spring break, conclusion

On Thursday, both of the boys told me they wanted to have a stay-home day. No one understands that desire more than I do. I went out to do some yardwork, as it was finally a nice day! Eva came out to play, but then she saw two flies and lost it. She actually had to go inside the house! I swear, if that girl doesn't overcome her extreme fears soon, we are going to have a very difficult summer...

Pokémon card battles: one of the things keeping Max and Lucas busy. I enjoy seeing them actually using all those cards they've collected over the years!

Around noon, some friends called and invited Max & Lucas to go to Jump On It, which is apparently some sort of trampoline extravaganza -- suddenly, they were keen to get dressed and go out!

Eva got a stationery kit in a Wendy's kids' meal and has been thoroughly intrigued with it. She drew a picture on one of the cards and put in an envelope, which she decorated as well. She insisted I ready it to send to Bella pronto. And thus her first good mail was born.

When they got home, we had dinner and watched Planet Earth.

Yesterday, Jill, Landon & Whitney all came over for Creative Friday. My kids literally could not wait for them to arrive.

Whitney was kind enough to indulge Eva with some imaginary play, pretty much her favorite thing to do, period. We kept hearing Eva exclaim "Daddy!", prompting us to wonder if Marc had come home early. The kids were all so good about letting Eva hone in on their play, I think it was the best day of her life.


Stefanie was in town for work and she came to join us as well. It's always fun to meet a fellow blogger -- I just love the friendship shortcut -- I'm never my normal shy self, and feel like we already know each other, so there's none of the awkwardness and it's right to comfortable conversation.

She brought me this adorable M! I love monograms in all forms, so pleasing. And she brought us a big box of delicious cookies. Gee, do you think she knows what I like?

Stefanie had all kinds of good stuff going on and made quite a few cute cards.

some of Stefanie's finished cards

Jill framed her cutest ever mailbox card and wrote quite a few cards of her own. Not surprisingly, I didn't get a whole lot done, but I did start cutting some of the fabrics I bought at Britex to make a birthday banner.

Last night, more Planet Earth. If you haven't seen the series, it is quite fascinating. This week we watched the episodes about caves and deserts. Next up: ice worlds.

Today Marc suggested we work on our photo wall. Woohoo! I've been wanting to do that for over a year now, and apparently today was the day to get started.

He suggested we follow Martha's lead and cut out papers to match the sizes of our frames. We arranged those on the wall, as they were easy to shuffle around. We started hanging frames, but it ended up being more time-consuming than we bargained for -- to be continued. The next step will be deciding which photos we want to put in the frames! It's a very happy project.

At one point today I found Max out on the deck, painting. We are all just so happy that spring is here (even if snow is in the forecast again).

I think going to Cold Stone was the last remaining thing on our Spring break list, so we had to go there this evening. Lucas chose cotton candy ice cream (!), which surprisingly was not nearly as bad as it sounds. I had dark chocolate peppermint, which was a taste sensation. However, we both decided that a medium is way too big for us. We swore that next time we will both get a small, and we shook on it. We also discovered that even a child's size is way too big for Eva.

And to finish out Spring break, my favorite thing of all: fresh haircuts, yay! They couldn't sit still long enough for me to get a decent picture, but... fresh haircuts, yay! There's not much I love more than that.