Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Delicious

Paige, as we all know, is delicious.  She's sweet and crafty and sly like a fox.

She also tends to stuff the pockets of her backpack full of random bits of folded up papers.  I'm always tempted to just toss the scraps in the recycling bin, but I know that there are often treasures to be found.

Today I found this...


and this...


And most fantastically, I found a book that she made.  
The story is short but sweet:

"Nate the Grat"
My latil brofer
Is grat.
Yes.


Puppy Love



Sarah's New Bike


Sarah just learned how to ride a bike.  She was never interested in a 2-wheeled bike and, instead, has been zooming around town on a lo-rider.  

A few weekends ago, Frank decided that she needed to learn how to ride a 2-wheeler.  He took out her old 16" bike, adjusted the handlebars and seat, and she hopped on and just started riding like she's been doing it all along.  It was crazy.

That bike was very small.  She looked like she was part of a circus act.  We took her to several bike shops and were told by all that she needed a 24" bike.  A big difference from the little one she was riding.  So, for her birthday, we bought her a shiny new big-girl bike.  With gears and handbrakes. 

She loves to ride it.  She's really really fast.  

Sunday, April 19, 2009

St. Louis Vacation


The kids and I traveled to St. Louis for our Spring Break.  This was our first time driving there -- we usually fly.  It took us 11.5 hours to get there and only 10 to get home.  My people are troopers.  We only stopped once in each direction ... and it wasn't because I made them cross their legs!  I offered to stop and they'd say 'NO! We want to get to Grammie's house!' 
We had a great time.  We always do.  We were only there for seven days but we did enough stuff to fill an entire summer -- because that's the way we roll.  You can click here to see all of the photos.  I'll just post a few here.

You should know that I'm laughing as I type "all of the photos" because I took almost 1000!  I narrowed them down to my favorite 199.  The link is to those.

My people are travelers.  We can pack a lot into a short visit.  Here's a quick summary of what we did:  

The kids met their cousin Jonathan for the very first time.  He's 14!  They loved him so very much.  He was a great kid and was so nice to the kids.  They tried their best to make him stay longer, but he had to fly home.  Sarah called him her cousin-toy.  I think this is the perfect description.


After Jonathan and Aunt Linda left we went to pick Frank up at the airport.


When we got back to the house we found out that Sam Johnson had been kidnapped!  The kidnapper left us some clues and we had to search high and low for him!


Once Mr. Johnson was safe and sound in Paigie's arms we were able to relax and make plans to go to the new mall for an Easter Egg Hunt.


After the hunt we went home to decorate some eggs.


That night we celebrated Sarah's birthday.


The next morning we we more than pleased to find out that the Easter Bunny was able to find us in our Missouri home.  Sarah was worried, but she left a note in her room at home and was feeling mostly confident that the Bunny would find us.


After finding our baskets and about a million eggs we had a late lunch with Aunt Betty.  The kids love Aunt Betty.  We visited her a couple of times during the week, but on Easter she came to us.


On Monday morning, Mr. Frank flew home and the rest of us went to the St. Louis Science Center.  My kids love that place.  We even have a membership.  The ten-hour commute is a bummer, but the Science Center is great!  

Grammie and Poppy kept Paige and Nate entertained while Sarah and I spent almost the entire day in the science lab.  It was really cool.  We have never been in this part before.  Sarah and I got to solve a case by comparing fingerprints.  We got to extract the DNA from some wheat germ.  She got to solve the mystery of a stolen dog by testing the ink on the ransom note against the ink in the pens of the three top suspects.  We measured liquids with a pipette and also got to do an experiment with some tiny tiny worms (whose name I can't remember).  She was really into it and took her job seriously.


The next day we went to my favorite store -- The Craft Alliance -- and then had lunch at a place called Pi Pizza.  We had to eat there because Barack Obama told us to!  It was yummy but expensive.  Also, they were stingy with the bread.  


