Snow and Snot

This was the view out of my kitchen window yesterday. Notice the very green grass and the green leaves on the trees? And yes, that is SNOW on the grass!! I was told last night by some who are older and wiser that we have indeed, had snow in the past at the tail end of April.
I however, do not remember any such thing, and was highly disappointed not to be able to dress Ava in yet another of her cute summer outfits. It is also still very cold today, I got out my sweat pants again and am wearing a fleece sweatshirt. . .

As far as this picture goes, well, I just couldn't help it. . .
(He didn't make that face on purpose, I just happened to catch him in the act of itching his nose!)
Hope this doesn't embarrass him when he gets older!

Motivated Mommy

I'm running a tight ship this week. Housework finished by 3:00, dinner started at 4:30, homework done, dinner eaten and put away, baths, jammies on, teeth brushed, toys picked up by 7:00.

We're starting another project in our drafty, dusty old house. I've convinced Marvin to commit to spending 30 minutes each night doing prep work in the room (aka: getting rid of his excessive amounts of clutter) so that the project will go more smoothly. In a fit of generosity, I asked him what the ideal circumstances would be upon his arrival from work that would facilitate his ability to follow through on his commitment. Well, you can refer to my first paragraph to figure out what his answer was!

I actually held up my end of the bargain quite nicely last night, and much to my suprise, so did Marvin! Because of how smoothly things went last night, I'm looking forward to seeing how the rest of the week will go, just from a scheduling standpoint. In theory, this kind of sound like a nice idea to keep up for the remainder of the school year...

Anyone want to take a guess at what room we're working on next?

Beauty and the Blog

I had a sudden epiphany last week, "Ava's a girl so I can paint her toenails!" Mine are never without polish unless I'm about 30 weeks pregnant, so I can't believe I let Ava's toes go naked nearly 17 months! Hmmm, now if I could only convince Marvin to let me get her ears pierced...

So, here's the beauty queen striking a pose among the blossoms of our cherry tree...
Quick, get me a tiara and some lip gloss!

A Picture and a Thousand Words

Ahh, Spring Break...The promise of warmer weather, no schedule, and family bonding time.

We took a few days to go south, the weather was around the 70's, and we had plenty of family bonding time on our 8 hour drive!

When we got back, we spent a day or two with no schedule whatsoever because we were scrambling to unpack, do laundry, run last minute errands, and get ready for Alec's birthday party.

Today was the last day, and Alec's party. The weather was lovely, everyone was happy, the boys had a great time geocaching, and at the end of the day, Mommy gets a rest (I put Ava to bed at 7!).

We won't actually have much post-vacation letdown this time; all the laundry is caught up, the house is tidy (one of the very few benefits of having a birthday party at home), and we're supposed to have more good weather tomorrow.

Sit back and enjoy my over-abundance of pictures. We truly did have a wonderful time...

On the way down south, we stopped at the VERY cool Duke Energy Children's Museum in Cincinatti in the Union Terminal building. I would highly recommend it to anyone; we could have easily spent the whole day...
This was an almost life size, stylized replica of some sort of scoop tractor complete with "rocks" that the kids could shovel into the dumper and other kids could dump out (yes Brittany, Gavin would be in heaven!)

The Lego room...

We had to drag them out of this area, even Ava, who was ecstatic that the tables were low enough that she could climb on them!

Alec being mauled by some huge prehistoric animal skull at the entrance to the museum...

Aww, ain't he cute?

One of the main attractions at my uncle's farm...

We stopped at New Found Gap in the Smoky Mountains (a good way to show the kids the mountains without hiking), the kids are sitting on the sign for the North Carolina/Tennessee state line...

Marvin was trying to get them to cooperate for a group shot; it's sort of like trying to herd cats...

My whole world...

Mommy and Ava and the beautiful Smoky Mountains

Benji checking out the sting rays at the very cool (and expensive!) Ripley's Aquarium in Gatlinburg

Ava and the huge "shish", probably her favorite part...

We stopped at one of the plethora of fancy schmancy mini-golf locations...

This is the only reason Ava participated; a hole and something to take out of it...

Oh yes, soak up the tackiness...Gatlinburg truly has it all! If you shade your eyes and look up though, you can see the mountains...

During break, I made my first "real" Benji-friendly pizza using my bread recipe that I use spelt flour with. We didn't turn up with a really round crust (I don't have a pizza pan), but Benji was so excited!

Ava was eating spaghetti while I was making two birthday cakes for Alec and his party...

Then I decided it would be a good idea to let her lick a beater. Mmmm, pasta sauce and chocolate! Strangely, Marvin was no where to be found when it was time to clean her up...

Alec's birthday; the "just our family" celebration; that yummy vegan chocolate cake again...it turns out better and better each time I make it

We've decided that our new tradition is to let everyone bite their cake, after we started it with Benji on his birthday

Need I say more?

I made two cakes at the same time, this one is for the friend birthday party. Alec was very specific as to what he wanted, he drew the top of the cake, told me what colors to make everything, and later we added big dinosaur footprints and an action figure to the top. Oh, according to Alec, it was supposed to look like sand, water and rocks...

An assortment of Alec's buddies at the party...the "potty talk" was prolific at the table while they were eating cake!

Me trying to convince Benji that the world was not ending because Alec just got three Webkinz and Benji got none...

Ava and "Pop-ie" (the boys call him "Papa"- my dad)

Alec and one of his favorite presents- the Dark Trooper (any of you avid Star Wars fans will know what that is!) and a skateboard. Hmmm, I wonder who will be teaching him how to ride that?

Quirky Confessions

I'm finally coming clean on this...Marvin and I are absolutely addicted to the arcade games on Webkinz; especially Cash Cow 2!

If any of you have kids with Webkinz and have ever played that game, you know what I mean. We spent probably hours on this week of vacation sitting in front of the computer seeing who could beat that darn level 4!

Oh, and we aren't playing with the kids- we're playing at night after they go to bed so we don't have to take turns with them!

Vacation and birthday pictures are coming...