The Party Continues

If your name is Little Chief, May is YOUR month for mail!

 Kind of the understatement of the year.

The fun keeps rolling in!
Glama and Bampa sent some $$$ which quickly became Jake the Pirate gear.

LC was thrilled to get the rest of his cowboy gear from Grandma Sandi and Grandpa Bob! 

He loves his new car and mechanic's gear too!

Grandma Sherrie sent a Super-Bear to warm the birthday boy's heart!

4 is going to be a great year, right?!

Mini Me

As we have met our new wave of neighborhood friends almost everyone says the same thing, 

"Abizella looks just like you!" 

I just shrug it off. Obviously she looks just like Pops, she has since the day she was born.

At least that is what I believed until I saw this pic that Little Chief recently snapped. 

That's MY girl!

New School Preview

During school vacation week, Pops took the kids over to the new school to check out the playground.

Even the littlest among us approved.

A couple of weeks ago we wandered back to do a little exploring.

We found another little playground in the back along with tons of boulders to climb, a nature trail (swarming with poison ivy), an amphitheatre, an outdoor classroom overlooking a pond, a garden, and 2 big playing fields. All of this tucked away in the woods. It is a magnificent place to be a kid and I'll bet the nurse and yard teachers are always occupied!

Most of the time we were there Superkid had the Toads engaged in an elaborate war play episode. It was hard not to giggle as I watched them army crawl out of the woods behind a boulder. Or to see Superkid step out from behind a building to chuck a grenade and see the soldiers all scurry out with their hands over their nose and mouth. Good times.

There were even a flower or two to enjoy.

We are going to miss our old school. We have had the best experience imaginable. The teachers are phenomenal and the facility is sparkling new with all the bells and whistles. That being said, whenever we mention we are moving to our new school, the consensus is the same. Even though it is older, our new school is the best one in town (therefore, the universe... that's what we tell ourselves after paying the piper to live in this town). So far, we approve.

Passion for a Project

Abizella can't resist a good project. It is never enough to just scribble some pictures on the side of a shoe box for a diorama. She has to go all out. Like this report on Sandwich Massachusetts. She was determined to represent the ocean of this seaside town with actual water. She came up with lots of ideas involving Saran wrap and cardboard. In the end she went with Jello in a paint pan. That is real live sand from the beach (although not the beach in Sandwich, which was a disappointment to Abz). And yes, the project is perishable. It is photographed here in our own refrigerator. Yes, that is a ham and cheese sandwich on the beach. Abz had me convinced the project (and report!) were due the next day. Turns out she handed it in a week early. Wonder how that is working out for Mrs. B?

Also on Abz's docket was this book report on Queen Elizabeth. 

As if the 18 inch replica of her majesty wasn't enough, she also needed to be accompanied by a Power Point presentation.

Abz was meticulous. She wrapped her head in yarn and came up with a great idea of wrapping yarn around a wad of tin foil for a bun. She strung a beaded necklace, sewed a dress and robe, embellished it with jewels, designed a matching crown and fashioned a face befitting royalty.

...Not forgetting any detail!

After we were well into this project it was divulged that this was all for extra credit. 

Oh my! This girl better come out with straight A's this term!

Finally, A Buddy!

Earlier this week Little Chief, Jaws and I were sitting at the dinner table enjoying some applesauce. From our periphery, we saw Abizella cruise down the street on a 4-wheeler with a girl friend. This was a little out of the ordinary, and I was a bit surprised considering I hadn't even seen Abizella yet that day. LC jumped up and shot out the front door. I was busy cleaning Jaws and pulling him from his booster seat when LC streaked behind me up to his bedroom. I wandered outside to the group of girls on the front lawn. There was a Dad out there too. I introduced myself to him and asked him if he was Carina's dad. He said no. I asked if he was Nora's Dad, he said no. There was an awkward silence as a scanned the crowd for another kid and found none. We met eyes and he said, "I think my son just ran into your house." I then stupidly asked him if he would like me to go fetch his kid (who I didn't notice among all the other kids in the house). Turns out Little Chief ran out the front door to see the 4-wheeler and also found that there was a genuine 4-year old boy walking past the house. He ran straight to him, gave him a big hug, asked him if he wanted to play, grabbed his hand and drug him into our house. We had never met. After fetching our new 4-year old friend, we played in the back yard for about an hour. I would have taken a picture but I thought that might come across as a little creepy after my son abducted an innocent child off the street. I guess they didn't find us too strange because despite the kidnapping and the realization that their mother "knows" us because she is our family phlebotomist (and has seen our ugliest moments), they came back the next day for some more fun.

