One cool dude...

...unless it's not cool to wear Mommy's sunglasses!

Batter Up!

As poorly as the Red Sox are doing so far this season, seems they'd be hard pressed to recruit such a good little slugger!

Early Spring Pics

Just a few pictures of what we've been up to this Spring!

Two boys, maybe up to no good? We read about the Very Hungry Caterpillar and then... ...We crafted our own egg-carton caterpillar

Last weekend was the Annual Success-by-Six Birthday Bash. First we played in the gym

Then spent some time at the sand-craft table Back in the gym, working off some of that delicious birthday cake on the "Sit-n-Spin" Finally, we hit the rec path with our buddy Quinn for some tree-climbingSpring is in the air!

Take 3. No kidding.

After suffering the emotional trauma of cyber-bullying (I will not mention any names), in which 3 of my loved ones commented on my horrible blogging record of late, I decided to (finally) sit down and write a "catch-up" post. That was 3 days ago. I got distracted by, oh let's see...a 3-year-old with a cold, 3 sets of 10th grade Biology RAFTs on Aerobic cellular respiration (now THERE'S some stimulating reading), Honors Biology anything.... So then I tried again yesterday, but did I mention that grades are due Wednesday and we also have Parent Conferences next week?

Okay, I will admit that I am also easily distracted by "The Office" marathons, which seem easy to come by these days. Oh wait!!! I nearly forgot! Next week is the Mr. Cougar contest. Please go back and read my posts about this last year, just to refresh your memory about this fun, family-friendly event. 1. Act Screenings, titled "Am I Getting Old?" and 2. The Fallout, titled "And the Answer is YES!"

So this year, we've got some pretty nice boys signed up for the contest. I'm hoping that it is a much, much cleaner affair than last year. But just as a precaution, one of our Assistant Principals is going to be in charge of the curtain, so it can be his responsibility to make the call and draw the curtain if necessary! I'll be screening acts for the next 3 afternoons, but you might recall from last year that what the contestants SAY they're going to do and what they actually DO can be quite different!!!

... That's all the complaining you'll hear from me today...only 50 more school days until summer vacation, which will be it's own sort of busy, but different...and better!!

Elijah's doing great. He rode his little Huffy bike (with training wheels) for big, long stretches both days this past weekend. I think it's his new favorite thing. Last weekend, I took him and his little friend Tiller to ECHO, the aquarium and science center in Burlington. That was really fun, but I never knew how hard it would be to keep tabs on TWO children in a busy place like that, and I really, really, REALLY didn't want to lose somebody else's kid!

I'm getting excited about some upcoming runs my running gals and I have "enlisted" in. The first one will be our team for the Vermont City Marathon, followed by the Covered Bridges Half Marathon in Quechee (which I'm a little nervous about b/c I've only ever run half-marathons in the fall, with the whole summer to train, and I wonder how ready we will be by early June). This summer we are also running the "100-on-100," a 100-mile relay that begins in Stowe and ends in Killington. It sounds like an amazing experience, but I have no idea what it will feel like to run that type of race.

Of course, none of this sounds like much when I think of what Tyler and Matt will be putting themselves through 2 weeks from today, when they run the Boston Marathon!!! If anyone wants to follow their progress, you can log onto the Boston Athletic Association website and enter their bib numbers- Matt is bib #2175 and Tyler is bib #2852. We are SO excited for them and I really, really wish we were going to be down in Boston to cheer them on, but Ed says it's just CRAZY NUTS down there on marathon day!

So, no pictures to post today, sorry to disappoint but I cannot be bothered with trying to upload a few scrawny pics (My camera hasn't seen much action lately).

Oh, yeah- R.I.P. "Zoe the Fish." After 8 weeks of not eating a single bite of food, the poor thing finally gave up the fight yesterday. I don't know much about fish, but I was surprised how long he lasted without eating. That was weird. It's too bad, he was a pretty little fish and I liked him a lot. Ah, well. I mean, it's just a fish after all.

Well, wish me luck. April vacation will be much-deserved. now if only I could talk someone into taking me someplace warm and sunny and tropical for the week...

Making Our Own Winter Fun

Who needs a slide when you've got a good big rock around?

Baby-No-More!

It's incredibly snowy outside and not much to do around here- so I decided to tackle the job of taking apart the crib and putting together Elijah's new bunk beds.

The guy at the furniture store told Ed it would probably take about an hour to put together.

I started at 10:30AM with a goal of just having it done by nightfall :-)

It took me about 3 hours, and my fingers are so tender from using an allen wrench for so long.

But as you can see, Elijah LOVES his new digs.

I wonder how Elijah's first night in his new "big boy" bed will go?

We've gotten about 12" of new snow today and it's still coming down hard. I was just beginning to wonder how I might get the car all the way down the driveway so we can go to Chris and Martha's tomorrow when my friend's husband came along and plowed out our driveway in an unsolicited and selfless act of kindness.

It brings tears to my eyes to know we have such great and thoughtful friends.

Just one of those snowstorms!

Stunning!