Thursday Thought

"Children are the sum of what mothers contribute to their lives."

~ unknown

Darn Rabbits

Earlier this week I posted a "Tackle It Tuesday" about the Butterfly Garden that my girls planted in our backyard. There they are, over there on the left, proudly holding the bean plants that they brought home from school. Everything was going great. We were watering the seeds everyday. We were checking to see if anything was coming up yet.

Then, Tuesday morning, before school, the girls went out to look at their garden. Both girls came back in the house and told me, "the leaves fell off of our bean plants."

Hummmm...I really wasn't sure what to say to them. I didn't have time to go out to look. We were on our way out the door. I promised them I would check the plants when I got back home.

Well, this is what I found!

Two little bean plants. No leaves, in fact no leaves to be found anywhere! Just two little green stems, standing all by themselves.

RABBITS!!! Rabbits had visited our yard during the night and had eaten all of the leaves off of the bean plants. At least they left the stems. I am sure they are hiding ~ out there somewhere ~ biding their time ~ until the new leaves grow ~ and they can have another snack.

So, now I am trying to devise a plan to keep the rabbits away from our newly planted Butterfly Garden. I would like to keep them away, at least until we have a garden! I'll keep you posted.

Wordless Wednesday ~ Silly Sisters!

For more Wordless Wednesday go here.

Read Your Way To Walt Disney World

Reading is Fundamental (RIF) and US Airways have joined up for the second year to help kids discover the joy of reading. Join the 2009 Read With Kids Challenge and help RIF log 5 million minutes of reading with kids.

Log in Between April 1 and June 30 for your chance to win a US Airways Vacation Package to Walt Disney World.

For more information go to http://www.readwithkidschallenge.com/

Tackle It Tuesday ~ Butterfly Garden

Two weekends ago our town had it's annual gardening festival, "Spring Fever In The Garden." At the festival the girls got several packets of wildflower seeds. It just so happens that I am in the middle of a big backyard makeover. Part of the makeover is a very large area that used to be a combination of grass and weeds (mostly weeds) that I am turning into a flowerbed. Since the area is so large, and I have not put any plants in it yet, I decided that I could give part of the area,to the girls, to plant a Butterfly garden. Sunday we got to work planting the garden.


Oh, I forgot to mention that the girls also grew some kind of beans (we think) at school. The bean plants are going to be part of the Butterfly garden too. Here are the girls holding their bean plants. The plants had been growing in those little plastic cups for about a month. I think they were very happy to be moved to a bigger home.

Our first step was to choose a section of the flower bed to plant the seeds. We choose a spot near the fence. The fence will give the bean plants some support and a place for them to grow and climb. Next to the bean plants, we made three rows in which to plant the wildflower seeds. The girls had a good time dropping the seeds into the rows and covering them up with soil.

After we got all of the bean plants and wildflower seeds planted, we roped off the area with some stakes and string. The Butterfly Garden is located next to the kids swing set and sandbox. The stakes and string will keep the kids and dog from running over the newly planted seeds. Now, we wait. We are watering the seeds everyday, and checking for sprouts. We will keep everyone posted on the progress of the plants. With any luck, we will have some pretty flowers growing~ all summer long.

For more Tackle It Tuesday ideas go here.

Getting Better

Last Monday Caley tripped at school, fell into a desk, and cut her head above her right eyebrow. She did not need any stitches, which we were relieved about. Yesterday, we took the steri-strips and bandages off. I was very surprised and happy to find that the cut has healed very well and you can barely see it. For the next couple of weeks we will continue to keep it clean and apply Mederma to the cut. With any luck, she won't have much of a scar at all. Yea! A happy ending to a scary incident.

8 Things

Kim at Homesteaders Heart tagged me with this one last Saturday. Yes, I am really slow getting it posted, but it has just been one of those kind of weeks.

So here goes.

The rules are:

1. Mention the person that tagged you.

2. Complete the lists of 8's.

3. Tag 8 other bloggers.

4. Tell them that they have been tagged.

8 Things I Look Forward To

1. Going home to Minnesota in the summer

2. Fall in Central Florida, the summers are too hot.

3. Halloween

4. Thanksgiving

5. Christmas decorating, activities and events

6. Weekends off with my family

7. Summer vacation

8. Eating at Convention Grill in Mpls., MN

8 Things I Did Yesterday

1. Took my kids to school

2. Washed, folded, put away 2 loads of laundry

3. Worked on my backyard make-over project

4. Blogged

5. Went to Lowe's to look for new plants

6. Went to Target to pick up misc. stuff

7. Made dinner for the family

8. Worked on a Cub Scout craft project

8 Things I Wish I Could Do

1. Finish all of my projects

2. Take a cruise to Alaska

3. Move back to Minnesota

4. Loose weight and get in shape

5. Run a 5K

6. Spend some time scrapbooking

7. Have more hours to spend with my kids having FUN!

8. Not worry about anything

8 Shows I Watch

1. Jon & Kate Plus 8

2. Little People Big World

3. Dancing With the Stars

4. Grey's Anatomy

5. The Real Housewives of NYC

6. Any movies that I have time to watch

7. Landscaping shows on HGTV

8. Moving Up on TLC

8 Bloggers That I Tagged (have fun ladies!)

1.Erin

2. Brimful Curiosities
3. Stacie

4. Christine
5. Phoenix

6. Up State Mom of 3

7. Angie

8. Mel

Friday Funnies!

It's Friday! Time to relax and have a few laughs.

For more Friday Funnies go to Homesteader's Heart.

Thursday Thought

"Each day of our lives we make deposits in the memory banks of our children."

-Charles R. Swindoll

Wordless Wednesday

We had fun trying to take a picture for the i Heart Faces challenge!

For more WW go to 5 Minutes For Mom.

i Heart Faces - Self Portrait

I have been wanting to do one of these for a while, but never had any pictures that fit the category. This week I do.

This weeks challenge is to take a picture of yourself and a child or children. You have to take the picture yourself. You have to be holding the camera. You can not use a tripod.

How did we do?

To take a look at more i Heart Faces entries go here.

Ouch!

2:00 pm - Chris and I are in the car, headed toward the school to pick the kids up. It was raining, so we decided to pick them up in the car instead of walking, which we usually do. My phone rings..."Mrs. Wr-----(no can ever pronounce our last name) this is Nurse Mary at school. Caley tripped and fell into a desk. She cut her head and I think she may need stitches."

Ok... thank goodness we were on our way there.

We get to the school, we were immediately directed into the nurses office. Both of the girls were there. Both were in tears. Part of being a twin is having the same emotions at the exact same moment, even if only one of them is sad, hurt, happy, sleepy, sick, the other joins in.

Poor Caitlyn was crying her eyes out for Caley. I asked her if her head hurt too(I have heard instances in which twins do feel pain for each other), she said "no" she was just sad for Caley.

Luckily the cut didn't look too bad.

We got all three kids and headed to the pediatricians office. His decision was that she did not need stitches, just steri-stripes and a little bandaging. Again, thank goodness, I think the trama of stitches may have been worse than the actual cut.

In the end, I was very proud of her. She handled the whole thing pretty well. I can't wait to hear the stories she will have to tell from school today. I am sure the whole class will want to know all about her new look. And hopefully it won't leave too much of a scar.

Bad Streak Over...New One Started?

Whoo Hoo... The WGLL Royals finally put an end to their 3 game losing streak with a great win on Saturday. This was the day that their bats came back to life and they looked like the team that won 7 games in the first half of the season. I believe that every player on the team got at least one hit. And yes, our own #5 CJ got two hits!!! Well, the second one wasn't actually a hit, he was thrown out at first, but he did hit the ball, and he did run toward first base. In proud mom world, that is a HIT!

Final Score

Royals 10, Pirates 6

A Cute Giveaway

A Pocket Full of Buttons is hosting a giveaway in which you could win one of two Ebooks with the pattern to make these cute personalized pillows. It sounds like they are really easy to make, and the gift giving possiblities are endless. I love them. Now, I just need to find the time to make them!

Head over to A Pocket Full of Buttons to enter the giveaway. The giveaway ends on May 1st.

Free Stuff for Earth Day

Earth Day is next Wednesday, April 22. In honor of Earth Day several companies are giving away some cool stuff. Here are a few freebies that you can pick up at your favorite stores.

The Disney Store - bring Three Plastic Bottles to your local Disney Store on Earth Day and receive a super cute reusable plastic water bottle. This offer is good while supplies last. For more details go here.

Target - The first 1 million guests at the checkout counter will receive a $2.00 coupon for GE compact fluorescent light bulbs and a free reusable tote bag. This offer is good on April 19th. Check with your local store for details.

Home Depot - On April 19th they will be giving away 1 million compact fluorescent light bulbs. Quantities may vary by store and there is a limit of one per customer. For more details go here.

Teachers - Here is a freebie just for you. Go to http://thinkgreen.discoveryeducation.com/, leave your feedback and receive a reusable tote bag. They also have classroom and teaching resources on this website. It looks like a great site, check it out!

Thursday Thought

Do not train boys to learning by force and harshness, but lead them by what amuses them, so that they may discover the bent of their minds. --Plato

My New Look

I have been looking for an updated look for my blog for quite awhile. Well, I finally found one that I love. So many of the designs that I have seen are just not me, but this one fits me to a tee. I am a big fan of anything with autumn leaves and fall colors.

I want to give a big Thank you to LeeLou Blogs for their beautiful designs. LeeLou has a great blog with all kinds of fun stuff on it. They have Free and Custom layouts, Free Buttons, Pre-made Layouts, Free Desktops, and Cards. Take a look at what they have to offer, I highly recommend their blog! Just click their button over there on the left or go here.

Wordless Wednesday

Silly Kids!

For more Wordless Wednesday go here.

Streakin' In The Wrong Direction!

The WGLL Royals are on a three game streak in the wrong direction. What happened? They started the season off so good, winning 7 games and tying one. Since they came off of Spring Break they look like a different team. The pitching has been terrible, the hitting has been non-existent, and they cannot get a break from the umpires. Ughhh..... They have lost the last 3 games in a row.

Tomorrow night the team has batting practice and on Thursday they have regular practice. Let's hope that something starts to click again and they get a win on Saturday.

Go Royals!!!

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday

Grandma Pauline!!!

Happy Easter!

We started our Easter Holiday on Saturday night by coloring eggs. The kids look forward to this every year. They always have lots of creative ideas about how they want their eggs to look. Some of the ideas are doable and some are not. But, like every other year, the egg decorating seems to evolve and take on a life of it's own as we go along.

CJ decorated his first egg with a New York Yankees theme. The Yankees have become his new obsession since the fall baseball season. I don't think we have had a Yankees egg before!

Caley's first egg was dyed blue and she painted a yellow Chick on it. It turned out very cute!

Here are all of our finished eggs. They look so cute and colorful all together. Each one has it's own design and personality. Just like us.

This morning everyone woke up extra early, of course, to find their Easter Baskets. Caley's basket was filled with two new outfits for her baby, a Marley & Me DVD, a Tinkerbell book, and of course a little bit of candy. The Easter Bunny went light on the candy this year. He would rather spend a little more on gifts and less on candy. =-)

Caitlyn's basket had a "Tumbles" rollover puppy, High School Musical III on DVD, an Amelia Bedelia book and some candy. Caitlyn has been asking for Tumbles since Christmas. The Easter Bunny must have gotten a great deal on him at Target this week!

CJ's basket was filled with a new Yankees hat, a Yankees/Derek Jeter t-shirt, an Everything Kids Baseball book, and of course some candy.

I think they were all pretty satisfied with their Easter Baskets. They had some questions about the lack of candy. But when I told them it looked like the Easter Bunny got them better gifts this year, they all agreed!

The rest of our day was spent going to church and having an Easter dinner with Grandma and Grandpa. Happy Easter everyone!!!

Thursday Thought

"The phrase "working mother" is redundant."

-Jane Sellman

The Agony of Defeat

The Royals in happier times!

Tonight the WGLL Royals suffered their first loss of the season. It seems that coming off of Spring Break, not getting much practice, and experiencing a few set backs from the powers-that-be in the league have left our players a little FLAT.

Hopefully tomorrow nights practice and a good pep-talk from the coach will bring them back to life. They sure didn't look or play like themselves tonight.

Final Score - Royals 3, Red Sox 8

Wordless Wednesday

Tuesday, April 7th

7:00 pm

Orlando, FL

55 degrees!
(It was 42 degrees at 7:30 this morning!)

Global Warming???

For more WW go here

Save Our Schools

This video was produced by the parents of a Tildenville Elementary School student. Please share it with everyone you know. It is important that we let the Florida State Legislature know that it is not acceptable for them to make cuts that affect our children's education. There are so many places that they could start cutting before they start in our children's classrooms.

*Remember to click the music off, on the sidebar, before playing the video*

Sunday at Animal Kingdom Lodge

For our last day of Spring Break the girls and I decided to meet Grandma (she had to work at Animal Kingdom) and go explore the Animal Kingdom Lodge. We looked around the resort for a few hours. Looked at the animals, checked out the pool, had a little snack poolside, and of course looked around the gift shop. In this picture the girls are standing on a balcony that overlooks the "Savannah" on the backside of the resort. We saw 5 giraffes and 3 zebras out there.

This giraffe was very active that afternoon. He/she walked from tree to tree looking for leaves to eat.

Here are the girls acting crazy and making their mom nervous. We were walking across a bridge that spans the lobby of the resort, on the 5th floor. I was feeling a little fear of heights up there.

Can you find the hidden Mickey in this picture? We found them all over the lobby of the resort. They were in all of the light fixtures, the carpet, and many other pieces of decor.

Caitlyn put her feet in the pool to cool off. It was hot outside, but the pool was still pretty cold. Both of the girls wanted to swim, but we forgot to bring swimsuits.

After checking out the pool we stopped in the gift shop to pick out one more Spring Break treat, and then we headed home.

Back to school...sigh...can't we have just one more week???

A Tale of Two Cities

While the boys are in Buffalo, NY for the weekend visiting family, eating at their favorite restaurants, going to a hockey game and getting a little taste of winter...

The girls stayed in Orlando to do some craft projects, go shopping(what would girls weekend be without shopping?), go to the Celebration Art Festival, and go to a birthday/pajama party.

All-in-all...a pretty good way to end Spring Break! Does it really have to be over tomorrow?

Where Did The Week Go???

Spring Break started last Friday for our kids and what a week it has been. We jumped right in on Friday by headed up to Camp LaNoChe for a Cub Scout campout. The theme for the weekend was "Fun With Son - Jurassic Pack."

We arrived at the camp on Friday afternoon. After a quick camp set-up, and a dinner of fried chicken we headed out for the Friday night movie, "Ice Age 2." The movie would have been pretty good if not for the 300 Cub Scouts that talked through the whole movie. I guess that is what you get when you put that many 6 to 10 year olds in a room together. Oh well!

Saturday morning we woke up, had breakfast and headed out to the daytime activities. Our group started off the day with crafts and then headed over to scout skills. Scout skills ended up being one of the cool activities for the day. The Boy Scouts had constructed a rope bridge that all of the Cubs and their siblings got to climb across. Here are some pictures of my 3 going across the bridge.

CJ takes his turn on the bridge.

Next it was Caitlyn's turn.

Then came Caley. Yep, she cried the whole way across. The funny thing was that she walked across the bridge better and with more ease than most of the other kids. She just had to add some drama.

A little girl talk and some hiking!!!

The rest of the days activities included BB Shooting, Archery, a nature hike, and we were supposed to go canoeing, but it was very windy and the water was too choppy. This was our 4th or 5th time at Camp LaNoChe and we still have not had a chance to go canoeing. Maybe we will make it onto the lake one of these days.

After dinner on Saturday night many of our c0-campers packed up and headed home for the weekend. They all had good excuses for leaving, but I would find out in a few short hours that I should have packed up and left too, excuse or not.

About 2:30 am I got a call from Chris. It seems that while we were sleeping the weather had decided to turn bad. I had a really bad connection with him so all I got in my half asleep state was... the radar is all red, be careful. GREAT!!! What do I do now??? I sat in my tent for about 10 minutes running through my options. Finally, I decided to wake up the other campers. By this time I was hearing thunder and seeing lightening in the distance. After some discussion I decided to go get my car and park it close to the tent, just in case we needed a quick get away. Of course we were in the woods, so the car was a ways away. I jogged to my car, looking for large furry animals the whole way. When I arrived back at the campsite all of the other campers were awake. We determined that we might have just enough time to pack up and make a get away. WRONG. About 5 minutes later we were in the middle of a downpour. We got the kids and our stuff into a shelter and decided to wait out the rain. Sadly, it rained until 8:30 am. So, 13 of us spent the night in the shelter. We did not have a very restful night. Everyone slept wherever they could. I was in a camp chair. Oh joy! But, thank goodness we were all safe and made it home without too much rain soaked equipment. I'm all camped out for awhile, REALLY!!!

Monday was a much nicer day. It was a sunny day and we decided to go to EPCOT. Monday and Tuesday were the last two days that our Disney passes were good, so we had to go one last time. After the weekend that we had I would have liked to take one day to regroup, but that was not possible. So, off to EPCOT we headed.

EPCOT is currently hosting its annual "Flower and Garden Festival," so the whole park is decked out in all kinds of flowers and topiaries.

We had a great day. We got to go on most of our favorite rides. We even got Grandma to go on "Test Track" and "Soarin" with us. We ended the night with "Illuminations."


One last look at "Spaceship Earth" as we headed out of the park. We can't wait to go back.

Tuesday morning we got up and headed out for our last day at the "Magic Kingdom."

We started the day with a ride on the Tomorrow land Transit Authority, The Carousel of Progress and Buss Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin. Next we had lunch at Pinocchio's Village Haus, toured Mickey and Minnnie's houses, road Goofy's Barnstormer and It's A Small World. Then we got a Fast Pass for Splash Mountain and spent a little time on Tom Sawyer's Island.

Here are my 3 crazy kids climbing across the barrel bridge on Tom Sawyer Island. I guess the theme for this week is bridges. We went across this one twice. It is a wild ride!

After our ride on Splash Mountain we headed to the center of the park to watch Wishes and the Spectro Magic parade. It was another great day. We sure will miss having our annual pass. We will just have to see what the future holds and how soon we will get to go back to Disney!