Fun with the Greens

Lost In *Birthday* Fun

Rant

Don't you love finally dragging the sick kids out of the house to go to the doctor's office after talking to the nurse to be sure a visit was warranted, only to be there alone for most of an hour & a half, then find out that your baby is sick with a nasty virus so she needs lots of rest & fluids? Duh. Argh.

Excuse my rant. Prayers appreciated!

On a roll

Bowling. I like it a lot. I'm not very good at it, but I think it's fun.

We took our GodTeens along & had a fun time.

Teresa missed all but about 15 minutes of her nap & Rebecca was a tad overwhelmed by all the "big kids", so a snack from the vending machine was a mega-highlight to their experience. ;)

One of the other couples' little guy would push his ball down the lane... it only took about 50 seconds to finally make it to the pins. He actually did pretty well, though!

This was only Andrew's second time bowling ever. Last time we were at Champions, where they have those handy dandy metal guides for the little kids but they didn't have those on east campus. So, he was determined to do it just like us. Check out this approach! Amazingly, he only dropped it once. He actually broke 50!

***

My first time bowling was at my classmate Crystal's first birthday party. I loved it so much that my score from that day has been my favorite number ever since: 47.

Sisters

I love it when they share a chair... too cute.

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This book they are reading was a repetitious story all about a little chickie who had a cold. Now Teresa sees any chicken or picture of a chicken and says, "Ah-choo!" Kind of like when Andrew thought that baby ducks said, "Aflac!"

She's learning!

Well, it's taken a while, but Rebecca is starting to learn her letters! I'm not set on her writing sentences before preschool or anything, it's just that Andrew kind of took off with it on his own much younger, so I guess that was my expectation. But this is great! Check out her princess picture, complete with name at the top.
Then when I was making our Lenten Calendar downstairs, she was creating, too. Totally by accident she made a great letter L.
"Look, Mom! I made a number!" I told her it was L like in LOVE & of course she had to know how to spell the rest. Her V got an extra bump, but I *love* it. ;)

Even though we don't really focus on reading or writing, I think that Friends Preschool has been a fabulous motivator for learning. When she can have school like Andrew, it's so exciting for her!

Here we are with our St. Patrick Trinity crafts.

Our awesome new-to-us T Rex puzzle. When you turn off the lights, you can see the skeleton glow in the dark!

Lunch, anyone?

Yes, they're that kind of friends. ;)

Rockers

Here they are: the Crazy Rockstars.

They spent about half an hour requesting different songs on the radio (most often "Danger Zone") as they sang, danced, & played the drums/guitar on their couch stage. Andrew insists on wearing these two pairs of pajama pants at every opportunity right now. Hey, I'm all about comfort but really?

They dug through our hat/mittens/sunglasses/random box to find these "costumes". Notice it strewn in the background? I have NO idea where they get that goofy streak from. ;)

Creations for Daddy

That is the most she has EVER colored on one paper!

And with vim! And vigor!

Rebecca made a sunshine, a birdie, & a machine that picks up boxes of lemons to squeeze them & then throw them into the van. Handy! Andrew wanted to draw Darren snowblowing... he got the outfit right, the piles of snow along the sides of the driveway, him peeking out the window, even some random birds AND an eagle flying, but the snowblower was just too hard. ;)

We love you, Daddy!

Here we go again

I love Nebraska.

I hope that we live here for a long time... the rest of my life would be fine, actually. I love the extreme changes in seasons, for one. It really is amazing though how many times we've gone from clear lawn like this to complete white wonderland in a day & then back within the last month. Isn't it?

Everytime I feel like I just need clear streets & some serious sunshine, it comes! When we want to play outside but the summer toys aren't out yet & it's still too chilly to do much, it snows! Granted the changes are challenging, & sometimes annoying depending on our plans for the day, but I think I'd be bored where it was the same all the time. How about you?

T-Rex, roar!

Since both Andrew & Darren were home on President's Day, we decided to have an adventure! We drove out to the new Dinosaur Museum to see what all the talk was about. Rebecca was a little freaked out about 1 minute in the door asking if we could go home... but, she mostly got over it. Teresa didn't seem to mind!They had some pretty big skeletons there. Andrew has always liked dinosaurs but they all took a greater interest since Dinosaur Train has started on PBS. There were quite a few catchy dinosaur tunes being sung & references to *who* each dinosaur was: "That's a pteranodon like Shiny!" "Look a tyrannosaurus like Buddy!" "Is that the Conductor dinosaur?"And plenty of large life-like replicas as well. Notice how funny Andrew's standing... I think he's a little nervous it might eat him! One room had just the neck & heads of about 10 different dinosaurs on steel rods amid some foliage. Rebecca said,

"Uh-oh. I think some of those dinosaurs lost their legs!"They had quite the variety of land dinosaurs, swimming dinosaurs, & flying dinosaurs as well as many other animals that lived during their time periods. There were also replicas of cavemen skeletons, saber tooth tigers, AND to show how molds are made they even had face molds of everyone from Ringo Starr to Arnold Schwarzenegger, which was amusing, mainly just to see who they picked to display! The girls were biggest fans of their two digging tables where you could *discover* fossils. Andrew loved the totally unrelated but completely fun mirror maze & the dinosaur videos at the end. Overall it was pretty cool, but very overpriced for such a small display. If you can get a Groupon deal it would be worth the drive. It made for a fun afternoon for us!

Happy feet

My beautiful mother came to town a couple of weeks ago while Dad was out skiing. My little sister & I took her for her first pedicure ever. Look at those happy feet. :) It was a great time!We enjoyed some fun time with cousins a few days later as we welcomed Grandpa & uncles home.
Look at how that handsome little Nicholas is growing!

16 months

Book Recommendations

Andrew - 14 months

One of our favorite additions to Christmas is our basket of Christmas books. We go to the library a lot less & just enjoy all the stories about Jesus' birth. I'd love to have a similar basket for Lent & Easter. Do you have some that you really love? Some you *thought* you'd like but don't so much? I imagine that I'll be doing most of this book browsing on-line, so any suggestions from actual readers like you would be very welcome! What's your favorite?

Lenten Ideas

So, we were discussing ideas for Lent at Bible Study this week (since it's only 13 days away!) & I thought I should rummage through what we did last year. 40 bags in 40 days, toys for Jesus, sacrifice jar, Holy Heroes, decade a day... it's all in this link!

http://smilers-robyn.blogspot.com/search/label/Lent

I don't know which ones we'll continue & what we might try new. How about you? What are your Lenten plans? Have any great ideas to share?

Signs of Spring

We have been SO blest by a week of absolutely beautiful non-February in Nebraska weather! We've been playing outside, going for lots of walks, & leaving all the windows open. Even Friday which was a little cooler had so many signs of spring. First we saw these:

I planted a bunch of tulips & daffodil bulbs in the fall & we have at least 10 popping up already! I'm a little leary, because I'm sure there is more snow to come, but they are sure a hopeful sight. Later on our walk we heard a single robin up in a bare tree. "Hooray!" Rebecca shouted. Then we turned the corner & discovered a whole flock of them descended on the last empty lot of our area. When we got back home & came inside there was a fly buzzing in my office.

It may not be here to stay, but I'll love our pre-spring beauty while it's here! Something about it gives me hope of starting anew. It gives me a fresh perspective on my day, my vocation, my struggles, my life, my relationship with God. Right now in Bible Study we are reading "The Discernment of Spirits" by Fr. Timothy Gallagher. I totally recognize the gift of this week as what St. Ignatius would identify as a spiritual consolation. Thank you, God!