There's some short grass in the yard

Thanks to the recently maintained Lawn Boy, about 1/3 of our yard is nicely manicured. I'll work on it more tomorrow. It was getting too dark to take a picture.

The girls and Cool Daddy-O played outside. Big Squirt even sat in the Maple tree in the play area for awhile. Looked like she was having fun up there.

The weather cooperated for soccer tonight. We made supper before soccer practice and Big Squirt realized that yellow peppers don't have much flavor, so she ate them in the pasta primavera we made. She was sobbing during the first few minutes, but once she tasted it, she kept eating. Little Squirt wasn't as enthralled with her meal. I think they just need more exposure to different veggies.

Updates

The plants are still covered for another hour or so. It was cold out there this morning.

Big Squirt's rash is gone. Dr. M. agreed that it was a reaction to the grass at the soccer field or some chemical that was put on it. She had to wear long sleeves on Friday due to the frigid temps. Perhaps we'll encourage her to wear long sleeves again tonight. Strong thunderstorms are predicted for Thursday. That means soccer will probably be canceled again!

Little Squirt and grandma are good buddies again. Last week she started asking about grandma visiting and said she wanted to play with her. They played on Saturday like the last 4 months of "closed eye stuff" had never happened. That's the good news. The bad news is now she's transferred the closed eye stuff to grandpa. Oh, brother. It will be interesting to see how long this stage lasts.

On Sunday when we visited the great-grandmas at the nursing home, both girls were good. When we got to grandma and grandpa's house, Little Squirt's eyes closed. She did enjoy some delicious pizza that grandma ordered. With her eyes closed. Squawking like a baby bird. Silly kid!

All tucked in

The girls are asleep, the perennials are covered up and we're watching TV. Yes, that's right, the perennials are covered up.....it's the end of April! Actually, all we covered up were the fern leaf peonies (4), peonies (9), tulips (2), and delphinium (3). The day lilies and sedum (too numerous to mention) are on their own. Hopefully, they'll be tough and not be harmed.

Cool Daddy-O vacuumed while I went to a PTO meeting tonight.

That's all of the excitement for today. Oh, yeah, I organized the toy room closet today. Tomorrow....perhaps the rest of the toy room and maybe the kitchen toys can go to the club house for the summer....yeah, once the temperature rises above 32 degrees in the morning.

She does windows too...

A day at home, at last! We cleaned the bathrooms and started on other rooms. Little Squirt insisted on wiping the mirror over the double sinks. She did a good job and seemed to have fun with it. She also did the inside of our storm door. I'm hoping we can wash all the windows in the house the next time she's feeling this helpful!

Big Squirt has the day off tomorrow due to kindergarten round-up. In the morning the girls get a hair cut and in the afternoon they have their well child check-ups. Perhaps we'll find out the cause of the itchy rash on Big Squirt's arms. The rash first appeared after soccer practice Tuesday. It was improving, but seemed to get itchy again tonight after soccer. Hmmm. Allergic to grass? or does she have one of those non-specified child rashes / viruses. It's not causing much discomfort though.

Chasing trains

So far today, our highlights of the day are chasing a train, finding a geocache and walking around a furniture store. After preschool, we heard the train a few blocks away. We were able to catch up with it and see it at several intersections. We never did find its destination, though. We were able to log another cache find. I didn't even need the GPS for this one, as the clue was really good.

At the furniture store, we looked at bunk beds and coffee tables. I think we'll need to invest in a set of bunk beds at some point to conserve some floor space. I think it would make our house seem bigger :)

Little Squirt is requesting a trip to the "gray park", so I think I'll take her for a bit. Not really sure why we call it gray, because the only gray there is the slides. Big Squirt just started calling it that when she was 2 and the name stuck. We just decided we'd wait until Big Squirt gets home and maybe take her along. It'll be even more fun that way.

GOAL!

I missed all the excitement on the soccer field tonight, as I was helping with a preschool spaghetti supper. The bad news was Big Squirt's team lost their soccer game tonight. The good news was her team scored one goal, and she was the one who kicked the ball really hard from far away and the ball went in the goal. Yahoo for Big Squirt!!

The weather radio woke up the entire household this morning. The girls ran into our room. I then abandoned ship and went to the girls' room. I was unable to go back to sleep though. The storm had not yet arrived and the birds were singing really loud outside. Once the rain and wind hit, the birds quieted down, however, it was about time to get up. The girls were greeted with pancakes for breakfast. I think they were happy. After the morning storm, the day turned beautiful, warm and sunny. Looks like tomorrow will be a beautiful day also.

I love this time of year, even if the birds wake me up in the morning!

Monday is a Fun Day!

We did our usual Monday stuff this morning...school, preschool, lunch at McDonald's. We spent the afternoon with friends and found a geocache near their house. The weather was sunny and warm. Both girls wore capri pants today and were able to play outside without coats! Fun!

We made cards for nearby nursing home residents at our Girl Scout meeting tonight. They will be delivered for May Day.

Just looked out the open window and saw the flags waving in the breeze. It's a cool site at night with the light pointed up at them.

Tomorrow is a soccer night and a special fund raising dinner for preschool. Yea, I won't have to cook! I do need to make some brownies, though.

Everyone is invited to the dinner tomorrow night at preschool. Spaghetti will be served from 4:30 to 7:00 pm. There will be a free will offering.