Little Chief is just glad that "his" neighborhood friend finally showed up.

Sunday Dinner

There is one meal the Toads can all agree on, 

Sunday dinner. 

That is if roast beast, mashed potatoes, gravy and rolls are on the menu. 

If not, it is mutiny. The only variable is the vegie. Corn on the cob hit the spot last week. 

I love how my guy can bring on the bacon, fry it up in a pan, and serve all the minions.

Our other Sunday tradition is dessert. 

We take turns picking what we are going to make. It usually is Pops' amazing chocolate chip cookies (something else we all agree on!), but last week Abz picked jumbo cupcakes and each person got to decorate their own.

Great idea, right?

Superkid made an "Enderman" (from Minecraft) cupcake, too bad it toppled when he tipped his plate for the pic. I was dying to figure out what a Enderman looked like. Oh well.

Abz' cupcake was a little of everything, including eyeballs.

I wonder who made this beauty?

The best part was, that you could eat the top part off and start all over again. 

Genius.

Some Recent Improvements

We do love this house, but there is plenty to keep us busy in the way of improvements for a very long time. Most of this takes place while I'm at work and I get photo texts to keep me in the loop.

Pops' intuition was recently confirmed when he started picking at the door frame leading from the patio to our bedroom. Rot. Plenty of it. Pops sawed it all out and rebuilt the area. Easy Peezy. Or so it seemed to this bystander. He later admitted to his uncertainty of how to piece it all together, but you'd never know.

I got this text one morning from Pops who was perched on the roof top with only two toddlers as his safety below. I got the following text, "It's going to rain tomorrow so I'm up fixing the roof. On a totally unrelated topic, my life insurance policy is paid up-to-date." That was heart warming. But hey, the sky light no longer leeks, so go Pops.

About a week-and-a-half ago a back hoe dumped a pile of loam in the backyard.

A week later I came home to sprouts of green. 4 days later it is a field of green (sorry, too dark for pics right now)! It was a perfect grass growing week. Plenty of rain and sunshine. We'll be playing baseball and turning cartwheels out there in no time.

We have a new peach tree! We have been talking about this for years. Pops found a great place on top of the hill next to the pear tree (that bore 25 pears last year!). We now just need an apple and cherry trees for "Fruit Heights".

Last weekend Pops threw up some shelves in the food storage room. In reality this is the room Pops was most excited for as we counted down the weeks before we moved. Now we have a place to store our food and ammo for the millennium.  Now we just need food and ammo.

We may need to do a little re-org down here already. I put the school snacks down low so the kids could grab them easily. But now the kids can grab them easily. This kid is a major juice box junkie.

And this weekend Pops put in a lovely garden stair case to take us up to "Fruit Heights".  Now I need Glama to come and plant my hillside garden. She is a pro at hill work.

In retrospect I see the value of taking some "before" pics. But Pops is a whirlwind. What's a girl to do? I'm grateful for my handsome and handy guy!

Night Flying

As you know, Superkid is a major fan of airplanes. He knows pretty much every detail of every dog-fight of WWII. You know this if you ever have the pleasure of sitting next to him and letting him bend your ear (right Grandpa Bob?).

