A little of everything...

What a roller coaster weekend it has been. I will start with a few pics from last weekend of the boys coloring eggs...

Baseball started for Matthew this week which means practice on Mondays, Thursdays, and Fridays until games start and then add Saturday morning to the mix. We are waiting to get Andrew's schedule and Mark has decided to continue with another 8 weeks or so of hockey.

Last Friday night into Saturday morning, our dog Rider has some kind of neurologic or vascualar "event". He had trouble walking and we thought his vision was affected. After a few days he was getting around better and compensating for his deficiencies so we decided to let it be. This past Friday afternoon (I'm beginning to think he is timing it so someone is here to help!) he had another event and could barely walk Friday evening. His shoulder muscle is in constant spasm and we had to carry him outside. We made a vet appointment Saturday morning and we had already decided no heroics. The vet suggested a muscle relaxer which did little on Saturday. Saturday night he looked like he was in pain so we added pain meds. He is up walking around a bit more today, but it is still difficult for him. He is still eating and drinking so that's a good sign. We now agree with the vet that his neck is involved, so Mark is going to call back tomorrow and see if we can get Xrays and possible steroid injections. If he has a bad disc in his neck, we can at least make him more comfortable, it's so hard to watch him but he is trying to tough it out. The end is drawing near, we watched Emma go down slowly over 6 months and it all seems a little too familiar.

We went and had family photos taken today and they turned out really great - too many to choose from! I am so proud of the boys, they have just been great all weekend with Rider and they actually had a good time today (didn't hurt that the photographer was good at getting them to laugh!).

And now we are facing a possible NCAA Championship game between UCLA and KU. This is always a fun but tense time in our house. The boys have already decided we will all root for one team if either loses in the final four, and they have also decided how to divide up if we play in the final game. (Andrew knows a good team when he sees one) :-)

Special Easter Gift for Dad

The Easter Bunny brought a special Easter gift for Dad...it just took awhile to figure out what it was. The boys each gave mom and dad one Easter egg out of their stash this morning. It just so happens the first egg Mark opened was an egg shaped piece to his puzzle. Looks like we get to check out the new Nationals ball park on April 13th. I won't mention that tickets for opening day (which happens to be opening night - Sunday at 8 pm - who scheduled that?!?!) sold out in 42 minutes. We'll go for a Sunday afternoon game instead.

Easter Bunny almost nabbed in MD!!!

Oh boy, did we cut it close today. Mark and I got everything ready last night after the boys went to bed and set the alarm for 6:30 am. We rolled out of bed at 6:32 am and got downstairs shortly after. Those 2 minutes nearly cost us a big secret!

Mark was putting out the last of the eggs in the yard and I had come back inside to get the camera when I saw Andrew was opening the door to the kitchen and he already had his clothes on. It went something like this..."Mom, it's Easter, and it looks like the Easter Bunny already came to our house" as he scoots closer and closer to the back door. "Yes, Andrew, and I nearly caught him!" as I scoot close enough to open the sliding door, eh hum..."Yes, Andrew and I nearly caught the Easter Bunny!" hoping the Easter Bunny could hear me and hide the last of the Target bags as he walked up the stairs to the deck.
"Andrew, I had to help Daddy get Rider dog outside and then I thought I saw footprints over by XXXXX's house (our neighbor). So I ran after him but I was too late, he was already gone!" As Mark turns away and stuffs the bag up his coat. Whew! Close call!
"Mom, you almost caught the Easter Bunny? Good job, he must have been hopping way too fast for you!" Yes, he was Andrew!

Matthew's Passport

This post is related to Matthew's project on Peru. Matthew and his classmates each made a Passport and listed all of the countries they would like to visit and a little bit about each. The photos make it a bit hard to read, but I love Matthew's reason for wanting to visit Japan...he wants to be on a ninja team!

Mad Math Minute

1st grade has tons of fun things and drills that I just don't remember as a kid. The latest is a series of "Math Minutes" where the kids get to answer as many math problems as they can in 60 seconds. If they get four or more wrong, they have to do it again. This is math minute #3 for Matthew and he pretty proud of himself for completing all of the problems correctly so far. Each week the math problems get more and more challenging.

Rainy Days

The boys have discovered a new favorite pastime for rainy days - Checkers! It rained most of yesterday morning. I tought the boys how to play a month or so ago and they quickly picked up the strategy side of the game. Matthew gets fussy when he doesn't win and Andrew usually brushes off a loss and moves on to the next match.

The boys thought it would be fun to see who was better...mom or dad. So we had a showdown match yesterday morning that came down to each of us having 3 kings. After several rounds of dancing back and forth, I slowly moved my kings into position for a triple jump sacrifice to end the game. The boys thought it was great and learned about turning a loss into a little bit of fun and laughs. You have to go down swinging!

Special thanks to Uncle Corwyn and Miss Linda for the awesome game box! They also love Snakes and Ladders. Next up...Chinese Checkers.

SPRING is HERE!

Great eye contact Andrew!

I love my new camera!

At least his eyes are open this time.

Good stance!

At least someone has figured out that taking yourself too seriously is not worth it!

More Hockey!

Too many hockey photos a blog you will break!

Hockey Game

We are back from the game and Mark is home too. We took separate cars and ate dinner in my old stomping ground in Rockville - Hamburger Hamlet. We allowed way too much time, so we went to the mall next door but everything was closed, except the arcade by the movie theaters. The boys played a couple of rounds of air hockey and then a video game. Mark left to go to the rink and we left on a secret mission to Giant grocery store for supplies. We made signs for Dad - the back of Prius is good for something!