Found 8 of 9 after school

Due to parent teacher conferences, Big Squirt came home 2 hours early today. The weather was beautiful and we decided to go geocaching. Here is Big Squirt posing with the first one we found. It was the smallest we've found thus far. She spotted it soon after we sat down and began looking for things that looked out of place. She found half of our finds today. Cool Daddy-O helped with the last 4.

Near the end of our journey today, the girls needed a rest. They decided to make grass angels.

Here she is with the last micro cache she found today. It was sticking out of a broken branch in a tree. I don't think we'll be doing much geocaching without her....she has a good eye!

Little Squirt shared her Birthday party with Grandpa

Little Squirt and Grandpa celebrated their April birthdays with cake and ice cream today. Grandpa was surprised by the cake.

The squirts thought it was funny to pose with the cakes with only their heads showing. Both girls got to open a few birthday presents. Due to the snowy winter, we never had Big Squirt's family birthday party either...so they shared the event today. I surprised both of them with their own balloon bouquets!

VEISHEA and Geocaching

We awoke to snow on Saturday morning. We immediately altered our plan to drive to Ames for the VEISHEA parade. Instead, we slept until the girls woke up, ran a few errands, and arrived in Ames just as the parade was ending. We met up with some fellow alumni and ate lunch at Hickory Park. Little Squirt enjoyed the birthday serenade when her ice cream arrived.

We then went geocaching with a friend from college and her 11 year old daughter. We soon were glad that S. is tall and nimble for her age. After we put all our brains together she was able to scale a dead tree to capture the cache. We felt pretty good following the find, despite being 200 yards from a tent pitched by a homeless person. This cache was rated average difficulty with an above average terrain. After this success we felt ready to tackle some easy rated ones.

We looked for 3 and found none of them. On the third one we went on a wild goose chase. The first clue was that the cache was not at the stated coordinates and gave a clue where to find them. We found some numbers and plugged them in and those coordinates were within a mile of where we were, so we jumped in the cars and left the park we were in. The clues had something to do with Charlie Brown and It's the Great Pumpkin. As we were driving to the next coordinates, we met a car with personalized plates "pumpkins". We were a little freaked out, but took it as a strange sign that we were on the right track. When we arrived at the new coordinates, we discovered it was a park with a name of one of the Peanuts characters, and found that to be interesting also, and thought we may have been on the right track. We wondered around the park and found nothing. I'm very baffled by this one.

Some day, when we find this one, we're going to laugh about this day.

After saying farewell to our out-of-state friends, we stopped at Target and used some coupons. I think we left with about $15 worth of savings and only spent about $62. That was fun. The squirts also had some fun money to spend and they had fun choosing coloring books and movies.

Happy Birthday Little Squirt!

Little Squirt declared today the best day of her life. She licked the frosting spatula for breakfast, took cookies to preschool, got to wear a crown at preschool and give little treat bags to all of her classmates. She also got to play with friends and a new toy (marble run) she received for her birthday. She even had some prime rib for supper.

She's in bed now and I had to get her picture after we had turned the lights out, because I'd forgotten to take her birthday picture today.

Tomorrow we're going to Ames to watch the VEISHEA parade and perhaps introduce some friends to geocaching. Unfortunately, the forecast (which I hope is wrong) is for a high of 38 degrees. It's not the first year we've needed mittens for the parade.

Happy Birthday little squirt! We're glad you're in our family!

Food tastes better when your eyes are closed

Today after story time at the library, we decided to go to Target to get some supplies. During the car ride, Little Squirt and I discussed where to eat lunch. Her first choice was the snack bar at Target. I do like eating at Target if they have Pizza Hut pizza (Super Target), however, the Target we were going to microwaves little frozen pizzas and they just aren't as good. LS finally suggested she would like to eat at Applebee's and she would eat teeny tiny cheeseburgers. I was happy.

When we got to our booth, Little Squirt hit her ear when she fell into the table. At this point, our adventure went sour. The good news was she didn't scream....she just snuggled and whimpered. The bad news...this lasted for a LONG time. She insisted on ordering 2 cheeseburgers for her lunch. I thought one would have been sufficient, but she strongly disagreed when I suggested that to the waitress. Since we were already in a precarious situation, we ordered two.

When the food arrived (I had spinach salad and tomato basil soup, in case you're wondering) she still had her eyes closed, however, her mood improved somewhat. Believe it or not, she ate both cheeseburgers... with her eyes....closed. She quietly squawked like a bird each time she wanted a bite, and I put the burger up to her mouth. She also drank most of her chocolate milk in this manner.

As we were walking toward the car after our meal, she opened her eyes and was back to her old self. I'm wondering if she'll now close her eyes every time we go to Applebee's.

We bought party hats and party favors for LS's birthday party. She is pretty excited about her party. We're having her party at McDonald's with her friends and she is hoping for a Tom and Jerry birthday cake. We'll see if we can pull that one off.

It rained all day long. No soccer. Bummer!

Soccer Game #1

Big Squirt had early dismissal from school today. We spent the afternoon organizing the toy room.

Tonight was her first soccer game of the season. They only had one practice this week due to the weather. BS was pretty frustrated at times because both teams kept kicking the ball out of bounds. Toward the end of the game, she got really tired. She didn't have a very big snack before the game....gotta remember to give her more food before the game next week.

BS is going to have a sleep over at her grandparents' house tomorrow night. She is looking forward to it. Little Squirt says she'll miss BS, but she isn't yet ready to spend the night. We're hoping she'll be a bit jealous of all the fun they have together. We also think they're going to miss each other and that might have an impact on LS.