Tidbits

- Rowan likes to say "Room" to Ellie when she's being naughty; he's telling her to go to her room for a time-out

- Ellie snuck out of the house one morning before anyone was awake to go to her friend's house. She climbed on a chair to unchain the door.

- Jason and I went to dinner last night at a new Asian restaurant and I had sweet sticky rice. I used to get it all the time when I was pregnant with Ellie, and this was the first time I've found it since then. It was soooo good!

- We have a huge garden plot all to ourselves this year. I hope we can keep up with it this summer!

- Ellie just asked me if China's sky was made of sand, since the kids at school always say that underneath the sandbox is China.

- Rowan burned his toes on our steam mop a week ago, and it was very painful for him. I think they are healing, but look horrible!

- Jason is probably going to Egypt for the summer to study Arabic and do research for his Ph.D. All summer. And the kids and I will stay in Madison.

- Tomorrow is Jason's birthday and Saturday is Ellie's! One night this week we will go to Red Robin for their free birthday burgers and Coldstone for free ice cream.

- I just started a new workout dvd called 30 Day Shred and my legs are killing me!

- Last night, while Jason and I were at dinner, Ellie found some medicine in our neighbor's bedroom, chewed it up, spit it out because it was yucky, then freaked out our neighbor by coming to her with a dyed-blue mouth asking for a drink of water. Poison control said she would be fine. We had a little talk with Ellie.

- We are coming to AZ in 3 weeks and we are so excited to see Jason's sister get married to a wonderful guy!

Neighborhood Easter egg hunt

We did an Easter egg hunt today with some of our neighbors, and had a great time! Our neighborhood didn't have anything planned for the kids, and since we don't have a car to take us anywhere else, we had to plan our own egg hunt! So, I used emails, facebook, and door-to-door invitations to put together an egg hunt in our play area. Another dad and I hid the 180 plastic eggs around the yard, and then 12 kids had a blast finding them all. The 3 toddlers searched in the sandbox, and everyone else had a huge area to hunt through. The older kids found their 15 eggs quickly, so they helped the preschoolers find the rest of the scattered eggs. It was way more fun than having our own egg hunt in our house.


Here's a bonus picture of Rowan, sleeping with one of his best buddies, a sock monkey he received from Aunt Nikki for Christmas. He calls it "Mono" which means monkey in Spanish. He always takes at least two animals with him to bed, and they rotate depending on who he wants, but Mono is always one of them. One of his "friends" closes the door and turns off the light at bedtime. Rowan and Ellie are different in so many ways, but it's neat to see Rowan going through the same stage of loving stuffed animals.

Building towers

Rowan received these blocks for Christmas, and the kids are just now really enjoying playing with them. Ellie builds the towers up, Rowan builds sprawling landscapes with them. And of course, like all good brothers and sisters, they fight over blocks.





Rowan's genius building style


The final product