Birthday Pics

Here are a few shots from our picnic today at Lake Crabtree. This was part of Amanda's birthday celebration.

Date Night

I have been sorely remiss in not taking Amanda out on a date since we got back from the cruise in March. We weren't really in the mood through March, April was busy with Easter and school, and May just kind of slipped away from me. That doesn't make it right for April and May, it's just how it was.

Nana and Grandpa Jack came over to watch the kids last night while I took Amanda out to dinner. We had a nice meal and it was good just to get away without the kids. It is just so incredibly liberating to eat a meal out without any kids. Although, to be fair, Noah is really the tough one these days.

The kids had fun last night too. In fact, the first word out of Noah's mouth this morning was "Nana." He got a little nervous last night when he saw them, so I reassured him that we would not be leaving for 8 days this time.

Incidentally, he is starting to reject sippy cups. I guess this is good in a way, but it's also a little scary at mealtime. Amanda tells me that if he is going to go with big-boy cups then I get to sit next to him and have milk spilled on my feet. That seems fair.

Uncle Mark might be interested to know that Noah really likes my old Tupperware cups that used to be an object of so much teasing toward me. If that's not a testimony for Tupperware I don't know what is.

Gearing Up

We've got a big weekend coming up. Today is Cousin (Niece) Brenna's 4th birthday. Amanda and Lily will go for the celebration of that tomorrow morning. Then in the evening we are celebrating Grandpa Jack's birthday. Sunday is Amanda's birthday and I have a few things in the works for that. Plus, Grandpa and Nana have graciously offered to come over tonight to watch the kids so I can take Amanda out.

In the meantime I just hope that we get a break in the thunderstorms when I need to pick Lily up from the bus.

Babysitting Central

Amanda seems to have waves where she does lots of babysitting and this is one of them. Yesterday she had over Ruby and Alex, who are the children of Lily's dance teacher. Their mom is going to Kenya for an short-term missions trip and needed someone to watch her kids while she got shots. The good news is that Noah did well with them and he didn't even mind napping while they were here.

Today Amanda is going to watch Ava who lives kitty-corner behind us. It will just be for a few hours in the morning. Hopefully she and Noah will get along. She's 4, so it's hard to say what she will think of a 2 year-old boy.

Lily gets a little bit sad when she misses kids coming over. However, she does enjoy her kindergarten class. It's hard to believe that there is only a week left of kindergarten! We're working on things to keep her busy over the summer, but not too busy. We hope to get her going on the piano. Amanda got her a video for learning Spanish, so we'll see how that goes. Amanda is going to sign her up for serious swimming lessons (8 45-minute classes) so she will be safer in the pool. I'm sure that there will be playdates.

One sign of maturing I've noticed in Lily is that she wants to sleep in on school days, but is out of her room promptly at 7-0-0 on the weekends. I certainly don't want for her to start developing the habit of staying up late and sleeping in until 9:00, but we wouldn't mind it if she slept until 7:30 on Saturdays and Sundays.

More Koalaty Kids

In the middle of this little video is Lily introducing the next song at their "Kindergarten Celebration of Success" (not to be confused with a graduation, though they did start with "Pomp and Circumstances"). Please forgive the squished-out distortion of everyone. I had to film it with the camera on its side because of the angle I had. I assure you that Ms. Snoots (back of the head in the pink shirt) is not nearly that wide. Quite the opposite actually.



This other video is Lily really performing for a song. She got a LOT of comments about it. Hey, when they tell her to do a move she does a move.

Springtime Lillies

Here is a shot I took this morning before walking out to the bus. What amazes me is that the lillies you see started off as one plant that we got a few Easters ago. It just keeps spreading like crazy. They sure are pretty now.

Handy Sunday

Saturday evening was kind of a rough one for me. Amanda and her friend went out to dinner, which left me with the kids. That was fine, but the kids were a little grouchy and I was starting to get a little short after being with them all day. Then Lily was trying to get some ice out of the freezer door only to have the door get stuck. In my attempts to fix it I made things worse. It got so that the flap covering the opening wouldn't close all the way.

On top of that I had to do some work on Amanda's laptop. Plus, the Indians and Cavs got stomped in their respective games. It wasn't pretty.

Sunday morning I decided to tackle the freezer door problem. Thanks to some useful online resources I was able to get it done in an hour or so. The trickiest part was getting the cover off the dispenser. I felt pretty good about getting it repaired, especially since Lily thought that I would have to call someone to do it.

In the evening we went to a picnic for our new church campus in Morrisville. It was good to meet a few new people and enjoy some time outside in the nice weather. The kids had a great time. There were balls there, so Noah was happy!

The only complication was that there was no room on the side dish table for our potato salad. Now I have a big bowl of it to eat. I wonder if we're going to get a visitor from California at our door to help out?