A 'close' call

Tuesday evening, we had one of Marc's friends from work and his two kids over for dinner. I left a few minutes before 7:00 to go to the Young Women's activity. Marc said that the kids played outside until about 7:30 before his friend left. I came home around 9:00 and a few minutes later, Marc went out to gather up and put out the trash for the next morning. He had been outside just a minute when he came back to the door and said, "Come look at this." Marc has said this to me before and it has never been good. So I went out with him and we found that this huge branch had fallen from our tree. I don't know if the pictures do it justice, but it was probably a third of the tree. At first, we were amazed that he didn't hear it fall, but after thinking about it more, we are grateful that noone was hurt. It fell right next to the swing set. There are leaves and branches that fell onto the swings.

Marc, who is forever the optimist, said at least there will be less leaves to rake in the fall!

TV-Free Zone

After talking about it for a long time and having some minor frustrations with Dish Network, Marc finally called and cancelled our TV service on Wednesday (I supported this). We decided to be "TV-free" for a while. We only get the local CBS channel which has clear audio but a really poor picture. I told Marc that I am the one that will struggle the most because I usually sit and relax for a while after the kids go to bed and watch TV. I also, as I am sure no other mother does, sometimes let the kids watch TV some I can get something done. On the other hand, Amazing Race and 24 are over for the season and the kids are just as happy with videos. So, I wonder how this will change my life and I wonder if I will survive. Maybe I will finally finish some of those unfinished projects. I feel a little out of touch already since we have no news...How would no TV change your life?

Warning: Parental Guidance Suggested

This Post rated PG-13

Parental Guidance is suggested.

This is how we have found Sarah asleep almost every night of the past week or so. As Grandma Wilson knows, she likes to have bare feet and will never leave her shoes on. Apparently, we are progressing from just bare feet!

Our little artist

I guess every artist has their favorite tools to work with....apparently Sarah prefers her skin as her canvas.She was so content, I didn't have the heart to make her stop. Thank goodness I took off her church dress before this impromptu creativity.

School's out

Thursday was Ella's end-of-the-year program at preschool. Each of the children had a part in the program. Ella was a butterfly and got to wave these little "wings" when the caterpillar turned into a butterfly. She clearly enjoyed it as she kept flapping her wings long after the song was over. She is quite the little actress!

This is Mrs. Stokes, the director of the preschool. I had to coax the kids to get the picture. She is really wonderful with the kids...she threatened to tickle them to get them to smile for the picture.

Here is my little preschool graduate on Friday, the day of the commencement! They were really cute. They played pomp and circumstance while the kids marched in. The kids had made little paper graduation caps. They did a little program and then each of them got to go up and get their diploma. It made me a little sad to think that Tanner is going to go to Kindergarten next year and won't be home with us all day. I hope he (and I) are ready for that change! CONGRATULATIONS to TANNER! We love you, bud!

Mother's Day Weekend

Mother's Day weekend, Marc had to present a paper at the Ohio Orthopaedic Society meeting in Cincinnati. It seemed like a good excuse for all of us to go down and spend some time with my family. The kids always like to go spend time with their cousins. Marc and I love that they are getting to know these cousins and wish that we could all live close so they could know the rest of them really well, too! My brother's two boys actually had three soccer games and a baseball game that day. We did not make it to all of them but we went to the first two soccer games so we could see Cameron and Treyton both play. This picture is Sarah, cousin Monica (who is 3 months older than Sarah), and Ella at Cameron's soccer game.

One of our favorite things to do when we are in Cincinnati is go to this great little ice cream stand that they have in West Chester. It is appropriately named The Cone (see picture below) and has the best soft serve peanut butter ice cream I have ever had. We actually went on Friday night and Saturday night because we love it so much!

The kids had fun riding on the little rides and even all piled in to the same car at once. Sarah was given her own ice cream cone...I plead temporary insanity on that one, but she did enjoy it.

Marc and I also spent two afternoons looking at model homes in Cincinnati as Marc is considering a job opportunity there. That was REALLY fun. I think Marc even enjoyed it a little! We both found one that we really liked...check it out here but it may be a little out of our price range right out of residency! (PS...if the link doesn't work (I am a blogging novice) go to www.mihomes.com in Cincinnati, OH, click on Grace Meadows community. The house we like is the Carmel!)

Cute things Ella says, Part 1

Tanner, mommy and Ella are in the backyard playing our new Hillbilly Horseshoes game that grandpa made for us. Ella says, "I don't want to play horsebilly horseshoes anymore."

Just before dinner Ella comes in the house, after looking around the backyard shed, carrying a hula hoop. She says, "Mommy, can I bring this hoop-a-loop in the house?"

Tonight, just before mom was leaving for cooking group, Ella approaches mom with a rather serious look on her face. She is concentrating very hard on a small (3 in x 4 in) calculator. She says, "Mommy, can I check my email on this?" Mommy says, "I don't think so sweetie." Ella's responds rather urgently, "but I have to do it today!"

Isn't it great how they make us smile?

Everybody's 'zoo'in it

Today, for a change of scenery, playgroup met at the zoo. We have spent the entire winter (which, in NW Ohio, are really, really long) letting the kids run around the church, and we were ready for something different. Maybe we have been to our zoo too much, though since my kids seem to think that the zoo has little to do with the animals. Here is Tanner rolling down a hill.
The other thing that they always ask to do is go to this playgroud in the middle of the zoo. It seems silly to me. If we wanted to play at the playground, we could just go to the park, right? Sarah forgets that she is only 19 months old at the park and tries to do whatever Tanner and Ella are doing. It makes for some scary moments for her mom!

I looked out the window and what did I see...

Last week when Grandma was here staying with the kids, she pointed out that these crabapples trees look like popcorn trees. Whenever we drive by one now, the kids, rather excitedly say, "Look Mom, a popcorn tree!" It is really sweet and the trees are really beautiful. Today as we walked by one, we couldn't help but stop and snap a picture!

Last Saturday, our stake had an enrichment activity that included Lisa Bearnson as the speaker. Apparently, her sister lives in our stake and set this up. It was really fun and we got a quick chance to talk to her. For those who don't know who she is, she is a BYU grad (go cougars) who started a scrapbooking magazine called Creating Keepsakes. She did talk a bit about scrapbooking but mostly about the importance of making memories and recording them. She talked about the importance of journal writing so that we can remember all those fun things that happen each day that get forgotten (my husband said that journal writing is old school blogging!).

Speaking of cute things that happen....today after we dropped Ella at preschool we were driving to the park to meet some friends to walk. We are having one of those beautiful, partly cloudy spring days here. Tanner was asking me questions about the thermometer/compass that we have in our van. He asked me what the temperature was and I told him 59 degrees. As we rounded a corner, the display changed to NW on the compass. Tanner saw that change and said, "NW. Does that mean nice weather?" ;)