70 Degrees

And I even have proof.....FINALLY a super nice day!

We grabbed some lunch and headed for Jester Park for a picnic.....and then hit up the playground.  Paul just loves this slide.

My two little posers!

 A recently cut tree makes a nice stump to jump on.

Someone can climb up this kind of ladder now. With just a few gasps from this momma.  Gotta let them do things on their own but in my head I see her face crashing into the bars and knocking out a few teeth and it concerns me!

A quick ride on daddy's shoulders as we hung out with some friends we happen to run into!

Yep - we ran into Grayce and her family.  Paul used to play soccer with Grayce and I work with her mom.  We hung out with them for a while and the kids played a little baseball.

We headed home where I hung with the kids and Jason ran some errands. Lillie decided to play with the 3D sidewalk chalk.....nerdy little glasses.

Paul chose to dig in the dirt for a while....love to get his hands dirty!

And then little miss had to join the dirty fun.

BOTH of the littles needed a bath after all of that dirt and fun!  And then it was time for dinner......someone picked Pocky sticks for her treat.

Because of good behavior, Paul earned a little America's Funniest Home Videos.  He clearly wasn't happy about it at all.

Amidst all of the fun, we also got a lot done today!  We organized and cleaned out Paul's room today including sorting some smaller sized clothing that we will save for Peter.  While the kids were playing outside, I cleaned out 2 bays of our garage including sweeping for at least an hour to get all of the winter crud out of the garage.  I think the adults will sleep well tonight and I know the kids will too!

Playing hooky

Sometimes you have to just take a day off from work...and Friday was my day. It was Paul's last day of spring break and I am getting ready to head overseas for a work trip - couldn't be a more perfect day to skip out on the responsibilities of the world and just BE.  Lillie went to preschool, daddy was feeling sick so it was just me and Paul and whatever he wanted to do.  The weather was supposed to be nice - it turned out to be a bit windy and cold but we survived.  Paul picked Subway for lunch and wanted to take it to the park for a picnic.  So that is what we did.

Love that boy so much.

Loving his Cheetos with his lunch....beautiful view of the lake.

Some friends tried to join us for lunch.  We ignored them.

It was chilly!

Over to the playground for some fun......

 A great tree for climbing.....and a beautiful sky behind him.

One last trip to the lake to see the ducks before we hit the road.  There were tennis racquets to buy....and my fingers were numb from the cold wind!

Budding tennis star

Several months ago I asked Paul what sport he wanted to play this spring/summer and out of nowhere he chimed in with TENNIS.  Totally bizarre since we don't play tennis, we don't watch tennis, we don't know anyone that plays tennis, etc, etc.  So where did he get this idea? Who knows.  But this momma will do anything to make it happen.  After a few phone calls, I found out that our city's parks and recreation department does offer tennis lessons for little ones.  So he is all signed up for a week of tennis lessons in June.

It seemed like we should get working on some skill building in advance of the lessons.  We learned the hard way during basketball that we probably should have spent some time with him before he started so he had some basic skills.  So, off we went to Sports Authority to pick up a youth racquet, some balls made especially for kids and an adult racquet......we dropped a little wad of cash but he was thrilled.  He wanted to go play right away!  Since the weather turned much colder today, I decided to call the Y to see if we could use one of the racquetball courts to get some tennis practice in....and off we went!

I really had no expectations about how he would do......and he was awesome for his very first time.  We will see but this might just be his sport.  We worked on forearm swing today and he rocked it.  We started with dropping the ball for one bounce and then hitting against the wall.  He had some trouble with that mostly because the ball didn't bounce straight for him.....but when we moved on to me hitting the ball to him, he rocked it out.  Certainly need to work on his control but he really did well with keeping his eye on the ball and he returned most of the balls I hit to him.  We will keep up the practice and see if this sticks.  It has been a long time since I have played tennis but it was something that I enjoyed so today was sort of fun for me too!

Step one towards a whole new room

Time to start thinking about what to do with a bedroom for a certain toddler who is currently chilling out in Korea.  Always tough to pick a theme when you don't even know your little one's personality.....so I think we will go with something basic like planes, trains and automobiles.  Seems perfect for an almost 3 year old boy.  So I just happened upon this super cute crocheted aqua blue plane......look familiar? Kind of like a Korean Air plane?  Yep!  Very first thing I have purchased for Peter's room.  The best part is that I bought it through an online adoption auction fundraiser for a friend that is raising funds to bring their second son home from Korea.  Makes me happy in so many ways.

So I will keep my peepers peeled for more fun stuff to add.  We are in no rush which is nice....well not really nice since it would be so much better to get him home sooner.  But, without control over the timing, I will attempt to stretch things out such as buying of items for his room since it is so much fun.....and it is a good distraction.

Bowling with friends!

We met up with our friend Kingston and his parents for some bowling and lots of fun!  Since it was St. Patrick's Day weekend, we broke out the green beads for the kids.  First up was some snacks.....I love how they all flocked to the vending machine for some snacks to share.

Bugles in hand - all is well with the world.

 Paul is becoming quite the bowler.

Check out his form.....slight panic when he dropped the ball but that's just over-protective momma.

Snacks with Kingston.

