Not walking

I may not have taken my first steps, but I can still climb into my own high chair 

Happy Birthday, Kaela!

Our little girl just turned 5 years old on Saturday.  I fear that we don’t have many pictures, but we did have a fun day.  We started out by sweet rolls in the morning, followed by opening presents.  We wanted her to have a chance to play.

Kaela decided that for her birthday she wanted to go swimming.  I have no pictures of that since we had 3 non-swimmers and only two adults, there was no one to take pictures.

But we took her out to eat hamburgers and french fries for dinner and had cake and ice cream.

We love our 5 year old!

The video is a bit long since we all know the song, but she is pretty cute at the end and I’m sure grandma will watch it all the way ;)

All the Fun

Lee tells me that it isn’t fair that I get to have all the fun while he has to go to work all day.

Today our fun was to go strawberry picking.

 

We didn’t want to stop, but I was afraid the price of strawberries would get to high ($2/lb), but in the end we spent less than $4, so I call that good cheap fun.  Darian stayed playing with the stroller straps while we walked the rows and picked, coming to move the stroller every few minutes.

We came home and ate strawberries.

Tuesday

So, what do you do after the kids are in bed?

Spring

Spring has blossomed! Our pansies from last November are bigger and prettier than they've ever been, the tulips and daffodils are out. And what is that under our front window?
A goose nest with a full dozen eggs.

Out with the old. . .

So this may come as a shock to some of you, but after lots of consideration, Kristin and I have finally decided to retire the motorcycle. I’ll pause for a moment to let the murmurs of disappointment subside. . . I know, I know. I understand. I feel it too. But let me explain – there’s a good reason for it. Mostly it has to do, ironically, with the weather here. And by that, I mean rain. Go figure, I’ve been using the motorcycle as my main commute vehicle now for about 3 years and I never had a problem commuting in the rain in Boston, but here in the South they have a different kind of rain than I’ve ever encountered before (and that’s saying something, coming from Washington State). It’s basically a complete downpour for about 15-20 minutes, to the extent that you can’t see 20 feet in front of you. And it can come out of nowhere. Kristin and I first experienced it last summer on the freeway drive home when we came here to house-hunt. All freeway traffic dropped to 20mph, and hazard lights were turned on everyone. It was really freaky – it came and left so fast.

So I’ve been spending the last few months worried about rainy season starting (which apparently runs on and off through spring to the end of summer), terrified about being caught in one of those events on my shiny little two wheeled eye-catcher. <sigh> In the end, I finally listened to that part of me that has long been tired of having to live in constant fear of the stupidity of others any time I take to the road, and we decided to look into a normal, four wheeled transportation device. But before you moan too much about the diminishing of my awesomeness with the loss of my blue lightning, I will state unequivocally – do not fear for the awesomeness. It will live on.

Rainbow Food

We have been busy baking for St. Patrick’s day.  For dinner we did have corned beef, cabbage, potatoes and carrots, but what we really want to show is dessert.

 

 

Just sugar cookie dough, divided in 5 and colored like a rainbow.  I highly discourage anyone from trying this more than once.  3 dozen cookies, and nearly 3 hours later, we did have a very fun finished product.  We enjoyed much more smashing the colors together and using cookie cutters than the sticky snake rolling. 

 

 

But the best was the leprechaun cake with a hidden rainbow.

(I saw the tutorial here: http://www.notmartha.org/archives/2011/03/16/leprechaun-trap-cake/ )