spring!

We took some time out of our weekend of busy-ness to go to Brandeis and visit with James and Brian during their spring arts festival. we went last year and the girls had fun, and this year was no different. 

the proof:

There is a man named "sidewalk sam" who brings chalk (not cheap chalk either, he told us) and kids (and adults) get to color in boxes all over the sidewalk on the campus. the girls took it a step further and rolled around in and on the chalk. (a 30 minute shower got them all cleaned up later ;))

this year, no one offered to take our picture all together, although there was a family right next to us playing on the hill that easily could have...anyway, avery wasn't exactly cooperating for the pictures, so i asked he if she wanted to be the photographer and take some pictures.

before we were ready :)

 and when we thought she was aiming the camera too low :)

she did a wonderful job despite our doubts :) 

and NOW, i'm off to my class. i have officially turned in EVERYTHING i need to turn in (!!!!!!!!) and just

all about me.

i am SO close. so so close to being done for the semester. i probably still have 6+ hours of work left before everything is completely ready to be turned in, but right now, that feels close! by noon on monday, i won't have ANY MORE work to turn in until mid-june when i start my next classes. i need to keep this in mind so i can just get these things done and start enjoying these girls more!

on another note, that is almost official, but not quite-the middle school that i will be doing my student teaching in next fall had their library assistant put in her 2 weeks notice for this year. if and when the job gets posted (soon, i hope), i'll be the new assistant for 12hrs a week for the rest of this school year and next! it makes things a little more tricky for next year, b/c i can't combine the hours i'm doing my practicum with the hours i'm getting paid, but hopefully the way we set up the girls school schedule for next year will ensure that i have enough time to be at the school. it's strange and amazing how this worked out, the timing of it and the flexibility of the librarian and her program, but i'm so thankful for this opportunity.

i'm working on making more collages of random pictures (especially from our april break). but first, grocery store, cookies for avery staying dry every single night for a couple weeks now (yay!) and a wish list for ikea when we ever get back there :)

back to posting about the other members of the family soon!

change?!

woah. am coming to post and it's all different now. I'm sure it'll look the same when it's published but...huh.
i was going to come on and say "i have so many pictures-from my phone- to post from last week but blogger makes it so difficult." i guess i'll find out now if it's any more difficult!

HALLELUJAH!!!! my first attempt. but that was so much faster and more intuitive! and it placed the pictures AFTER the text, right where I wanted them. this is good. 

hmm. i need to spend more time with this, but so far, so good. which actually isn't all that good because i have a 4 inch binder to fill up with things including my words by next monday and i'm dragging my feet on it. BUT! LAST ASSIGNMENT!!!!!!!! so ready for the summer after last week's break. i'll post more tonight. 

random.

it's hard to see, but that screen shot shows TWO assignments left in one of my classes. granted, they're HUGE assignments, but still. only 2 left. only 1 left in my other class. again, big (designing a web portal for children), but it's only 1 thing!

cuties in the shower with their hair piled up on heads :)

love in home depot. they really do adore each other most times of most days. melts our hearts :)

the girls had a makeup day at school today b/c avery was still kind of sick on monday and i kept them home. FOUR HOURS of "free" time. it's been wonderful. and productive. and now i get to pick them up and hear about all the fun they had.

next post. our plans for next week.

hoppy easter!

well, we had a sick avery on our hands on saturday night, so it made easter day a little more challenging. little sleep, a little one feverish and saying her tummy hurt and a big old apple pie that she wanted to devour but knew she shouldn't :(

we made the best of it and cooked up a ham, chicken and every kind of carb side you could imagine :) my sister and her husband came over and it was a nice quiet day at home. it was chilly out but we were hoping to get some pictures of the girls in their dresses:

"pretty good"

(snuggles with mema :))

the girls and i picked mema up from the airport when she arrived in boston. she opened the door to the van to say hi to the girls and said to nola "hi nola, how are you?" nola looked at her and said "pretty good". and thus began everything being "pretty good".

it's true. we're all having our moments of stress and sleeplessness and snuffles. but for the most part we're pretty good. looking forward to the summer for sure (rumor has it we might get snow tonight into tomorrow morning, too early to be april fools i guess :)) but with summer comes 2 more classes for me and the official end to my stay at home career as i know it :( but. we're pretty good. thanks nola for clearing that up.

(avery sounded out C-A-T the other day when we were painting with chalk-paint on the sidewalk. we were all surprised :))

a few funny stories:

**on wednesday i picked the girls up from school and the teacher caught me before i left to tell me that nola had jumped on avery's back at some point and had her arms around avery's neck. she put nola in time out and as nola was sitting on the stairs, she was giggling. mrs t. looked at her sternly and said "nola, this isn't funny. i'm not laughing." she turned to walk away and heard nola say "well, I am."

yep. she's almost 3.

**the girls were taking a bath yesterday afternoon, mostly so i could kill some time since zane was going to be late. avery dropped a mermaid toy out of the tub and it fell behind the toilet. i told her i'd have to clean it before she played with it again. she started to get teary and said "but i waaaaanted to play with it!" (did i mention sleeplessness?) nola looked at her and said "it's okay avery, you can have mine mermaid" and handed her the toy she was playing with.

**the girls were just playing with cotton balls (i was going to do a craft but they were having so much fun without glue and paint i let them do what they wanted!) and i heard avery make up a song:

"we make fluff, all day long,

all day long, we make fluff.

if anyone doesn't have fluff, we can make it for them

a lot of fluff, a fluff, a a fluff!"

(nola joined in with "sluff, sluff, sluffy sluff" b/c her "fl" sounds like "sl", ie slip-slop, slamingo, buttersly)

**the other day we were reading stories before bedtime and avery remembered rolling down a hill at some park recently. she stopped and said "mom, it was really steep." and she sounded like she was 14, not 4.

(craft time. watercoloring their names. they loved this!)

we've started reading short chapter books to the girls. when mema was here we drove to ikea (40 minutes away) and zane started "the bears on hemlock mountain." i was surprised how much nola was actually following the story and by the next day when we were going to the airport and mema was reading, both girls were engaged and we finished the story! we just started "charlie and the chocolate factory" the other night, and it's a bit slower and i'm not sure the girls are as into it. hopefully once charlie gets into the factory it'll pick up. one of my classes this summer is children's lit, so i'm sure there will be more books we can all read together that i'll have for homework anyway :)

when the girls were babies, i can remember bringing them into our bed in the mornings and feeding them and then snuggling. sometimes i'd put them behind me and let their feet kick my back as they were cooing and waking up. the girls usually come into our room when they wake up in the morning, and i brought up these stories of when they were babies. they indulge me sometimes and (gently) kick my back in the mornings. it feels so good and they get a kick out of the stories.

i have a conference to go to tomorrow for school. i'm hoping to see a professor from last year that might have a good connection for a practicum placement next year. i can't remember the last saturday i wasn't around doing family things. after the conference i'm getting my hair cut -i also can't remember the last time i got my hair cut. it's been way too long.

since i'm rambling about hair and morning back kicks, it's time to go.

piddy ball bites.

so the girls have come up with a game involving the small pom-pom craft ball things.

they call it piddy ball bites. and i think they either feed them to their kitties or line them up on the floor and scatter them, screaming in delight.

they're sisters.

almost april!?

wow. i sure am horrible at this blogging thing this year. i like to think it's because there's lots of stuff-busy and fun- that's going on and we're spending out time really enjoying each other and not worrying about capturing everything on "paper". but i know next year, etc, i'm going to want to see what we did this year. and i need to get better about recording.

we're coming off a 10 day mema visit!!! we didn't do a whole lot. the weather was unbelievably unbelievable (85 degrees in march!) and it was nice to just be around each other and watch the girls together. i was able to get a bunch of school work (not homework, but observations, interview, etc.) done and the end of the semester is in sight, zane and i went on 3 dates (yay!!!!!), and we all trashed the house :)

other than that, in march:

*i took the girls to see zane play in a basketball game at his work, teachers against senior high students. the music during practice really freaked the girls out, but after the game started, they had a blast cheering for dada :)

*i took, and passed!, my massachusetts test for educator license. this basically means that i can start my practicum in the fall and when i graduate, i'll be certified in schools.

*we had snow one thursday (zane had a snow day) and the next thursday it was near 70 degrees and the girls and i got a little sunburn during our picnic on the deck.

