Egg Coloring

Today we had a messy house and two kids who wanted to color eggs. I boiled the eggs up and told them that the eggs were ready whenever the toys and books were picked up. That was the fastest the house has ever been cleaned. We even vacuumed all three floors in the same day--well, Jim vacuumed. I am still nursing the sore back and don't need to have anything else to aggrevate it. The egg coloring started. Annalise wanted to make a pink egg. Here she watches it closely.
We also got the white crayon out to make designs on the eggs before they were colored.

Evie checks on the progress of her egg.

The girls and the final product. Aunt Becky, this smocked dress is coming your way soon. It seems like something Juner needs.

And our lovely eggs. I made the Butler one (go bulldogs!). We had eggs for lunch and will probably enjoy egg salad all week.

Odds and ends.

We have just been hanging around. Annalise thought it would be funny to surprise dad with stickers all over her face. Goofball.
At religion last week, Evie got a "Mass Kit". She played a long time with it. I'm happy to see that she is showing some interest in church especially with only 2 years until First Communion.

A nice lady at Uncle Kevin's church made these hats for the girls. They are perfect for spring!

The seedling project

Now that I am offical Master Gardener Intern, I felt the need to stretch my green thumb and for the first time since grad school, start some plants from seeds. Growing corn and oats are pretty forgiving. You just slap some dirt on them and they pretty much grow without worry of sterilizing anything. I also had an undergrad who was in charge of watering so I didn't even have to worry about that. Here in the real world, I am my own undergrad--at least until my kids make it out of kindergarten. So for this grand experiment, I decided to plant some tomatoes (grape, yellow pear and romas), broccoli, basil (because mine never grows well from seed here in IN) and cilantro. I also had a bunch of ten cent zinnia seeds so I also planted a flat of those to fill in around the house with color. I allowed my undermost undergrad to plant some of the zinnia seeds. Or I should say over plant some zinnia seeds because there was an accident with the first batch.
Annalise takes her work very seriously. She told us that she wants to be a farmer when she grows up. She wants to have 12 chickens, 5 cows, 4 goats, 100 calves, and 1 rooster. Jim will be in charge of milking the cows, Evie is in charge of feed the chickens every morning, mommy will drive the tractor to plant seeds, and Annalise is in charge of the calves. she will need a lot of pastures and barns. We are starting small. Mom isn't exactly driving the tractor to plant these seeds.

The accident. I was bringing in the four flats of seeds when I tripped. Fortunately, the flat that went flying was the zinnia seeds. I ended up with a sore back again, a bruised up knee and a lot of dirt to vacuum up. We swept up the dirt and dumped it back in the flat. Annalise then randomly planted seeds. Surprisingly, they are doing pretty well!

The result as of Saturday,March 27. Jim humored me by setting up some shop lights over a table in the basement storage area. These are tomatoes. I thinned them out to a single plant per cell and they are doing pretty well. I will be adding to my seedlings when I plant two more flats of zucchini and summer squash for the Master Gardener plant sale. They only let the Interns grow the easy stuff. I hope I don't drop them.

Annalise's Ballet recital

Annalise has been attending Ballet classes at the local community center. She started in early February and Monday was her last class. The children go in alone while the parents sit in the hall and watch on a screen. There is less distraction that way. On the last class, we all went into the room to observe.Of course, the teacher positioned them to be looking away from their parents, but I had a nice spot where I could watch her in the mirror as well as from behind.

Speaking of behind, check out those shapely legs.

The girls did a number of exercises individually. The rest of them waited so patiently.

And the best part of class is where they get their stickers.

Annalise and her teacher.

Here's a video of her dance--the flight of the bluebirds from the Sleeping Beauty Ballet.

Our weekend.

Big fun this past weekend for the Taller family. I packed up my bag and jetted off to Washington DC to help my friend, Erica, move into her new apartment. I wouldn't go out of town on the opening weekend of the NCAA basketball tournament for just anyone. Erica and her husband, Clay, are expecting their first little pink bundle of joy over Race weekend, I mean Memorial Day weekend. Man, if she thinks that she is going to plan some life changing event for the OSU v. Michigan game or the Rose Bowl, she is on her own. :)

While I was gone, Jim worked from home with the help of our neighbors and friends to take care of Annalise so he could get some stuff done. On Saturday, he and the girls got up and went for Donuts and then hit the zoo for the first time this spring. The Rhinos were out and very close to the fence. Maybe they missed us.
They went to the dolphin show and sat up in the stands instead of the "splash zone". That way they could see the dolphins jump up and do their tricks.

A ride is always neccessary at the zoo. Today was the merry go round.

Two happy girls.

They wondered over to White River Gardens to see the orchid exhibit and to check out all the new butterflies. Here is a Blue Morpho that just came out of it's cocoon.

Annalise was pretty tired when they got home. She fell asleep in her cocoon.

Meanwhile, Erica and I enjoyed the beautiful weather and went to the National Botanical Gardens which is located near the Capitol Building.

