Baby Birds

At the Pine View Rehabilitation Center (where my mother is recovering from her broken hip), there is a small tree on their patio where a brave mother bird made a nest and laid her eggs. My kids loved to check up on the little blue eggs every time we visited my mother. Well today the babies hatched! They are the cutest little things. We had a chance to take a picture while Mommy bird was off finding food. It will be fun for the kids to watch these little birds grow.

New Phones!

Dave and I have finally caught up with the rest of the world and traded our old phones in for new ones that have picture taking capabilities. I am pretty impressed... they take half way decent pictures. I thought I would share a few.

At Austin's last baseball game, I was a little too involved with cheering for Austin, and I wasn't watching Ivy as closely as I should have. Next thing I know I look over and there is Ivy climbing to the top of the chainlink fence. What a monkey!
This is my motley crew..... Not too bad for a camera phone!

Graduation

Erin graduated from pre-school!!

Erin and Austin both went to the same pre-school, Miss Helen's pre-school. I have been SO impressed with her. She has taught my kids so much. I even have had Ivy signed up to be in her pre-school since she was born (Her classes are really hard to get in to and she has LONG waiting lists.)

Erin has been in her class for 2 years now and absolutely loves Miss Helen. Every year Miss Helen does a graduation at Barkers fish farm. The kids do a presentation where they say the pledge (one thing they have worked on all year long) and they sing songs like Miss Mary Mack, Going on a Bear Hunt, Teddy Bear, etc. After the presentation Miss Helen presents each of the graduates as they walk over a cute little bridge to represent crossing over to kindergarten. Then everybody fishes and there is a large BBQ. It is such a fun event!

Here is Erin as she is walking over the bridge.

Erin and one of her little pre-school friends, Michael.

Erin decided AFTER she caught her fish that she didn't like the idea of catching fish! She was mortified by the whole process.

Ivy, however caught 2 and would have caught more if we hadn't stopped her. (The fish are pretty easy to catch obviously!) Austin caught a couple of fish also but was down at a different fish hole with Grandpa so I have no pictures of his fish :(

Erin, Michael, and Miss Helen.

Fish, Fish, and more Fish!

Last week for Mother's Day, the kids gave me a fish tank w/ accessories. With my mother being in the hospital we didn't get a chance to get it set up until Friday night. On Saturday I took the kids to PETCO and let them all choose some fish. Austin chose two orange ones (Stripes and Tiger), Erin chose two white ones (Strawberry Shortcake and Blueberry Muffin), and Ivy chose two black ones (Dora and Boots). I know in the picture below it looks like we only have one but, we really had six darling little fish.
Well, come Sunday morning, Austin comes running into my bedroom (he being an early riser and me... not so much) yelling "Mom, Mom come look at the fish." I thought for sure they had all died! I was WAY off.....Ivy's fish (we assume Dora) had babies over night! We went from 6 fish to 9! In the pictures below you can see the little black specks by the plants, that would be the babies. I told the kids not to get too excited because the bigger fish will probably eat them, but here we are 10 hours later, and we still have 9 fish!

Make-up?

Last week my cousin Shelley put a post on her blog about her toddler putting make-up on all over her face. Well at least it was make-up.... Ivy decided since she couldn't find any make-up she would try out MARKER! Pretty cute don't ya think?

At least she looks a little remorseful! Guess I will put the markers on a higher shelf in the toy room.

Happy Birthday Erin!

Erin turned five (clear back on April 28th). It has taken me forever to put her pictures on the blog because last week our hard drive crashed and I have been without a computer for over a week! So now that I finally have it back I can blog again :)

Erin's birthday started with Erin calling me while I was at work...."mom this is Erin, can I get my ears pierced?" I was a bit taken back by the question and I told her we would talk about it when I got home from work. She said, "Well dad and I are already here and I am sitting in the chair!" Needless to say.... she now has her ears pierced!

We had a family party for her. She chose to have a Strawberry Shortcake theme.

A picture of her cake (obviously.)

Here are Ivy and Erin sporting their new stylish sunglasses.

The day after Erin's birthday we had her first ever friend party. We had a "fairy" themed party at the Ogden Treehouse Museum. We are faithful members here. They are GREAT with kids. They started the party off with stories and crafts. They then let the kids have some free time to play with the millions of things they have at the museum. We ended the party with cake, ice cream, and presents. Erin said this was the BEST BIRTHDAY EVER!

Ivy in the music room.

Some of Erin's friends playing on the fire truck.
The tee-pee (is that politically correct?)

This is their newest feature....a long curvy slide that comes down out of their GIANT treehouse. It was the biggest hit of all that we did.

Ivy again.... She ran around telling me to take her picture here, take it here, mom take it again here. What a girl!

They do not allow candles at the Treehouse so they provide a cute windmill thing for them to blow instead of candles.

Ivy loved this giant chess game.

This is Erin's little friend Ashley. She fell and scraped her knee on her way into the building. She cried and cried. However, this picture was taken about an hour later. Any time someone asked her how her knee was she was able to produce a stream of fresh tears! Poor thing.

Some of the group jamming to the beat in the music room.