*we got the girls new sneakers. they were a whole 1 1/2-2 sizes bigger than what they had been wearing. oops. they're much more comfortable in their new kicks.

*it seems like during mema's visit, nola aged 6 months. her vocabulary and sentences are even more "old" than they were a few weeks ago.

*zane and i got a bed! when we first got married, we were sleeping on mattresses on the floor. then we graduated to a platform style bed (with brown headboard and white side boards-we didn't check the packaging at ikea), then when we moved to belmont we started using a metal frame for our mattress. it was fine, but everytime we leaned against the wall (to read or watch tv), the bed would slide out from the wall. we lamented for years. but no longer! we got a bed. a real, adult bed. and we love it.

*speaking of beds, zane made bunk beds for the girls while mema was here! we'll most likely wait until april to paint their new room, and wait until may (after i'm out of classes until the summer) to move them into the room. we still have to figure out and make the stairs for the bed, but the big piece is finished! i'll get a picture of it soon.

that's all for now. pictures to come.

real quick.

just a quick post. finishing cleaning my desk so i can have hopes of being productive.

last night around 8pm zane turned to me on the couch and asked me if i was going to do any of my school work. i sighed and told him no, i just couldn't manage it. i just wanted my brain to shut off. it's SO hard to do work after the girls are down and i'm exhausted from the day. we're both in a state of having so much to do that it's overwhelming and so we just hunker down with denial. i said that maybe i'd try and rest while they were today so i could function tonight, but it isn't happening.

on a lighter note! nola stayed dry ALL day yesterday!! when i picked the girls up from school i asked if she had used the potty and she said no, but when i asked her if she wanted me to show it to her, she said yes and that she needed to use it. she did! we came home, she went potty again, we had lunch and she went potty once more before naptime. got up from nap (she had a diaper and did use it once while she was sleeping), went potty again and again throughout the afternoon/evening with no accidents! to celebrate, the girls and i got to eat captain crunch for breakfast while watching elmo's potty time dvd :) i would think that even with your 10th kid this potty training thing would be just as exciting as with the 1st. kids are awesome!

more random:

*i went running for the first time in months yesterday! it was hard and amazing. i missed it without even realizing it. my legs are feeling it today :)

*i'm doing an observation tomorrow at a middle school library. i'm hoping it goes really well and the librarian wants to host me next year for student teaching. she's retiring the year after next and it would be pretty awesome to slip into her position :) fingers crossed.

*i went back in the blog to the summer before avery turned 3, and sure enough i found posts about tantrums and fits and no naps. makes me feel better about nola's behavior the last couple weeks! i forgot about the 3 year old insanity...

i've procrastinated long enough. back to work.

it's march fourth!

wow. 5 years. FIVE years since we found out avery would be coming along and our lives changed forever. seems like yesterday, seems like 100 years ago.

we had a fantastic weekend. nola is a potty-ing fool! we were out to dinner last night and she went to the potty in the big, new, understandably scary public restroom. the best part about all this (other than being one step closer to diaper-free!) is avery's excitement. she is nola's biggest cheerleader, and it couldn't make us more proud. on another note, the girls wanted to sit next to each other on the same side of the table. it felt like zane and i were on a date! it was a fun new stage and the girls did wonderfully.

the girls did things this weekend that made us tear up and say "they are amazing people" more than a few times. today as they were separating to their rooms for naps, avery brought nola's bear to her room b/c she knows how much she loves him, and a few minutes later, nola poked her head into avery's room with a blanket she found and a "thank you" for rescuing her bear. in between errands and work for school (for both zane and i), we thoroughly enjoyed our family time.

tomorrow it's back to work. i have this week off from school for spring break but have some observations lined up, a few assignments due next week and a line-up of things due in the next 2 months, zane has a busy week coming up. i will say that the promise of daylight savings next sunday (it's already light past 5pm!), 60 degree temps later this week, and the hope to get to the gym to run has already improved my winter blues (that i never realize i have until the days start getting longer again and i get some energy back).

but right now it's march fourth, and its a wonderful day to reflect :)

marching in like a lion

after a calm winter, march surely came in with a force. but not really...i think boston only got a few inches out of this storm, but that was before and after it rained overnight (??) and kept the observable totals to just an inch or two. zane had a snow day yesterday (where he works got a lot more snow) and we thought it would be fun to walk in the snow to get donuts and coffee. turned out it was mostly wet snow/rain and really cold when we walked and it wasn't fun.

doesn't matter for these girls though :) just before 6:30 this morning, avery came into my room, already dressed and said "hey mama, when you wake up, can we go downstairs, get our snowpants on and play in the snow?" it didn't happen as quickly as she would have liked, but we did get out in the snow.