After some shopping, we went to an excellent frozen custard place for dinner (yep, that's what you do when you are with a pregnant lady and there are no kids around.) It was only on our second visit did we see that our fine President also came out for custard with his children.

I returned home on Sunday with intentions of watching some basketball. Some little girls missed me and wanted to cuddle all afternoon.

St Patrick's Day

To celebrate St. Patrick's day, we did a couple of things.Annalise's class made these cute hats and the teacher took pictures to send to the parents. Cute.

AFter school, Evie decided to fly kites despite the fact that there wasn't more than a light breeze.
We decided to go down to the pool parking lot where there weren't any trees to eat the kites. They ran all the way there with limited success of the kites getting into the air.

Evie managed to get hers flying, a little.

And then they worked together after Annalise's kite got stepped on and tore. This is about as high as the kite would go because of the lack of wind. We are patiently waiting on a nice windy day to really get them up in the air.

Annalise is bummed about her kite, but ran around a lot anyway.

Big Ten Championship game

We love the Big Ten. We love Men's Basketball in the Big Ten. I also love the Buckeyes. It was like the perfect storm over Indianapolis today. The Buckeyes played in the Big Ten Championship against Minnesota (It was supposed to be Purdue, but they blew it yesterday by only scoring about 14 points the whole game and lost to the Gophers). We still have great interest in Minnesota and always like to see them improving, just as long as they don't get better than Purdue again. During the Semifinals yesterday, Jim and I decided it was high time to see a game. We didn't make it up to Mackey, down to Assembly Hall or over to Hinkle Fieldhouse this season so Conseco it was (I LOVE Conseco for games!!!!!)

After church, we got all fired up for the gameAnnalise has grown into the next size Cheerleading uniform. I thought I had one for Evie, but no such luck. Evie has also grown out of her Purdue stuff so she has no affiliations at all!
Monster future cheerleader--maybe we can get her to wear a giant hairbow then.

The 2 Buckeyes. I got another chance to wear my buckeye earrings. I also got my hair cut this weekend and it is too short in my opinion, but I guess it will grow.

When we got to Conseco, there was a bunch of stuff about a documentary that will appear on the Big Ten Network about the 50 Icons of the Big Ten. One of Indiana's favorite sons is an offical icon.

Steve Alford was immortalize with a life size bobble head. What an honor. As an extra bonus, our seating section won some offical bobble heads from our choice of Big Ten schools. We brought home the pride of Indiana (as shown, but much smaller) and a teeny tiny Drew Brees. I think we will have an Indiana shrine and add these to my Indy 500 stuff.

Famous people of normal size, Jim Nantz (the voice of the Masters) and Clark Kellogg (the voice of the obvious) were the CBS commentators. I didn't miss hearing their lively banter until I started wonder what Evan Turner's free throw percentages on the season were (by the way, Aunt Becky, wouldn't it be nice if you named your baby after the Big Ten player of the year? He's pretty awesome.)

Yeah! Tipoff. The game was pretty close well into the second half and then the Buckeyes got on a streak and never looked back. Poor Gophers. In addition to having only 45 fans in attendence, they lost by a large margin. We did have the pleasure of seeing Goldy spin his head around and hearing the world's slowest fight song. We will always be Gophers deep down inside.

Jim was a Gopher on the outside. He was the only one in our section rooting for Minnesota. His teams had it rough this weekend.

Big Ten Champs. Wonder if they can keep this up into the Big Dance. Thanks to Uncle Jay who held down the fort while we were at the game. We missed out on Wii fun and cookie making. The girls had much more fun at home than sitting at a boring basketball game.

In non basketball related news, Annalise has been providing us with some entertainment.

Here she is doing her chipmunk impression with Cherry tomatoes in her checks.

And one morning, she had breakfast, Grandpa Taller style. She used 3 bowls, 2 spoons and a cup. I cut her off when she asked for tea with lemon.

Evie breaks in her roller skates

The weather has finally warmed up here. This allowed all the snow to melt and gave Evie a chance to try out her new roller skates It was not a good start. She hit the dirt almost right away.
Fortunately, two older neighbor girls were out skating and decided to teach Evie. Evie had some experience from ice skating that I think helped her to get the hang of it a little faster.

And then she was off. She proudly told the dr. at her annual appt today that skating was her most fun thing to do besides ride the bus. I'm not sure if it is going to get embarassing for her, but she weighed in at 44 lbs and is 47 inches tall. (That's just for the grandmas and grandpas out there). While we were at the dr., he noticed that the last time we were in prior to this appt was for her 5 year check up. A whole year without a dr. visit. Wow. To celebrate, we went to the DQ and had ice cream cones before dinner (hey, it was a really nice day here!)

Annalise decided that she wanted to make sure there was nothing in Evie's way during skating.

She "swept" the drive way and side walk to get rid of all that winter yuckyness. These pictures were taken Monday. Today, we reached 72 degrees and the kids played outside in t-shirts until dinner time. They were so tired, we got them cleaned up and put them to bed by 7:45.