Kindergarten - Check

Mrs. Baker and Maxwell this morning, kindergarten certificate in hand. Awww...

Anyone make any progress on that pause button??

Roar!!

We have our own little Tiger Scout roaring around the house these days. And I mean that literally. He is walking around the house, roaring on a regular basis. He is doubly excited because orange is his favorite color. And a brother that wanted in on the picture action. Now a few notes about Ben's wardrobe. He loves clothes that his brother passes over to him. So much so that he packed every single shirt Max recently passed over to him (about 6 shirts total) for a one-night stay at his grandparents' house last weekend. There's still (thankfully) a certain mystique to clothes Max passes over to him. This firetruck shirt is one such shirt.

You can also see his turquoise shorts in the top picture. You will be seeing a lot of these shorts this summer because if they're clean, he's wearing them. Here's the back-story to those. His very favorite shorts were three brightly colored tropical print pairs - size 24 months.

He is now 4.

You can see the problem.

He insisted that because he could still get the shorts on they still fit, never mind how short they were. He also has a gift for conjuring up big fat tears and whenever I'd bring up how small these favorite shorts were, the big fat tears would start rolling down his cheeks. We finally agreed to buy some replacement shorts in equally bright colors and rotate the itty-bitty shorts out of the wardrobe. So the turquoise shorts are the shorts he picked out. It's funny because while he certainly loves hand-me-downs, he, being the second child, still lights up big time when he gets to pick out new clothes for himself at the store.

So the outfit is pretty much perfection for Ben: hand-me-down shirt with favorite shorts. Sweet boy!

Twelve years ago today...

Where's the pause button?

Maxwell is winding down his school-year, and the traditional end-of-the-year Field Day was this week. His class enjoying their Jamba Juice.One of the cool things about the year-round schedule is that except for a few kids moving in and out or switching tracks, the classes pretty much stay the same throughout elementary school. So it'll be fun to watch the same group of kids as they progress from kindergarten to fifth grade together.

I can't believe he'll be going to school all day in about 6 weeks! And with a full June, the time will fly! The transition to kindergarten was pretty easy because it was basically the same hours as preschool and he was home by lunch. Having him gone all day though will be a whole other story - sniff! They even practiced eating lunch in the cafeteria this week. He'll thrive, but his mama and his little brother will miss him!

Seriously, I need a pause button! Anyone?

Benjamin wrapped up his first year of preschool last Tuesday and had a little end-of-year party. They got to paint a little pot and plant a seed.

Serious artistic concentration.
Snacks - always the best part. Oh my goodness...a gummy worm! Does it get any better than this?
All the little rugrats.

Grandparents and a New Dessert

Last weekend Andrew's parents stopped in for a couple of nights during their journey of moving from NM to PA. In honor of their visit, we decided to try a new dessert: Oreo Pizza. Nobody had yet reviewed it on allrecipes.com, but with ingredients like Oreos, Oreo pudding (who knew they made such a thing?), whipped cream, and some strawberries (which rendered it practically a health-dish in my book), we figured it was worth a shot. As the boys would say, it was "Yum, yum and extra yum!" Oh, the anticipation as the boys put the strawberries on!

Mother's Day

Mother Nature was kind to us on Mother's Day. It would be an understatement to say that the weather this winter and spring has kind of stunk, so the feeling of warm sunshine on my skin and wind that blessedly decided to stop blowing for one day was a welcome change yesterday - it was going to be a good day indeed!

Max's kids' choir performed their oh-so-cute spring musical at church. Ben working the 3-D glasses (there was underwater 3-D footage on the screens behind the kids singing). I also enjoyed a nice run, some time to just chill and read, and dinner out where I dined on crab enchiladas and a mango margarita - YUM!

And of course, Happy Mother's Day to my own mama!

Ta-da!!

So here it is: While watching his brother try on the new costume, Ben got this look on his face and started to really fight back tears. So here's Benjamin giving it a whirl. Look at that smile! And his very own killer whale costume will be coming up soon!

Project Shamu

The task: Transform this into something that resembles this for Max's musical next weekend. (I found the costume here.)