We had a great time watching Mark play and cheering him on. Mark is #9 and has the only white helmet. We stayed until 1/2 way through the third period and I got the boys in bed at 10 pm (which was really only 9 pm by their clocks).

While the team played well, they lost 2-1 to the Grizzlies :-( Last one is a video

Can we drop off a piece of your house?

I really hate it when phone calls start like this. Our neighbor Andy called yesterday after the big wind storm and told us he found 3 pieces of siding in his yard. We met in the garage and Mark was out walking the dog so he took a walk around the house to make sure it was ours. In the process of walking around, he found 2 more pieces for a total of 5 (at least one is broken).

















Aha! That's where it came from! Care to guess?























Yep, you guessed it, the worst possible location for us to get to. I'm not getting up on the roof!

I guess this means we shouldn't laugh at the neighbors when we see pieces of siding flapping in the breeze. Proof of what goes around comes around!

NEW FEATURE!!!!

Yeah! Now you can add a slideshow!
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If you hover over the bottom of the slideshow picture, you will get controls to pause and continue. < >

My plan is to keep recent photos/scrap stuff in the slideshow so everyone can see recent happenings with our family. I have to play with it a bit, so depending on how time consuming it is to update, I will initially plan on changing the show once a month.

Back it up, back it up, then back it up again...

In my effort to get better organized this year, I have also been reviewing our current storage and back up options for all of our digital photos, my digital scrapbook supplies, and other critical documents in our house.

Our solution thus far has been:
Copy 1: Computer hard drive
Copy 2: Seagate external hard drive
Copy 3: CD's/DVD's/Documents in a fire box in our house
Copy 4: CD's/DVD's sent to parents in Kansas (they didn't know they were my offsite back up until now!)

Our solution in progress is:
Copy 1: Computer hard drive
Copy 2: Seagate external hard drive
Copy 3: CD's/DVD's in a fire box in our house (this is being phased out after the TV documentary on fire boxes that semi-survived the 2007 Southern California wild fires)
Copy 4: CD's/DVD's sent to parents in Kansas (sorry to say this is also being scaled back as the photos from the new digital camera are larger in size and can barely fit a few weeks on a DVD)

NEW - Copy 5: Laptop hard drive (which I use for portable scrapbooking, but also another back up location)
NEW - Copy 6: Internet back up to www.mozy.com. The initial back up has taken 8 days of continuous back up to transfer and encrypt 53.5 GB of files. This solution is costing me $4.95/month but I consider it a small price to pay for having everything in one place. Next step is to try to restore!

So, the permanent solution looks like this:
Copy 1: Computer hard drive
Copy 2: Seagate external hard drive
Copy 3: Laptop hard drive
Copy 4: Internet back up to www.mozy.com

I am fairly confident in our new solution, but if anyone has any other suggestions, please send them along.

Mom 1, Craft Room 0

Well, almost! I finally had to deal with the piles of stuff in the craft room upstairs. Chaotic space makes for chaotic brain! I think I got mad and even at the same time. I saw an add in the paper last week for these craft bins on sale and as I was looking online to see if I could get them cheaper, I found a lady's website who used the cubes and had other creative ideas...

See the magnetic white board in the back? Wedding mint tins with a magnet glued on the back to hold all the little scrapbook embellishments. Also, the idea below to organize rolls of ribbon (which I find myself using at least once a week for all of the boys birthday party gifts). Slacks hangars!

Unfortunately when you tackle a project like this it gets messier before it gets cleaner. Now if I can just get to the piles in the rest of the room!

Amazing Peru

Matthew and his class have been working on a focused project on the country of Peru. Apparently his teacher has been there and could share quite a bit of information. Each of the kids brought in something about Peru (we contributed a menu from our favorite Peruvian restaurant in Silver Spring).

The final writing project came home today and I am very impressed by Matthew's penmanship and also the structure of the document. He explained that he created an outline first, then a rough draft, then the final copy that you see below. I don't know about you, but I don't think I was creating rough drafts of anything in 1st grade! Let alone a 3 page report. As Pooh would say..."Impressive Rabbit!"

Thing 1 and Thing 2

Happy belated Birthday Dr. Suess! Yesterday was "Read Across America" day in honor of Dr. Suess' birthday. The boys had a great time. They came home saying that "Thing 1 and Thing 2 were stealing lunchboxes at school!" Apparently a couple of teachers dressed up, stole a few lunch boxes, footballs, etc. and quickly found themselves in the principal's office being locked up in a box.

Matthew wanted to read Dr. Suess books for his homework last night so he read There's a Wocket in My Pocket, The Foot Book, and I Can Read with my Eye's Shut. We sang Happy Birthday to Dr. Suess before our after dinner snack.


Today, the boys came home with these great hats!

Outlaws Tie!

Mark fulfilled a dream last night, unfortunately none of us were there to see it :-(. The Outlaws (his adult hockey team) played in their first official game. As Team Captain (aka jersey hander outer), Mark had to be there early to get everyone lined up. Early is 9 pm on Sunday night, game started at 10 pm. They play 3 - 15 minute periods and they ended up tied 2-2.

He has quite a few games in the next 4 weeks or so but none of them are at a reasonable hour. I have decided to throw caution to the wind next Sunday night and take the boys to his 8 pm game. I figure if we only stay 1/2 hour and put PJ's on for the drive home, they will survive.

There is an Outlaws hockey jersey somewhere in the house, but I think I will wait for Sunday night to post a photo (ok, it's not the prettiest thing I've ever seen).

Go Outlaws!