After lunch we went to a place called Turtle Playground and the kids climbed like crazy all over a family of gigantic turtles. 


After Turtle Park we went to the St. Louis Art Museum.  The kids were not thrilled to be going to a museum -- they voted for the zoo -- but, once we were there, they loved it!  They didn't want to leave until we saw every single room.  I think that on this day it was ME who was begging everyone to stop looking at the art and start going home.  I was pooped!  However, the girls had their cameras and they were having so much fun taking pictures of everything that they didn't want to stop.


The next day we went to the Magic House -- another Gorman kid favorite.  We stayed there until they kicked us out.  Honestly.  The kids were having so much fun and, in the end, were playing in a little pond in the yard.  I thought we could just leave through the garden gate, so I let them take off their shoes and get all soaky.  I was WRONG.  A lovely 
man came to tell us that they were closing and that we had to leave by going back through the building!  Apparently, the little garden gate was an emergency exit.


Thursday was our last full day to visit.  We were going to go to the zoo but decided to take it easy.  Instead, the girls followed Poppy around while he worked in the yard, we made cookies with Grammie, Poppy took the kids fishing, and we played in the park.


For our drive home we planned to head for Indianapolis and then head north toward Michigan.  I was merrily driving and following (blindly) the directions of my navigation system -- we call her Joyce -- when I realized that we were way past Indianapolis and were heading EAST!  So, instead of driving through four states to get home we ended up with a bonus state.  We went from Missouri to Illinois to Indiana to OHIO to Michigan.  No matter, though, because I think the new route was even shorter than the original one!  Ha ha!  That's an argument for just listening to Joyce and leaving my own map at home.


I don't know if we were happy to be home -- we miss our Grammie and Poppy (and Sukee) -- but we were happy to see Daddy and we were VERY happy to be out of the car.  The kids went crazy helping me unpack the car.  I was so happy for the help until I got to the house and saw how well they put everything inside!!!


Happy day.  I'll write something new soon.
Cheerio.

Sunday, April 5, 2009

Sarah's 8th Birthday

This weekend we celebrated Sarah's 8th birthday.  

She had a small party -- invited four friends.  We started out at our house, played and had some pizza.  After dinner we took the kids to the stable to ride horses.  They all had a blast and wanted to ride all day long.  

If you want to see LOTS of birthday party pictures you can click this link.  Otherwise, just scroll down...........

Happy Birthday, Sarah!



Super Sam Johnson

We all know that Paige loves Sam Johnson, right?  

We all love Sam ... just not quite as much as we love Paige.

She has been making up stories about "Super Sam Johnson" lately and we thought it would cool if he had a little costume.

I went to Etsy and ordered him a custom-made cape.  Sam, you see, needs a custom cape because of his, er, portly design.  Paige got to pick the colors and logo.  She, of course, chose lime green with a black lightning bolt.  Wouldn't that be your first choice??


Friday, April 3, 2009

Squeezy Gooey Eyeballs!!

Sarah is in 2nd grade and today she got to dissect an eyeball!  I was shocked when I heard about it.  Excited for sure, but shocked.  I don't remember doing this kind of thing when I was seven.  

When the note came home in her backpack I volunteered right away!  I didn't want to miss it.  I have fond memories of sheep's eyes and fetal pigs and the such.  I always liked dissecting things.  I must have been overly enthusiastic because Sarah's teacher asked me to help with another class also -- I guess they didn't have as many volunteers.  Also, I should note that I don't ever remember seeing so many DADDY volunteers before!  It was crazy to see how many daddies showed up for this one.

Sarah was a trooper.  She was lukewarm to, perhaps, disgusted about having to do this.  She was not thrilled.  However, once we started going, she was all over it.  She had lots of fun.  I think that she would have done a second eye if we would have let her.  I felt proud.

If you have any desire to see more pictures than what I've posted here, feel free to click this link.  It will take you to the other site where I've posted lots more pictures.

Enjoy!  Baaaaaaaaaaaa!