Superkid hates to spend money. Many times he has loaded up his pockets with cash he's saved when we head on a shopping expedition. He usually finds a thing or two he wants to purchase, but when it comes right down to it, he places the items back on the shelf and explains that he hates the feeling of parting with his money. I couldn't believe it, but on a recent trip to Target he actually pulled the trigger on this awesome soaring airplane. 

He loves it so much that he didn't let the setting of the sun slow him down. He and Pops were out late pitching this bird into the dark abyss of the back yard. It was thrilling to watch this bad boy catch some air. You could almost see the Bernoulli princple play out in Superkid's minds-eye as he studied the airfoil move through space.

I love this kid's head.

How Sweet It Is

If we are fat, we have Abizella to blame. 

She is our Chief Baking Officer (CBO). 

She is always fixing to make something to make us swoon. Some recent treats....

Peanutbutter oatmeal bears

(Jaws was her official taster for that event)

and miniature sweet rolls.

It is hard to tell from the pic, but the mini sweet rolls were doll-sized treats.

If you don't mind eating doll-sweet rolls, they are bit sized. Perfect for popping in the pie-hole.

Jammies

He doesn't say much. 

Just, "Dad", "Mom", "Ball" and "Da-did (David)", but he does get his point across. He likes to dig through the laundry baskets to find his jammies. Then he brings them over to beg me to put them on him. This particular day he was up to 3 pairs. Comfort and style, this kid has it all.

A Place For Pops

Okay, it really is hard to pick the best part of our new house. 

We had come to accept that Pops would likely not have an office, or would have to work in a rat hole in the basement to afford a house in this town. I seriously regret not taking a picture of his office in our Suwanee Road home. It was tucked away in the darkest recess of our dark, dank basement. It wasn't cooled in the summer or heated in the winter. But it was a place away from the madness to work. The only reason I didn't take a picture was shame. I really wish I had, but I was afraid it really would be a permanent reality.

After spending the first month living here with more than 20 boxes of books stuffed into this room (another pic I regret not taking) and watching Pops dig through the boxes to pull out favs time and time again, I put my foot down. We needed a home for books. I insisted. Sure we didn't have furniture for the living room. Our books needed a place to sit more than we did! 

Pops didn't skip a beat. The next day we had these beauties!

And a lovely place for Pops' prized Washington paintings.

There was even more wall space so all of his diplomas and bar certificates found a home too.

The other great space in here is my closet overflow (not pictured). It doesn't have doors yet. Jaws hauls my shoes out and scatters them liberally through the space. 

I'll probably regret taking that pic some day too.

Our Favorite Room

We love our house. I've said it before, but it really is perfect for us. Superkid summed it up the best when he said to Pops, "Dad, I love our new house. I feel really comfortable here." We have lived in a lot of places and usually it take about a year to feel settled in a home. We are less than 2 months in and we feel completely at home. And of all the things we love about our new pad the very very top of the list has to be THE PLAYROOM! Pops and I love that we have a place to dump all of the toys. The kids love that they have a place that is nothing but toys !

What's even better is this treasure donated by the Larsen family! We've been going over to their place for years to play in this thing. It is pretty much a dream come true to have it in our own space!

The carpet has a special past too. It comes from Sandy and Derek. We've had it lovingly tucked away in our basement (and the Andrus') for the past 5 1/2 years since they moved. We loved romping on it when they were here and we are getting plenty of love out of it now too!

It's the place to be.

Even the big Toads agree.

Superkid and I recently faced off in a air hockey game...

There was a little interference (LC was the official photographer for the match).

It is also a supreme place to take your best bud for a camp out.

Superkid accepted Little Chief's invitation to camp out when he heard that LC was shut out of Abz and Tad's sleepover. He is really the best big brother of all time. He even thought to bring his seal, Dragon the Dragon and his duck billed dinosaur for protection and comfort. LC has his constant puppy companion "Sugar".

Here's the other party. These two are thick as thieves. Yes, the Angry Birds are kissing.