Dancing with Nolan

I was folding laundry tonight and had the t.v. on in the background. Idol was recording on the DVR, so I had turned the channel to something else. I don't normally watch Dancing with the Stars, but that is where I stopped tonight. Farrel was at work, Laiken was at soccer practice, Carson was watching a basketball game on the t.v. in our bedroom and Nolan was helping me with the laundry. I had my back to the t.v. when I hear Nolan say, "Watch me dance!" Well, after watching him for a few songs, I had to video a little bit of his "show." Near the end of the video, you will notice that he abruptly stops. Carson walked into the room and I think Nolan got a little self-conscious. But, it was great entertainment while it lasted. Check out these moves...

Easter Weekend

Saturday was so beautiful that we spent the whole day at my Mom and Dad's enjoying an early start to Easter. Mom fixed a great lunch, as usual, and the kids opened Easter presents, had an egg hunt, colored eggs, went fishing, and played soccer. We had such a great time and the kids came home exhausted.

They woke up early on Sunday, though, both to get ready for church and to see what the Easter bunny had left them!

Over the Break...

As fast as Spring Break began, it was over. We had a great week that included a trip to the library, playdates, skating with friends, going to the park, and visiting with family. We also managed to use the rainy Tuesday for a little housework. No, the kids weren't thrilled about that, but they helped anyway and we got it done.

One of the huge events from the week was that Laiken donated 10 inches of hair to Locks of Love. This is the second time that she has donated her hair and even though I knew that she was growing it out for that purpose, it was still hard for me to take her to have it cut. I love curling and braiding her hair and I knew that I would miss it. We had DeAnn Purdy do the honors. DeAnn has known our family since Laiken was 5 years old and it was so nice that she was able to help with the transformation. She did a fabulous job and even though I almost cried, which in turn, almost made Laiken cry, everything turned out great and the new 'do is too cute! When I later told Susie how crazy I had acted about the whole thing, she reassured me that Laiken could work it out in therapy later on! She's right...just add it to the list!

Before:

After:

Bummer

I know that some of you like Point of Grace's song, How You Live, as much as I do. The link in my playlist quit working today so I had to do some investigating to find out why. Due to copyright violations, Warner Music had it pulled from all public share sites....oops! I have a few friends who are experts in snagging music for free, but I'm thinking I'll probably just pay to download the album. Or, you can visit the Point of Grace website to hear the song and see the video.

Spring Break!!!!

Yes, I am excited!! It is no secret that I LOVE to have my kids around with lots of unstructured time to fill!! Late nights, sleeping in, movies, skating, plenty of time outside, and story sharing are what I love best about spring break, summer, and holidays. I know we are expecting some rain this week, but I am keeping my fingers crossed that most of the weather will be good.

We started our break with a trip to the park to feed the ducks and geese. It's always funny to see the kids negotiating how close they can get without getting pecked. We also saw several turtles and the kids insist that they saw a "huge rattlesnake." Now, I'm not saying that they did or didn't....I'm just saying I didn't see it myself.

After we fed the ducks, we fed ourselves at Gatti's. The kids wanted to sit in the little room with the big t.v. and I gave in. We were the only ones in the room and there was a show on Nickelodeon that my kids don't watch. I still screen everything they see and the list of approved shows is pretty short. The show on yesterday was The Fairly Odd Parents. After about 5 minutes, I was completely regretting that we had chosen to sit in front of the t.v. I asked the lady behind the counter if she could change it to the Disney Channel and she told me that they didn't get that channel. ????!!! So, instead of moving 5 kids while they were eating, we sat through it and I ran damage control the whole time. The cartoon--yes, cartoon--had a male main character who was pregnant and in the hospital trying to deliver the baby, a female reporter who was scantily clad, and more images of violence and rude behavior than I care to count. I tried really hard to come up with one redeeming quality about the show and just couldn't find one thing. I didn't plan for our simple pizza dinner to turn into a deconstruction of a "kids" show, but that's what happened. I'm just not sure who the target audience is for this program. There were commercials for some fairy Barbies, so I'm guessing they expected young children to be watching. Really?? I mean, really!? There are so many little girls watching this show that Mattel felt compelled to pay for ad time?? Luckily, all the kids with me were very adept at picking out all the horrible things in the cartoon and their abilities to recognize bad behavior and inappropriate images at least made me a little happy.

Open House

We had Open House this week at Laiken and Carson's school and, wow, what a reminder it was of the great school our kids get to attend. The kids were happy to show off their work, interact with their friends, and have their teachers brag about them. The teachers and staff at our school are some of the most loving, hardest working, most professional people that I have ever known and our kids are so blessed to have them in their lives.

Here is Carson showing off some of his work to Laiken:

Granny and Pap-paw Ritchie came to share in the excitement this year.

And, finally, what the kids loved the best--the pet snake in Laiken's class!

Snow x 2!

The kids were ecstatic to have two delayed starts at school last week due to the snow. I've never bought into the whole global warming scare and with the cold, snowy weather this week, I'm buying it even less. I know, I know...somewhere the ice caps are melting.... but, here, it looked like Christmas!

It's March???!!!

Around 6:00, the snow started and it is now 11:45 and the snow is still coming down! It is beautiful outside. Everything is blanketed in white. Around 10:00, we started to wake the kids up to see it, but then thought about how much work it would be to get them back into bed, so we let them sleep. They'll see it in the morning and then the fight will be on to get them to school when all they will want to do is stay home and play in it! I can't say that I would blame them--this is, after all, a pretty rare occurrence.

Our Feeble Attempt at Western Day...

I admit it, I have never been one for wearing cowboy attire. Don't get me wrong--some people really wear it well and look cute in the whole boots, hat, jeans, and starched shirt. I grew up with lots of friends who dressed in all of the attire. We grew up in a rural area and the boots and hats were standard for our school that was heavily populated with FFA members. I know what makes a good "western day" outfit, but my kids have never owned boots, hats, or the right kind of jeans for that. So, when they were supposed to dress like cowboys/cowgirls on Thursday, this was the best we could do:

I know....Carson's shirt from The Children's Place and Laiken's "cowboy" hat from The Gap are not really cutting it, but it's what we had. They both thought they looked cute and I'm not sure that they even know that they were not really looking very western!