sad Holland

We cobbled together a live feed (between the all-Spanish live feed from Univision and the radio-only feed from ESPN) and actually watched the last half of the game. The boys were very into it, surprisingly. They've not had much ball-sport exposure yet, but seemed to get the idea and rules pretty well.

Sorry, Holland. At least one citizen was rooting from all the way in Minnesota, on a tiny screen with a five second delay, with two very excited little boys in orange. When No*ah asked if all the Dutch people are sad, Oliv*er said, "they've still got all those cows and things".




(I think they're getting "hup, Holland, hup!" mixed up with "hip, hip hooray!", but oh well...)

growing, growing, everywhere

We've had lots and lots of heavy rain this season after 4 years of drought, so much that mushrooms were popping up everywhere. So we went on a mushroom hunt and found 12-18 distinct kinds of mushrooms, just on the boulevard on our block and the next one.





Among other interesting things for the Nature Basket...


We are not experts at mushroom identification (though there's an app for that, it turns out, and I'm learning a little about them).

Did you know that lichen is in it's own kingdom, neither plant, nor animal? It's very sensitive to pollution, so in the city, it only grows high in the trees. When we have storms, little bits or even whole covered branches come down, and the boys are fascinated by it.







The boys are often interested in helping out in the kitchen. They're very cautious and precise around the hot stove, so I'm starting to trust them a bit more.






Mmmm--curried rice and greens. They are indeed getting to be "good cookers"!

2010 spring

Heavens, I'm behind on sharing photos. Here are a bunch from spring, and hopefully I'll start catching up. Happy summer to you all!







Chicks we "chick-sat" from school.



May flowers!


Skyping with Omie

bikes!

I don't have pictures yet, but each boy just learned how to ride a bike without training wheels. They need a little help getting going, but they can ride and stop without us. It was actually very easy to teach them, which I didn't anticipate, because I remember that teaching them to ride a trike 2 years ago was rather torturous for all three of us.

With her fabulous sense of timing, Auntie Mea*gan picked up a discarded library book all about bikes at a sale. As you can see, it's been a favorite, and I confess that I even learned a thing or two about bike anatomy. No*ah is convinced that the ideal job would be to sell iced cream out of the back of a bike cart, "and have some anytime I was feeling a little hungry for it". Indeed.

now we are five

A few pictures of the boys' actual birthday. (My parents came a week later for their birthday party - more on that when I'm more caught up).



The boys received hardcover "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" and "Alice in Wonderland" with beautiful illustrations. We're all the way through "Wizard" and half-way through "Alice". I love the chapter-book stage; half the time I enjoy the book as much as they do.



The "Gig*gly Hi*lls" by the river.




And one Giggly Boy.



No*ah requested a "short boy haircut". Once I figured out what he was talking about, I took him to the barber's.

I think he looks great, but somewhat predictably, Jo*el was less pleased.



Ollie is so capable and sweet with his "ladies".

antics

If you live, as I do, with two newly minted five-year-olds, you might just wake up one morning to a bit of stirring and giggling next to your bed. You might open your sleepy eyes and attempt to focus without your glasses, and see this*:



You might look next to the bed and notice a string leading out of the bedroom...

...into the living room, which just might lead to another sign:

and another....


Until, SURPRISE!!!!!!


It's a party! With streamers! And a balloon!

And if a party wasn't fun enough, you can always bite your pita bread into "underpants".


Or do an extra good job when mama asks you to put a few rolls of toilet paper on the holder:


* that's "follow the line" and "follow the path", in case their phonetic spelling didn't make any sense to you.

just a few pics I never got around to publishing.

