Spring Fever

The kids are spending lots of time outdoors right now - they're just so happy to not be cooped up by lousy weather. They don't even care that it's barely not lousy weather so far this spring!

100 Days!

It's official. In 100 days, we're leaving on the trip of a lifetime. The four of us, Cyndy, Barry, their girls, Mom and Gordi are all headed to Florida for two weeks.

We'll spend the first week at Coronado Springs Resort in Disney World. We've got a great itinerary planned that will have me in the Magic Kingdom on my birthday, lucky me! We then head to Cyndy and Barry's timeshare for a week of Universal and Orlando fun. We even won the free Universal tickets advertised during the Super Bowl!

With 100 days to go, I've already been driving the rest of the family nuts with planning - what's going to happen when it's a week to go? But I just can't wait!!!

Here's some t-shirts the kids created for the trip:

The Great Football Card Saga

For anyone who doesn't know, Nicky has become an avid collector of football cards. He doesn't have any idea what is actually valuable, but he knows what he likes, and what he likes is Packers cards. He's also fond of Eagles, Giants, Steelers, and Pro Bowl cards. He's been working on his collection for months, trading with friends, and spending his allowance on new packs. So when he came home one day from school and sadly told us that his exact favorite cards had been meticulously removed from his binder and stolen, you can imagine how upset he was. He's not allowed to play with the cards at school, but he is allowed to trade them on the bus, so he put his binder in his bookbag and left it there all day. At some point in the day, without anyone noticing, someone took each individual card that he likes out of their sleeves. I still can not fathom how his teacher didn't notice someone standing at the cubbies that long, but since her only reaction to his dilemma was "you shouldn't have brought them to school", we figured Nicky was out of luck as far as justice went.

That's when Mommy hit eBay and started recreating his collection as best I could without spending too much cash. Fortunately, as I mentioned, his idea of valuable cards doesn't really correspond with their actual value, and for under $20 I was able to make him happy.

And then. He waited. And waited. His Eagles cards arrived. His Brian Westbook Pro Bowl card arrived. And he waited. And waited. I began to worry that he had been ripped off twice and then...

Finally, 12 days after I paid for them, his 100 new Packers cards came in the mail yesterday.

Just call him "Happy Nick" (do doo do do ta do).

Wearin' (And Eatin') O' The Green

Gotta love going all out celebrating your heritage. With Irish on both sides, we just happily proclaim ourselves Irish on St. Patrick's Day (and everyday, average "American" family label notwithstanding)!

We started celebrating on Sunday by bringing these cookie pops to church for coffee hour. They were VERY popular, and not just with the kids. Grown adults apparently love lollipops - go figure.

We also had a great Irish-American dinner (corned beef and cabbage - don't get me started on why it's not Irish at all, but Cyndy loves it so there you are) with lots of green desserts. The kids donned their St. Patrick's best and enjoyed the day to the fullest.

May the luck of the Irish be with you in the coming year!

The Confetti Cafe Diet

Dieting sucks. Eating sundaes (like this Confetti Cafe creation) rocks.

Is it any wonder I keep failing so miserably at dieting?

At least I shared it with Scotty. That has to count as "reduced" calories, right?

March

These photos were taken in the same week. On Monday, we had a snow day due to the several inches of snow that got dumped on the house throughout the course of the day. By Saturday, the grass was starting to green up and it was warm enough to go barefoot in the park. That's early spring in Pennsylvania for you!

Enjoying the afternoon at the park brought to mind one of my favorite Reliant K songs, In Like A Lion:

And everything it changed overnight

This dying world You brought it back to life

And deep inside I felt things

Shifting everything was melting

Away oh away

And You gave us the most beautiful of days

It's not that I don't know how blessed I am in the winter months. But the return of spring brings a lightness back to my heart I didn't know I was missing. If you ask me, I will probably tell you that spring is my least favorite season, and it is. But there's still magic in the warm, damp breeze.

'Course, it's Pennsylvania. So don't discount a return to ice and snow by next week!

Philly Phun

We headed into Philly for a day trip on Saturday. We really wanted to see the Narnia exhibit at the Franklin Institute before our membership ran out. Unfortunately, no cameras were allowed in the exhibit, so we had to settle for this shot in the concourse.

The kids had fun, but we probably won't renew our membership right away - other than the travelling exhibits, seeing the museum multiple times in a year can get boring. We did see a nice IMAX on the Grand Canyon, although it was a bit environmentally preachy. Still, there were many highlights to the trip. Nicky got a cheesesteak:

Kairi got to surf:

And I got to see the automaton that inspired the GREAT Caldecott book "The Invention of Hugo Cabret":

On our way out of Philly, we had to stop to see our favorite big cats at the zoo:

And take Daddy on the new carousel. We picked the spinning snake basket and all piled in:

Daddy is hamming it up a bit, but spinning a car while spinning on a carousel can get a little nauseating:
The one problem with loving to day trip is that it sometimes leaves us wanting a break from our weekend! Fortunately for us, Monday was a snow day, so we had a day to rest, too!