All About Me Day

Each year, Claire's school puts on an "All About Me" day for the kindergarteners. They work all year long on making projects to display. On the big day, parents and family can come into the school to see what all they've been working on. Each kindergartener stands in front of their display and answers questions/shows off their stuff. They were so proud of themselves and of all the things that make them, "them"!

Part of the display was a photo of them on "When I Grow Up" day. Here's a closer picture of Claire on that day -- she wants to be an artist.

After showing off their work they all got up on the stage to sing a few sweet songs. How cute are these kiddos (especially the one second from the left in the back row)?

Memorial Day at the Veterans Cemetery

Claire's Daisy Girl Scout troop, along with many other scouting troops in the area, placed flags on the headstones at the Brigadier General William C. Doyle Veterans Cemetery here in New Jersey. What a wonderful way to help the kiddos understand the upcoming holiday!

Here's our little scout, hard at work:

And Maddie got to place some flags, too:

Even Colin got into the spirit!

Phil helped to hand out flags to the little girls in Claire's Daisy troop.

There were so many scouts there that the whole cemetery was completed within about 20 minutes. It was pretty warm outside today, but the kids all did a wonderful job!

Before:

After:

Let's Dance

We just got home from the girls' big dance recital. They spent the last year getting into the routine of a new dance studio, getting to know a new teacher and all of the girls in their classes, and (of course) learning new dance moves. Once again, they got to wear beautiful costumes and perform a dance on the big stage. They worked really hard on their routines and they both did a wonderful job up there!

There's Maddie in the middle

That's Claire 4th from the left

"Recital week" is a busy week. We had their normal classes on Monday and Tuesday. Photos (in their costumes) on Thursday. Dress rehearsal on Saturday and THEN the real deal on Sunday. I got pretty good at putting their hair into ballerina-esque buns by the time the big day came around! Note: there's lots of hairspray and bobby pins involved.

Getting prettied up

Yesterday the girls were upstairs playing and they were quiet. Too quiet, really, but I trust them not to do anything too awful and Phil's out of town so I chose not to check on them. I'm so glad I didn't! When they finally emerged from the bathroom (yes, they were playing in the bathroom and I still didn't go check -- did I mention Phil's out of town and I'm long overdue for a break?) they were SO cute! They had discovered all of their hair-do accessories and Claire put them to good use.



She combed out Maddie's hair (without any complaints from Maddie - that never happens for me!) and then completed this complicated coiffure. Such sweet and beautiful girls I have!

Longwood in the Spring

This weekend the weather was beeeeautiful so we packed up the fam' and headed back to Longwood Gardens to see the tulips in bloom. Boy oh boy were there a bunch of flowers! Side note: how cool would it be to be a gardener there and get to play with all of those pretty plants and make beautiful landscapes???



Maddie apparently observed her grandmother closely at the gardens and the flower show last month -- she knew just what to do! "Daddy, take a picture of that flower. Ooo and that one! This one too, Daddy!" and so on and so forth. I'm sure her grandmothers will be proud to hear of her love of plants.

The Royal Wedding

I can distinctly remember when Princess Di and Prince Charles got married. I think I was 5 years old. Now there's another royal wedding and my girls are about that same age. I just knew they'd love watching it!


We invited a few friends over to join us for our princess wedding party. Thanks to our good ol' DVR, we could watch the wedding at our leisure, rewinding as needed due to kiddo-fits (I'm looking at YOU, Colin), and skipping forward through the boring parts (by that I mean boring for the kiddos. I personally love the ceremony and history of it all but I'll have to go back and watch later. Kiddo attention was mostly focused on pretty dresses, handsome princes, and snacks and did not allow for in-depth viewing).

Speaking of snacks, we paused the festivities and took a break halfway through for scones, muffins, and lemon cookies. And yes, I pulled out the china and silver. Why not? May as well use it! This kind of thing doesn't happen very often.

I thought the girls were going to burst with excitement when the newlyweds got into their horse-drawn carriage -- just like Cinderella! Those Brits sure know how to put on a beautiful wedding. Best wishes to the new couple! Kate Middleton succeeded in living out every woman's fairy tale -- she married a pilot! ;)

Easter!

He is risen, Hallelujah!


What a wonderful Easter we had! First, the kiddos woke up and tore apart their Easter baskets.

Then we all went to Mass and got there in time to get seats. Wahoo! (no pics of the 3 kiddos together, though -- timeliness does have its price!)

Check out those pretty dresses from Gramma Bethie again - with matching dollie dresses!

Then we came home and had some friends over for dinner. The weather was beautiful -- warm, sunny... perfect! Definitely a joyful, blessed day. Oh, how I wish I could freeze time on days like this. The kiddos' excitement as they checked out what the Easter bunny brought them was such a neat thing to watch. Then there's always the fun experiment to see how much chocolate and jelly beans their little tummies can handle (surprisingly, quite a bit!). They're growing so quickly, but I hope we have a few more Easters with "The Bunny" in our future.

Gearing up for Easter

Poor Colin. There was a "Breakfast with the Bunny" fundraiser at Claire's school and, of course, Claire and Maddie wanted to go. So off we went to get the obligatory photo with the bunny and eat some breakfast. Colin was decidedly uncool with this concept at Christmas time (but that was Santa - this is a bunny! Who doesn't love a fuzzy bunny???). Turns out he's still not a fan. Oh well, we got the picture anyway! Aren't the girls' dresses from Grandma Bethie pretty?