Paul was a super helper with the littles.  He would pull the ramp out and carry the ball for them.  And then once they pushed the ball we would sometimes give it a little extra umph!

The big helper in action......

We headed to a brew pub for dinner.....kids were squirmy but they had fun and all three had mac and cheese (big surprise).

I love when we get to spend time with our friends.....Kingston will be joined by a baby brother or sister very soon and we can't wait to meet him/her!

Paul's Gotcha Day 2014

Hard to believe that our oldest child has now been home with us for 5 whole years.  On one hand it has flown right by and on the other we have done so much together.

This particular Gotcha Day landed on a Thursday - and it happened to be a Thursday that was pretty busy for this momma.  So, I juggled a bit and got up pretty early to work from home before anyone else got up....and then we had a quick celebratory breakfast together before I headed to the office.  The rest of the fun would come on Friday afternoon.  Kind of fun to stretch it over two days anyway.

You get to pick your breakfast on Gotcha Day.....so Paul started with a triple stack of pancakes with syrup and sprinkles.  He washed it down with strawberry milk.  He wasn't excited at all about it.

Selfie with momma, Paul and a stack of pancakes.

Lillie got into the pancake fun too.  Oh, and why yes my kids are wearing Christmas pj's in March.....don't judge.

Next up he chose a Korean snack of onion rings (think Funions) and a piece of string cheese.  Once again, I reiterate that you get to pick your breakfast choice on Gotcha Day....it was painful to watch but it was what he wanted. After it was over, I mentioned that he better go brush his teeth before school as he had pretty serious onion breath.

On Friday afternoon we headed to an indoor playground with bounce houses and all sorts of fun climbing things.  Lillie clearly had a lot of fun.....

Paul has been making some really weird faces when asked to take a photo....oh look, here's one.....

Hanging together in the bounce house room.

Paul got to pick the restaurant - he chose HuHot....and picked some fun stir fry items.

And finally we completed the fun celebration with a trip to the ice cream store.  Not surprisingly, he picked BLUE ice cream.

 

SO much fun to celebrate with Paul.  A fun prelude to his upcoming 6th birthday as well.

Pillow flops!

Blankets and pillows are a big hit around our house.  Many days they are better than toys.  I am in a constant state of picking up pillows and blankets. Constant.

Case and point with Lillie and her big flop....she did this at least 7 times in a row today while waiting for daddy and Paul to get back from running errands.  

Bike rides in March

When you live in the Midwest and you get a day in March with blue skies, sunshine and temps in the 50's you take the opportunity to get outside and ride bikes!  And you just pretend that you don't see the lingering piles of snow.  It was a day for light jackets and bike helmets!

Sporting his fancy new Mario shirt.....

One of the neighbors is moving and had a trailer parked in their driveway. Quite sure this was against an ordinance of some sort as it was completely blocking the sidewalk.  But we used it as the best obstacle course ever.  Paul started with bravado and then quickly changed his mind....Lillie got under it without problem!

I am quite sure we will end up with more frigid temps and snow yet this winter but for now we will just focus on the one beautiful day we had.

Build A Bear and then some....

Today was a BIG FUN day.  After Paul's pottery class we loaded up the kids and headed to the mall.

First up....some smiles from the ladybug!

We hit up Red Robin first.....selfie with mommy!

Milk for her......

.....and fruit punch for him!  And lots of yummy food for all of us.

We headed for our inaugural visit to Build A Bear.  We had a few gift cards for the kids and decided we needed to use them!  It turns out that this whole Build A Bear thing is pretty crazy and over the top.  Paul had some trouble picking and making up his mind.  First choice was a Spiderman bear.

Lillie picked a fuzzy brown bunny.

Then Paul changed his mind and picked a brown bear and a Darth Vader outfit - it's all about the accessories in this place.

And then it was time to get our bears and bunnies filled up with stuffing.....each kid gets to step on the foot pedal to make the stuffing machine run.

Picking out the heart to put in the bear before it was stitched up.  Gave it a big kiss and in it went!

Same process for Lillie's rabbit.....here she is picking out her heart.

Once the bear and bunny were done being stuffed and stitched, it was off to the bath station.  How cute that they get to "scrub" up their animals while the "sprayers" blow them with air.

Off to the dressing rooms.....Lillie selected a sparkly princess dress for her rabbit.

And after he figured out that the Darth Vadar outfit wouldn't fit on his bear, he selected the Yoda outfit instead.  He and daddy worked on dressing his bear.

All of that picking and choosing and picking again made the children hungry....so we had to grab some ice cream, right?!?!

Both kids fell asleep in the car - big surprise there.  After dinner the kids just HAD to play with their new stuffies.  Let me introduce you to Yoda Bear.

He even has his very own birth certificate.....

And here is Sparkly Bunny.....

With her very own birth certificate.....

So many smiles tonight.....

Yoda Bear decided to share his ears with Paul.

Close-up of Sparkly Bunny......nice choice of dress Lillie!

 And plenty more smiles and crazy antics.....

What a fabulous day it was!  Everyone was in a great mood and we had a lot of great family fun.  I was lucky enough to be feeling so much better after two days of flat on my back illness.  Paul so lovingly shared his strep throat germs with me and it hit me hard.  We had to miss a super fun charity event and I missed two days of work.  It was rough which meant today felt all that much better!