First day of "school"

Today was "take your kid to work day" at New Trier, and they do it as only New Trier can! The kids "registered" for classes to go to throughout the day and when they arrived, they received actual school IDs with their names on them (Matt doesn't even have a school ID yet!), and pencils and pads of paper that had "I went to work at New Trier" printed on them. The kids of course had to wear their backpacks like the big kids!

Our first class was culinary arts, where they got to make parfaits (have you ever asked anyone if they want parfait and they say, "Hell no, I don't like no parfait!") consisting of crushed oreos, chocolate pudding, whipped cream and raspberries. Yummy! Aiden cracked me up though because he didn't want his berries to have anything on them, so I had to lick off the pudding before he would eat it!

Then they had Spanish class. They had various stations set up where they could make a mother's day card and get face painting. They played a game that was a cross between London bridge and musical chairs, sang songs and played duck duck goose. Unfortunately, when Annabelle was the goose, two kids trampled over her because they wanted to be geese too.

The part that they were both looking most forward to was getting to conduct daddy's band. Some other kids went first, so some of the high school students were doing a craft with the other kids. They were going to make batons. So Annabelle went out in the hallway with them and Matt and I stayed in the room with Aiden. We then heard a scream like no other. For some reason, the students thought that using a hot glue gun on a kid's project was a good idea and Annabelle burned two of her fingers on the glue. The poor thing blistered! :( And to top it all off, neither of them got a chance to conduct the band because we were in the hallway icing down Annabelle's burn. Maybe next year...or maybe not!

They can be so cute sometimes...

I think Annabelle is officially smarter than me. It was a warm day, so I decided to take the kids outside to play (we're totally getting cabin fever in the house these days). We were going to go to the park, but it looked like it may rain at any moment, so to make the most of the time until it did rain, we decided to just play in the driveway. The kids rode their trikes (well, Annabelle did. Aiden just stood with one leg on either side of it and walked), drew with chalk, blew bubbles and eventually wanted to play with our t-ball set (see the post from April 16th). Well, I got it out and noticed that the bottom of it was cracked and wasn't really standing well. I told the kids it was broken and that we probably wouldn't be able to play and we'd have to get a new one. Annabelle, in the infinite wisdom of a two year old, said "Why don't we just tape it?" Frickin' genius! I completely did not even think about that. I'm now taking orders from my daughter. Well, she is almost as tall as me...

When we did play t-ball, they were adorable. One would take several turns batting - and might I add, they're pretty good! I had to chase the ball across the street several times! Meanwhile, the other one would sit and wait in their lawn chair and would clap for the batter like they were at a baseball game. I have no idea where they got that from. Then at one point, Annabelle yelled out "Good job, Aiden!" and very slowly, while focusing all her concentration on her hand, gave him a thumbs up. Where do they come up with this stuff?

Damn Food Chain

Well, I am very sad to report that Duck Duck is gone, and so are her eggs. Saturday morning as I was leaving for a much needed spa day, I noticed she was not on her nest. I looked around to see if she was lurking anywhere (I didn't really want to start my day by being attacked by a duck) and went to go check out the nest. Matt had said that he had seen at least two eggs there a few days earlier. When I checked - nothing. I know it is too early for them to have hatched (it's about a 28 day gestation period - I was on bed rest for longer than that!) and there were no shell remnants. My guess is that Duck Duck left for a bit and something came and ate the eggs. She had to have been gone when it happened because we had our window open that night and would have heard a fight since the nest was practically right under our room. It was so sad (yes, I cried - I was very protective of her and feel bad that she lost her babies) and the kids have asked about her several times. We just told them that Duck Duck and her babies went bye bye. Luckily that has satisfied their curiosity.

Play Ball!

I am so glad that the weather is getting nicer, because we can go outside and play! We have found out that we may have a star baseball player on our hands. Wtch the videoos to find out who!

Easter Eggstravaganza

We had a very busy Easter weekend. Saturday morning we went to an Easter Egg hunt at the park by our house hosted by the Palatine Park District. The kids got to meet the Easter Bunny and had a great time finding eggs. They both got coupons for a prize in one of their eggs that they redeemed for a pinwheel (thank goodness they both got prizes or we would have been in big trouble!). The egg hunt is nice because it's broken down by ages. They even had a group for 16 and older, which I participated in (hey, I gotta do it to get more candy for my kids, right? Ok, so I would have probably gone and done it even if I didn't have kids...). Well to make it more tricky for the adults, we had to hop to get to the eggs. Luckily there were no pictures taken of that!

Later on Saturday, we went to the house of one of my former co-workers who threw together a great shindig for the kids. They all had to wear their Easter best, by recommendation of another former co-worker, and since I didn't want to risk getting Annabelle's dress dirty before Easter, I decided to try on her dress from last year. Yup, still fit. Fit better than it did last year in fact. That would be a 24 month dress on an almost 3 year old!

After the egg hunt, we went inside and the kids got to decorate their Easter baskets with stickers and ribbons and then played while we got our potluck dinner ready. The kids had a blast and didn't want to leave their new friends!

On Easter Sunday, the kids woke up to find out that the Easter Bunny had been to our house and dropped off some baskets with goodies in them. We went to church, where Matt and I played our trumpets together for the first time ever! And we've been together how long? The kids posed for a picture with their best buddy Braeden before we went to Grandma's house for one more egg hunt and lunch. Now, what do we do with all these Peeps?

Duck-Duck watch '09

Well, our buddy Duck-Duck is still there! Yesterday when the Orkin guy came to our house, I had to make sure that he didn't do any spraying outside our front door. I don't want poor little Duck-Duck's offspring to hatch with 5 eyes or anything...
I've also done a little research. Duck eggs take about 28 days to hatch from fertilization, so our little friend could be with us a while. I also asked our veterinarian friend Karen what is best to feed her. She said that bread is not the best, because it's like junk food. She suggested some lettuce or cracked corn. Since we don't currently have any cracked corn on hand (Jimmy cracked corn, but I don't care), we'll stick with some lettuce for now. Maybe sometime soon we'll take a trip to the bulk bins at Whole Food and get her some yummy grains if she'll be around for a while. We'll just have to make sure she doesn't take up permanent residence. Either that, or we'll have to start charging her rent...

Duck, Duck, Goose!

Okay, so there's no goose, and this post has nothing to do with the children's game. We do, however, have a duck who has decided to nest right outside our front door. I went out to get the mail today and when I came back in and started to close the door, I noticed her there. She didn't budge at all as I walked by her twice, and I noticed the area where she was sitting looked very "nest-like." So I introduced her to the kids, who named her Duck-Duck. I gave them some small pieces of bread to throw to her to eat, and since she didn't abandon her nest to come toward these crazy kids to get the bread, Aiden decided "Her not very hungry." We'll keep an eye on her over the next few days and pray that the lawn care people don't decide to come clean the leaves out of our yard anytime soon.