I love to garden!

Oh, I am so excited!  After going to the gym I went and bought our garden seeds for this year!  Yes, I am excited.  Oh, how we love to garden in our house.  I would not necessarily say that I have a green thumb, in fact I think it might be part brown with green struggling to survive; but I have decided that gardening and yard work is one of my hobbies (if only my kids would give me more time to do it).  We at our house are excited for Spring.  Caleb and Peter have been enjoying the warm weather by digging and playing in the dirt and I have had our garden plan figured out since Fall.  To add to the excitement we (Caleb and I  really) have been planning a Welcome Spring party complete with decorations and yummy food.  YEAH!  I love it and I cannot wait to start planting!

Bonks

Ah, Coops!

Sometimes we find ourselves easily distracted. We find son #2 distracted ALL the time. Today, for example, we were on our way out of Blockbuster. Largely uneventful for most of the family. Uneventful is good most of the time. Cooper, however, may one day learn something from his un-uneventful (that's for you, double-negative police) exit. I guess a typical height of counter tops is approximately 36".

For an arithmetic simpleton like myself it goes like this:

Cooper walking out of Blockbuster + Eyes focused upwards and to the left (probably on something to do with Batman) + Blockbuster counter top =




Whether Cooper realized he has reached a vertical milestone as evidenced by the erythematous bridging of his eyebrows is yet to be determined.







ps. American Idol is painful tonite. Now I remember why I don't watch this show.

Growing Up

Douglas' hair had finally gotten to that point where something just HAD to be done. I was dreading the first big boy haircut, and had been trimming here and there to avoid it as long as possible. As soon as they get their first big boy haircut they just don't look like a baby anymore. Instead they start to look like a little boy. :( But I've gotten over it now, and can say that I'm glad that we cut it. It looks so much better.

The hairy beast before

The cute little boy now

We welcome the Tooth Fairy to our house

Well, it happened tonight, Caleb's tooth popped outta there and not a bit of pain.  It was actually quite a surprise to all of us.  Caleb was messing around on the couch tonight doing all sorts of stunts and unauthorized tricks and at one point he came to sit on the floor.  Out of the blue he sprang up and said, "My tooth fell out!"  But he did not know where it was, great.  I thought for sure it was a goner, who knows when it came out.  He had been eating an apple earlier in the afternoon, there was the circus act on the couch and then the always lovely fight with Peter, it could have happened at any time.  We started the face on the floor search and I really could not see anything.  But then, by all of the luck I found it, the smallest thing I think I have seen in a while.  It is so tiny!  It looked a lot bigger in his mouth.  Caleb was ecstatic, jumping up and down and running here and there.  Yeah, it is out!  It did not hurt a bit and I did not have to do anything myself to get it out.  :)

Oh PS, Valentine's day was fun.  We did Caleb's 100 day project for school and dinner was yummy.  I did a Paris theme.  We looked at our photos from our vacation to Paris 4 years ago and then we ate Baguettes, Crepes with Nutella (yummm!) and had Italian Creme Sodas, raspberry favored of course.  Oh the baguettes were yummy because of a good flavored tomato, nutella is delicious on crepes (something we learned in Paris) and oh how I love raspberry sodas - with extra raspberry and creme. :)  Happy Valentines to all!

Dressing up Douglas

Lately Douglas has discovered masks and capes. If the lid is ever left off the dress up clothes he will most likely find something himself and bring it to me to put on him. He's so darn cute!!

My littlest super hero

Ok I have to admit, he didn't ask for this one. This was when we were painting the dining room, and in and effort to not have green hair, head protection was a must.

Harry Potter glasses (that have been stepped on, bent and smashed one too many times to ever look normal again.)

Just trying to be like his big brothers

Shark Tooth!

First of all, yes it was Peter's party tonight and I should write about that but I will save that for a night when I have more time.  I just want to quickly show all you dentists out there my cool son's mouth, what we have come to call the Shark Tooth (or Teeth at it stands now)

Yes, Caleb is pretty excited that his tooth is almost outta there, but still hanging on.  He is so excited that all last night he wiggled and wiggled, even came up to me saying, "Mom, look how much it moves."  I looked and saw bloody flesh underneath this tooth hanging by a thread.  I shook my shoulders and turned my head.  I just do not have the guts to yank the thing for him and I am willing to let it dangle there for another day.  Meet Shark Tooth, but do not say that to Caleb, he does not like the name much.

Stanley

Here's the pictures for Flat Stanley. He visited Yale University, hung out with the librarians at the Yale library. Saw Yales school of music and visited the memorial for Yale students who fought in WW1.
You can copy the pictures and print the ones you want. Let me know if it'll be enough. If so then I'll mail you back Stanley. If you need a few more, then we can go out again.

Burnin' the midnight oil

Well, tomorrow is Peter's birthday and I, trying to be a good mom, have been working on his present.  I have been furiously crocheting a new green blanket to hopefully replace the old, loved to death green blanket of Peter's childhood.  Let's first take a look at the old blanket:

Yes, this thing has seen better days.  It was run over by the stroller a couple of times, thus the huge holes.  There are strings dangling everywhere and it is so stretched out.  But Peter loves it!  So, I thought what better gift that to crochet a new one, out of the same exact yarn, same color, everything!  My plan was great.  But then Peter turned into sort of a punk.  Here I was, dutifully crocheting and one day last week I asked Peter what his favorite color was.  He said, "RED!"  WHATTTTT????  You cannot possibly do that, change your favorite color a week before your birthday and especially since your mom is making a GREEN not RED blanket.  I then asked him what color his favorite blanket was and he said, "Green."  Well, thats something I guess.  So, here is the finished product.  I hope he will like it, accept it and I hope it is big enough because man I am done crocheting for a few days. :)

Star Student!

We went to the school yesterday for the Star Student assembly for Caleb.  Every class in the school had selected three students to receive the award and Mrs. Hargrove nominated Caleb to receive the award in his class.  He did not know about it until we got to the school so all during the assembly he was hoping his name would get called.  Sure enough when they did Mrs. Hargrove's morning class Caleb was the first one called.  He sprinted up there and all while the principle was telling us why Caleb recieved the award Caleb was chomping on his gum and would not look at us once for a picture. :)  Funny kid.  He was given an award for excellence in always being truthful and honest.  Mrs. Hargrove said Caleb is always honest in class and is the first one to admit that yes, he did do something wrong or no he was not listening.  So, this is our Star Student; he got a pin for his shirt that he says he is going to wear everyday to school and he got a pen shaped like a star on the top.  William ended up breaking the star pen a half hour after the assembly so I had to get Caleb a new one this morning. :)  Gotta love em!  We are so proud of, Caleb!  He is doing fabulous with reading and he loves to draw and sound out his own words.  He is really learning a lot.