6 Miles

Today started off chilly, but sunny. Thankfully it warmed up. The boys had a great time playing outside this afternoon.

Yes, they’re drawing on the table. I figure they’re waterable markers, and being outside…the art will wash away. Plus, it was the first time Will’s drawn something without me drawing it first for him. You’ll see a nice truck and trailer with lots of boxes in it. Alex is drawing a roof for the trailer.

Other exciting news–Will learned how to pump on the swing by himself last week! He’s had lots of fun going outside and just swinging and swinging, and I LOVE that I’m not being asked to push him!

So our Friday was crazy busy. It started with getting Will to preschool and then stocking up at the grocery store (the fridge was rather empty).  We had time to come home and unload/put away the food and then do a quick tidy-up. Then it was time to get Will. We got back to see our friends in the driveway! Yea! My friend Krisha was a bit early, she and her daughter Gracie (from the balloon party a few weeks ago) came down to visit.

We were going to go to the Children’s Museum but on Tuesday, when I was chatting with a staffer about coming back on Friday, I was warned it was going to be BUSY on Friday. If we were coming, it would be best to come first thing in the morning. Since that wasn’t possible, we decided to go to a cool park near-by. Yes, she drove an hour down to go to a park. We were SO glad she came. Grace and Will have been playing together since they were babies, and get along so well! Grace said she was going to marry Will, but don’t tell him. (She yelled this right in front of him. That face he made when he was getting the trophy at the race–his embarrassed but happy face–he made that again! And then fell on the floor. Ah, to be young and silly again!   We had a great time talking and eating lunch, then we went to the park. Will and Grace ran and ran. Alex and Elizabeth (another girl Krisha babysits on vacations) alternated between playing with them, being upset they were running away and just playing on their own. I was so thankful we could do the park…it was cloudy and the weather people had been forecasting rain starting in the afternoon. The rain held off all day Friday (and didn’t start until Saturday evening!!!)  and the kids had fun. We stopped for ice cream on the way back to the house, the perfect ending!   Friday night James and I got to go out for dinner and a movie (Mexican food and the movie Duplicity–we enjoyed both).

Saturday was more relaxing. I spent part of the time running to the store by myself. I got all the loads of laundry that I’d sqeezed in during the week folded and put away.  James did tons of yard work, so not so relaxing for him.    Sunday was another lazy day. It was cold and rainy (which switched over to a “wintery mix”), and once we got home from church I vowed we’d not leave the house again. And we didn’t. 

Our calender is VERY empty this week. I’m thankful after the crazy week last week. I just have to be careful our relaxing days don’t turn to laziness!

After a crazy week, today I resolved we were going to take it easy. We all slept in (kids were up late last night) and I let the boys watch their morning video in their pjs (they were SO excited, that doesn’t happen often). We eventually got moving and enjoyed some time outside. The boys played in the (shrinking but still present) compost pile.  I got some branches we’d pruned on Tuesday moved to the back branch pile, took a few pictures and then the boys had some lunch.

My lilac bush…leaves! (well, leaflets, but still, green!!!)

The rest of the day was spent making cookies for preschool (see below) and various odds and ends (folding laundry, cleaning up, the boys had a great time playing and played together really well).  Will was not ready to put his derby victory behind him, and asked me to take this picture for Uncle Doug and Grandma Harbin (not sure why the rest of you aren’t included, but I’ll include you now):

Tomorrow is Will’s turn to bring snacks for preschool. They are studying the letter V, and move on to the letter W next week. It’s fun (but not required) if you can match the snack to the letter–something we’ve not been able to do (I don’t even remember what the letter was last time, I just remember I couldn’t think of any ideas that were easy to take, kid friendly and reasonably healthy).  The only thing I could think of for V was vegetables…and while a good idea, I’m all out of my fresh carrots and any other fun veggies to make a veggie tray (I’m going shopping DURING preschool tomorrow!) and for some reason, this post  on watermelon cookies popped into my head. So, I asked Will what he thought, and he and I decided we were going to make watermelon cookies. (Go look at it that post if you haven’t yet, her pictures are SOOO good, makes me embarrassed to put some up here! And then you’ll understand as I start talking about what I did differently).

