Duck "Pond"

Out behind our house we have an easement. Usually it is just a big hole but recently, due to all the melted snow and rain, it has been full of water. So, the kids call it our "pond". Everyday these ducks come to the "pond". I do not want to what is in the water that they are eating but we certainly enjoy seeing them. We have a perfect view of them from our deck. If you ask Lucy, "Where are the ducks?" she will run to the back door. When she sees the ducks she starts to "quack, quack, quack". The other day the kids asked if they could feed them. So out they went with their old bagels. The ducks would not come to them but all of the bread is now gone, so I am sure they enjoyed it when the kids were not watching. It has been fun to have them here.

Snack Time

Lucy has figured out how to climb up on the bench at the kitchen table. Yesterday Seth was enjoying an afternoon snack. Lucy saw him and decided she wanted to have a snack also. SO, she decided to climb up next to him and enjoy. The look on her face when she finally made it up on the bench was priceless. She was so proud of herself and loved being a big girl with her big brother. Seth enjoyed showing her how to get the chips out of the bag. It was one of those "mommy" moments that are priceless.

Enjoying an afternoon snack.

Big Brother/Little Sister

Better than a dog

Mom, you may not want to read this. :-) As I mentioned in my last post we had some friends over tonight. We made pizza for dinner. There were 7 kids making pizza, it was fun but not the neatest thing. There was a lot of cheese falling on the floor. Lucy took full advantage of the falling cheese and had a little snack. She just camped herself on the floor next to the table and enjoyed.

Easter Eggs

Tonight our family colored Easter Eggs. We invited our good friends and their four kids to come over and color eggs with us. We all had a really good time. After we colored eggs we came inside to make and eat some pizza. And lastly we all went out front to play freeze tags. My kids are faster than I thought they were. It was a very fun night.

Mommy & Seth

Jacob's cool egg.

Jacob coloring eggs.

Emma coloring eggs.

Update on the Brown's

Life is busy as normal but we are having a blast.

Jacob had his first baseball practice last night. He played t-ball two years ago and has decided to try it again. He will be doing coach pitch this year. He is excited to be playing. The name of his team is the Indians. He continues to do very well in school. He tells us often that school is boring. I hope that as he gets a little older he is a little more challenged by school.

Emma started gymnastics on Monday. She is going to take an hour class on Monday afternoons. She has been asking for a while to do gymnastics but with her going to preschool 4 days a week we wanted to wait until the Spring to get her started. She loved her first class. She is all girls and loves putting on a leotard, pink shorts and her hair in a cute bow. She loves her preschool teacher and is very excited about kindergarten.

Seth is having fun with Joy School two days a week. He has been completely potty trained for about a month now, what a wonderful thing. We are down to one in diapers. He loves to have friends over to play. In fact this morning he was telling me he was bored because no one was coming over today. I guess I need to be more fun.

Lucy had her 15 month check up on Tuesday. Wow, how time flies. She is a tiny 21lb 4o little girl. She is doing well. She is starting to say so many words. She loves to say "duck" and "quack". We have an area behind our house that is full of water right now because of all the melted snow that was added to by much rain recently. We have two ducks that frequent our "pond" and Lucy loves to go look at them. She does not like to be alone. She can go up and down stairs on her own and makes sure she is where everyone else is.

That is about it for the kids recently. We stay busy but have fun doing it, most of the time. Jacob and Emma will be on Spring Break the week after Easter. We have not made any plans but hope to do a few fun things.

Emma's big Day

Today we went and registered Emma for kindergarten. She got to miss preschool because registration was in the morning. She was pretty excited about it. They do a hearing, vision and speech assessment on each child. She got a sticker each time she completed one of the stations. She has been telling everyone she sees all about registration and what she got to do. We really liked Jacob's kindergarten teacher so last night we made cookies and took her some this morning to "bribe" her to make sure she gets Emma in her class. I do not think I will be as sad when Emma starts kindergarten as I was when Jacob started. We are familiar with who her teacher will be. We are also now familiar with the school and how things run. She is very ready and can not wait to be in Ms. Zeglin's class. When we got home Sean asked her, "Did they accept her? Is she allowed to go?" It was a big day for our big girl.

Signs if Spring

Lucy's first bloody nose.

The birds are singing. The trees are budding. The sun is shining. The tulips are coming out of the ground. The kids are playing outside. And my poor baby got her first bloody nose. We were in the backyard playing on the swing set. Emma and Seth were on the glider and I was on dog poop duty. Lucy was running around the yard and climbing on the slide. She decided she wanted to check out what Emma and Seth were doing. It was one of those moments when you can see it all happening but you can not move fast enough. Yes, she got in the way of the swing and got hit in the face. She was pretty upset but finally calmed down. She would not let me wash much of it off for a little while. I tried to get a picture but you can not really tell, oh well.

Happy St. Patty's Day!!

I am not Irish but I have fun with the kids. All the kids were adorned with their green shirts. Seth was a little upset because his shirt was not "green" enough for his standards.

For breakfast we had green pancakes, green eggs, Seth wanted ham to go with it but we did not have any and green milk. The lunch menu was grilled cheese with green grapes. And for dinner I surprised them with green lemonade. The kids were all trying to figure out ways to make every food green.

We had a good day being green.

Papa John's

Seth's Joy School group got to go to Papa John's last week and make pizza. All the kids had a lot of fun. It was not a big store. Towards the end the kids were getting restless but all in all in was fun. After the pizzas were made we all came back to our house to enjoy some pizza for lunch. Seth enjoys having his friends over.

All of Seth's Joy School friends.

Seth adding peperoni's (his favorite).

Seth spreading the sauce around.

Spring is here, for now.

We have been enjoying some very beautiful weather the past few days. I would like to find somewhere that has weather like this year round. I do not think that I would ever get tired of it or the kids. When Jacob gets home all he wants to do is be outside. How could I say no. So, we have spent the past few evenings enjoying the outdoors. Last year at this time Lucy was too little to remember being outside. She LOVES it. The minute anyone opens the door she wants to go out. It is a lot of fun to watch her toddle around and discover all sorts of new things.

Her big Brother teaching all about his big wheel.

Heat please..

About 2 1/2 weeks ago our heat went out. It was pretty cold but we used some space heaters, visited some friends and we were okay. The motor went out, so we replaced it and thought all was well. Wednesday night it went out again. I decided that the kids and I would go spend the weekend with my dad and step-mom and not freeze (the man who fixed it the last time was out of town until late Sunday night and we did not want to have someone different come over). We left Friday, had a great time, and came home Sunday morning. Sunday night Sean and I both felt impressed to turn the heat on. We did and it worked fine. What a miracle!! We are not sure what happened but we are grateful that we have heat again.

There is still a fair amount of snow on the ground but these warmer days are continuing to take care of that.

We had Joy School at our house today. We talked about Outer Space. Each kid got to pretend to be the sun, where a bright yellow shirt and we orbited them. We put stars in the sky and painted an earth. I love having Joy School here.

And we just got a brand new laptop. We have had our desktop for almost 9 years now. That is prehistoric for a computer. It has been a great computer but we are going to turn it over to the kids and start a new adventure on a laptop.