Easter 2014

This Easter weekend was so full of blessings, including the three above (although Laura's performance at church was not exactly one of them).

Saturday I got to participate in the Chickamauga Chase, a 15K through a historic national park and battlefield. Sheryl and I ran it both last year and this, and plan to continue the streak.

 

I came home to a very relaxed family, which is about all a mom can ask for. Kids played together, amused themselves, and stayed pleasant!

Easter prep for two different egg hunts meant digging up these plastic eggs, which turned out to be an outstanding source of entertainment for Laura. She stood on a chair and closed them all, then re-opened them, countless times.

 

After church, and our traditional waffles, we wandered down to the Kings for an egg hunt with them and the Bergstroms. Good times and great neighbors.

Later in the day, the Francos came over to finish celebrating Easter with us, which of course meant another egg hunt. We always cherish our time with this family!

Spring Break 2014

The kids and I hit the road and headed to Sarasota last week for some fun in the sun. We would have preferred to have Tim with us, but we managed to have a great time with the grandparents anyway.

We made a couple of visits to the incomparable beach on Siesta Key:

 Spent LOTS of time at the pool, (where we often encountered other visiting grandchildren):

 Danny put his fishing rod to use with Grandpa, though alas they came away empty-handed:

 We made a day trip to Epcot, where it rained a LOT but we enjoyed ourselves anyway (despite Laura's look here):

 

We opted to skip the five-hour wait to see the princesses from Frozen, but did get to visit with Sleeping Cutie, which Laura is still talking about:

 And we relaxed a lot, including curling up with a good read on the lanai. Basically, what spring break should be:

Clare's 11th Birthday

Sweet Abby made this for Clare.

Doesn't 11 sound old? Nevertheless, that's what Clare saw fit to become on this latest birthday of hers. Happily, she is still her lovely self, a wonderful combination of maturity and age-appropriateness. After all, her latest infatuation is with Kermit the Frog, and her birthday list was predominated by American Girl items. Yet her heart's desire for celebrating her birthday is a day of shopping with me. Sweet.

Danny knows we sometimes need to go to extremes to get a photo.

In what she has declared a new tradition, the family went out for Mexican food for the second year in a row. A sombrero and celebratory dessert were featured at the end of the meal. Laura really liked the sombrero.

 The years really do roll by quickly. And with every one that passes, we love our Clare Bear more and more!

The Book Thief

Over the past week or so, Laura has developed a new habit during her nap and at bedtime. We tuck her in as usual, and all is quiet. Then, after a bit, we start to hear thumping noises. And when we go in to get her up, her bed generally looks like the above photo, often with books also on the floor (hence the thumping sounds).

I find this interesting because we have always marveled at the fact that neither Clare nor Danny ever budged from their beds once they switched out of the crib. Not once, until we finally told them at around age 6 or so that they did not have to wait for us to get them up in the mornings. Laura has also followed this trend, with the new exception of helping herself to a whole lot of books.

Naturally I love that my kids all love books. In fact, as I write on this Monday morning, Laura is voluntarily in her room, "reading." And it warmed my heart yesterday morning when I went in to get her and found her reading aloud to one of her stuffed animals. I will say, though, that the quality and duration of her sleep has deteriorated a bit since the book hoarding began. Last night first I, then later Tim, had to go in and bring down the hammer as the thumping continued a good hour past the moment we tucked her in. This led to a whole lot of sobbing. But as Danny remarked on one of her sob fests, "Dude, that's just Laura."

She is loud, moody, and emotional, but she has stolen our hearts as deftly as she nabs those books.

Three's A Crew

We seem to be entering a wonderful phase where all three children play together happily, blissfully unaware of where the grown-ups are or what we are doing. Beautiful weather enhances this phenomenon, for sure, but Laura's growing independence is a major part of it as well. And it is glorious.

Laura has mixed views on growing up. She has asked me several times, "Am I a grown-up now?" She tells me how eating healthy food makes her grow bigger, yet she is still somewhat perplexed about why certain clothes no longer fit her. A few times, upon learning that she can no longer wear a favorite item, she has told me, "I don't want to be a grown-up." Which is good - no need to rush these things. I don't really think any of my kids are in a hurry to get there, and for that I am exceedingly grateful.

A Tale of Three Valentines II

It's that time of year again! And this year, Laura is in on the action. Both Clare and Danny stayed consistent in their choices of valentines (although if they had offered Greek Hoplite or Roman army options, that would have been Danny's preference). Surprising no one, Laura chose princess cards.

For their own surprises, this year I tried to tap into individual interests. For Clare, we have gel pens and hair bows, both of which are hot items among fifth graders this year. Danny's gift is partially incomplete. In addition to the Genghis Khan book, he'll be getting a kids' version of The Odyssey (delivery delayed due to the Icepocalypse). Finally, to add to the precious princess dolls she received for Christmas, Laura is getting the princesses from Frozen, the latest Disney princess movie and the soundtrack to which has been playing in our house nonstop.

To top it all off, we've had lots of family time together, Tim and I get a date night on Sunday night, and school resumes on Monday. HAPPY Valentine's Day indeed!

Snapshots from Another Snowstorm

This one has been dubbed by the locals as either Icepocalypse or snOMG. Both work. We got walloped by a bunch of ice and snow again this week, leading to three more snow days, two of which included Tim. I'll admit I was dreading it, and I'll also admit I was wrong to do so, as we wound up enjoying (most of) it. Of course, I will also tell you that when CKS alerted us that the kids would have school on Monday, despite a previously scheduled holiday, I did a dance of joy.

Here are some images from our time off:

Taking advantage of Tim's presence to have him make waffles for breakfast. We went through a lot of butter in 36 hours.

Despite fears, we never lost power...but opted to grill nevertheless. You can take him out of Buffalo and Chicago, but...

Woke to a beautiful, snow-capped morning.

The mini snowman I made which Laura promptly stompled to pieces.

The real hero of this ice storm: electronic entertainment.