May 2009

For Jonathan's 2nd birthday we went to a petting farm and Jonathan had a fabulous time feeding goats and sheep carrot slices, checking out all the animals, sitting on an old tractor, and going on a hayride, where, again, the tractor caught Jonathan's attention above anything else. That's my little boy! I made a little video of the birthday fun - check it out!


















For all of you who were wondering, here's the difference between a llama (left) and an alpaca (right).
























































Coconut-milk-based chocolate cookies and cream ice cream (GF/DF oreos)! Who needs a spoon?




GF homemade doughnuts. Yes, I'm accepting nominations of wonder-mom now. :) I was very happy with the results, and the kids were even more so!









































Our huge bag of bird food sunflower seeds became squirrel food when I left it on the bottom of our outside closet. They made a royal mess, but didn't succeed in eating all of it, so I relocated the mess (with residual seeds) to the ground opposite our front window, bringing 3 happy squirrels this morning, and a baby squirrel a little later! This made for 3 happy kids, who were only too happy to watch the squirrels and try to scare them away too!


Anna performed her ballet recital for spring-term rec and ed today (May 30), and the teacher had said at their last class that they could wear whatever they wanted that was appropriate for dancing, specifically mentioning Easter dresses. Anna latched onto that, and insisted on wearing her dress. Well, you know, there are some things that aren't worth worrying about! She was happy, even though she wasn't dressed like your "typical" ballerina. And she looked beautiful, of course. I thought her bun was especially cute (besides which I had to take a picture to show her what her hair looked like). The lighting in the room is terrible, so the pictures are very grainy, but you get a small glimpse into our little dancer.




































One more project completed: Jonathan's baby quilt. (No comments now guys.) My mom embroidered the little guys and got the cute snake/worm fabric to put it together. I pieced and hand-quilted the squares. I took close-ups of the squares, but you still couldn't see the quilting very well, so you get the big picture. I stitched ponds, trees, a wishing well, paths, etc. into the background though. I really enjoyed it!











And finally, if you've made it to the end of this novel, you deserve to know the best news of all! We're pregnant!!!!! I'm 15 weeks, and we are thrilled to welcome a new little one into our family.

Oh, there is one more thing. There aren't any pictures of it, but it's big news nonetheless. Josh is in Washington DC to do his internship with the SEC now! He starts on Monday, June 1, and will be working there for 10 weeks. I'll be finishing packing here with the kids to move out on June 27. (He'll fly back for that weekend.) Then we'll be living in our very generous friends' house (thank you Coltrins!) for a week until we fly to California for a retirement/60th birthday celebration for Josh's dad. We'll be there for a week and Josh will join us for the last couple days, after which we'll fly back (everyone together) to Detroit, then drive to Virginia, dropping Josh off in DC, then continuing on to Lynchburg, to stay with my parents until Josh finishes his internship in mid-August. It's nice to have everything figured out until that point!

And the really final thing: I have a heck of a time formatting the pictures and text! What am I doing wrong? Can someone who is good at blogging help me figure out how to not have to spend more time on the formatting than I do on the text and pictures? It drives me crazy! At least you have the pictures and the captions - though they may not be lined up just right. :) But I'm done for tonight (it's past my bedtime!), and I don't want to spend any more trying to make it look right!

Grandma Bristow's tablecloth

So I don't think we (my mom and I) are quite sure on the history of this, but it came from Grandma Bristow, and considering she was an avid crocheter, we're assuming she made it. There were 2 squares missing and 3 squares that were damaged, however, when mom got it, so she gave it to me to finish, and I did it! I've marked the squares I made with red, which obviously weren't very many, so I can't take too much credit for the finished product, but I was happy to figure out the pattern! (Or close enough that you can't tell hopefully.) Looking at it now, I wish I'd taken before pictures!
Anyway, one more project finished! :) Hooray!

Haircuts...

Exhibit A: On the right, the lock of hair I saw on the bathroom floor during quiet time, which prompted me to run into Jonathan's bedroom where I saw him and Melanie playing with the hair cutting kit... Melanie helped Jonathan with his hair, and he apparantly helped her with her hair... The stack on the left is what I combed out of her hair. It was so sad. Thankfully she's young, and it was fairly mild. And thankfully they didn't figure out how to turn on the buzzer, which they'd plugged in.




Exhibit B: Not too bad looking, though it's cut to about 1.5 inches in a few patches along her part, including in the front, as you may be able to notice.








Exhibit C: The cut-line across the back, before being smoothed a bit by me.




Exhibit D: Jonathan's snipped front hair, which hopefully will grow out soon!