Friendly Student Award

Connor received the "Friendly" student of the month award at his school this week! Each month there is a new theme, and one student from each class is chosen. I'm very proud of my friendly little guy!

Piano Recital

Emily had her very first piano recital a week and a half ago. She really enjoyed the whole experience, and plans to perform this same piece in the talent show at her elementary school later in the year.



It was so fun watching her perform, and although she was REALLY nervous about playing in front of so many people, she did a wonderful job!

Headbanz

My mother-in-law bought a new game called Headbanz, and the kids had a BLAST playing it! Some of the words were a little above my kids' level (especially Connor), but we just dug through and made sure they got ones they would decently be able to guess. I heard there is a kid version of the game, but we figured we could easily just make our own "kid" cards to go with the existing game!

(I realize Connor looks like he's naked, but I promise, he's got pants on! LOL)

In a nutshell, you have a word on your head, which everyone else can see, and you have to ask questions to try to guess the word. It might be a food item, a vacation destination, an animal, a movie star, etc.

Going down an inappropriate road, my FIL got the word "beaver", and the first question he asked was, "Am I edible?" (keep in mind, he didn't know what the word on his head was). After the rest of us adults in the room laughed, his next question was, "Am I a destination?" Maybe you had to be there, but it was pretty funny!!!

I can see us all playing this game again, for sure!

HATS!! (and more hats!)

I made Eva an owl hat as part of her birthday present (can you believe she's two??)


I purposely made it a little big since winter is basically over for this year; that way it'll for sure fit nicely for next fall/winter.


Alisa found a hat online that looked like hair, with some cute flowers clustered on one side, and asked if I could do something similar. Turned out pretty cute!


She also asked if I could make Eva's cousin, Bella, an owl hat as well.


I attended a baby shower over the weekend for my friends, Kristina and Jess, and their newly adopted son, Mikey. Couldn't resist making him a monkey hat, similar to the one Connor has!

Quote of the Week

Just a little humor on this Monday morning! I found it funny enough to take the time in the pouring down rain in Pittsburgh to stop and take a picture before dashing into the next store along the strip.

Connor's 3rd lost tooth

He's looking a bit snaggle-toothed, wouldn't you say?!?!


It still doesn't seem like he should be old enough to be losing teeth! He's my BABY!!! (right???)

Wounded foot

As I was doing final packing Monday night before traveling to Pennsylvania for the week, I somehow managed to hurt my foot! All I did was squat down on the balls of my feet to dig through my yarn stash, and when I stood back up, something popped (not an audible pop, but a pop/shift I could FEEL in my foot). Pain shot through my foot, then the ball of my foot swelled up (I compare it to one of those tension balls you grip, and it is squishy, but firm?). After about two hours, the swelling felt like it had gone away, and I never gave my foot another thought. Tuesday morning we arrived in Pittsburgh and spent the day attending the viewings for Dan's grandma and connecting up with all the family. Later in the day, my foot really started to hurt, and I took my shoe off to see what was going on, and found a DARK bruise all over the ball of my foot, in addition to some pretty significant swelling (not the THICK lump I'd had the night before, but it the whole area of the bruise was larger than on my non-bruised food).

This picture really does NOT do the bruising justice


I was pretty positive nothing was broken, but the bruised area was very tender and I spent the entire week limping around on it. I still have no idea what exactly I did to it, but a full week later, the tenderness is going away and the bruising has faded a lot. Leave it to me to wind up with a stupid injury!

Trip to Pittsburgh

We got a call early morning Sunday, March 4th from Dan's mom, letting us know that Dan's grandma ("Grammy", who was my FIL's mother) had passed away in her sleep overnight. Sunday morning was spent in a bit of a tearful blur as we processed the news. I only got to meet Grammy a handfull of times, but she welcomed me and loved me as if I'd been around forever. She was a tiny little woman, but goodness, could she give a hard hug! Her spaghetti sauce was the only sauce I can truthfully say I actually liked.

We scrambled to get airfare, lined up child-care and pet-care, and made the trip across the country as soon as was humanly possible. It was an emotional rollercoaster of a trip, as we gathered with family and cried together, laughed over funny memories of Grammy together, etc. It was so good to be with everyone for comfort.

I don't have many pictures from our time in PA, as it just really didn't seem appropriate to be taking them, but I have a few random pictures from activities we did during our stay.

One of the days, a large group of us headed downtown to the strip district in Pittsburgh to do a bit of shopping. Dan and Corey and I got a laugh out of the directions we saw stapled to a Terrible Towel that was for sale:


We also went to Pennsylvania Macaroni Company, where one of Dan's aunt's is THE cheese lady (so many people come in to get fancy cheeses on the weekends they have to take a number!!!). While we were there, we came across this $85.99 HUGE container of Nutella:


Another day, we met up with some of the family from Dan's mom's side of the family, and we went to get some Vincent's Pizza, which is sort of THE pizza to get. It's quite a pizza!! (compare it to the plate and my MIL's hands in the background)


And if there's a silver lining to the last-minute scramble across the country, it's that it put me within 2 hours of my dear friend Kaci in Ohio, and her new baby, Emmy, so we met up for lunch. One of her friends, Cindy, was in town visiting from CA, so I got to meet her as well!


Emmy was/is a sweet little princess baby and I loved the entire 2.5 hours she snoozed in my arms. The lunch was over WAYYYYY too quickly for my liking


The week ended in the blink of an eye, and before we knew it, it was time to head home. Grammy was an amazing person, and I'm sad the kids and I didn't get more opportunities to be around her. She's left behind a lot of grieving family and friends, and she will be greatly missed. XOXO

Where's Connor?

Thought it would be funny to pose Connor in his monkey hat, buried under all his monkey friends. He loved being so snuggled in!

Olympic Game Farm Bloopers

The animals really have no problem with shoving their heads right into your vehicle and nosing around for food!




Several times we'd be busy feeding an animal from one side of the car, and totally not notice that some were coming up to the OTHER side of the car, until someone was getting licked in the neck or gently head-butted, or heavily breathed on by something with STINKY breath... LOL!! The llamas absolutely CRACKED US UP the way they trot alongside your car as you're driving along, heads bobbing into the window. Hilarious!

The buffalo use their long tongues to wrap around the piece of bread in order to pull it into their mouths, which means you are pretty much guaranteed to get licked during the process at one point or another. Poor Connor got a buffalo that couldn't quite figure it out or something, and kept wrapping it's tongue around Connor's wrist instead of the bread. You can see by his expression he wasn't overly thrilled:


Then there was a sneak attack and a direct lick to the face! aughh!!


Emily got uber slobbered at one point, too


The buffalo STUNK. badly. Jared agrees:


We asked for toothy smiles, and even the elk cooperated!


And you can't have a large group of kids without ending up with a silly faces picture: