Spike

Today Jake attended a birthday party for his friend, Teagan. There were three boys in attendance. The main event for the party was that there was a beautician there to do everyone's hair and make-up.

I picked Jake up to find this:

Unfortunately, this picture doesn't do him justice, but he was beyond thrilled with the style. Slightly disappointed that he had to have pink instead of orange, but it was a small inconvenience for the actual mohawk. Mike was at Rob and Tracy's and when we went to show him he said, "That's the price you pay for going to a girl's birthday party, Jake."

At least he didn't come home with make-up on as well.

Summer Start 2009

Monday was our first day in the pool this year. The kids have been fairly patient this year and only asking every few days if we can swim yet after we opened the pool in the middle of April.

We were gone all weekend attending a wedding in Milwaukee. Seriously one of the MOST FUN weddings we have ever been to. Perfect for this couple. Anyway - on the way back, we called my dad to ask him to run over to our house and turn our pool heater on because during the six hour drive back Mike surfed the Internet and realized it was going to be warm enough on Monday for swimming! As long as the water was actually warm. Enter dad.

Monday morning we picked the kids up from my parents house, grocery shopped and ate a lunch of slightly overcooked (read: charred) hot dogs. Then it was into the pool by noon.

Maddie and Jake did not exit the pool until about 5:45pm. Okay - I think they each took a 20 minute break in there to go to the bathroom and reload the suntan lotion. That's it. Other than that they really didn't get out of the water. Mike and I were in and out all afternoon. We tend to be the type to play in there with the kids for about 30 minutes, and then we are done for an hour or two while we sit and relax beside the pool. Plus, it was a bit chilly outside the water. The air was warm, but there was a bit of a breeze. And no sun until about 3:30pm which made the early afternoon that much more chilly.

So, we have unofficially kicked off the start of summer. Only seven days left of school and hopefully we'll be enjoying these types of frolics on a more regular basis...

Editor's Note: The following video will not change your life. In fact, it is about 2 minutes that you will never get back. But, I love that they are having fun, then getting irritated or trying to annoy each other, then having fun again. Ahhhh...siblings.

Spring Recital - Take Two

Tonight we finally recorded the kids playing parts of their recital. I had been asking them to play for me so I could record them. Mike and my dad had tried at the actual recital last weekend, but it was a bust.

True to childlike form, I was met with eye rolls. When I finally said, "Please do this for Grandma Murphy to watch..." then it was an okay thing to do.

But sorry, Kay. Even guilt using you wasn't going to get them to dress up again.

Twittering

No, I'm not talking about the website where you post your thoughts in 140 characters or less. I can barely come up with something to put on Facebook once in awhile; Twitter would be far too much pressure.

I'm talking about a bird. A live bird. A really loud live bird. We have one tree by our house. It happens to be by our window in the front. This morning at 4:59 Mr. Bird decided it was rise and shine time for everyone. EVERYONE. My brother in Minnestrista probably heard it.

This would be reason #368 as to why I like the wintertime. The sun comes up late. Reason #369 would be that there are few birds to brave the winter. And the ones that are here put their energy into staying warm, not singing before/during said sunrise.

Anyway, Mike woke up and asked if our window was open - it wasn't. I had already piled my pillows on top of my head. I went back to sleep dreaming of a shopping spree of ear plugs and slingshots.

Yo-Ho...Blow the Man Down

Today the kids and I decided to walk to Office Max, walk over to Target and return something, get an Icee for them (a favorite treat!) and pick up my order at Office Max and walk home. We tried to prepare for the weather because it looked like gale-force winds out.

The kids thought it would be AWESOME if we all walked and listened to our iPods. So we looked like such a close-knit family walking down the sidewalk all jamming to our own tunes.

At one point I stopped because Mike called. I had on his windbreaker in hopes it would be slightly warmer than my regular jacket. And now that I see this picture I can understand why the kids kept laughing at me...

And being her Aunt Tracy's niece Madison did a self-portrait along the way. My sister used to be pretty famous for taking a few of these with friends.

And then we walked back. It was fairly uneventful really - but a good workout at some points!

Happy Mother's Day

My Mother's Day started at about 12:01am. I had gotten home from a great dinner out with my girlfriends and Mike and I sat talking until he popped up out of his chair and walked over with a gift bag saying, "NOW...it's officially Mother's Day!"

This is perhaps one of the longest amounts of time he's ever had a gift and not offered for me to open it early. After almost 13 years of marriage he's finally realized that I've been serious when I've declined his offers to open gifts early because I just feel like that's anti-climatic. He offers because HE'S too excited to wait. So, this year there were no early offers. But, like I said - 12:01 he had the gift bag ready to go.

So I opened it and found THIS inside!!!

An iPod Touch! I've never owned an iPod! I was very excited and he followed it up with, "I figured you would never get one if I didn't buy it for you." Which is totally true. So, then we ended up staying awake until 1am getting it set up with my computer to some degree but not getting too much accomplished. We finally went to sleep knowing we had to be up at 6:45am for church.

The rest of the day was great too. Before church the kids each gave me some stamp sets I'd had my eye on and I even got a chance to try them out today. I got homemade cards and poems. Jake's card read:

"Mom...I love you more than a Wii."

This almost made me tear up because if you have been anywhere near Jake in the last six months you know that his obsession with getting a Wii is equal to, if not exceeding his obsession with Star Wars.

Then I read the next sentence:

"Mom...I love you more than a Wii. But that doesn't mean no Wii."

Always the negotiator.

It was such a nice day. I'm so spoiled - I have a great family and they were so thoughtful all day. Only 364 days until the next one!

Sitting Ducks

This morning my dad came downstairs and noticed we had a visitor on the front walk...

Maddie and Jake thought this was pretty cool and we all watched for a bit. Jake had to eat breakfast. Maddie was already dressed and fed so she watched and updated us all.

Soon our feathered friend was joined by another.

We've been very lucky so far in that ducks haven't really found our pool (KNOCK ON WOOD!). As a kid we grew up with a pool that ducks found every spring and we would often have to go out in the morning and scare them away. They were tougher and tougher to scare away each year. Part of me wanted to go out and scare them away and another part thought they were fine as long as they were in the front yard. Who knows, maybe Mr. Duck is playing games with me and trying to lull us into a sense of complacency until he makes his move to the backyard. But I'm watching....

And they left two deposits on our front walk. Mike will be thrilled.

Hang Ten

A couple weeks ago my dad took the kids to another Build & Grow at Lowe's. This time they built hang gliders. We were all a little curious as to what this would entail seeing as how we didn't want to encourage anyone jumping off roofs to try flying.

No worries though - these little gliders are about 6 inches long. When they all got home, Maddie and my dad went to work finding string and tying it up to make a route for the glider. Their initial goal was to have it fly over the pool, but there wasn't enough angle to make that happen. Instead it went from the post of the deck to the deep end stair rails.

Awhile later I got to go out and test out the glider. They had also set up a great system by tying extra string to the glider so there wasn't much need to go down the stairs - you just pulled it back up with the second string. Unless you were me. Then you kept accidentally letting the string go and would have to go get the glider which resulted in...

Just kidding. I didn't really fall in. But at this point Maddie was in charge of photos and we were goofing around.

The glider is still hanging off our deck. Today seems just windy enough that it could probably take off on it's own.