Just Life

Since Bobby, Genevieve, and I stayed home sick from Easter Sunday Mass, Bobby had not been able to wear the most fantastic suit I found on clearance for $3 after Christmas.  Solution:  He wore it for Divine Mercy Sunday instead.  I really had to force the bow tie issue on him.  He is an extreme Mama's Boy and so I told him if e wanted to sit with me at Mass he had to wear the bow tie and that was the end of that problem.  Of late, my fears have begun to come to fruition and he is becoming more and more particular and vocal about how clothes feel.  I knew from a young age that he was going to be like Hannah and Drew in this clothes sensitivity thing.  He's had the signs for a long time and here he is approaching three years of age and right on schedule he's starting to push back on jeans and clothes that feel too tight or stiff.  He also is having a hard time with not wearing socks some days now that the weather is getting nicer.  Both Hannah and Drew always have trouble during the season transitions when you either have to start wearing socks and tennis shoes or stop wearing them and wear sandals or flip flops, or even sleeves and layers to no sleeves, or vise verse.  It goes on and on.  

Nice weather also equals gym days becoming park or playground days.  We've had several playground days and this particular day was a friendly game of kickball between the home-schoolers.

Bobby has been very tired before nap time these days.  I catch him laying on the floor with a car or book.  This particular day he was just laying his head on the table where the big kids (individually) and I sit to do schoolwork together.  I just put him down before lunch is he is this tired.  The kid eats so little anyway he never misses lunch.  I have to make a point of remembering to offer him lunch when he wakes up because he won't.

The German Kindergarten has a playground across the parking lot that the moms have been taking their kids to right after pick up time.  We try to do this as often as possible.  I love to hear the boys speaking in German to their friends as they play.

Drew and his friend, Mia.  There are only girls his age.  It bothered him for a while and then he just accepted it.  Now he is the BMOC.  The girls are always running up to him and chatting away or waving frantically as we pull away in the van on gym day when I pick him up early.  

One day I arrived about ten minutes early to pick him up and they were just sitting down at the table for a game.  Frau Grau asked if they could stay and play the game.  I videotaped part of it because it was so much fun to watch.  Basically, it is like "Who took the candy?  Not me, maybe it was..." kind of game.  After they went all the way around the table, they even included me in the game before finally revealing the candy (AKA Bon Bons) and passing them out to everyone.

The Draisine

Spring sprung here about a month ago officially when the cherry trees were in full bloom and the tulips and daffodils (AKA Osterglocken which translates literally as Easter Bells) were dazzling our eyes.  This is our little cherry tree that isn't quite old enough to actually produce any cherries.

What better way to celebrate the weather than the Draisine?  The Draisine is an abandoned one way train track that you can rent bike carts on to ride through the beautiful countryside.  It is located only 30 minutes from our house and we had never done it.  I was a little nervous about whether or not the kids would be strong enough to do it, and, to be totally honest, if I was in good enough shape to pedal that much weight.  Although there are bigger ones, the only ones available were the four person bikes, so we needed to get two.  Two people pedal and two people ride on the bench.  I was also not sure if Bobby would be okay sitting on the bench without sliding off or something.  I decided that he would have to have me or one of the girls sitting with him.  It turned out that some of our friends came along with us which made it even more fun.

The kids LOVED it and we had such a wonderful day!  We had three carts altogether and the boys wanted to be together on one cart, but they didn't make it the whole way.  At the end we had to spread them out to finish the track.  

Drew was too short to reach the pedals so he was a passenger the entire time.  

At road intersections, two people had to hop out and lift the gates on either end while the others drove the carts through.  The kids thought this was super fun, of course.

You are allowed to stop whenever you want to and I was very curious how it would work if people came up behind you and wanted to go faster than you were going or wanted to keep going when you were stopped for a picnic, etc.  Turns out there is a plan for this, but you need some strong men for it.  You have to lift your carts off the track on one of the shoulder places.  We, obviously, had to move three carts off whenever this happened, but I think we only did it 3 times during the whole "3 hour tour."  Once we stopped for our picnic, and twice we let people pass us.  The boys were slow.  :) 

At the end of the track, you have to buy bus tickets to take you back to your car.  We had ice cream at the restaurant outside before getting back in our van.  The whole day was just so memorable and relaxing, despite the exercise involved (and the extremely uncomfortable bike seats.)

More Artsy Projects of Mine

I am still working on my hand lettering.  For Easter, I made these two name signs as gifts.

Just before Easter, I had a deadline for a project that a friend of mine asked me to do.  She wanted me to design and draw two picture for her tattoos.  Her sons are nicknamed Joey and Bear, hence the request for a bear and a kangaroo.  They were supposed to represent her two sons.  The original plan to make them Lego animals was a bust.  I tried two different designs for that and it was impossible to get it just right.  Her second idea was to put their favorite signature hats on the animals if that makes sense.  She wanted cartoon animals and posed to be coming out of a frame.  The tattoo artist was going to take care of the frame, but in the end she ended up not being able to decide and chose to leave it open and finish it later.

My drawings

Tulips in Holland

My parents were here, thankfully, for Judah's surgery, but they left the next day.  That afternoon Brian came home and took these three children to Holland to see the tulips while Hannah stayed home to help me with the recovering patient and Bob.  They only went for one night and were back the next evening.  Here are the picture from their adventures...

I forgot how much easier it is to get good pictures of just three kids.  He got so many!