Easter

We spent Easter weekend at Oma and Papa's house. The weather was beautiful, so we spent a lot of time outside - playgrounds, baseball, and of course, hunting for eggs!

Field Trip

I was lucky enough to get to go on Brady's field trip with him. They had a ton of chaperones, so he was the only kid I had to keep track of! We went to the Frontier Culture Museum.

First, we visited the old country homesteads: Africa, England, Scotland, and Ireland.

Practicing their balancing skills...

Brady and one of his best friends at school, Gabriel:

Then, we were off to the new world to learn about homesteading on the frontier.

Musical gourds:

Fence building:

Even his teacher tried her hand and making split rails for fencing!

Egg rolling:

S'mores!

We took advantage of the ridiculously warm weather to have a backyard campfire. The boys wanted hot dogs, but since it was Friday during Lent, we went with pie iron pizzas. Of course, we had to finish with s'mores!

Buddies!

I sent these photos using Adobe(R) Photoshop(R) Elements 6.0. Find out more: http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshopelwin/

Have a ball...

I saw this fun idea to send a ball through the mail. The boys had a great time decorating the balls and I think the recipients were pretty excited with their special packages!

April Fools'

We can't make it through April 1 without some sort of silly food. The Easter brunch was at the community clubhouse today, so no one was ready for a big dinner. Instead, we snacked on bacon, eggs, and toast...

Egg hunt

This weekend was the annual neighborhood egg hunt. The kids love the opportunity to hunt with their friends, and are even more excited the last few years when they've graduated to the big kids group!

Desks

James reached a stopping point in his latest woodworking project. He built each of the boys a new desk. Ultimately, there will be a small hutch on top of each. The kids have already settled into their new spaces though!

Five and a half and three quarters

Rudy finally caught on to the fact that Brady got a small family celebration for his birthday in January as well as his half birthday in the summer. Since Rudy's half birthday falls right before Christmas, we decided we would let him have a special day for his 3/4 birthday. He started calling it his "five and a half and three quarters birthday." This year, he wanted to go out to lunch, watch Return of the Jedi, and go to SweetFrog. The original plan was to spread it out and watch Star Wars on Saturday night and go to lunch and SweetFrog on Sunday. We decided to add in a trip to a glass studio between lunch and yogurt, but the studio was as far as we got before Ru was struck by the cootie that had gotten Brady on Friday.

We postponed the SweetFrog trip until this Friday and even combined it with a road trip to another children's museum.

Pitiful

Tell me this isn't a sad looking kid...

Thankfully, he's back to his happy self again!

Oobleck

If you've never made oobleck, it's definitely something you should try! It's the weirdest stuff we've ever played with...

Does it look like Brady is wearing gloves? Nope...that's just the smurfy color his hands maintained after playing with food-colored oobleck...

Fort building...

Oma and Papa were in town last weekend. The boys decided they wanted to build another fort with them, using the discarded fencing boards in the adjacent lot. I was envisioning a sort of lean-to back in the woods, but we ended up with something so much more...

It ended up being a fun project, and the boys got a lot of practice with a hammer and nails (and even a little with the drill!)

Classy, right??