(i like to think that if i had a really good camera i wouldn't have to wait for a snow day with the perfect natural light outside to get decent pictures :))

VACATION!

we're officially on break. we went on a double date last night, no kids! we were home before 10pm, but it was a great time out with friends we haven't seen in WAY too long :)

the girls found some stencils yesterday buried in our craft boxes. avery used one to make a butterfly, then wanted me to make a butterfly for her. i told her i wasn't very good at drawing things like that, so she tried it herself.

think she did a pretty awesome job :) how she knows to do a mirror image for the wings (and HOW to do the mirror image) baffles me. i can't wait to see what she creates the more artwork she does.

the girls are obsessed with dressing up lately. in anything. this pig hat (that avery wore when she was 11 months old during her first halloween) has gotten it's share of use!

tomorrow we have plans to go to the children's museum early to take advantage of their members only hour. funny, when we got our membership, we were so excited that we'd have someplace to go on the cold and snowy days when we were stuck in the house. never would have guessed we'd have no need for such a destination! crazy winter. or lack thereof.

friday photos. lots of em.

mardi gras party at our neighbors last friday. lots of people, kids, food, drink, crafts, commotion. it was awesome. the girls had a blast, avery found the baby in the king cake and was king of mardi gras!, i parked myself by the buffalo dip that i love and its safe to say after how sick i was, i won't be craving it any time soon.

avery was scrambling to get her crown and mask on before she went down in the basement with the other kids because "i want to look cute". well!

we celebrated valentine's day late. i felt so guilty on valentine's night when avery was near tears b/c she was sad it was over. the girls had school the next day (where they gave and received valentines from their classmates) and we made these delicious pretzels that night. i should clarify and say that avery gave up after a couple and nola stuck with it til the end :)

so good.

nola sporting a headband mema sent the girls for valentine's day. my little girl is growing up...

avery was playing a game. she had her back to me and i was supposed to say (over and over and over) "don't turn around! don't look at me!", then she'd turn around and i'd take a picture. she's really into telling us all what to say and do lately! she was trying to growl, but giggled in the process when i took the picture :)

the playdate with jane. by looking, you wouldn't know nola is a whole 2 years younger than jane ;)

snack time in front of shaun the sheep.

it's friday! zane starts vacation! i have a sore throat! nola hit avery no less than 7 times this morning and laughed after each time out! we have a double date set for tonight! it's sunny out! i want spring! and a nap.

olivia.

olivia newton john, no?

today we had a first! the first time a friend came over and stayed here for a playdate with out the friend's mom! our neighbor dropped her daughter off so she could take her youngest to the dr to get a button removed from the nose. eek. avery, nola and jane had a BLAST playing ballerina, stickers, eating snacks, watching shaun the sheep and hitting each other with balloons. (more pictures to come). after jane left, zane and i were making dinner and i heard avery call: "mama, come here and say 'why is the princess sad?'" she was staring out the window, telling me she missed her friend :(

she got over it quickly though and after dinner, during a break from their dance-a-thon, took this picture of nola and zane :)

i may just hand over my camera to her after all. this might be my favorite picture of these two ever. thanks, avery!

more lysol please

unfortunately, this is a pretty accurate depiction of this weekend. actually, take me out of that chair and put me in bed, immobile for 24 hours and that's more like it. i'm hopefully the last to be hit with this bug and things might start getting back to normal around here soon. there's a good chance i wont be making it to my classes tomorrow night, maybe i can take the time to blog about the good things that happened on friday before all the very, very bad.

hope everyone reading is healthy. this illness has prompted me to become a little ocd about hand washing.

ps, avery took this picture. along with 111 others today. when i finally took my camera off her hands and handed her the pink toddler one she got for her 3rd birthday, she looked so insulted. i said "you like my camera better than yours?" and she answered, "huh, YES, mom!"