Sunday in the yard

There were four yards of mulch in the driveway and somebody had to move it before the rain comes on Monday. Since Evie and Annalise were predisposed with sorting rocks and shells, the work fell on Mom and Dad. I'm happy to report that it is done. We have done A LOT of work in the yard the past few weeks, now we are going to sit back and enjoy it. We have some beautiful tulips blooming in front of the house. And two goofballs.
They are representing Mom and Dad's colleges. Wouldn't it be great if they grew up to go to Purdue and SMC? Jim thinks it would be great if they both wanted to go to Purdue. It's a land grant university, so I'm ok with that, but I would love to have a Saint Mary's Girl.

Sisterly cheeseball Love. I didn't take a picture of when Annalise was chasing Evie trying to bite her. Moments like that are a little more frequent in this house.

Aunt Becky wanted to see some pictures of the tulips to show how many there are, not just how artistic they are. The girls are in the pic to provide visual interest and scale.

The color of these are washed out by the sun. They are peach and rose colored. Jim thinks they look like Easter.

And the last of the tulips, Yellow and Red. I love how they make our yard look like a park.

Aunt Becky posted pictures of her garden. Here are our Onions, cabbage, broccoli, and a bunch of sticks marking where the lettuce is supposed to come up. Unfortunately, I think the potatoes rotted. They haven't come up and I haven't found any spouts when I started digging around. We'll try again next year.

The pretty redbud in our front yard.

Soccer Week Two

This was a tough week in the world of 5 year old soccer. We had 2 games. The first game was against a green team that wasn't so good. Evie scored several times and all was good and right in the world. Today she played the black team. Apparently they are very good. She was upset that they were so good and cried all the way home. It's tough in a league where they don't even keep score. Here's the three goal scoring kid. That didn't even make her happy when she was playing the black team.
Dad (in the orange TX shirt....I know, the mortal enemies of my Buckeyes, right after MI) got a chance to"coach" some kids. Mostly he had to keep them pointing in the right direction and make sure that they were at least in the same area as the ball.

Post game, we headed to Steak and Shake. Evie was TIRED.

Annalise is becoming quite perky and fun to be around, as long as you agree with her.

Friday at the park

On Friday, it was a beautiful day. The first day we could start the day in shorts. We celebrated by going to the park and having a picnic Annalise loves to eat outside. She also has to wear her Hello Kitty sunglasses everywhere. But only on her forehead. never over the eyes. I suppose her forehead takes up more geography than her eyes.
Evie had a good time outside too. She got to climb the spider web that freaks mom out.

We took a "nature hike" around the pond.

We also got to feed the ducks because another family shared their bread with us.

Spring Flowers

We returned from Grandma and Grandpa's house to find our yard in full bloom!Someone tell these kids that the tulips don't smell anymore. That doesn't seem to stop them.
These are among some of the 300 tulips Jim planted last fall. They all look great! We are still waiting for the last 100 to bloom.

This is an interesting one. It is half red, half yellow. Split right down the petal. Who wants to explain these genetics?

The "orchard" is also in full boom. These are the cherries. The cherry in front is also loaded with blossoms. So if you want cherries this year, bring your lawn chair and pitter. There is going to be a lot if we don't get a late frost! By the way, the apple is starting to bloom too! I better start cleaning out the freezer.

Also in the picture is the garden. The onions are starting to poke up, but nothing from the grand potato experiment.

Memories to last a lifetime

While dad visits the family down in TX, we came up to Ney to attend a few parties and hang with Grandma and Grandpa Seibert. When some kids go to their grandparents' house, they do stuff like make cookies or go for tractor rides. I bet no one else has trapped a skunk from under their Grandpa's Barn. Evie and the skunk. Grandpa had to have one of those "circle of life" talks with Evie that resulted in the skunk going to heaven. Not his body, just his life went to heaven.
He sure stinks to high heaven.

Soccer!!

Evie participated in her first organized soccer "game" this weekend. On Friday, she had an initial practice and they got their uniforms. You can only imagine how excited I was that she got the BLACK and GOLD jersey. Must be her Fairview Apache and Centerville Elk lineage shining through. Her first game was at 8 am on Saturday morning. For a mom working all alone at an early morning deadline, I congratulated myself that we were only 5 minutes late considering I was hauling two lawn chairs, a cooler, two cameras, and a Shlee-shlaw across to the field. Evie started warming up with her teammates.
I think warm ups are her favorite because each kid gets a ball and there is no competition. Here she is with her team and coach. We have a great coach who is very encouraging to the children.

Here she is going in for a goal. I hear that she scored at least one. I didn't see it because I was busy visiting the restroom with Annalise. The other parents told me that she was awesome--of course. If she has any athletic skill, it certainly didn't come from her mom.

Evie's number is 5. Here she is flying across the field. These kids are all 5 year olds. They play on a field the size of a basketball court. And so everyone gets a chance to kick and play, the teams play 3 on 3. At the end, the teams slap hands under the parent tunnel. There is still so much I have to learn about soccer parent social etiquette.

This week

It was a slow one here. I came down with a cold on Tuesday night that pretty much put me out of commission until Today. Evie went to school when I was particularly sick and made me this beautiful card. The best part is she drew what we were wearing that day. The other good part is that we don't have any feet.

That afternoon, she drew this picture. I wasn't sure what it was. I thought it was an egg wearing overalls, but then she told me it was a picture of Jesus. Zoom in. Jesus has a goatee.