So, first off, we chose not to follow the recipe she posted, because she didn’t like the flavor. Since it just looked like a basic sugar cookie recipe, we used my mom’s recipe, in the past it’s our family favorite…but I haven’t made it in a few years and  our dough ended up really sticky, so I ended up adding more flour after I’d added the food color. I also made more of a pink watermelon then red.  So I made the dough, and then while it chilled, I had the boys help me make green sugar. This was also tricky because I only have food color gel, not the liquid kind, and it was REALLY hard to mix! The gel clumped up in the sugar and I did more mixing then the boys. If there is a next time I’ll try to buy the green decorative sugar you see at Christmas time. (Our mxing/mashing made the sugar crystals REALLY small, so they didn’t show up well in the end. I think the bigger, bright green you can buy would really look good here.)

I decided to try to roll the dough into a snake shape, and then roll it in the sugar, and slice off the cookies.

The cutting make the one end flat and so it was a perfect little watermelon shape. LITTLE being the key. Very tiny ones! And it was hard to make them sugar cookie width (thin) so I used my thumb to press them a bit flatter–only that destroyed the cute shape.  I was going to try to do half this way, and the other half roll out and then cut circles, cut them in half in a more traditional sugar cookie way. But, remember how I said how sticky that dough was? That plus just not wanting to do that much work meant I did all of the cookies the roll and slice way. The second ball of dough I rolled up and then put in the freezer and that was a bit easier to cut.

The boys had a great time putting chocolate chips in (those are the seeds). Again, if I did this again, I’d try to plan ahead and have mini-chocolate chips on hand, these were really big for the size. Here’s what they looked like pre-baked.

And post-baked, I’d say they looked less like watermelons then ever! Some even looked a bit alien like.

But, I figure the audience of 4 & 5 year olds won’t care, they taste pretty good and that’s what matters!

Last night was the Pinewood Derby at AWANA. The boys have been VERY excited about this night. From the first moment Will heard about this, he was excited, couldn’t wait and hoping he’d win. Alex was excited because he got to come with me to with the Cubbies (not to the “baby room” where he usualy goes when he comes to AWANA) and watch the races.

Will and James have been working on his car on and off for the last few weeks. Then I helped Will with the final decorative touches. The entire car was his design.

He really wanted circles on it. The sides are green with black and gold stripes. The number is his favorite driver, but he has 21 on the side (not sure why).

Here was the setup in our fellowship hall.

This is where the Cubbies and I were–we had a great view of the races. The kids watched movies, colored, played with cars or legos or watched the races.

They divide the races up into 4 classes–the Sparks girls, the Sparks boys, TnT girls and TnT boys. We watched the girls, and then it was Will’s group’s turn. Here goes one race! (Will’s car is the third in).

And he won! Not only did he win his first race, he ended up winning for the Sparks Boys!!! We were so excited for him! This is a picture of his car coming first:

Here is Will’s post race interview. He was asked what his favorite color is  and he said “Green, of course.” So then he was asked why he painted his car blue. Good question!

 

At the end, Will go to race against all the other champions:

It was a close race betwen his and the white car, but Will won! He was the grand champion! He was so excited he won FOUR races, he didn’t quite get what that last race was. When I explained it to him, his eyes got big.

He was presented with a trophy–his first trophy!

And then they gave him milk to drink, just like the Indy 500! (James tried to get him to pour it on his head like they do at the Indy 500…I told him if he did that he’d have to take a bath!

 Quite a fun night. The most fun was how many people were excited for Will with us.  It’s great to be a part of such a caring group of people and makes us SO happy we found our church!

…gets really dirty together?

Today the boys helped James put compost in the front flower beds.

They had fun taking the compost and putting it in the wagon with their shovels.

And they helped with spreading it around the flowers.

While they did that, I weeded. We have a bumper crop of wild garlic I’m trying to get rid of.  And I took pictures.   Here’s a close up of some of the flowers (the tulips are new, not what I expected when I bought them, but I really like them…seriously, I bought a pack on clearance that was a mix of  3 types of bulbs, purple, white and another color. I think these are them…or maybe we’ve had them and I just forgot? Possible too! There are still some comeing  up, so we’ll see.).

 

They open wide in the warmth of the day and are all yellow on the inside.  And we have my spring favorites below.

