Au Revoir Little Tooth

I love this picture. (o: Ang was checking out her new space in the car mirror and I happened to have my camera.

The dentist guessed back in November that Ang would still have to wait another year before she would lose any teeth. They seemed pretty solid, I guess. Angela has been anxiously awaiting her turn to lose a tooth and was very happy to prove the dentist wrong! It came out with hardly any drama, which is unusual in this house. (O:

Look at that adorable little tooth!

Quirky Girl

Ah, there is never a dull moment with this kid around! (o: The things she comes up with just keep us laughing. She is always inventing her own fun. The other day, she decided to do a little experiment with an empty 2 liter bottle. I watched her wash it out and take the label off and wondered what she was thinking of doing. A little while later she came downstairs from her room with the bottle full of water and several items inside floating around inside: a crayon, two silly bands, a few charms, a paintbrush, a mechanical pencil, some coins, a Squinky, and some other random little toys that could fit through the narrow opening. It looked like quite the project. Later that night she had added two markers which made the water turn a dark reddish purple color. I had to draw the line there as I pictured the bottle leaking dark inky water all over her lovely carpet. I teeter between being annoyed at times and just laughing at the things she comes up with.

I love my Nat. Life would indeed be boring without her! If you have seen the movie Ramona and Beezus, that pretty much describes my Natalie. She Ramona incarnate. I think that might be why I love that movie so much.

School Projects

For the big second grade project in Natalie's class, her teacher wanted them to do a Great Brain report. The kids had to pick any topic they wanted and read a minimum of 5 hours on their subject. Natalie picked cats for her topic. We got lots of library books, DVDs, magazines and studied them for weeks. She made a binder to keep track of all the things she learned. She filled it with pictures, facts about cats, drawings of our cat, journal entries, etc. It was quite a project. Then she had to do a presentation on all she learned for her class. She really did a fabulous job and she scored a "Genius" grade. (O: I have enjoyed all the creative assignments her teacher assigned this year. They really challenged Natalie, but had such a fun and creative twist that Nat enjoyed using her artistic side to do her homework.

Natalie glued on some items that cats like to play with. Sure enough - Twilight is demonstrating that feathers and chenille pipe cleaners are irresistable! (o: Nat wanted to badly to take Twilight to her class, but it would have been a dangerous thing for the cat and the kiddos. So she had to settle for pictures.

And wouldn't you know that at the same time, Angela had to make a spotlight poster for her class. When it rains it pours! She did a cute job and wrote a little comment next to every picture.

A Thank You to Robin!

As I said before, I was pretty excited in march to see lots of green leaves poking up through the dirt. I couldn't wait to see what came up. It was like Christmas. These beautiful daffodils came up all around the border of our huge flower bed on the west side of our front yard. There must've been over 100 of them. I thought about sending Robin, one of our home's previous owners a thank you card. I should have. I imagined all the time it took her to plant those and how she must have missed seeing them this year after all that work. I am grateful for the good care she and Ross took of our home and the beautiful additions, like all the bulbs and our huge raised garden that make our home such a wonderful place to live.



These daffodils just made me smile everytime I went outside. They are little sunshines on a stem. They even survived two surprise snow storms, I thought for sure the big April snow, being so wet and heavy, would kill them for sure. They had just blossomed the day before the snowstorm. But they are resilient little things and looked none the worse for it.

April Birthdays!

I still don't take for granted what a fun thing it is to get to hang out with family so often. It it still such a novelty to me. We get to have Sunday dinner about once a month with my family and on this particular night we were celebrating our April birthdays! This is the kiddos table that my dad sets up. Notice the tarp under the table. It is really a necessity for those inevitable chocolate milk spills when a basketball somehow finds itself bouncing across the table. (I think this actual event happened this night.) It's never a dull moment with these kids!

My sister-in-law Kimmie makes such cute cakes and it is tradition that everyone gets their own cake from her for her gift to them. She does such a great job. Mom got flowers.

A ball cake for Collin's 9th birthday.

And Natalie asked for butterflies on hers. She loved it!