Bugs

Tessa and Ellis love bugs. They get very up close and personal with them, unfortunately they usually get smushed as well. I'm trying to teach them that bugs are animals and we don't hurt animals (except for Roaches, I hate those things). I might need some good reading material on empathy for kids. Tessa really likes to dig for worms. Unfortunately they don;t last either. She pretends they are hot dogs and puts them on her toy grill. If I can, I try to save them.

Here are some pics of them looking for bugs on the deck.

Weekend Fun

On the Saturday when Mike was in Nashville I was very brave and decided to let the kids finger paint. I know I should be more open to them exploring new things and developing their artistic talents, but there's something about messy finger paint that makes me a little verklemmt. It was warm enough to do outside on the deck, it took Ellis all of 10 sec. to make the biggest mess and get very little paint on the paper, but somehow got the red ALL over his mouth. Ironically, the results are beautiful. Tessa did a handprint one that came out perfect I am even going to frame it.

Of course the clean-up effort turned into a fun water fight and we had as much fun hosing off as we did painting. Tessa is really into painting, coloring and drawing. She will sit there for quite a while and just color or write her name, etc. It's pretty cool to see a kid sit still that NEVER sits still.

St Paddy's Day

Friday before St Patrick's Day, the kids of course got to wear green to school. I just love St Paddy's Day, the combination of beer (which I love) and kelly green (my favorite color) just put me in the best mood. Both Tessa and Ellis looked so cute in their outfits.




We had green cupcakes (store bought, I can never get that bright vivid green right). Ellis LOVED it, but they were too messy for Tessa.



Mike was in Nashville on Saturday, so on Sunday Tessa and I made green pancakes for breakfast. She had so much fun, she said that she wanted to make blue pancakes tomorrow. I explained colored pancakes are for special occasions only. We added blueberries, which Tessa thought was awesome. She got to plop them on the pancakes. She asked Daddy if he wanted blueberries and he said No, and Tessa said "Yes, you do" and proceeded to put blueberries on his pancakes. And since we all know Tessa has Mike wrapped around her little finger he ate every single bite of his green blueberry pancakes. Note Tessa's nice pose in front of the pancakes.

Tessa Funny

Ellis' speech is really developing now. He is starting to string words together into sentences (Ok they're only two or three words, but it's enough). He'll say stuff like "I dropped it" or "Tessa Funny" or "I got it". It's really amazing to see the learning curve just grow exponentially.

On Sunday my parents came over for dinner and we hung out on the deck and grilled a pork tenderloin. We had the pool on the deck, but we had drained it already. It was upside down and Tessa and Ellis were drumming on it. Omi started dancing and Tessa looked at her and said "Omi, why don't you go into the Kitchen and cook dinner". We all died laughing, I guess Tessa was not impressed by Omi's mad dancing skills.

Spring

Spring has come quite early. It was such a mild winter I'm waiting for some monster snow storm. Either that, or this summer is going to awful. We spent last weekend outside doing yard work and playing all weekend.

Ellis trying to be a hot shot and driving backwards. He can't steer facing forward, let alone backwards. But he sure looks cute doing so.



Handsome little man.



Tessa and Daddy cleaned the windows. At one point all four of us were washing the windows and Tessa said "It's like a family!" But Tessa helped MIke the entire way through. Ellis lost interest about two seconds in.





AIRPLANE!




Trying to get a normal looking shot of Tessa these days is almost impossible. She has this weird picture pose as if she were some sort of goofy child model. This was turned out fairly good. She looks so sweet.

Pictures

Sweet picture of my little man in his jammies.




For Dr. Seuss Birthday the kids got to wear wacky clothes. Tessa wore everything we could find that didn't match (similar to an outfit Mike would pick out). Tessa also had a Cindy Lou Who inspired hair-do. She wanted it to be wacky day every day.

Movie Nights

Here are some pictures from the past two months.....

We've started doing movie night on Friday or Saturday nights. Tessa will eat an ENTIRE bag of popcorn by herself. She loves that stuff. She also won't sit still. Ellis will usually either sit next to me or Mike, he doesn't seem to care for popcorn much.