Cody's B-day at school and egg hunt

Here's Cody's Birthday Day at school. First they start of by all drawing pictures for the birthday kid for a book.

Then he is present with his crown and wand during circle time.

After singing they blow out the candles.

They they put their wand to work, excusing the kids one by one for work time. He knows that in order to be excused you have to be sitting cross legged. He skipped over a number of people that were not following the rules, then finally came back to them later. They were all down, but on their knees. I asked me why he skipped his friends and he said, "They weren't criss-cross, apple-sauce!"

That was pretty much all the added excitement, we handed out goody bags at the end of class and were off!


A new thing we have in the classroom is a writing center. They can write and draw, cut, stamp and paste things together as they please. Cody had really taken to it and his backpack has been full of scraps and envelopes. This is the only picture I have from his egg hunt day. They took a few of the kids hunting, but only about half the class had pictures. ???

Ty's Egg Hunt

Both the boys had Spring Egg Hunts at school on Friday. I'm hoping to get pictures from Cody from the class picture mom soon.

Ty's class was super full on Friday, we had a new person and a couple visiting from the Wed class.

Snack time.

It was finally time to hunt for eggs.

Look mom!

We were finished gathering our 11 eggs so we stopped for a picture.
I didn't realize his hair had gotten so shaggy! That's my homely little guy!

New Puppy

No, not at our house, but at the IL's house!

Meet Coco...

She's so cute and snuggly! The boys have been getting to know her over the last couple of weeks. She's only a couple of months old, not sure of what all she is, lab & ??? So much fun!


Been a little slack on the posting, so busy this month and it just started! Now that we have Cody's Birthday fun over with we are getting ready for a trip to Boise. We get to fly up this time, YAY!! Only a couple of hours travel instead of the regular 9.
In between all this, plus a regular school week, we've been getting ready for the Niello Ranch Run. A charity car show to benefit Ride to Walk, a wonderful organization. Keith has his hands a little bit on the planning side, then really deep into the execution of the event. My job is baking and the bake sale table, so that's what I've been up to today. Knee deep in cupcakes, muffins, brownies and cookies. Tomorrow will be Rice Crispie Treats, frosting cupcakes and packaging everything that can go easily into a package.

Our Tuesday flight time is nipping at my heals, I just hope it doesn't run me over.

Happy Birthday Cody!

Wow! I say this every year, I can't believe your (insert birthday)!

We are having a 4 day Birthday celebration this year, and it's been fun! Friday, my parent's flew into town from Boise to help us celebrate, making the weekend extra special. Then on Saturday we hosted a backyard party for some of his friends. The new house has opened a great door for us, the ability to rent a bounce house. Upon it's arrival and setting up, Cody yells at me, "Mom! It's Ginormous!"

Tyler's response being, "Holey-ga-moly!"
It was beyond cool! A ton bigger than I thought it would be and it had a basketball hoop inside.

A do-as-you-please sort of party, that included the painting sun catchers, making necklace/bracelets, and playing with the racetrack Grandpa built. We also had hot dogs, chips, Jell-o squares and sizzly lemonade. Everything loosely based on a Cars theme.

Another must this year was the pinata. It was hard to find a larger pinata, but when we did, it was a pull string. I was told it would break, but after two round of kids, it wasn't budging. We had Cody pull the strings and it loosened it up, after one of our old brothers gave it a good whack, it finally let loose! I filled it with bags stuffed with goodies, kinda scrooges, but I hate it when one kids hoards all the good stuff!

I think Ty has a lot of pent up aggression, because he was slamming that thing!

After the pinata we sang and had cupcakes.

It was a blast! Once all our friends were gone, we had a quite time opening gifts. I thought we might fit this into the party this year, but everyone was having a good time, no use in stopping. This was the year of the Lego, he got 6 different sets! Needless to say, I'm gonna be busy for a while.

Here's a video of our day.

Monday at school we celebrated with the rest of his class. The celebration included him getting his crown and wand, blowing out the candles on the cake, and getting a book filled with pictures from his friends. It was also his second turn at taking Clifford home, a big Clifford with new books.

Tuesday, his actual birthday, we are heading over to Grandma & Grandpa S.'s for a small celebration, complete with presents, pizza and cake.


Happy Birthday Big Kid!

The Training wheels are off!

Cody decided Monday was the day to ride without training wheels. There are a few kids at school that already zip around the bike path and one of the other moms was helping her daughter on Mon. After some serious contemplation, and after the 2nd time she asked, he said he was ready to try. She said it took only a few minutes and he was off!
He came home and was excited to tell me, asking if he could practice some more at home.
Not totally sure of his new skills, we flipped his training wheels up and gave it a go. He was really riding!
Once Dad came home, he fixed his seat and took off the training wheels.
Tues we went on a looonnng bike ride to the store and back, he wanted practice after all.
Wed he made sure to show me how well he could ride at school on the smaller bikes. He did very well, but with the traffic of his other friends, he was a little nervous.

