Amicawhat?

Juston's parents came out to spend the week with us last week. I absentmindedly didn't take any pictures, except when we took them to Amicalola Falls on Friday. You'll recall that we went there with Frankie in the cast. There are pros and cons to having your child in a body cast when you're at a waterfall. For one, he's less likely to run off and try to climb the fence that is supposed to keep people from falling 786 feet to a watery grave. But I digress.

Little waterfalls all along the footpath.

And thar it is!

Frankie was not impressed by this baby water snake. For all of the talk we get out of him, he's surprisingly disgusted by worms, bugs, snakes, and salamanders.

Not sure what this face is supposed to mean.

Lots more stairs.

Picture of a picture.

Lookout below!

The obligatory bad self-portrait.

Dead wood.

After taking the little 'hike' to the waterfall and back, we stopped at the playground by the visitor's center for a little swinging. Harper was definitely a fan.

Jumpy Jump Jump

Yep. Grandma got us a trampoline. Jumpy jump jump fun!

The BUMSMACKER! This kid may end up a pro wrestler yet.



All of your Mormon friends are supposed to have trampolines. I guess we're trying to keep up with the Larsens. *snort*-

Buy my old diapers! :)

http://atlanta.craigslist.org/atl/bab/1711890818.html

I did not teach him this.

But Harper sure thinks its funny.



(Peter, we're going to get you back for this. Probably with "I Sit Down When I Pee." Watch out, Dries.)

Once more, with feeling.

I'm trying again...

Skinny butt sits in the Bumbo and eats a popsicle; highs in the 80s every day this week have prompted the eating of frozen treats.


Harper in the high chair; I had to pull it out of storage because I was tired of eating with her on my lap, being all grabby. Haven't gone to solids yet as I'm trying to avoid the, uh, more involved poops, but we're heading that direction as Harper can't keep her hands out of my food.


Frankie started swimming lessons at the Y last week. Here's to being a little more drown-proof!


Last week we had a double birthday celebration/babysitting with Abe & Jay, who are now 4 and 6. This ice cream and Wall-E moment was preceded by a raucous Michael Jackson dance-a-thon in the kitchen.


We went to the 'dinosaur museum' for about 45 minutes on Monday. Frankie's chief obsession there is the fishing ponds in the kids discovery rooms. If I'd let him, we'd be there weekly for hours of fishing fun. *yawn*


So when mom gets bored while son is fishing, she stages an impromptu photo shoot with the baby. I took a ton of pictures, but this one makes the blog because it appears as though I only have one chin. I love optical illusions.

My computer hates me. Blogger hates me. You'll have to wait more to see the pictures I've lovingly selected. Sorry, mom.

Wormies

A spring break serenade for you.

More Remodelation

We're still remodeling our house, bit by bit. When we moved in a year and a half ago, we still had several 'mostly cosmetic' projects that we assumed we'd take care of once we got settled. Now I'm pretty sure that we'll be finished remodeling on the day we move out. Our big project for this year was refinishing the living room fireplace mantel and fitting it for gas logs. This is a very expensive project, mostly due to the antique tile that we decided to use. However, it looks fantastic. :)

This does *not* look fantastic. This beauty was what we originally had defacing the wall of our living room.

We installed the mantel on the wall when we moved in...and that's as far as we got. Here's a shot of the new fire box going in, brick by old brick (the bricks were salvaged from another chimney flue that we ripped out of the house. There were originally five fireplaces in this house; the fifth one had been sheetrocked into a wall and would've been in Frankie's room.)

Tubs of antique tile. We decided to go with a green, purple, and gold color scheme.

A general idea of the mosaic pattern before installation.

The surround installed and the tile affixed. It's starting to look pretty good!

The final step was sanding, applying putty, and staining/finishing the mantel. The final *final* step will happen in the fall when we insert some gas logs as we had a line run for them. Unfortunately they aren't a hot item in the spring and summer, so we'll pick up a set in the fall.

Lest you think we're more talented than we are, we hired out a restoration company to do this for us as if we'd left it up to us, this fireplace would probably not be nearly this pretty today.

Bunny FooFoos

Frankie 2007:


Harper 2010:


Can ya tell that I stopped caring about color correction somewhere in the last three years?