Hard to believe that this weather is still possible in MN this time of year, but it is. Thankfully, this was around Christmas, and we're having a lovely early green spring!

love and lentils

for Omie and Opa

The boys talk all the time about when Omie and Opa are coming for their birthday. This year we're going to have a real birthday party for them at our favorite Nature Center. They'll each get to invite a few friends, and a naturalist will take the kids on some games and such, and then there'll be cake. We're having a "Book Party" where, if they want to, people can bring a book for the boys, and also a copy of the same book for the Re*ach Out And Re*ad program at the hospital where I work, which gives a free book to every child at every well-child visit. For many of the kids that receive books, it will be the only books they have in their home. Toys and presents are lovely, of course, but we've just gotten rid of a ton of clutter, and hope to keep it that way for a while, with less sets of tiny parts mixing up everywhere and requiring constant sorting. And, while these toys don't always get the biggest "wow factor" when the presents are opened, what they actually play with for the most part is this: books, blocks, trains, puzzles and games, art supplies, Legos, and stuffed animals. And those things by themselves take up a fair bit of space and organization. Even the boys have remarked that it's easier to clean up since the "purge".



Our bathroom is finally done -this won't be interesting to all of you, I am sure, but here are a couple of pictures.



We bartered for the labor on the tile, and St*ve did the plumbing and electrical. The bathroom has gone from being an unpleasant little room with moldy plastic tile to the nicest room in the house.



I took No*ah to the Minnea*polis Inst*itute of Ar*ts on Friday, and we had a great time. We did set off one alarm when No*ah touched the plexiglass over a decorative object, but after that he was extremely careful! We had a great discussion about what exactly makes something "art", and he was particularly interested in the period rooms. (Omie, the interior decorator and antiques dealer, would be proud!) He said, "A long time ago, everything was much lovelier." I did point out that the lovely rooms we were viewing belonged to very wealthy people, and that not everyone had such well-appointed parlors.


When we got home, No*ah and the boys wanted to make a "museum" in the house, and while I vetoed using the kitchen for this purpose any more than we already do, I helped them put their art in the upstairs hallway. They made "tickets" for Grandma and Grandma, and here they are showing Grandpa the "exhibit". There is talk of sending Opa and O*mie some advanced tickets in the mail.

crafty

The blocks above are a recreation of "Wonderland", the imaginary world the boys talk about all the time, where everything is made of candy. They are very into imaginary worlds, forts, and "pretend friends" at the moment.


We recently had a "guest". Benjamin Bear, who lives at Gra*ce Nursery School, likes to take an overnight visit to each of Miss J*ean's students, and it was No*ah's turn. We even had a special book in which to record Benjamin's "adventures". No*ah introduced him to all his other "stuffies" and had him sleep on a special part of his bed so he wouldn't feel lonely. It was hard to say goodbye.




Isn't this a great plastic knife the boys got for Christmas from Auntie Je*nn and Uncle Da*ve? The boys use it all the time to cut up veggies for dinner, or make a fruit snack for themselves. The other day, I mentioned in the car that I was buying more peanut butter, since the dog got into our giant plastic tub of it. Oli*ver requested celery too, so we could have peanut butter on celery "like grandma makes". Then No*ah said from behind me, "I really love Grandma", and Ollie responded, "me too, No*ah".

Winter is draaaaagging on - this is the time of year when everyone is kind of out of patience and Vitamin D, and spring is still a month off from seeming like a reality. But we're surviving, and trying to get outside when we can. We've managed a lot more sledding and fun new outdoor activities like cross-country skiing this year. Last week we took the boys tubing (going down a snowy hill on an inner tube and back up again on a lift, for anyone who doesn't know what that is). Ollie said,"I think maybe tubing was the funnest thing I've ever done. Except maybe next time I'll crash more." No*ah: "Tubing was pretty fun, even though it was awfully fast and I almost crashed."



No*ah spends hours and hours drawing and crafting, but finally figured out that not everything is permanently archived in our house. He asked me to take some pictures of his art, and I thought maybe you'd like to see them too. Click here to see them (you don't need a Facebook account, because I made the album public). If you click on the first one, you can see the rest of the pictures like a slide show. You may be interested to know that the picture of the fat man behind bars with a bag of money is of "Den*ny H#ec*ker", the recently indicted auto-sales scion. The boys had heard on the radio that he is "probably going to jail for the rest of his life", and that made quite an impression. Whenever they hear his name, Ollie says "he made a lot of problems for himself!"