Perfect Timing

"Hey Jude, You ready to go to the store?"

(guess not - this one required a full bath and an entire new outfit! Boys! I love it)

Nature!

We enjoyed a beautiful day outside yesterday!

The Cap'n of the Ship!

Jackson and Herb in the canoe. Man, is Jackson growing like a weed, or what? We're in talks of getting a kayak for him (and me:).


Me and my little man (had to give him the 'you-must-stay-seated-the-entire-time' talk before we got on the boat).

Although this is one of those photos I'll probably embarass him with in 15 years, it melts my heart to see my little guy picking and smelling dandelions.

It's days like yesterday that remind me how lucky I am to live in such a beautiful part of the world.

Posting

I realize I haven't been posting much lately.

April is kinda the busiest month for me @ work and much of that business flows over into home life too.

Just a couple of quick updates:

1. Got Jackson signed up for soccer again this year. This will be his 4th year playing.

I also signed up to coach - Lord have mercy on us all. I've coached before, but now

it's up to me to know the game and teach it to a team of 6 and 7 year olds.

2. Jackson will be finishing up his University Reading Clinic next Saturday. He will

be one of the featured Readers at the SFU Reading Conference on Friday and then

reading again at the closing ceremony on Saturday! Yay for him.

3. I have been such a work in progress. Since about January, I've been working on losing

my excess weight and in the process started running. I will run my first race ever on May 16 -

a 5K in Cresson. It's very motivating to accomplish a big goal like this, I just hope I make it!

My goal is to finish under 33:00.

I will do a 1-mile fun run next Saturday @ SFU, so I'll

be able to compare my running to others (and realize that I should probably use the term 'jogging' to describe what my level of activity is).

4. Jeremy is in the process of creating a little oasis in our backyard so that we can enjoy the summer. We are planning on cooking out most nights (as soon as the weather agrees to cooperate), and the backyard is the perfect place to have a little picnic area. Thanks, H!

5. Judeman is growing like a weed. He's so chatty and forgets nothing. He's all about scooping in the dirt with his trucks and just being outside all the time. He says, "Mama, I wanna coop in da dirt!"

6. We're all excited about summer coming. We'll kick off summer with a weekend trip to Deep Creek Lake, MD with Dana and Nate. We also just got our tickets to see Jack Johnson in concert in July. The concert will kick off our vacation - concert - Ocean City, Md for a few days - maybe Baltimore/DC on the way home. Just 3 months away - can't wait.

That's all for now. Photos will follow soon (or not). April showers bring May flowers is so true in so many ways.

Happy Easter

My Easter bunnies! Have a wonderful day everyone!

NCAA Tournament

We went to Pittsburgh today to see the SFU Lady Flash play in the 1st round of the NCAA playoffs. Yeah, we kinda thought they wouldn't pull in a win (although we hoped), but just to take the boys to a tournament game was an opportunity we couldn't pass up.

I think the real success of the game was the number of SFU fans that traveled to watch the game. SFU, a student population of about 2,000 had just as many, if not more fans as Ohio State U, who has a student body of at least 40,000. Just awesome!

Snow Day

Yet another snow day this month (I think this made #5 just in February).

I'm not complaining - it's actually been super nice to be at home with the family.

I made a point last night to get some activities set up so we'd have a fun day.

Here's what we came up with:

Breakfast, my favorite part of the day:

Strawberries and blueberries (nice treat in February) and

cinnamon toast (with cinnamon sugar - couldn't help the added treat!)

Dr. Gertie, wearing her stethoscope, checks Jude out and finds that he's A-OK!

Next was Mom's School! I found some worksheets for Jackson to do (with some reluctance) and for Jude, I pulled out the Highlights Magazines!

LUNCH TIME! I packed the boys' lunches in lunch boxes (so much better than on a plate) and inside had some surprises for them (thanks to a quick stop @ $ General yesterday). In addition to their mediocre lunches, they got Hotwheels cars, chocolate, and pencil toppers. Jackson also got an animal puzzle book and Jude got a set of color/shape flash cards! Since they had no idea about this surprise, they were pretty excited.

Jackson playing the Wii - a snow day tradition. He doesn't play Wii too often (which is something I feared), but when he plays, he really gets into it.

Last, but not least, Fireman Jude. He's all decked out in his fireman PJs, helmet, and played in his firetruck for a while.

And so now, as we begin to wind down for the evening, we're watching Spongebob! I hope it's days like today that the boys always remember. I know I will!

My Book Worm

I couldn't be happier that Jackson has turned into a little bookworm! He's reading everything. SFU has been offering a reading clinic on Saturdays and Jackson's been going and he really loves it - doesn't mind getting up and showered on a Saturday morning to go and read. The kids and their reading buddies (SFU education majors) are called URBs (University Reading Buddies). They play word games, write poems, practice reading to each other, and learn other reading tips.

While he's in reading clinic, I sneak across the way and exercise in the new fitness center on campus (love it:).

This is Jackson and his friend from school 'practicing' their reading skills. I guess he thinks that the words will go straight to his head if he reads up-side-down!

Jackson takes his turn reading a couple of sentences out of the book he picked. There were some pretty big words in there (like 'believed', 'Sith', 'thought', 'powerful', 'light')
So proud of my big boy!