Heart

There was a little contest last week that involved creating or finding pictures of hearts to submit. The girls noticed it (in spite of constant insisting to the contrary on my part, I find them standing over my shoulder reading my computer all the time) and really wanted to help. They came up with some good ideas, and learned a bit about editing and directing babies and toddlers in photographs! We didn't win anything, but it was fun to work on a project with them.

Bike Park

Michael has been out of town for a few days, dominating his ordination exams. When he is out of the house, two things happen without fail: I cannot sleep, and I have no motivation to cook. The kids are perfectly happy to eat apples and peanut butter or ants on a log or veggies and hummus or leftover cold turkey and cheese or any other number of mostly raw, snacky type foods all day long, so why bother with anything else? And when I don't cook, it frees up quite a few evening hours. So after school and errands were done today, I asked the kids if they wanted to have a picnic dinner in the park. They couldn't say yes fast (or loud) enough, so we packed pretty much all of the aforementioned snacks into the stroller and headed out into the afternoon sunshine.

Gussie just recently grew tall enough to practice on and start to enjoy the balance bike. He can scoot along pretty quickly now, and today was the first time he rode to the park with the big kids. Actually, he rode all the way there, rode around the paths and fountains while we were there instead of playing on the playground, then rode almost all the way home; he tuckered out about two blocks away.

The park is truly stunning right now with all the blooming trees.

Even though the weather no longer necessitates snow boots, Gussie still chooses to wear them most days because 1) he can easily get them on by himself and 2) they give him an extra quarter inch or so above other shoes which is good because he is still just *barely* tall enough for the balance bike.

Watch out for the neighborhood bike gang...

Since all of the big kids rode bikes and Edie prefers to be wrapped and carried than ride in the stroller (ok, she pretty much hates the stroller), I ended up following four kids on bikes with a baby wrapped on me, pushing an empty stroller. I got a few curious looks. Actually it wasn't empty at all, just empty of kids. Taking dinner for those four kids requires several cubic feet, plus the girls wanted to bring their roller blades, plus a diaper bag... yeah, the stroller was necessary even without kids in it.

We stopped before we got to the playgrounds for our picnic dinner.

After a lot of spinning and climbing on the playground, the girls put on their roller blades and joined Michael and Gussie in the Wheeled World.

Have I told you about the roller blades? Grandma got a pair for Mary but couldn't find any in Catherine's size. Catherine tried in vain to be comfortable in Mary's, which adjust up to one size too small for Catherine. Our delightful neighbor noticed the girls attempting to share roller blades on the sidewalk out front, and asked Catherine if she would like to try hers. They are a little too big, which it turns out is much better than a little too small, so our neighbor told Catherine to use them as often as she wanted, and that she should even go ahead and keep them at our house and our neighbor would still know where to find them if she needed them.

After each of the girls had their own pair of roller blades, "blading" immediately became their new favorite activity. They both have multiple rubs, blisters, and scrapes on their feet, toes, and ankles from suddenly subjecting their feet to several hours of skating each day, but they don't care. And they're improving remarkably quickly!

The kids all declared it the most fun dinner picnic ever.

We didn't leave the park until seven, which means we didn't get home until 7:30, and of course everyone was hungry again and also much too dirty to go straight to bed. But even though they were still all worked up when we got home, it only took a few minutes of heads on pillows to bring on the pleasant sleep that comes from a long day of physical activity.

Apparently (and thankfully) they don't share my neurosis about sleeping when Daddy isn't home.

Happy Easter!

Easter is probably my favorite holiday. I love the fact that it comes with the heralding of Spring, and I love the food, and I love the preparations of Holy Week and the Easter Mass. It's all great. And when I think everything is great about a day, there's a pretty good chance I'm about to overload you with pictures.

We started Saturday with an egg hunt at church. The only place to hold an egg hunt at church is on a soccer field, so I fondly call it the Egg Pick-Up.

It takes a hundred kids between one and two minutes to clear that field. I was hoping to get some fun pictures, but with only a 2-minute window it's pretty tough. Plus the kids were all in different age groups which started slightly staggered and at different points on the field. Plus when it was time to start, Gussie totally froze. He wouldn't move until I took his hand, led him to an egg, pointed to it, and told him he should pick it up and put it in his basket. Repeat, until he had a handful of eggs.

And only one picture of the aftermath because I left the kids to play, went to pick up milk, and came back to get them when everything was wrapping up.

Sunday started with a breakfast of pancakes and berries, which I made sure they were completely finished with before letting them put on their Easter clothes that Grandma bought for them. We stopped in the park on the way home from Mass for a few pictures. Grandpa said they look like a bunch of colored Easter eggs. So they do!

That was pretty much the "good" one. For the most part, the boys were distracted by the ducks behind them and Edie was confused.

This one deserves a close-up.

Then they went exploring in the daffodil field. It's their first album cover!

Then home for our first Easter feast. I tried to use my camera timer to get a quick shot of all of us before we ate, but it seriously did not work out and the food was getting cold, so I gave up. Next time I should definitely have my remote ready beforehand.

So, some individual shots!

Goodness, he looks all grown up.

Speaking of all grown up...

Another inventive hair wrap from Mary. They make me smile.

And Gussie just wouldn't stop shoveling food into his mouth for one second, which explains why he nearly choked a minute later.

After lunch, we headed to Grandma's for another egg hunt and another feast! But first, more pictures.

I found a Bobbsey Twins book at the thrift store and Mary couldn't part with it for a moment. She brought it along.

Catherine took this picture.

And this one. Gussie has a serious super soccer kick.

Mamo and Aunt Sunny jousted for best baby holder all afternoon.

But Aunt Mel sneaked in some smooches as well.

Egg hunt time! Gussie was a little more comfortable in this environment and enjoyed the egg hunt quite a bit.

Kali search far and wide!

All of my pictures of Michael look like this, as he frantically zig-zagged all about the yard.

Any guesses as to which sister came away with the spoils?

Meanwhile, Edie was well cared for.

But she wasn't very interested in the contents of Olivia's eggs.

Olivia was very interested in the contents of her eggs.

And so was Kali!

Peanut butter cup stack.

After they had opened all their eggs, they combined all the puzzle pieces they had picked up along the way and used the clue to locate their last prize: a bubble gun for each of them! Gussie and Olivia shot non-stop bubbles while Catherine and Mary dance-popped them.

Yep, Easter is my favorite.

Happy Birthday Trip

Grandma and Grandpa treated us to a quick trip to Big Cedar in honor of Michael Jr's birthday. We were planning to stop and see Aunt Jena at her parents' farm on the way down, but unfortunately she called as we were driving and warned us off because her dad was sick. So we sadly missed the chance to visit with Jena while she was close to being in town, but luckily the beautiful Spring weather cooperated at least! We had a day and a half chock full of hiking, swimming, paddle boating, mini golf, playgrounds, waterfall tours, climbing, wildflower picking, and general relaxing in the sun.

Mary proved to have quite the nose for treasure when they hunted geocaches with Grandpa.

But really, she would have been happy to just pick little wild flowers the entire day.

The property has a lot of man-made (but still beautiful) waterfalls and a lovely maze of bridges and paths, perfect for running and exploring, and stopping for a rest and a quick snack.

Oh, this girl. If you haven't hung out with her in a while, you might be shocked at how independent 8 can be.

Walking with Grandpa; maybe we were headed to the paddle boats? I don't have any pictures, because I was paddling a paddle boat. Catherine and Mary manned one of their own and they did great!

I think the favorites of the three big kids were the lake beach and the swimming pools.

These girls love the water! It wasn't warm enough to swim in the lake, but plenty warm enough for toe splashing.

Gussie wasn't tempted by the water at all, but he was happy to play on the beach and dig in the sand.

Baby toes and toddler chunk feet relaxing in our room after a long, active day!

Our last morning there was Michael's actual birthday and Grandma brought along some special glasses to use at breakfast. Yes, they're playing Trouble at breakfast. They would have been playing it a lot earlier but I made them wait until everyone was awake. That die popper is loud!

After breakfast we talked about what they wanted to do as their last thing before we had to leave and they all voted for swimming in the indoor pool. We swam in the outdoor pool for a long time on the first day (and have the sun kissed faces to prove it), but they wanted to swim again and they wanted to try a new pool.

Except for Gussie, who still was not tempted by the water. He opted to bring some cars and trucks to play with, and since Edie had just fallen asleep wrapped on me, I sat and played with him instead of getting in with the big kids.

Can you see how happy Catherine is? She declared swimming to be the most wonderful thing she's ever done.

Michael was even getting pretty brave in the water. The indoor pool didn't have much of a shallow area so he could only touch bottom near the steps and a little around the outside edge. He worked really hard to tiptoe his way around the edge!

Once he managed to snag an abandoned pool noodle (with an alligator head), he used it to kick his way from one edge to the other. And that's Olivia in the background, also sticking to the steps. I have no idea how I don't have more pictures of her, but she was there!

Meanwhile, one of Gussie's many story-telling faces.

[I missed pictures of a lot of our activities simply due to the logistics of doing anything with five kids. No pictures of the outdoor pool because I was either swimming with the kids or feeding Edie. No pictures of mini golf because I was feeding Edie and running various kids to the nearest building for the bathroom. No pictures of our golf cart nature tour because I was driving a golf cart with a sleeping Edie wrapped on me and one hand on Gussie because he looked like he was going to tip out the side at any moment (but Mary was snapping a picture every few seconds, so keep an eye on her blog).]

After cajoling Catherine out of the pool we loaded up and headed home, first stopping for a lunch of throwed rolls. All was going well -- even Edie did pretty well in the car with minimal protesting -- until Gussie threw up. I know I made somewhat of a promise about not whining, but I have to be honest: cleaning vomit out of the endless nooks and crannies of a car seat and its straps and buckles is very likely the worst thing ever. It's enough to make one contemplate how you might go about getting through eight or ten years without ever having to go anywhere in a car with children in carseats, and you have plenty of time to work that out because cleaning car seat buckles with wipes at a rest stop takes freaking forever. But thankfully Gussie's stomach seems to have simply been protesting lunch or riding in the back of the van or both, because as soon as I put him in clean clothes and he guzzled a bottle of water, he spent the entire time at the rest stop running around with the kids and has been fine since.

So we piled back in the van, motivated by the fact that Daddy was waiting for us at home, along with the brownie-mint-chocolate-chip ice cream cake we had made and stashed in the freezer before we left.

Michael blew out each candle individually, which was making the kids waiting for cake a little jittery! But he loved the cake and the trip and he is very excited to now be "a whole hand!"