A Nursery

We finally got the nursery done. Justin's getting the same Classic Pooh decor as the other boys did, but at least he got a fresh coat of paint, a spruced up changing table and a new guardian angel care of Poppy and Nan.

How to read a story. . .

Yes, this looks like the three-headed monster I posted a while back. Perhaps a bit cuddlier--nothing like snuggling while daddy reads about Komodo Dragons.

Justin wears pink . . .

. . . for the first and probably last time!

Alyssa turned my belly into an Easter Egg today. It was totally awesome. And we had a great playdate at Ali's. I think we were there almost 6 hours. It's amazing how well all the kids do together now that they're getting older.

Daddy goes to school

Matt's on spring break this week and so he visited Luke's class today for "parent sharing." Matt talked about his violin and then he played songs for everyone. Luke helped out by showing his violin and playing along with Matt. The kids sang and danced to the music. Matt was so great with the kids and all of the teachers kept asking me if he was a music teacher. Everyone really seemed to enjoy it.

Congratulations, Matt!

I can't believe we've been in Ohio for almost six years! This morning, we finally got the news we've been waiting for. Matt's been granted tenure and has been promoted to the rank of Associate Professor. Yaaaay! I guess that means we get to stay in Columbus. Woo hoo!

PJ Day

Today was Luke's pajama party at school. It's actually my least favorite day of the year because, on top of the usual stuff, we have to lug the sleeping bag, pillow and stuffed animals to school, too. But Luke loves it. Here he is with his friend, Sahar, showing off his Spiderman jammies.

Downtime

We've been telling Michael that when he turns three next month, it's time to give up the bottle. Until then he is, literally, milking his bottle and monkey time for all it's worth.

Saint Joseph's Soup

Matt went to an academic conference that was held at a Benedictine monastery in Missouri over the weekend. He came home with this cookbook written by a monk for me. Tonight we made St. Joseph's Soup. It was really good, although the recipe called for tomatoes which I'm pretty sure St. Joseph never ate since they are a New World food. I don't know why we don't make more soup. It's so easy and the kids really like it, so now we've decided to make a new soup each week. Upcoming recipes include St. Scholastica's Soup, St. Anthony's Soup and St. Lobia's Beer and Mushroom Soup.

A Hypothesis

Our prehistoric sea reptile phase is still going strong, but has merged with a new shark obsession. I must admit I'm having as much fun as Luke checking out books and videos from the library. He's learning a lot. Last night he said: "Mommy, I have a hypofemis. My hypofemis is that I think that Great White Shark's teeth are sharp enough to pierce armor."

Although his pronunciation needs some work, that's pretty good use of the word "hypothesis" if I do say so myself.

Baby Shower

How blessed and lucky I am to have such a wonderful group of friends. My EBC Moms' Group friends threw me the baby shower to end all baby showers last night. It was so amazing. I never had a shower with Luke. I had a lovely little shower for Michael with some close friends, but that was before I joined the EBC group. The scale of last night was just outrageous, thanks in great part to the co-hostesses Ali and Alyssa. I missed Sharleen and Constance like crazy and Melissa, Shelly and Steph couldn't make it, but my friend Heather drove all the way from Louisville for the evening! The food was spectacular. Everyone made bar snacks including deep fried pickles care of Kendra! The games were hilarious as always and the gifts were completely over the top. I don't think we'll need diapers for six months. Thank you, thank you, my wonderful friends!

Diane making up for lost drinking time since the birth of her baby, Nora!

Kendra, Ellen and Ali. Did I mention I was the only one who couldn't drink?

Allanya won the "don't say baby" game.

Alyssa was dead on in the "measure my belly" game, but then claimed she wasn't really playing.

So Diane won! Go Meves!

CAKE!!

Only Ali can look this good with blue teeth.

A ridiculous pile of loot.

Yes, Sharleen, there was chapstick.

And lots of boy gifts--I love these bibs from Cheryl.

And the requisite group shot of the best friends ever!

Train Set

I just finished painting the press board for the train set we bought last week. It's about the craftiest thing I've done in a long while. Now to let it dry and then have Matt haul the thing upstairs to the boys' room.

Valentine's Party

Why yes, these are mainly pictures of other people's kids and not my own. Mine wouldn't hold still long enough to get in the pictures. What can I say, there was a lot of sugar available.

