At their school assembly on Friday, the kids who have April birthdays got called up to get a pencil and a sticker from the principal. Using the sticker to attach the pencil to her shirt was all Kaylee.
This rose bush is actually by our next door neighbor’s house, but it faces our driveway, so we get to enjoy it too. A nice shot of color on a gloomy gray morning. :)
Mark and I did go check out the pond. It’s a little ... um… green… but still a nice little area. We saw a mamma duck swimming with about 10 babies. :) It was super-cute, but, unfortunately, I didn’t have my camera with me, and we haven’t seen them again.
Mark’s latest addition to his magic collection. Why, you may ask, does a ceramic painted horse from the Shiloh Horse Rescue belong in a magic collection? Well, because it’s a hand-signed replica of the original life-sized Painted Pony by actor and artist Tony Curtis. And… um.. so? And Tony Curtis starred in the title role in the 1953 film “Houdini”!
Oh… of course! So… a horse, of course. tee hee :)
Mark and I resumed our daily walks around the park this week. Adjacent to the park there’s a semi-wooded lot with a decent sized pond. The lot used to be all overgrown and fenced off. Quite a while ago, the fence came down, but we didn’t think too much about it, even after a lot of the brush was cleared out to the point that you could actually see some of what was back there. Now suddenly this mulched path has appeared, leading directly from the sidewalk in the city park over towards the pond. Since we had always assumed the pond was on private property, this struck us as a little odd.
So this afternoon, I did a little digging online and found out that the lot is actually part of another (previously rather neglected) small city park! Apparently, there’s not really a budget for it, but the parks staff have been working on getting it cleaned up when they have extra time, and it’s now quite pretty. Looks like we’ll have some new territory to explore on our walks! :)
Kaylee came home from school on Monday with a friend’s phone number and asked if she could call her. She’s talked to family on the phone a bit, but hasn’t really used the phone much other than that. So I showed her which buttons to push, and she had that phone glued to her ear for the next 25 minutes. When I pulled out the camera, she rolled her eyes at me and sprinted to her room. So being the dedicated mamarazzi that I am, I staked out her doorway until she came out. ;) I guess we’ve officially graduated from the “hand phone”. LOL
Kaylee indulged me in trying on a couple of crazy hats during an (unsuccessful) visit to Party City to try to find Wizards of Waverly Place favors for her upcoming birthday. This one looks quite stylish with her sparkly hoodie, don’t ya think?
I don’t often take photos specifically for a layout, but in the case of this one, it was a must. Matthew’s gotten mostly pretty good at ignoring me and staying natural when I’m snapping candid shots, but when it comes to posing, he still gets really stiff a lot of the time. After a few minutes of firing away, I decided to try something silly to get him to loosen up. So I said something along the lines of “now imagine there’s a fly up your nose” and he gave me this look. I started laughing like crazy and couldn’t stop, to the point that I was having to hide my ugly laughing-so-hard-I’m-crying face. LOL
Even looking at this now, I can’t help but grin. Yeah, you probably had to be there, but it was a moment definitely worthy of photo of the day. :D
A friend of Mark’s was performing at a charity event at Six Flags Friday night, so we buzzed on over there for the late afternoon/evening. The first ride we hit was the teacups. I used to loooooove spinning as a kid, but I’ve completely outgrown it. Fortunately, the kids more or less cooperated when we told them they had to take it easy on us. LOL
I’ve got loads more pictures I need to sort through and edit. Will post them on my other blog, hopefully within the next few days. :)
On average, I probably only get my hair cut about twice a year, and that’s a generous estimate. In between, I trim my bangs myself up until shortly before I think I’m ready to go in for a real cut. I had planned to do just that… about two months ago. This week I finally got to the point where putting up with the hair in my eyes was annoying enough that I absolutely couldn’t take it anymore. So I snapped a quick holding-the-camera-out-in-front-of-me shot, grabbed a coupon I’d gotten in the mail, and buzzed over to a new little chain salon that recently opened just down the road a bit. Forty-five minutes later I’d left half my hair on the floor of the salon and my vision was restored! A ten-dollar miracle! LOL
I pulled out my camera as Kaylee was finishing up her homework, and she started making one overly exaggerated face after another as she finished up what was apparently a very dramatic round of multiplication flash cards. LOL So then I started calling out different emotions. “Show me ‘sad’ ” got by far the most authentic-looking reaction. I think my little drama queen has had a bit too much practice faking this one. ;)
Matthew has missed quite a few karate classes over the past several weeks due to homework and such, and the ones he usually makes it to tend to be more sparring and weapons oriented, so his form has gotten a bit rusty. He took the opportunity to get in a little extra practice out in the driveway after class tonight with Mark critiquing his technique. Although Mark hasn’t been active in martial arts for quite some time, he still has the eye to be able to spot Matthew’s mistakes, and the one-on-one attention really helps Matthew improve and get up to speed quickly.
More long exposure photo experiments… this time shots directed, photos selected, and captions written all by Matthew…
I know a lot of things, but I never knew this! 