Here's a video I put together from our Wed practice sessions.

Another busy weekend...

So my days are backwards, but I'm not rearranging the pictures!

Sunday we headed up 49 to Murphys, CA, a little spot on the map, for a small VW gathering. We were in and out of some rain the whole way there, but the 2 hour drive was beautiful and well worth it once we go there.

On occasion, the boys hold hands with out prompt. They did this a bit on Sun and it makes me giggle every time.
There's a great park where the show was being held, right next to the creek/river that runs through the area. The boys really enjoyed this part of the trip.

Then we walked around and did a lot of this. Pointing and oohing, and ahhing. Tyler was sure to let us know, "that one has no hood on it!" if the case was so.
This area is also part of Calaveras county, home to all things frog. Every year there is a frog jumping competition in the area, complete with a festival. We will be going at some point, because you can't not go! So once we hit the county line, we saw statues and pictures of frogs everywhere.

In front of the library in Murphys:

Fire station in another town...

Real Estate office...

Cute worldly shop, donning the international frog...

Then there are the stickers, on the side of the chief's fire truck...

The street signs...

On the sidewalk...

Street light banners...

Then, set up like the Hollywood stars, all the former winners from the jump. Listed with the frog's name, distance, year and owners.

Yep, we'll be hitting that festival in the next couple of years.


Saturday was spent hanging out with Tyler. Keith and Cody left early in the morning to go drive a Smart Car in a St. Patrick's Day parade in Roseville. He had a blast! They had a red convertible, he was able to stand up and wave during the parade. Then went to breakfast with everyone else from the dealership that participated.

Poor Ty was stuck with me and the weekend shopping. But he didn't have to ride in the cart and was able to help be get things down and put things away, so he was happy!

Once everyone was home and down for naps, I set out to finish some gardening in the front yard. We asked Keith's sister to get us some mulch from the utility dist for free, so that gave me something to fill in the dirt bed with. It's not the prettiest of stuff, lots of leaves and such, but it will pack down some and then we can get some "pretty" bark to put on top of it. Only needing just a bit, instead of the whole bunch we would have needed to fill in the whole box.
I'm also trying newspaper as weed block for the first time. You lay down a thick layer of newspaper, soak it with water, then put your mulch/bark/rock on top of it. It decomposes naturally, and makes like a paper mache' block against the weeds. It has to be replaced yearly, but most the stuff you use needs to be anyway.
So here's the finished project, new flowers planted and a couple of statues moved to center stage.

The square pot has a few strawberry plants in it, so we'll see what that does.

The next yard project is to do redo the beds under the front windows. Two snarly rose bushes, weeds and weird grass are currently residing there. Their eviction notice is coming!

Do tell...
Is it too ghetto to plant a pumpkins in my front yard? Not like as the front yard, but in the bed under said windows?

Folsom Train Field Trip

The March field trip for preschool was a trip on the light rail to Folsom to the historical center.

After riding the train we headed over the to the center. We were broken into small groups and led around, visiting different stations. First we toured through an old caboose. Cody was happy that his latest girlfriend was in his group, the trail together, with brief periods of holding hands.

After the caboose we looked through old horse-drawn carriages, an old hunter's cabin, farm implements, then put the kids to work. First they were shown how you used to get water from the pump, each of them were given a chance to try. They have a recycle system that pumps the water out, then pushes it back through to pump out again, learning some about conservation.
Next was showing them how they used to grind down the stones. Cody on one side, two other friends on the other.
We were then taken to pan for gold, they have actual gold sprinkled through-out if you are lucky. No one in our group found any, but the group leader found some earlier in the morning and saved it out so we could see what we were looking for. Then he passed out "gold nuggets" to all the kids to keep.

The blacksmith showed us some of the practical things he could make, like horse shoes, tools, and a industrial strength bubble blower.
On our way back to meet the light rail we stopped by the old turn table. They have restored it, but it's where it's always been. Things have come up and down around it, but it's stayed there. Pretty cool.

Tyler's moving up...

Well, actually still down, just with more room to spread out! We were supposed to make a dump run this weekend, so I saw it as the perfect opportunity to break down his crib and move in the twin. The crib is currently listed on Craigslist, but the mattress has seen better days, so it's on it's way out. Last night was his first night and he did very well, only getting up 2 times and was asleep around his regular time. He stayed in bed all night, but did give me the stare down about 7:30, we'll have to work on that.

Currently the boys are playing, and Ty's bed is the house, the toy room is the garage and our room is the burger place. Cody just ordered a han-ga-burger, Ty ordered a salad with Ranch. Talk about night and day!