March Miscellaneous

At the beginning of March we had guests! Dillon and Heather actually came out of their way on their Utah trip to see us! It seldom happens that someone in my family goes out of their way to see us unless we beg...or whine...or cry....or offer to do free family pictures! (Or write a MAJOR GUILT TRIP on our blog...see the previous sentence for an example of this shameless behavior!) I promised Dillon that I would mention that he is now my favorite sibling. So GAME ON for all the rest of you! All it takes is making a little jaunt out to the east desert! I will feed you, and hold your babies, and even change the sheets! Heck, I've even been known to rub people's feet and clip their toenails! I tell ya, I will do just about anything! Anyway, enough with the guilt trip (and overabundance of exclamation marks!) But in all seriousness, we had a really nice time with Dillon, Heather, Mae and Bo. I hadn't spent much time around them in the past few years because they live in Nevada now. It was fun to get to know the kids a little better. Mae is so cute and I love the way she talks. Bo is only 8 months old and walking all over the place, it's crazy! I kept worrying he was going to hit his head on the fireplace or get it stuck between the stair rails, or fall down the stairs, or choke on a stray Lego. But he made it through the visit unscathed! Thanks Dillon and Heather for visiting. I bet you wish you had known about the foot rubs!

At the kids school they have a program called Meet the Masters which is an art program run by parent volunteers. I go in once a month to both Zac and Lexi's classes and teach art. No, I'm not artistic, but you don't even have to be. The kids are still young enough they can't see through your bluff! I haven't signed up yet to do Drake and Garrett's class. Two classes is enough for me! Next year though I will do Zac's and Drake and Garrett's classes. I also help out with the assembly that they do at the beginning of the month where they learn about the artist. Last week they did the Meet the Master's project in first grade. The artist for the month was Frieda Kahlo who drew her pet parrot, Bonito, in several of her paintings (and who had an obsession with her crazy eyebrows! She also did tons of self portraits.) Garrett came home completely inspired! He has drawn several dozen parrots in the past week. Sometimes he draws boy parrots and sometimes they are girls. How can you tell? By their eyelashes of course!

A few weeks ago was Health Week at school. If the kids participated in the Health challenges (no electronics day, get 60 minutes of exercise day, eat vegetables day, brush/floss day, and eat a healthy breakfast day) they were entered into the drawing. The boys all came out as big winners! Lexi did all the activities, but her luck wasn't too good! The boys all won frisbees, cups, hand sanitizers etc, etc, etc. Garrett also won a big ball which met it's untimely end the same day. (Apparently when mom says that the rose bushes will pop your ball she actually knows what she's talking about. Go figure!) Drake was excited to win a boxing speed bag. Tyson installed it over the door to the storage room downstairs and they all take a few swings at it each day. I know because it makes a weird sound and I'm always stopping in my tracks to figure out what that sound is.

And last of all, we had a fun St. Patrick's Day dinner. In years past I have done more traditionally Irish food like corned beef and cabbage and potatoes but no one really likes it that much, except me. So this year we just food colored a bunch of stuff instead. Lexi, sporting her new cute shirt, made cupcakes for us. I made Chicken and Broccoli over green rice, with a green jello salad, and french bread with green butter. And, of course, green milk. Thanks family for letting me get my food coloring urges out of the way for the year. Especially thanks to Drake. Poor guy couldn't quite get past the odd coloring and I thought he was going to actually lose it at the table. Put he persevered and we came through all right in the end!