Nature center

After working a 75 hour week last week, PNC was nice enough to give Jon an extra day off this week.  It was cold so we headed to one of the nature centers.

Ellie thought the bonnet was cute for about 2 whole seconds.

Sams scared face!

Ellie wanted to make silly faces.

Real smiles.

The highlight of the morning.  Sam did this at least 25 times.

Charlottes Web

We all went to see another play at LCCC last week.  We read Charlottes Web in the fall and the kids really liked the book.  All the LCCC plays are geared towards kids, but this was by far the least annoying.  All four seemed to enjoy themselves.  Ellie keeps asking to see another play so it must have been a good time.

Art work

Ellie has been on a drawing/coloring kick recently.

Pinewood derby

The boys participated in the Pinewood Derby through Royal Rangers over the weekend.  They each designed and painted the cars on their own. They each won a couple races, but were beat out at the end.  They still managed to get a trophy and have a great time!

Face paint and lemon aid

Not to jinx it, but I think we're done with winter.  We went from 40 degrees last Thursday to 70 last Friday.  The kids on our street got together and decided to set up a face painting and lemon aid stand to celebrate warmer weather. It was a cute thought, but since we live on a cul de sac, we just don't get a lot of traffic.

They got a little bored and started painting each other and drank all of the lemon aid.  Somehow they managed to make $2.  I think the bigger kids split the money and walked away with 30 cents each! Good thing they were in it for the fun and not the money!

Movie time

I took the boys to see Gods Not Dead 2 last week.  We had the entire theater to ourselves. I could get used to that!

Tinker toy time

More snow

We're in Cleveland.  We shouldn't be surprised to wake up to snow in April.  No worries though. Ellie is ready!

Wordless Wednesday: Yes, my kids eat ketchup...by itself!

He pulled a fast one

My car is falling apart...literally.  The bottom is full of rust and pieces fall off all the time.  Its not going to last much longer.  We know we have some big repairs coming and when its time for them, it just wont be worth it to fix it. We've been holding off for as long as possible so we could save as much as possible.
Jon had his car for 12 years.  We loved his car and we knew we'd have a bigger repair coming soon, but after taking it in for an oil change last week, we learned it was much worse than we thought.  We were given an estimate of $2500 and close to another $2500 coming up shortly after that.
We decided to get Jon a new car.  We went with a lease. That wouldn't have been our first choice, but a lease cuts the payments almost in half so we'll still have a few bucks to put aside for when my van dies.
He got another Subaru.  I have to admit, its pretty awesome and I'm totally jealous!  On the plus side, I've already driven it almost more than he has so I guess I can last a little bit longer in my rusty van.

Happy Easter

We hope everyone had a great Easter!

Egg hunt

Gram set up another Easter egg hunt yesterday for the kids.  They've been looking forward to this for the past week.

They had a fun time looking through the eggs to see what goodies they got.

Sadly, Sam and Zach are experiencing Easter candy tooth decay at an accelerated rate!

Everyone did a significantly better job this year of buying less candy.  Although it wouldn't be Easter if Gram didn't go a little overboard with this 19" tall, 2 pound chocolate bunny!

Easter eggs

The kids did a great job of coloring Easter eggs on Saturday.  Unfortunately for me, their favorite part of the decorating was the glitter.

Hoop!

Jon The kids have wanted a basketball hoop for a while.  A hoop was actually at the top of Sams Christmas list.  Now that its getting warmer, we decided to go for it.  It went up on Saturday and has already got a ton of use. Jon The kids are very happy!

03-20-04

Jon and I celebrated 12 years of marriage on Sunday.  The kids let us sleep in so we ended up playing hookie from church and going to Bob Evans for brunch.  We spent the afternoon at home.  We made more bread and Jon gave us a little concert. The kids love the banjo as much as Jon does.  We went out for pizza for dinner and ice cream for dessert.  The kids were great all day minus the fact that none of them would change Zachs diaper for us!
Sorry about the camera angle change half way through!

Bread!

The kids have been on a bread kick recently and I'm all about a soft, warm piece of bread. However, in our efforts to slowly take out the junk from our diets, we realized we weren't doing ourselves any favors with the store bought bread.  We got a bread machine and made our first loaf of bread last night.  The kids are used to the store bought taste so this will be an adjustment for them.  They aren't a fan of the crust yet, but they seem to like the bread overall.  I liked being able to put in 4 ingredients and have a 2 pound loaf of wheat bread appear 4.5hrs later!  We have a storage container on the way and Jon has already requested some french bread and pointed out a cinnamon swirl recipe.  Maybe this wont be such a healthy alternative after all!

Park day

We had slightly warmer weather over the weekend and headed out to play.  It was nice to get them outside and just let them run. We're definitely looking forward to spring.

What????

The face you make when your mom kicks your butt at Uno!

Musicians

I never learned to play an instrument as a kid and now I wish I had.  I told Jon I wanted to learn either piano or guitar.  Apparently, I'm going to learn both!  Jon also wants to learn the guitar and his dad just happened to have 2 guitars he isn't using.  He dropped them off this weekend and is going to let us borrow them for a while.

Jon also had a coupon for guitar center who was running a sale on keyboards.  So we picked one up over the weekend. Jon has spent more time on the guitar and I've been on the keyboard more.  I think we're both making pretty good progress.

Of course who would be satisfied with a guitar and keyboard when you can have a banjo too?  After hearing David Crowder do a hoedown at a recent concert, Jon was sold on learning the banjo too.  He found a really nice one and it was delivered yesterday.  Its actually really cool.  I like it a lot more than I thought I would.  He taught himself most of a song in about 2 hours.  Its going to be even louder over here.  We might need to buy the neighbors some earplugs!

Bowling

We went bowling over the weekend.  3 of the kids had a good time!  I think we left a couple dents in the lane after 10 frames of Sam and Zach throwing the ball.

Ben tried bowling with out bumpers for the very first time. He tried hard.  Unfortunately, his score doesn't reflect the effort.