I scored the sweatshirt off Wal-mart's clearance rack for $5. On the way to check-out, I felt like I should be announcing: "I am not a Star Wars fan, it's for a project." (No offense, Star Wars fans.) And World, you're welcome for sparing you from one more 18-year-old guy walking around in a Star Wars sweatshirt. (Again, no offense, Star Wars fans. But really, 18-year-olds shouldn't be wearing Star Wars sweatshirts. Even if they're only $5.)

I know, I've been a blog slacker lately. I can live with that.

Yes, it's been awhile. No reason in particular - call it a blogging spring break.

Max was off-track most of March, so we visited the zoo and toured the hospital and an ice cream shop.

We also celebrated a birthday (Dad's 60th!) and a baby shower (Becca's), with Jody, Whitney and Becca in town for those events.

Mom and Dad added a new puppy, Betsy, to their family. The boys did a round of swim lessons...both boys love the water, but Ben especially loves swimming.

We've had completely crazy spring weather, with days like this and days like this and more wind than I ever care to experience again. Max is now skiing, which he absolutely loves, from the top of the mountain to the bottom, and Andrew and I enjoyed a glorious day of spring skiing with him.

We of course celebrated Easter and another birthday (Andrew's, and yes, there was blueberry pie). I think those are the major highlights of the last month or so...good stuff!

Music through the generations

We are quite honored that Lloyd give us Barbara's piano. I think it would make her smile to see the boys learn to play the piano on it. Once we finally got the piano into our living room (thank you mom and dad and Mark the poor guy that happened to be visiting his parents next door), we started to map out what other furniture we should put in there. You know, something besides trains, the Handy Manny workbench and the dog kennel.

We discovered an on-line Room Planner on American Furniture Warehouse's website that let us try out all of the various furniture arrangements we could think of. Do we know how to have fun on a Saturday night or what?

We settled on two chairs with a loveseat and set off to AFW to look with some purpose this morning. We got these recliners: We also got a loveseat that's the shade of red in the chairs, but it is out of stock for a few weeks. It will face the chairs, making a little conversation area. And it's all made in the USA - woot-woot!

I will eat them anywhere!

I know Dr. Seuss's birthday was earlier this week, but Max's class has been doing Seuss stuff the whole week so he really wanted green eggs and ham for lunch yesterday. It definitely looks "interesting," but he happily gobbled it all up.

Feeling loved...

I had the most wonderful evening with my favorite guys and my parents celebrating my birthday last night. There has been a lot of whispering around our household the last few weeks as the boys and Andrew planned "Mama's birthday." I told Andrew that I think this was the first time in 15 years he's gotten me a birthday cake. He came clean and admitted that it was Max who insisted on getting me a cake and the boys picked it out together...so sweet!

Mom and Dad took us to Chang's...my favorite! Max has been asking to go to the "restaurant with the horse statue" for a few weeks now and was so excited that's where I wanted to go for my birthday dinner. We had the usual delicious fare (crab cheese wontons, Chang's spicy chicken, Mongolian beef, and sweet and sour pork), but also got crazy and tried their fried green beans, dumplings and shrimp in lobster sauce for the first time. The new (to us) dishes were fabulous!

I was so impressed with the main gift Andrew got me this year. When Max was born, he gave me a set of diamond stud earrings, but I lost one of the studs on Max's birthday last November. So he found the remaining stud in my jewelry box, took it into a jeweler and had it matched, so now I have a new set of studs to wear, and one of them is the original one he gave me when our first baby was born...awww, love it!

So Romantic...

Andrew just got home from the store. I'm not sure which is the more romantic Valentine's "gift", the flowers or the pearls. Now that's love, y'all!

Cupcakes, Plan B

OK, the plan was this plus this would make some really cute Valentine's cupcakes.

Yeah, not so much.

This is what I made with a pile of this. And yes, I greased the pan really well.

So the next batch is cooking: plain ol' cupcakes in paper wrappers - but they'll still be delicious! (Honestly, the little pile of cupcakes that I scraped out of the pan tastes pretty delicious too!)

Making It Look Easy

This morning before church, Max informed that he was going to learn to ride his bike without training wheels this afternoon.

And guess what?

He did exactly that.

Suburban!

We traded in the van and the truck today and brought this home: