March Madness

03.11.13 First day it was "warm enough" to go outside to walk.  I was so excited that I got my iPod out and took a picture.  That is why it is so fuzzy.

 

03.14.13 Esther and I went to her cardiologist appointment today.  She is doing great and the doctor said to come back in 6 months.  We ran a couple errands and then went to lunch together.  We stopped at one place just as the train came by.  She thought that was pretty cool.  We went to lunch and had hamburgers and fries with a shake.  She pretty much ate everything, just a lot slower then me.  I think she thought it was pretty cool to be out with just mom.  Maybe I should try this with each kid more often.  We will have to see how that goes.

 

 

03.15.13  Esther got into the scrap fabric box and decided to dress up.  I need to get her out the dress up box so she can run around here in her princess garb.  She was pretty funny as she directed me or Kirsten on where to put things.

03.16.13  Self portrait from Dave, covered with a "little" sawdust.  I thought it was pretty funny that he took the picture and so I had to add it here.

He also took the kids to Jump Zone since I was having a girls evening out with my craft group.
I had a great time at craft group, I just didn't get what I wanted done in the time I had given myself.  We decided it was time for a Super Saturday to get those unfinished projects done.  I had a couple to finish and a few to start.  But we had a nice time and it was fun to chat without interruption.


03.17.13  Happy St. Patrick's day.  We did a low key celebration complete with green eggs for breakfast and green cake after dinner.  We didn't get into it much, the kids laid a trap with pennies up the stairs for the leprechaun, but he didn't show this year.

03.20.13  Today was crazy hair day or dress alike day at school.  Since Peter and Justin have the same shirt, they did both crazy hair and dress alike.  We tried to make Pete's hair into a faux hawk but it had just been cut and wasn't quit long enough.  It usually does that on it's own once it gets to a particular length.  Should have thought ahead and not got that last hair cut.  NOT!



Kirsten's class got the opportunity to go to the Chicago Field Museum, and I decided that I wanted to go.  We had a pretty fun day.  We got a couple of strange looks since many of the kids had spray painted their hair or had it tied with funny bows.  They have been studying the dinosaurs and so we spent a little time in that area.  Kirsten wanted to see the gem display and the two boys with us were pretty bored from the first thing we looked at in there, they kept asking me when we could leave.  I figured we would see plenty of what they wanted to see in the rest of the museum.  It was pretty fun to spend time with Kirsten and her friends.

 

Even though it was time for bed, Dave and I could hear peals of laughter from down stairs.  We had no idea what was happening but decided to let them continue for a bit.  Peter tried to explain to me what they were doing but I couldn't understand from his description.  When Dave looked at his iPad he found these crazy pictures.  I love it, they are pretty funny and still make me smile when I see them.

 

03.26.13  Spring break is here and we have been having a great time keeping busy playing all day.  Today I decided we needed to try dipping peeps in chocolate.  It was an idea I saw on pinterest.  Um, yep they were good.  What is wrong with peeps in chocolate?  It was the perfect combination of waxy chocolate and marshmallow.  YUM!

 

 

03.27.13 While Kirsten was having a playdate at her friends house, we invited Justin to come and play at our house.  Here is the conversation that led to this picture.

Justin: Sister Anderson, Sister Anderson (I have been upgraded from Peter's mom to Sister Anderson because of my job at church.)  Can you take a picture?
Me: Sure, let me get camera.
*Click, click* (A couple pictures later.)
Justin: Sister Anderson, can you put this on Facebook?  And share it with my mom, so that Anna can see what I created without her.
Me: Sure.
Justin: You are on Facebook and can do that.
Me: Yes (I never got back to the computer to do it, sorry Justin.)

 

 

03.27.13 YUMMY, ice cream.  I love the progression as they age of amount of ice cream on their face.  Do you think they like it?

 

 

 

03.29.13  This spring break has been fairly cold and so when we had the opportunity to go play at a park because it was going to be almost 60, we jumped at the chance.  The kids had a great time and through out our time there they jackets came off.  We played, and we played and we played.  It was so beautiful, we even had a picnic it was that nice.  Esther went missing for a few minutes when I was talking to Sonrisa.  But she was only in different area of the park where we hadn't checked.  Boy did I have a scare. 

We love this park because it has everything you need, a zip line, slides, climbing areas, swings, sand, and even a boat to climb on. We love visiting and spending time outside with our friends the Parkers.

 

While the kids and I were playing at the park, Dave was moving things around in the garage.  He built these shelves and moved all of the food storage out into the garage.  I love it. 
Then he and I spent the rest of the day and Saturday cleaning out the rest of the garage.  He is trying to make his work space easier to use.  It looks awesome and I can't wait until it is all done.

We have been trying to do one act of kindness for our community or for people we know each month.  This month the thing I had planned was changed to May and so I had to come up with something.  I have been walking in the morning and on my walk the other morning I came up with our service project for April.  We went and collected garbage on the bike path and along the neighborhood streets we live in.  It was actually pretty fun for the kids and brought a smile to the faces of people we were helping.  My kids thought it was great and kept picking up things all along the way.  It is part of my Kindness Inspires Kindness project.  The neighbor asked what we were doing and then I noticed her boy was cleaning up the area around his house just like us.  I loved it!  Pride in our community and pride in our neighborhood.

Today was a busy day, we finished the night with egg dyeing.  We started off with just plain eggs with a little bit of writing with the wax crayon.  Then I remembered we had some left over vinyl from previous projects we have done and so I brought them down.  We put them on the eggs and then removed them after they had been dyed.  The kids thought that was cool, and then I did it after I had already colored the egg, then I was cooler.  The last thing I did was put an egg in the dye 3 different times and ended up with and egg with 4 quadrants of color.  Now I really got the COOL MOM award.  Then they made many variations.  Esther on the other hand just dyed her eggs orange, and then her hands went in and they were orange too.  Oopps!  Mom should be watching better.  This is one of my favorite things to do for Easter.

03.30.13  Easter egg hunting on Saturday morning.  Esther figured out what was in those eggs and had her mouth full before anyone realized.  She hadn't seen the eggs at first and was happy to help mom make pancakes before she realized that the eggs were all over the house. 

While we worked on the garage I worked on a project for the Pinewood Derby for our ward.  We found the idea on Pinterest and I had Dave help me cut the wood and figure out how to get the cars to stay on the wood blocks.



03.31.13  Happy Easter.  We were all dressed up for Easter but didn't have time to take a picture before church and so when we got there I grabbed Liberty and had her take a couple of pictures before bows, ties and everything else was all messed up.  I think we are a pretty cute family. 

 

My visiting teacher brought over these tulips a couple of days ago and they have all blossomed.  It is a beautiful bouquet of tulips.  I made the carrot cake from a recipe that said the Unbelievable Carrot Cake.  It was really good.

You can see we were all enjoying it.  Even Kirsten who said she didn't like carrot cake.  All my kids really liked it.

Thanks to a really good friend that suggested a couple of years ago that peeps were best roasted, we have to do our annual roasting of the peeps.  Also thanks to the cleaning out the garage we had tons of wood scraps that we could burn to make perfect coals.  Yum!Yum!
I love the contrast of shorts and winter coats.  Although it was a nice warm day it started to get colder as we sat out in the yard as the sun went down.