Not quite the Kite Festival

The kite festival is one of our favorite events of the year, but this year it was too rainy. We went into DC anyway because the American History is newly renovated and I wanted to go. I forgot how crowded it gets here during the cherry blossom season. It took awhile to get a parking spot and then when we got to the museum, the line was humangous. So, we walked down to the Natural History Museum and saw the new Ocean exhibit. The boys liked it. Along the way we found a few cool walls to stand by and plenty of things to jump off of. We'll go back once the tourists clear out.

St. Patrick's Day

Top o' the morning to ya!  Ok, I can't really write in an accent like Aunt Diane, so I'll stop.  This was our green dinner.  Green Reuben sandwiches, boiled cabbage, french fries and green milk.  I had plenty of leftover cabbage.  After dinner we hurried off to Nate's string concert.  I started to tear up when they played Ode to Joy.  In my opinion, it was miraculous that they can get hundreds of young students to play together, having never practiced together and it actually sounded good.  They played with an accompaniment CD.  One of the school's director had a very amusing style.  Spencer kind of smiled and said "What is he doing with his arms?"  I'm not actually sure.  

Cockadoodle Zoo

I always mean to go to Cockadoodle zoo and this year we got pretty close. It is a morning when the zoo opens early for members and you can watch them feed the animals and some other behind the scenes things. The problem is that it is early on Saturday morning. Ok, not that early but for me to get up, get the boys ready, and be at the zoo in DC by 8 would be pretty miraculous because you know I am not a morning person. Especially not a Saturday-morning- after-we-stay-up-'til-1 morning person. So, we made it there by 9:30 and we got to see a huge snake eat a rabbit. Kind of horrifying. We enjoyed watching the elephant get bathed and we briefly saw the new baby gorilla. The Orangutans were funny with their ice popsicles. The female would pass them pieces from her mouth by sticking her lips way out so they could take it with their lips. Too bad we missed the free Krispy Kremes but I had a great morning with boys!

Some of the zoo cuties

Monkies

Here's proof I live with a bunch of monkies. Sam can do the monkey bars! I know I couldn't do that when I was in Kindergarten. It made me happy to watch him. Then I turned around and he was hanging upside down from some other bars and then he flipped off. Boys are brave!

This park is great, even though it was really crowded. I kept having to do my 1-2-3-4 counting. It was fun to go with Andrea and Karston while the dad's were hiking.

More Monkies

Sunday morning I noticed Cam and Karston both had on Monkey PJ's (Cam calls them his Monkey Soup) so I thought it would be cute to take their picture jumping on the couch. I worried this would lead to trouble, but Cam has not tried to jump on the couch since. I'm the one who should stay off the furniture. This is when I stood on the chair and fell over backwards. Stupid! Anyway... the point of this post is to show these cute monkeys having fun.





Speakiing of monkies...One of Cam's favorite books is Hand Hand Fingers Thumb.  I love reading that to him because every time at the same part, on the same page, (The picture with millions of monkies and little one is one the big monkey's shoulders.)  he points and says "That's me."  It cracks me up.  

So behind...

Today was a beautiful spring day and here I am posting pictures of snow. I'll get caught up soon I hope. This was our only real snowstorm of the year. The kids were out of school for two days and so we had a lot of fun. We have a great hill for sledding except that you have to watch out for the house or cars in the driveway. The boys are good at bailing off when they need to. I obviously don't have that skill, so the only "accident" of the day was me landing on my tailbone. I had shoveled the end of the driveway and was building up a wall that would stop the boys. Spencer and I went down together one last time before going in and needless to say, the wall did not stop us, but rather it launched us right onto the asphalt. Ouch! When the boys crash like that they just hop up and do it again.








On the second day the boys and their friends built some jumps. Look how high Spencer went! He had the record for the day. They had a great time but I had to keep my eye on them so no one would get hurt. They try to jump off the rocks if I don't watch. Once that sun came out the snow only lasted a couple of days and now I have daffodils blooming the front yard. Yea!

Liberty Mountain

To start the day we drove to Liberty Mountain ski resort in PA.  The tubing was fun but the lines at the top were deceivingly long.  No trains and Cam couldn't go on the big hill so Matt and I took turns.  Cam got to go down a small hill and then he was a pretty good sport to hang out and watch the other boys.  

This lady's face made me laugh.  Maybe she reminded me of large Marge or something.

In front of the lodge where we ate our lunch/snacks.

The magic carpet is in the long tunnel. We walked up a couple of times on the other side, because it looked like it would be faster.  I think in the end it was about the same.