Happy Birthday Talia!

What a fun birthday party we had tonight for Talia. The "family" (read Seth & Rebecca & Emma & Levi) came over with Seth's brother, Mick. We ate cake and ice cream. Well...some of us did. Since it's Passover, Seth, Rebecca and Mick were not partaking of cake (flour, leavening, you know). So they thought they'd have ice cream...our flavors (Talia's pick) were: Cake Ice Cream, and Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough. It was pretty funny. Luckily there was no actual cake in the first, just cake "flavoring."

We sang and ate cake and opened presents and the kids ran around like nut cases. The cake was orange flavored with cream cheese frosting and I have to say it's one of the best cakes I've ever made. The recipe is in the database at mrandrews.com. I ate some cake...going back to the no sugar thing tomorrow. Thanks to Rebecca for taking pictures, as I inadvertently left our camera on the back of the car a couple days ago, never to be seen again...after I drove somewhere...(argh!).

Spring Break Fun

It's been a wonderful spring break with just beautiful weather and lots of time spent outside in the yard. We had a couple play dates with Gracie and Aiden and Bridget who live about a block away.

We created a strawberry patch and we're just waiting for the strawberries to come in the mail (next week, they say, which in my opinion is about a month too late). Right now we have plenty of room for 25 plants.

Talia and Malachi have also been riding their bikes every day, and getting much better at it! No training wheels anymore. Talia likes to do "tricks" on her bike that involve balancing and putting her feet up on the crossbar. Ron doesn't even want to know about this (so don't read this, Ron).

You can see the great digging patch that M & T have created! Anyone who's hankering for a juicy mud pie can come right on over. Some of the dirt has been taken up to the front yard planting bed where I'm hoping to plant a black currant bush. The method of choice in transporting dirt these days (because I'm not sure that all of you are up on the latest technology) is via an old winter knit hat. Fill the hat chock full of dirt, stretch it out good and there ya go!

And finally, aren't those violets so fun! We pressed a page or so of them in Tali's flower press book.

Reasoning Abilities

Yesterday Ron did lots of laundry. He had folded it and it was on the couch. Malachi got a warm-up top from his pile. He said, as he found it "Mom, I just wore this two days ago!" Then, after about 3 seconds of thought, he said "You know, when we went to Utah, our washer and dryer got a good rest. Now they are working faster!"

These cute reasoning abilities are what happens when you sleep in the partially hanging off the bed position, demonstrated above.