OK, so it IS a demented looking bunny!

Next up: egg hunt at Maddie's preschool.

They had a beautiful day for it.

On a side note, I just love her little preschool. It's in the town of Bordentown, which is pretty much what I always pictured when I thought of New England.

The kids are sweet. The teachers are nice. It's been a wonderful place for her.


Today in our Easter prep: dye some eggs. The kiddos' favorite activity; not so much mine. But they did a lovely job.

Colin really got into it this year and insisted (as only a not-quite-2-year-old can) that he get to participate fully and dye his own eggs. I was skeptical, but he did great. Naked, but great.

And then this afternoon the mailman delivered the annual box o' contraband from Aunt Heidi:

Aunt Heidi - your packaging gives you away!

You see, I can't bring myself to buy Peeps for my kiddos. Is there a worse food out there? They're made of marshmallow, corn syrup, gelatin, and carnuba wax. Yuck. The kiddos love them, though. Lucky for them, their Aunt Heidi knows I'm a big meanie and she ALWAYS pulls through and sends them a big ol' box full of Peeps and other fun items!

Of course, I have to provide photographic evidence of the Peep consumption, so here it is:

Polish pottery

In recent weeks I've been hoarding - er, I mean - collecting Boleslawiec pottery, or Polish pottery. You see, I went a little crazy with the stuff while we lived in Germany, 10ish years ago. It's such beautiful pottery, it wears wonderfully, and it's relatively inexpensive if you buy it from the factories in Poland whilst on a super-fun overnight shopping trip with a bunch of other military spouses. It is significantly more expensive here in the States, but occasionally TJ Maxx gets a big ol' shipment of the stuff in and they don't charge so much for it. I currently live near not 1, not 2, but 3 (!!!) TJ Maxx stores and they put such great prices on it that I end up doing silly things. Like what, you ask? Oh, like deciding to get rid of our old dinnerware (plates, bowls, etc) and replacing it all with Polish pottery!

Who needs to go to Poland when one can go to TJ Maxx???

Phil is decidedly LESS enthusiastic about my little obsession, but he has tolerated it thus far. I think, though, that I'm about done with purchasing pottery so as not to test his limits too much! I just need 4 more dinner and salad plates to round out the bunch. Oh, and whatever I can get Nikki to buy for me at the warehouse near her in Holland...

Two-wheeler

Claire has been working very hard on riding a bike with no training wheels. The problem she was running into was that she would get scared. Then she'd start wobbling. Then she'd slow down and get more wobbly. Then, of course, she'd fall.



Finally today it was a beautiful day and Phil took her to a parking lot at one end of our subdivision. With all of that space it finally clicked for her. After just a little bit of practice she was comfortable enough to ride around our cul-de-sac. I'm so proud of her and her big-girl riding skills!



Maddie went along to the parking lot to lend moral support. She practiced riding her scooter and running relays. This girl is fast!:

Vacuuming is men's work

Am I right? Men who vacuum are awesome. That's why I married one AND I'm raising one. OK, maybe he's just learning by his daddy's example, but whatever. In 25 years or so some gal is going to be very lucky , for many reasons, to have this little guy (sorry, the bigger one's taken).

Look! He does stairs, too!

The Wait

We move a lot. That kind-of goes without saying. But our move to New Jersey was unique in that we knew we'd only be here one year. Kindergarten for Claire. One year of preschool for Maddie. Colin's year one to two. These days when our kiddos are so very young are such wonderful, amazing, once-in-a-lifetime moments and we do try to live every day just for that day. And we have definitely enjoyed our time in New Jersey. But it's hard to NOT think about next year. Where will we be? There were exotic possibilities: Hawaii. Florida. Germany. There were interesting possibilities: Washington, DC (stuff to see). Colorado Springs (never tried Colorado before). There was the close-to-home possibility of Illinois/St Louis-area that would make it possible to have birthday parties with family and weekend visits to the grandparents' houses. And that just names a few places that were out there! The questions were endless: Should I buy the kids new winter coats while they're on sale or will they not need them? Do I need to go through all of the boxes downstairs before we move to some tiny house overseas? Will we want to rent a house or buy?

Fortunately for us, the Air Force finally put an end to the waiting game this month. We will be moving to Washington, DC this summer. Well, OK, we'll be moving to Virginia, but Phil will work in DC. So the answers to the rest of the above questions are: yes (glad I did!), probably-but-don't-want-to, and RENT. And we should be there for around three years, so we should be able to actually relax for awhile before worrying about what's next! I guess we'll have to continue to beg our families to come see us, get in the van and go see them when we can, and get ourselves ready to see the sights of our nation's capitol.

We went out house hunting as soon as we could and quickly found a nice house. According to the folks we know there, the rental houses in the areas we were looking at get snatched up very quickly as it gets closer to the summer move season, so we hope we've avoided that craziness.

In between checking out houses, we reconnected with some friends there that we knew in Altus AND we managed to squeeze in a very quick trip to the Air Force monument:

Colin checking out the wild blue yonder

View of the Pentagon, Arlington National Cemetery and the National Mall

The kids are pretty sure they waved to the president on Marine One, too. I think all of the excitement may have worn them out a bit, though.