Egg Hunt 2010

This is the second year I've orchestrated a neighborhood Easter Egg Hunt (although we call it a 'spring egg hunt' because the co-sponsor is agnostic.) This year we hid - and I use the term loosely - about 700 eggs in the neighborhood park. It was really more of an 'egg scatter and pick up,' but none of the kids seemed to care. The weather was perfect and we easily doubled the amount of kids from last year; guess what, advertising works! One pickup truck pulled up blasting rap music and had about ten kids in the truck bed, which seemed highly appropriate. :) Here's to another successful event pulled off and hopefully many more egg hunts to come, or at least until we move, which won't be anytime soon. (Unless someone wants to offer one of us a six-figure job somewhere, then we might be swayed.)

Abe and Frankie at the starting line, ready to hunt!

The park actually looked like this! There were enough people that I had to do crowd control (you can see me on the right-hand side of the photo); I was trying to organize kids into age groups and was only marginally successful. Next year I need to borrow a bullhorn.

Frankie, Harper, and I huntin' eggs.

He was too busy gorging himself on candy to get his picture taken.

Some of the boys checking out their haul.

Somehow this one managed a good 45-minute nap during the middle of all of the chaos!

No trip to the park is complete without a stop at the swings to 'touch the treetops,' as Frankie says.

My little beast turned five months old yesterday. And if you are curious, she still is not sleeping more than a few hours at night with any consistency. *yawn*


Aunt Katie crocheted her this headband. Harper looks cute wearing it, even though she was emphatically not loving the photo shoot.


My big brother is the best! (However, she should probably be concerned. He loves to be pushed on the swings at the playground, why wouldn't Harper want to be pushed - hard - in her baby swing?)


And I am too tired and behind on grading to give you anything else.

Seriously, I mean it...

Guess who didn't want his picture taken at Kangazoom....


And guess who didn't want his picture taken while gardening....


When I turned my back, he literally tried to drown all of the seeds that we planted. He was convinced that they were 'thirsty.' Maybe a gardening miracle will happen anyway.

Pug dogs in the springtime

They molt. Like crazy. Like after her shower, there was enough hair that there might as well have been a dead rat in my drain. It's like a little pile of Bridget-love!

Hippies in the Springtime

Frankie's preschool + spring = all of the earthy, granola-y goodness you've come to expect. This presentation was a big deal, with parents enacting 'Mother Earth', 'Father Sun', 'Sister Rain', and 'Brother Wind', all nourishing a seed. Each child was given a peat pot, a seed was planted in it, and then it was presented to each entity while a song was sung that described the process. Afterwards was a 'potluck', complete with hummus and sunflower seeds. I don't think Frankie will even touch hummus, honestly. Apparently a kid in his class has a hummus allergy, but how do you find out these things? Do you even know a three-year-old that eats hummus?

Anyway, I digress. Here's the video:



For what it's worth, we really do like Frankie's preschool and he's thriving there. He loves to work in the 'garden' at home and is very interested in planting vegetables this year. Stuff like this is just so foreign from my childhood experience that it makes me scratch my non-hippie head sometimes.

Belly Laughs

Sometimes big brothers beat you up (there was an incident today, but he was upset far longer than she was over it.) And sometimes they make you laugh. I've tried and tried to get her to laugh like this, but no one makes her laugh quite as much as her big bro. She always gives him the biggest smiles, too. Sometimes momma feels a little shafted (I do feed her in the middle of the night and all), but it makes me happy that they have such affection for each other. My kids are pretty awesome. :)

The Kindezi School

Most of you know that I'm on the founding board of a charter school called The Kindezi School. Today, the school was officially approved by the Georgia Board of Education, meaning that it will open next fall. It's unique model proposes six students to one teacher, a ratio that is virtually unheard of in public schools. Our kids will attend the school and I'm really excited at the prospect that such a small ratio offers; they will have an individualized learning plan and be taught in small groups. Their strengths will be challenged and their weakness aggressively addressed. I'm very excited and I am optimistic for the future. :)

Oh yes, we did.

This one is for Grandma Chrys. We like to call it 'pink vomit' or 'pink cupcake.' You pick. :)


Nom nom nom....

Floating Head

Yet another one of Frankie's masterpieces.

The View From (down) Here

Frankie's photography. He's using a candy-red Polaroid iZone camera on the lowest setting. Basically, it's a glorified piece of plastic with a lens, but he loves it. There will be no 'headshots' of the adults because something about the height and angle from which he takes pictures magnifies all of the extra chins.

Frankie set up this photograph and took a picture of it while I was distracted doing other things; he was so proud of himself.