stupid human tricks??

some family bonding time with straws! (sorry video quality is not better)

spring concert

here are some pictures from tyler's spring concert/open house last night. he got to play the xylophone for one of the songs. some of the other pictures are of his classroom after the show.

on a side note, we had thunderstorms off and on all day though it looked like it cleared by the time we were getting ready to leave for tyler's show. we all decided to walk over to the school since it had stopped raining for a while (and parking would be horrendous). of course, when we left the rain started back up again. i left earlier than aaron & tyler so i could put emma to bed, and i ended up sprinting the whole way home so emma wouldn't get too wet...i ran so hard i thought i was going to throw up, blech. my clothes were totally drenched. aaron & tyler looked like they just got out of the shower when they got home. crazy!

ack! i was almost done w/ my post and the the dumb computer died on me...grrr.

anyway, lately i've been really frustrated at all the spiderman related advertisements. i've been especially annoyed at the spiderman toy and kids' clothing ads. why? the movie is rated PG-13, and yet the majority of the ads are marketed towards kids under the age of 13. all the spiderman movies (and the hulk, and superman) were all marketed that way. kind of messed up in my opinion. not that we won't allow tyler to see it, but he's a bit older. but what about parents of younger kids? would you let your 5 year old see it? or your 4 year old? i know there are many parents here in the u.s. that allow their young children to watch TV. kids 6 and under spend an avg. of 2 hrs./day using screen media, and the avg. american watches about 4 hours of TV/day (go here for more alarming facts). especially w/ cable, there are more channel options for kids to choose from, which keeps them hooked on the TV. ugh, i think i'm just really frustrated at how the media chooses to take advantage of kids who they know are VERY impressionable! makes it tough on us parents. *sigh*.

i found the TV Turnoff Network. what do you know, TV Turnoff week is this week! tyler is already not watching TV during the week so i don't think it would be fair to "deprive" him of TV over the weekend. today, our TV substitute activity was playing twister and LIFE after dinner and homework. it felt great to interact w/each other and we didn't miss the TV at all. i'm so glad we don't have cable (makes things easier)!

shrubless

this past sunday we finally pulled out the shrubs in our front yard. the first photo is the "before photo"f rom when we hired roofers to re-do our roof (2005). they tore off all the shingles (including the original slate) and just let them fall around the house. that's what pretty much killed our shrubs (we didn't really care for them anyway) and after 2 years we have finally gotten rid of them! the next step is to find some nice plants to put in the empty space.

225 years old!

beautiful weather, breakfast made in the morning, sushi for dinner and having aaron home for the evening with the rest of the family made for a perfect birthday!

congratulations nick and heather vinje on the birth of their twin boys, jack and owen. they were born this morning at 8:30 a.m. jack weighed in at 6 lbs 1 oz. while owen weighed in at 4 lbs. 11 oz. i'll post a picture if one is sent to me. yay...new cousins! time for some embroidery projects :).

watching abc primetime right now...though a little sensationalized, in my opinion, still *very* sad news about the virginia tech shooting.

jump rope for heart success!

thanks again to all friends and family who sponsored tyler for his jump rope for heart. turns out he was the top money raiser for his school for the american heart association (see the close up letter-you can also click on the picture for a closer view). today, filled with excitement, he came home bearing prizes from the jump rope for heart fundraiser.

jump rope for heart success!

thanks again to all friends and family who sponsored tyler for his jump rope for heart. turns out he was the top money raiser for his school for the american heart association (see the close up letter-you can also click on the picture for a closer view). today, filled with excitement, he came home bearing prizes from the jump rope for heart fundraiser.

yumm...puffed apple pancake

courtesy of marth stewart...

the first try was okay, but the second attempt turned out better. instead of 6 eggs (tasted to eggy), i changed it to 4 on my second attempt. almost there...third attempt i'm going to try 5 eggs. i found with 4 eggs, it didn't puff up as much.

sorry there hasn't been a new post in a while. i don't really know what i've been up to last week that kept me from blogging at least once. nothing new going on. tyler returned safely from his trip to seattle, and sounded like he had a good time. now it's back to the grindstone.

emma is now 10 months old and has a weight and height check up next week. not only is she a super fast crawler, she can now pull herself up to standing. amazing how much she has changed already in the past month.

what do you do when you're snowed in your home all day??

take random pictures and pretend you're an "arteest."

p.s.-the tulips are origami tulips tyler made for me before he left for spring break. pretty cool...and tulips are my favorite.

we've arrived....

