We are having lots of fun discovering all of the places Ridge can throw a ball.

April Fools!

We haven't ever done anything special for April Fools Day. I thought about it last year and it came and went before I made any plans. This year we were planning on going to a movie on the beach Friday night so we had a special April Fools dinner on Thursday, March 31st. I thought about fooling the girls, but decided it would be more fun to include them in the plans and fool Daddy. We planned our menu...Meat loaf and salad with cupcakes for dessert and fruit punch to drink. The salad was...drum roll...salad. Now, the exciting part. The meatloaf was a regular rice krispy treat made with cocoa krispies and a little extra cocoa. We shaped it in a bread pan and cut it into slices, just like meatloaf. The cupcakes were a recipe for meatballs. We put the mixture into foil cupcake wrappers and baked them. The frosting is potatoes dyed pink and spread on top of the meatball "cupcake." Our special fruit punch was actually jello that could not be sucked through the deceiving straws. We had fun planning and making the dinner, discussing how we could keep it a secret until it was time to eat, and practicing how we would yell, April Fools! For me the best part was the shining glow in the girls' eyes when Rusty went to take a drink from his straw. They screamed April Fools and started laughing hysterically and pointing with huge ear to ear grins. I caught some of it with my camera. Rusty was, as usual, the best sport and did a great job hamming it up. I can't imaging we will ever go another year without a plan for an April Fools.

St. Patrick's Day, 2011.

We added a new level of fun-ness to St. Patrick's Day this year with rainbows. We had rainbow shaped pancakes for breakfast. The girls decorated them with all the colored sprinkles we could find and we colored coconut yellow for our pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. It kind of looked like cheese. In the afternoon we made rainbow colored cupcakes. It was just one cakemix separated into 6 bowls and dyed red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple. The girls dyed the batter and layered it into the cupcake liners. The result was a very fun cupcake and they were so proud to show Rusty. For dinner we had green-green chili rellenos with beans and sopapillas. Green chili rellenos count for St. Patrick's Day, they ARE green. Thats what we wanted to eat, anyway. At night we left out our green pots to see if the leprachauns would find them on the windowsill. They did find the pots and left each of the kids a dollar. Wow, those are really nice leprachauns. All of these things were fun, but my very favorite part of St. Patrick's Day this year was the outfit Kyleigh came down the stairs in. A green belt wrapped around a golden shirt and some very green hand me down tights that she adores. My very own leprachaun.

Bird feeders with Katelyn.

The kids came to cub scouts with me one night. We were making peanut butter pinecone bird feeders and Katelyn hung out with me and the scouts and made one for herself. We hung it up outside, but it was on a corner where you couldn't really see if the birds were coming. We did see some evidence of birds so we had Daddy put two hooks right in line with the windows. We made two more bird feeders and hung them on the hooks where we would be sure to see the birds if they came. Lucky for us they came and they keep coming every day. We especially love the two birds that we think are a cute old bird couple. They come every day and they often share with each other. One will fly up and get some seeds then land on the rail to give it to the other. Ridge is especially fond of the birds. He now says Mama, Dada, and Bird.

Another Creature Friend

Kyleigh loves creatures. She was especially fond of this little guy. He kept running around to her back and she said he was playing hide and seek with her. About a week after this she was playing with a lizard and it bit her hand. It tore the skin. She told us, "it took me two shakes to get him off." In the last little while she has also been stung by two bees on the bottom of the same foot in one week. Both times could have been avoided with shoes, but it is still "the bee's fault." She has been telling us how she prefers mosquitoes over bees now, despite the honey.

Daddy and Ridge and Sunglasses.

Muffin Madness Morning

Another fun idea from...you guessed it, family fun magazine. I took the idea and gave it a more exciting name. When I read this idea I liked it so much I grabbed my calender and scheduled it in. If it's not on the calender it never happens. So, on muffin madness morning I filled all of our little bowls with random possibilities for muffin guts. The options included cheese, ham, mixed berries, strawberries, chocolate chips, bananas, green onion, chopped nuts, mandarin oranges, raisins, and craisins. The girls put combinations in the mini muffin cups. Then they mixed the a scoop of batter into each muffin cup with a toothpick. We baked them up and had ourselves a muffin feast. The girls started asking if we could "do this again tomorrow" before we were done eating. This was a definite do-over.