Annalise has reached the age that I wasn't looking forward to. The no napping age. That generally makes her a whiny train wreck by 6 pm. The only good thing about no naps is that we put her to bed at 7 pm. Well, on Wednesday she took a good nap. Thursday she was upstairs chatting away. I was just about ready to go get her and go outisde when she finally feel asleep. I did have to wake her because it was getting late in the afternoon. This is what I found.

She was so sweaty when she got up. The kicker came after she woke up and I took her to the potty. She normally wears a diaper at naptime. Well, during her chit chatting, she apparently removed her pants and diaper and then put her diaper back on and her pants back on. I can only guess this because when I changed her, the diaper was on BACKWARDS. Now when she naps, I remind her to keep her pants on.

Easter Sunday

Happy Easter to all our Family and Friends! At times, we all get cleaned up at the same time. This was after church. I think we look pretty good.
The girls got new Easter shoes this year. Evie was so excited because her's were "high heels". They make a very satisifying clicking sound on the ceramic floors. Annalise ate about 7 pounds of candy after church and surprise surprise, didn't eat any Easter ham. She was truly missing out.

The Easter bunny visited and we had to hunt before 8 am church. That's pretty early for candy.

There was also pez and chocolate bunnies. They are safely tucked away on top of the fridge for another day.

We had the Brays and the Jacobs for Easter dinner. Everyone got their fill of ham. I even lifted the ban on cream of something soups to make cheesy potatoes and green bean casserole. The company and the food was great. After everyone left, we all had to rub our bellies and take a nap.

It was a nice day here and we went outside after nap. I rearraged the tools on the peg board in the garage and then gave everyone instruction that the tools need to go back in their proper place. I didn't go so far as to outline them with white paint, but I'm thinking of it. I wish I would have taken a picture because it is truly a work of Seibert Garage cleanliness. A masterpiece.

But tool organizing wasn't as exciting for some other people.

Annalise started harvesting the dandelions from the neighbor's yard. We don't think he will miss them.

Annalise and Dad on this beautiful Easter day. Only one thing that went wrong this Easter. They only sang 2 verses of "Jesus Christ is Risen Today". In my book that's one that you have to sing all four verses of. Come on guys, we only get to sing it once a year!

Zoo with the Jacobs

We welcomed the Jacobs family this weekend. They came in to have a little family vacation and join us for Easter. We took advantage of a beautiful Sunday and went to the zoo.Adli and Evie take a look at some fenced in wild life.
We also stopped at the play equipment. It was there that the parents all decided that we should have just skipped the zoo and the 10 million people and just went to the local park and let the kids run. We also decided that the zoo would really rake in the cash if they built a bar. It would make the zoo so much more enjoyable for moms and dads chasing and arguing with kids.

Mazie crawled around and tried to chew on anything that wasn't moving. True story, she chewed through the handle of Annalise's Easter basket and tried to eat any cardboard that was left on the floor. This kid must need some more fiber in her diet.

The kids decided that the merry go round was the ride they wanted to go on during this trip.

After the merry go round, things got interesting. We were close to the farm animal exhibit and Annalise and I wanted to check out our favorites, the goats. After entering their pen and petting them, everyone had to wash their hands with soap and water. Everyone. Somehow, Evie thought that this didn't include her. She washed with water, no soap. Dad was watching and asked her to wash again. The standoff began. There was a tantrum complete with tears and yelling and screaming. She missed out onthe baby goats and most of the African animals before she tearfully caught up to us. It lasted a good 20 minutes and in the end, they compromised with hand sanitizer. Those teen years are getting a little too close for us.

We had to stop and see the elephants, a family favorite.

Adli and Annalise goofing around. Evie was still crying at this point. Great day at the zoo! Thanks for spending your vacation with us Jacobs family!

Easter Prep

It was a quiet week out here in suburbia, on the edge of the prairie. The kids were at Grandma's for most of the week. Between eating out dinners and shopping for bike helmets, Jim and I were able to get some work done around the house. One order of business was to clear the art gallery. Before things were filed away (I don't throw everything away), I took some pictures to share with you all. Evie painted this zebra for the week they worked with the letter Z
Annalise made this rainbow. I am a sucker for anything made with hand prints or finger prints so this one went into the file for the future.

Eventually, we had to retreive our children. They had a great week at Grandma's house and were totally destroyed when they came home. We did muster up enough energy to color some Easter eggs/

They did a great job and the only person who cracked an egg was mom.

And they're off!!

Today's the day. The girls are off on their spring break vacation to exotic Northwest Ohio! They are spending a few days with Grandma and Grandpa Seibert. Back here at the ranch, we are doing what we normally do when they are gone, working like crazy. But before they left, we took a few picture to tide you over. If there is a definition of Saucy, this would be the illustration.
Annalise decides to join us for breakfast in a nightgown and princess sparkly shoes. No pants because they were "too fuzzy".

One last look at Evie. She was really excited to go up to Grandma's house and maybe play with a friend that she made while camping last fall.


Look at those shapely legs. Doesn't it make you long for a sausage?

And while the kids are away, it's "Work Camp" for mom and dad. We moved the 3 yards of soil into the garden. Surprisingly, it didn't take all that long. Probably because we didn't have to break up any fights or take several potty breaks. We think Roger Cook of This Old House would be proud of the GAAARden in our YAAArd.

Tomorrow, it is just us and a couple of gallons of paint. What a vacation.

Hope you have fun at Grandma and Grandpa's house, ladies. We are living it up here! We got steaks on the grill tonight and fancy ice cream for dessert. Hey Aunt Becky, we can get Grater's at our grocery store now!