Happy Birthday Marc!

Marc became "one year older and wiser too" last week. He decided he wanted me to make him an apple pie instead of a normal birthday cake. I would take pie over cake any day, so of course I agreed. Yes, Owen has no pants on in this picture, and yes, he is holding the flame gun. I promise that it has a child-proof feature on it. My kids believe that it can "sense" when an adult is holding it (because that is what I told them) and it won't work if a little kid tries to use it. In reality, it is just really hard to use dexterity-wise, so you have to be about 21 to have the physical capacity to squeeze a flame out of it. It brings a smile to my face to watch them look for the "kid sensor" on it though. The joys of parenting :).

As you can see, Owen was quite disappointed that we didn't really let him light dad's "cake" up. To add to his disappointment, dad only wanted to put 6 candles on his cake. Two columns of three to signify "33." Owen was hoping for something a lot more spectacular. He knew how old dad really is.

Here we are, singing the birthday song. Owen has cheered up now. You can tell Maddy and Eva are really into it.

You can't really tell who is having a birthday in this picture. Eva looks absolutely delighted to be in front of those candles.....AND she is turning six this year. I will have to be careful to archive this one correctly :). Candles are lit, and we are ready to blow them out.....

Once again, Eva's birthday? Marc's Birthday? Hard to tell. After the pie festivities Marc and I were off on a hot date. We went clothes shopping for Marc. He still had not spent a Brooks Brothers gift certificate that I bought for him for our Anniversary last year, so we were looking for some new work garb. We had no clothes shopping luck (they respectfully told Marc that his sizing is so "unusual" that we should have his clothing hand tailored :), so we went to the grocery store! I know, what a fun birthday treat. But truthfully, it was fun just to be out together sans children....even at the grocery store. Thanks for taking the birthday pictures and watching the children Maria!

Friends in Town

The Hansen family came to visit NYC a few weeks back. They are good friends of ours. Marc was on the track team with Jeff Hansen way back in the glory days of BYU. The Hansen's brought along their adorable daughters. Here, the girls are paying their respects to Balto in Central Park
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Eva had Maddy loved having some playmates to sight-see with. Unfortunately it was freezing, freezing cold for part of the week they were here.


Here we are, all together enjoying some Patsy's pizza. I think it is hilarious that all of the kids are on one side of the table, and all of the parents are on another- a fact I didn't realize this until I saw the picture afterward. I think after a long day of sight seeing, we needed some distance :).

The whole family, all together. The kids are gulping down their bounty from the M&M's store in Times Square. If you are looking for a cheap place to buy M&M's, this would not be it :).

In all, we had a great couple of days together. We took our kids to a college/professional track meet in Manhattan. Owen absolutely loved watching the pole vaulters. The girls liked watching the races and cheering for BYU.

Valentine's Day 2009

We made some heart decorations to hang from our dining room lights earlier in the week.

We woke up really, really early. To see how truly photogenic my little ones are in the wee hours of the morning, click on this picture. The kids were tired because we had to have our Valentine's Day breakfast before Eva had to leave for her test at 8:00. Yes, Eva had a test on Valentine's Day. I bet you didn't think the Dept. of Ed. gave tests on Saturday. We are living proof to the contrary.

Then we had breakfast! Heart pancakes. Heart Marshmallows in our hot cocoa. Heart shaped strawberries.

I love these people.

Tea for Three

Because we are home schooling this year, we have a lot of flexibility in our day. This can equate to some pretty fun outings in NYC. I am not a fan of braving the crowds of tourists on the weekend with my 3 kids in tow, but I love a weekday of city exploring. On this particular day we headed over to Alice's Tea Cup. It is a mildly famous tea room here in NYC that is kid-friendly, and surprisingly pretty reasonably priced. We shared the Mad Hatter special, which means we stuffed ourselves for under $35- scones, two pots of tea, sandwiches, and dessert.

Eva appears to really enjoy herbal tea in this picture. She is my actress. She didn't enjoy it, even with lumps of sugar and cream added. But, she did enjoy the scones.

Madeline was not a tea fan either, but she liked the tea sandwiches, and loved being sprinkled with "fairy dust" as she entered the restaurant.

My girls' favorite thing about lunch was the whipped butter. You can see it in the bottom tier of stand. They wanted to eat it by the spoonful. Yum. Overall, this was a fun memory to have with the girls. They loved pretending to be "proper", and having time out with just mom.

Good Reads

These have both been on my "to read" list for a while. It took a long bout with the flu to finally get through them. Both were fantastic reads by Michael Pollan. These are not diet books, and no- the author will not try to convert you to Vegetarianism.

Much of what is discussed and presented corresponded with the feelings I had while studying nutrition as an undergrad. I graduated a little disenchanted with the food guide pyramid, and the FDA, and the government's hand in our food supply. Read these if you want to know why (or get ready for a really long conversation with me :) Additionally, much of what is discussed coincides with how I look at food from a religious perspective. As said on the cover of the second book, "eat food, not too much, mostly plants."

Start with Omnivore's Dilemma, and stay with it. He can be a little meandering at times, but he does fully make his point after 400+ pages :). Finish it off with In Defense of Food. I can't promise you will change the way you eat (although I would be surprised if you didn't) but I can promise that you will understand why some people choose to eat differently.

Why do some people spend so much money on Organic/Local/Grass-Fed/Free-Range food? Aren't they a bunch of environmental loonies?? I mean c'mon it is just food.

Read the books, and you decide.

Ice Skating

The girls took Ice Skating lessons together this past Fall/Winter. Bryant Park has an outdoor rink where skating is free, and lessons are pretty reasonable. The rink is normally super packed (like most "free" things in NYC) but because we home school, we can hit the rink at 9 AM and have it pretty much to ourselves.

This picture is of their first lesson. Eva could hardly stay up on the ice. Madeline was pretty steady, but was pretty much shuffling most of the time.

Before they took lessons, they spent most of their time circling the periphery of rink, holding on to the gate as they shuffled along.

Here is Eva getting a little more confidence with Mom's help.

I feel bad I didn't take more footage of their ice skating. Their last class was two weeks ago, and both of them had improved considerably. This is something we will definitely do again next year.

Reading can be exhausting....

I found Owen like this the other day. While I was working on homework with Madeline and Eva in the Dining Room, he decided to bring his pillow and two favorite blankets over to the couch and snuggle up with a good book.
I could faintly hear him happily "reading" his book out loud, and then he became completely quiet. When I went to check on him, he was peacefully dozing under the pages of his favorite read, Blues Clues.