Thursday, March 26, 2009

Spring Is In The Air

The days are finally warming up a bit, the cherry trees are blooming and the daffodils are glorious. Even the animals are enjoying spring, as Megan pointed out to us as we drove by a neighbors house:

"Those alpacas are doing piggy-back!"



Sunday, March 22, 2009

Venison, Anyone?

We are in the planning stages of a back-yard re-do. the forst step was clearing out some massively overgrown 30 year old junipers. Already the yard looks better! To get the junipers out to the field, part of the pasture fence had to come down, and so the deer came to check out the progess.



Check out the bush pile behind the deer - that is going to be one heck of a bonfire!



"We could shoot those from our deck!" Mac exclaimed. More accurrately, I could shoot those from our deck - and that is really saying something about their proximity! Fortunately for these guys (gals, actually), so far in my experiments with meat eating, only bacon has been deemed worthy of consumption, so I guess these guys are safe! (well, that, and we don't have a gun, nor would we be allowed to shoot it in our neighborhood, but those are just details...)

Saturday, March 21, 2009

St. Patty's Day With the Smiths

Not much happening for St. Patty's Day in our neck of the woods, but we did have green pancakes and milk for dinner!






Megan's thoughts: "Green milk tastes good, but I don't like green pancakes." I guess we'll just have to make the pancakes clover shaped next year.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

As Good As A Sister

As much as Mac and I would like to find someone who will help with the cooking, cleaning and taking care of the kids, we have been unable to procure a step-mom in the last few days. And so we had a foolow-up conversation with Megan, affirming that we were indeed done having kids and that there would be no sister for her.

Megan expressed her indignation: "No fair! Liam gets a sister!"

Yep, life is not fair, my sweet princess.

I am not quite sure why Megan needs a sister anyway; Liam LOVES playing with his big Sis, even if that means donning a leotard and ballet slippers to pirouette in the living room!



(Liam is going to hate this photo when he gets older!)


Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Conversations with Kids

Megan: I want a baby sister.
Mac: Why?
Megan: I just do!
Mac: I'm sorry honey, mommy and daddy always said we'd only have two kids, no matter what they were.
Megan: Why?
Mac: That way, we can never be outnumbered.
Megan: Well we can get a step mom!



Saturday, March 7, 2009

Where we are at -March 2009

Mac looks awesome. We had to go buy him new jeans cause the fat pants don't even stay up anymore! And he's drilled three new holes in his belt. Mac was surprised and elated to find he had to buy a size 32 waist - the smallest pants he's worn since puberty!

Megan can read (short words). But she is impatient - she tries to guess at the words based on the first one or two letters or what she thinks fits with the nearby picture. And a lot of times she gets tired of sounding things out and will flat out refuse to go on. But some days we catch her reading to Liam and it is so amazing!

Liam can count! He made it to ten today without any prompts, without skipping three and without throwing in an 'F' . I still have some concerns about color blindness (allbeit fleeting and minuscule concerns) - he seems to be able to get them all (even grey) except green, which he often calls red. Of course, he did call three 'f' for the longest time, too. Hmmm... At his 2 year check-up he was up to the 20th percentile for weight (up from 10th!) but still pretty wimpy for his 50th percentile height!

And me - well, as Mac puts it, I am "addicted to running." He is not too far off. I practically went through withdrawal in Vegas! I am either running, thinking about running, or reading running blogs. I don't even think I nag Mac about the house being messy anymore - it is not even on my radar! I have all kinds of wild running schemes and grand plans all cooked up, but I am not sure how much reality will back it all up.

The house - since it has been at least six months since we have done anything major, we decided to have the back yard ripped up! So far we've only just had the monstrously overgrown junipers ripped out, which makes it feel much more spacious already. We will definitely be doing this to the two other juniper jungles on our property. We are planning to add some landscaping as well, but that is still in the planning stages.

Well, off to bed - I don't like the idea of losing an hour of sleep tonight! I already told Mac he's in charge of the kids till 9:30 - I need my sleep!