Ok, Michael's in the background here. At least I put him in red, but he was no match compared to all of the girls in their party dresses.

Luke and some buddies--gotta love Ella's pigtails.

The Baby Brigade: part one--Lola and Molly.

The Baby Brigade: part two--Matthew and Rachel.

Girls love chocolate. I think Amelia and Alison were at the fountain most of the day.

I repeat, girls love chocolate. My friend Alyssa took this picture of Mya. I think it's one of my favorite pics of any kid ever!

Valentine's Day work

It's Valentine's Day and we've been very productive. No school tomorrow, but we are going to a playgroup Valentine's party. I've already assembled and addressed 40 valentines (20 for each kid). Technically, Luke should be signing his own, but there's just so many. On Friday we did his school Valentine exchange and he signed about 6 before he lost interest. Tonight, it was just easier for me to do it. I also made two mailbox-looking-type-receptacles. I'll take pictures tomorrow once the glue is dry--not because they are good, but because I made them at all! I also just took brownies out of the oven. Wow, that's a lot for me considering I've been doing a pretty good impression of a slug the last few months.

Matt's working, too. Yesterday, the boys went to a model train expo, so they are back into trains and vehicles again. I was out at Toys R Us and found a wooden track set on clearance. I wasn't expecting much for the price, but when I assembled it last night, it turned out to be pretty big--it took up our whole coffee table. I originally chose it because it came in it's own storage tub, but after assembling it once, we realized we had no desire to assemble it over and over again. So today Matt went to Lowe's and bought a piece of press board and, as I type, he is gluing the track to it. I bought some paint today and my job begins tomorrow night when I will try to paint some landscape features on the press board. I have no idea where we are going to store this monstrosity, I think it will have to go in the boys' bedroom. But, hey, we are now the proud owners of a train set and we are feeling like quite the crafty parents.

Three-headed Monster

A snowhill

Another big snowstorm this week. On Tuesday, the roads were too bad even to take the kids sledding, so Matt built a snowhill in the backyard.

A Snow Fort

Columbus is buried under almost a foot of snow! At Christmas I bought the boys plastic molds to make snow bricks, but the haven't worked very well with the dry snow we've had. But this is the heavy wet stuff and they worked great yesterday and today. Matt helped Luke to build a big fort yesterday, but it collapsed overnight . Today Matt, Luke and Ethan started over and built two snow awesome forts. Too bad Ethan later decided to destroy one of the forts after a snowball fight, but at least one is still standing.

A Birthday Party

Michael has been to birthday parties before, but usually for friends of Luke or family friends. This was the first time he was invited to a classmate's party as his own person. Isabella's party was at Kingdom of Bounce, a big indoor inflatable playground. He had a great time!

A Story by Luke

In the car today, Matt was telling Luke that the story of Eragon (a movie Luke likes) was written by a young boy, not a grown up. Luke decided that he needed to write a story of his own. It's hard to write a story when you don't really know how to write, but Luke did his best.

According to Luke, the story is about a gang of good prehistoric mega-sharks who are fighting a gang of evil Tylosauruses. A bit like West Side Story for Sea Monsters. Luke has been obsessing about sea dinosaurs for about ten days now. He recently acquired a National Geographic video game and dvd about Sea Monsters. The Tylosaurus was the biggest and scariest creature in the prehistoric ocean. Luke LOVES him and is patiently awaiting for him to arrive in toy form (yes, they do make toy Tylosauruses if you are willing to spend enough time googling them).

A zoo to ourselves

Matt was going to take the boys ice skating after mass today, but the open skate hours weren't good. So we decided to bundle up and go to the zoo. It was EMPTY!! The Columbus Zoo is one of the largest and best rated zoos in the country. But I guess when temps are only in the 20s, most people would rather stay warm at home. We really only did the inside exhibits: the aquarium (Luke is in a shark/sea monster phase), the manatees, the reptile house and the Asia house. But it was so much fun to have the place virtually to ourselves. I thought it was funny that the only other people we saw there were families with young boys like ours--"airing them out" as my mother would say. Check out these very rare pictures of an empty zoo!

This is the entrance where people are normally lined up to buy tickets.

Just inside the main gates.

Luke walking on the concrete "balance beam" back towards the nearly empty parking lot.

Behind Michael and Daddy you can see the other parking lot, normally full, with not a single car in it!