"Hmmmmm!" I didn't know he had a paper arm. 
I have seen him watch "Avatar: The Last Air Bender" but this is ridiculous!
Holy Lights! What the... ?!
Kaylee was on a Hannah Montana kick this weekend. She decided to pull out her Hannah Montana hairpiece that we normally attach to a partial ponytail, and put it on like a full wig. Since it’s not meant to be worn that way, it also required a little help from this old hat I bought on a whim in college. (Yes, it was the ‘80’s. LOL) It never did fit my big ol’ melon head very well, but it has made for a bunch of cute shots of Kaylee over the years. :)
Kaylee wasn’t in the mood to have her picture taken, but Mark talked her into letting him snap a few with his iPhone. So we have the first picture posted here that was not actually taken by me. ;)
The middle school students have to take either band, choir, or orchestra. After a presentation earlier this year, Matthew decided he wanted to do band. They had a screening on Saturday to start matching up the kids with their instruments.
Matthew went in thinking he really wanted percussion, but he found he didn’t enjoy it that much once he got in there. He tried oboe (doesn’t have the right mouth for it) and trumpet/French horn (could do well but “has a lot of lip” for the mouthpiece LOL), and he did well with both the trombone and the tuba. His favorite by far though was saxophone. The screener gave him the highest possible marks and wrote “best sound of the morning” on his form (Matthew’s school was the first group to be screened). Unfortunately, saxophone is also one of the most requested instruments, and they only take the top 10, so we have to wait to see if he will get it. If not, he will be on trombone, which was his second choice.
After ignoring what passes for our lawn all winter, Mark and I spent the afternoon mowing and pulling weeds. We still have more weeds than grass, and the edging and trimming still need to be done, but it felt good to make some progress.
Kaylee made a flip book in art class. In Kaylee’s words… “The chicken was just chomping his mouth for no reason, and then he crashed and fell and all his teeth flew out!”
Here he is in action…
(And, yes, Kaylee is fully aware that real chicken don’t have teeth. LOL)
Look who was spotted waiting for Matthew to get out of his karate class today! LOL
Matthew spent a very long day (alllll day) at school on Tuesday taking his math TAKS (state assessment) test. He was worried going in, since they put a LOT of emphasis on these tests. I tried to assure him that if he just focused and read carefully, he would be fine. He always does well in math. (He jokes that that’s why his name is Matthew.) If he does get things wrong, it’s almost always that he misread or misunderstood the question. He says he took his time and triple checked everything and is very confident that he only missed one problem… one that he had trouble understanding. After discussing it with Mark later, he realized he had interpreted it wrong.
Anyway, because of the testing (the reading test was also this week), Matthew hasn’t had any homework. So as not to distract Kaylee from hers, he and Mark retreated to our bedroom to relax and look through a book of Mark’s… “The Zen of Magic Squares, Circles, and Stars”. Yep, more math. LOL
Homework done… Matthew off at karate... Kaylee and Mark relax and watch a little TV. :)
In addition to the usual chocolate and other candy, Kaylee’s Easter basket was full of Selena Gomez goodies. She was very pleased. :)
The traditional day-before-Easter dying of the eggs. We didn’t get too fancy, just colored a dozen of them with basic dye and a little white wax graffiti. :)
Kaylee sleeps with a huge assortment of pillows, blankets, and stuffed animals which are rotated in and out as the mood strikes. Her “Gloe” bears are a fixture though. They light up in a continually changing range of colors, turning themselves off after about 20-30 minutes. The white one was a gift from the Easter bunny in 2007. Kaylee bought the panda about a year ago I think. She also has a smaller version of the white one, but, sadly, it suddenly quit working after our road trip last summer.
Fifteen years ago today Mark and I moved into this brand new house we had built just for us. In some ways it seems like we’ve been here much longer. It’s the only home Matthew and Kaylee have ever known. Fifteen years of ups and downs, laughter and tears… but mostly love and fun and togetherness. It’s hard to say whether we will be here another 15 years, but, for now, it’s home.
The one downside to the kids having a short week in school is that, in general, they try to cram a full week’s worth of lessons into the four days. This ended up meaning that Matthew had to skip karate and spend all afternoon and evening doing homework and studying for tests. He made himself comfortable on the floor next to my desk and finally got through it all, staying up just a bit past his normal bedtime.
Kaylee had a lot of homework too, but not quite as much. She managed to finish up just before supper.
Matthew came home from school very excited about this “wallet” he made to keep his Pony Points organized. Pony Points are a reward system they have at school. They receive them from their teacher for various good deeds and then cash them in for prizes. The different colors are different denominations. Anyway, he went on and on about making the wallet, so I had him show it to me again later. (He did not wear Spongebob pajamas to school… he changed into them after karate. LOL)
In the photo above, he was not aware that his face was going to be in the photo. Once he knew it was, I got the official fake smile. LOL
I also have video of him explaining how the “Quality Wallet” came to be, and a “commercial” he made to “sell” them. :) I’ll get those put up on my other blog at some point… once I figure out how to upload video. :-b