back in cleveland. we never made it to spokane saturday because we got hit with so much snow last weekend. the drive to the airport was treacherous, with crappy roads (including the freeway) and constant snowfall. our travel day on saturday ended up being a horrendous experience. the plane (courtesy of united) was already 45 minutes delayed because of crew change, and then to top it off we sat in the plane for another 3.5 hours while they tried to fix problem, after problem. all was snow related of course, but it seemed to me that united was also unprepared for the snow. tyler left for seattle that same day, though his flight left an hour ahead of ours. he was only delayed 1.5 hours due to de-icing procedures for the plane (note that he flew nwa). an hour...not bad, but almost 4 hours, with a baby (who can't nap on my lap by the way), confined to our seat was ridiculous. by the time we made it to chicago (the actual flight itself only took 50 minutes) we had missed our connecting flight and all other flights (including other airlines) that took us to spokane were FULL, FULL, FULL. i found this out after standing another hour in the customer service line. spending the night in chicago didn't make sense to me, because i only packed enough baby food & formula for the day's trip. i only nurse her twice a day now so there was no way my boobs were going to go into extra production mode overnight. i was exhausted, emma was VERY crabby and had a huge meltdown while i was at the customer service counter...so i decided to cancel the trip and head home. we'll have to try this another time when it's not snowing...in april. to top off our wonderful adventure, our luggage made it to spokane...ha, ha, ha. i almost laughed out loud when i found out.

anyway, here are a few pictures of the snow. we got almost 2 feet. we had continous snowfall from friday night to late sunday afternoon. we were snowed in for easter so we stayed home and "attended" a church service via the internet (www.lifechurch.tv). it was pretty cool. i bought emma an easter dress which i had planned for her to wear for church on sunday. needles to say, she didn't end up wearing. oh well. we did have some delicious steak for dinner. one of the pictures is after aaron dug out the grill from under all the snow...the things you do for a good piece of steak, huh?

off we go....

emma and i are getting ready to leave for the airport today (she's still sleeping but hoping to just transfer her to seat and go w/out waking her-ha!). we'll be in spokane for about 4 days visiting my folks. hey....anyone that wants to take a drive over to say hello feel free...would love to see you! i'm REALLY nervous about the flight, because emma is no longer an "infant." last time we flew, she was only 6 weeks, slept anywhere and everywhere, and nursed to sleep every time. so flying was a breeze. now she's almost 10 mos., and has a hard time falling asleep anywhere but her crib (she'd gets so distracted by all the neat things out there that it's hard for her to fall asleep). i'm just afraid that she won't end up falling asleep (and she gets soooo cranky w/out her naps) on the plane and then she'll turn into wild-crazy baby through the rest of the trip. pray for us...ack! tyler already left this morning to go to seattle for a week for spring break. so aaron will be mr. bachelor for a few days. *sigh*

trash...not a good thing

did you know:

• in a lifetime, the average american will throw away 600 times his/her adult weight in garbabge, leaving a legacy of 90,00 lbs. of trash for his/her children.
• americans throw away enough office paper annually to build a wall 12 feet high, stretching from l.a. to nyc.
• americans throw away enough aluminum every 3 mos. to rebuild our entire commercial air fleet.

yikes! so i got that info. from this city of lakewood newsletter we received in the mail. stats like that sometimes makes me feel like our recycling efforts aren't really going to make much of a difference when there aren't enough people being made aware of the importance of recycling. yes...i know i'm sounding like some crazed hippy, but trash isn't going away. sometimes i get frustrated because i just don't see enough folks around here recycle. the service is free (unlike in seattle where you have to pay for waste & recycling services), all you have to do is sort the stuff and put it out on the curb. not hard, but not too many people we know around here do it. admittedly, i've been known to pick out beer bottles, empty soup cans, and pieces of paper out of our trash can so that i can put it in our recycling. go ahead...i know i'm sounding like a tree hugger, but i just had to get that out. like they taught me in school: recycle-reduce-reuse!

just to give you an idea of how "petite" emma is, this outfit is for 3-6 month olds...and she can still fit in it at 9 months! imagine what she'll wear at 12 months....

oh and she's been doing the whole sticking out her tongue thing a lot lately.

yay...another date night!

amazing but true, aaron & i went on another date night last saturday. thank you gram for staying over to watch the kids :) we went to the opening night of the tempest downtown, which corrie is stage managing. for a shakespeare play, it went pretty quickly (helps that it's shakespeare's shortest play), and we were able to get the hang of the language once the play got going. it was an enjoyable show, for sure. afterwards, we met up with corrie at the theatre's restaurant for the opening night reception. aaron & i got to meet the director, most of the performers and some of the crew. we had a great time...i hope corrie invites us to another opening night show!