Lake Lynn

Another beautiful day, another fun afternoon feeding the ducks!

Happy Birthday, Izabella!

My cousin's daughter, Izabella, turned 4 last week. She invited Brett and Kate to her birthday party at Play Nation - what a cool place! The kids had a BLAST! In fact, Brett's preschool class has decided to have a play date there this Friday, so we get to go back. Yay!

Umstead

This past Saturday was absolutely GORGEOUS! We're talking 77 degrees and beautiful blue skies. I, of course, had agreed to work in exchange for another day off. We won't talk about how bitter I am that my day off is supposed to be mid-50s and raining. Anyway, Todd decided to take the kids to Umstead Park to do a little hiking and have a picnic. The kids were super-excited to tell me all about it. They "ate lunch on a big rock in the middle of the lake!" Really, it was a rock that jutted out into a stream, but they were really excited about it either way. What a fun dad they have!

Mardi Gras

The kids' preschool holds a Mardi Gras festival every year in February - full of everything "festival-ish" that you can think of - bounce houses, games, auctions, face-painting, etc. Well, this year, it got snowed out, but they decided to do a preschool-wide fun day last Friday morning. Todd and I were both working, but my mom had the fun job of taking the kids over to the festival for a couple hours. From talking to the other moms that were there, I've learned that our kids waited in the VERY long line for face painting for a VERY long time and VERY patiently! Good job, kiddos! Here are the results - Brett as a dalmation (with a fire truck tattoo that you can't see) and Kate as a butterfly (with a butterfly tattoo that you can't see). Don't they look cute?! They even took naps in their face paint - needless to say, we had some dirty pillowcases to wash :)

Busy little bees

This has been one thoroughly productive, yet exhausting, weekend! I agreed weeks ago to take the kids all day on Saturday so Todd could have a good chunk of time by himself to get stuff done. He got a ton of organizing and cleaning done in the bonus room. Apparently, it wore off because I decided to get a lot done during what spare time I had this weekend too.

This is one corner of our attic... I'm pretty sure I could open my own Babies R Us right here, right now

If you do a quick 180 from the above picture, this is what you'll see - every article of clothing from newborn to size 3 in boys, size 2 in girls.

Why do we still have all of this? Because if you ask us one day, we'll tell you that we *might* decide to have another baby. If you ask us the rest of the days, we'll laugh at you and look at you like you've grown 18 heads just for suggesting such a thing! One day, we'll actually decide and then consign all this mess!

Remember this wall?! Well, now it's bare (except for all of the places that I've ripped straight through to the dry wall... more on that another day!)

I found these ginormous cork boards on clearance at Michael's, painted the edges green to liven it up a little bit, and helped Todd to hang all of them. I moved the artwork from the "Wall of Art" over to their new home, until the latest and greatest preschool artwork comes home anyway! I have another idea for the wall that I've now destroyed, but I'm still thinking it out in my head. I'll let you know when I do something constructive with it.

Airplane Park

Monday was absolutely beautiful - 72 degrees and bright blue skies. I told the kids that we could go to the "airplane park" (observation deck at RDU) if they took really good naps after school. The bribe worked wonderfully and they had a blast running around and enjoying the sunshine.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Working hard

 

Happy Birthday, Aunt Erin!

We celebrated Aunt Erin's birthday on Friday night at Kemp's Seafood - delicious! Brett and Kate had a great time helping Aunt Erin open her presents and blow out the candles on her birthday cake.

Shasta

Shasta is Brett's class pet from his Shining Stars class, and she was our (dirty) house guest for the weekend. I wanted to give her a bath, but I was pretty convinced that she would disintegrate in my washing machine, so I left her alone. I am pretty sure, however, that she infected our entire house with the latest preschool ebola virus - the snot nose. Gross.

This is Kate being Kate - dressed up as Tinkerbell, and singing "Happy Birthday" to Dora. Apparently, Dora turned 2! Kate even made a candle for her cake using the extra bolts stuff from Brett's workshop. I have to say that she does have a very good imagination!

Little old man

This totally cracked me up... I walked by the bathroom and found Brett sitting there, on his Bob the Builder potty seat, "reading" the Toys R Us Advertisement. Priceless!