I had done so well updating the blog in the previous week, I’m embarrassed it went so long in the last week or so! So, some highlights of our last week:

• Thursday–March Madness begins! The boys are great fun joining me in watching the basketball games for awhile. Alex tends to pick the winning team to be “his” team and cheer for them. Will sticks to wanting to know the team on my bracket and helps me cheer for that one.
• Friday–First Day of Spring!!!   James went to Chicago to visit his brother. He chose to take the MegaBus, so we got to take him downtown to the bus stop. We celebrated the first day of spring by getting ice cream on our way downtown.  The boys were quite excited to see the big buildings and go downtown. Alex fell asleep before we were even mid-way there (it was about 7 pm).
• Saturday–We went to visit Grandpa and Grandma Harbin. They took the kids to the park and the boys helped Grandpa start getting ready for spring.   We had fun watching the Purdue game and stayed a bit too late…Alex fell asleep in the car on the way home again.
• Sunday–I weeded as the boys played outside. I replanted my tomato seedlings I started too soon into larger containers.  (Lesson learned, wait until late March next year!)  Also, James came back! But the bus got stuck in traffic (that time of year as well, roads are starting to close for construction) and was late. It was supposed to come in at 7:30, and it didn’t get back to Indy until 9!!! Both boys were quite excited to see the city at night and Alex stayed awake long enough to see the bus come. But, once again, he fell asleep on the way home, in the car.
• Monday–We overslept and Will was late to pre-school.  I made both boys take naps. They were still really cranky. I spent most of the day working on a meal to share with friends who had twins a few weeks ago. Things just kept not working out and taking longer then expected!.  After supper,  I was happy to get out of the house and go get my hair cut and then visit the library by myself. It was really nice to look around for books without kids running off or being impatient.
• Tuesday–We visited  Children’s Museum with a friend I used to teach with (and renewed our membership so we’ll be going more often–but even with taking almost a year off,  it’s become so common I didn’t even think of taking my camera–shocking!!!  I did have a fun time remembering what we did and how it was when Will was 2 1/2 and we first started going.)   We had a great time catching up and the boys had a great time playing. Alex feel asleep in the car on the way home.  It was another beautiful day and we spent the afternoon/evening outside (pictures are above).

So, we’ve been enjoying some beautiful spring weather (but really need rain). We’re working on getting the boys caught up on sleep, and letting Alex actually fall asleep in bed!

…a week late, we still want to wish everyone a happy St. Patrick’s Day…

Part of our celebration was a green breakfast (made by James, he does the pancakes):

Green pancakes and green milk! Yum! They actually did taste very good.

Playing outside! Yesterday, the boys got a ride with the neighbor boys in Daddy’s Wagon. (After we’d done a long family bike ride)

Our garden–nothing is planted yet, we’re just getting it ready. This is really for Grandma Lo, so she can see the size. Sorry I cut off the end on the left, but that’s the end.

 

Close up of the boys!

 

A tree on our walk today.

Yesterday we celebrated James’ birthday. My parents came down for the afternoon. My sister also thought it’d be fun to come out for a short trip and surprise Mom and Dad. She got in town late Friday evening and left first thing this morning, but it was fun to have her stay over at our house. 

Mom and Dad came mid-afternoon and had fun playing with the boys. Dad brought his truck so he & James could go to the hardware store and get rail road ties for making a raised bed for our garden. They got those and unloaded them. Then we sat around, talking and watching basketball. While we were doing that Alex climbed up on Grandma’s lap and ended up falling asleep!!! I guess he’s not quite ready to skip those afternoon naps–even if he thinks so!

We finally had to wake him up so we could go get dinner. We went out to Red Robin for supper. The boys had fun playing on the games while we wait for a table.

James “held” the boys balloons for them.

Will and Grandpa as we wait for our food

Alex wanted to join in the fun!

Just love the brotherly love!

After we filled up, we went back to the house to open gifts and have cake. We did the gifts first, in an attempt to give ourselves more room for the cake!

Alex was very excited to watch James open his gifts. When James opened up the gift from Heidi (Season 1 of Scrubs) he said “YES!” and did a fist pump. No, he’s never seen Scrubs! 

James’ gift from his mom and dad–it sparked some discussions over cake. (It’s a book on crisis prepardness, note it’s wrapped in plastic, so even the book is ready for any water disaster).

And finally, the part the kids had been waiting for, CAKE!!!

James blew out his candle (yes, we’ve used that on the last 3 birthday cakes, we’re not too original!) and we had double decker ice cream cake. We have LOTS left over if any of you want to come over and have some!