tuesday's tadpoles

They've arrived.

The directions insist on using bottled spring water, which seems a bit high maintenance for creatures that naturally spawn in dirty ponds. We shall see how long these beautys last. For now, they are all the talk around here.

ants

Dylans most prized Christmas gift this year?

Uncle Miltons Ant Farm

(ants sold separately )


For a small sum of cash, plus shipping and handling, Uncle Milton promises to mail your ants, when the weather is permissible for shipping in your area.


Needless to say, Dylan has learned the virtue of patience. Back in the thick of winter, we would hear "Are my ants coming today?" all. day. long. Sometime mi-March, he gave up.


Well, a few weeks back, the glorious day finally arrived! A delightful little cardboard box of Uncle Milton goodness came addressed to Dylan.

It actually caught us by surprise!


Tim spent the morning with the kids putting it together. They really were quite fascinating to watch.

It's hard to pinpoint exactly when their troubles began.

Perhaps it was when Stella took the lid off and tipped it on its side.

Perhaps it was the "earthquake" Dylan keeps talking about... referring to when he brought them to pre-school, and 18 little kids passed them between themselves, some tipping them side to side.

Perhaps it was the piece of of ham that Tim lovingly slipped them from his dinner plate.

Perhaps it was a combination of all of these events.

Regardless, after 1 week all of the ants were dead.

And after one more week, Dylan finally accepted this fact....and stopped trying to persuade us that one was moving, or that they were sleeping or taking a break.

So, this past weekend, Sydney and Dylan overturned rocks and caught a new batch of ants the old- fashioned way.

Sadly, they are now all deceased as well. Perhaps these less civilized ants would have appreciated my casserole.

Good thing we are still awaiting the tadpoles he sent away for!

5 months

At 5 months, Ellery is getting happier and more content by the day! She is definately aware when you walk out of a room, and loves to be right in on the action. She is content playing on the floor with a sibling on either side talking to her. She does pretty well, considering the kids are always right in her face. She seems to notice and enjoy the TV much more than any of our other kids did at this age. She smiles and talks/coos quite freely now, and will usually laugh back at you if you laugh at her. She's working on sitting up, and does pretty well if you sit right behind her.

Her torticollus has improved alot.

She is sturdy! I weighed her on my scale, and it seems she weighs 17lbs. already!

We recently began feeding her real food. You can tell by this picture her thoughts on oatmeal. We tried a few times and she would have nothing to do with it, so we moved on to sweet potatoes. After a few tries she seems to like them! We slipped some to Stella however, and she does not :)

As far as sleeping goes, we are still working on sleeping through the night...but she's making progress. She can do it if she wants to. Some nights she will sleep till 5am, while other nights she is up crying every half hour, and I'm hastily wedging her pacfier in her mouth with her pink stuffed pig. During the days that we are home all day, she seems to be getting in to a bit of a routine, taking real naps. Lately tho, between 3 kids playing soccer, school, and scheduled apts., I always seems to be waking her...but she's learning to roll with it.

I LOVE this age. Still a little non-moving baby, yet so responsive, happy, smiley, chatty, loving and squeezable!

tv junkies

reason #434 why i love this person...

because dinner is served... while holding 2 screaming little girls, wearing my pink crocs, on a less than manly grill.

you know you have boys....

...when this is what you find when you walk back in the room :)

baton rouge

When Tim informed me he needed to go to Louisiana for work, I knew I needed to find a way to come along :)

So... we dropped the 4 big kids at Tims parents, and continued on to Chicago with Elle, and spent the night with my parents. We got up @ 2:30 am the next morning, left Elle with my parents, and caught a Coach bus to O'Hare. All went smooth at the airport, and time flew by catching up with some of Tims old high school friends that just so happened to be on our flight!

Well, they began boarding our plane, and the lady taking boarding passes quickly learned that something wasn't right because everyones tickets were beeping!

As it turns out, they had changed airplanes overnight. Our plane had been downsized, all seats had been re-assigned, and 30 people were now without seats. We happened to be 2 of those 30...sigh. I had visions of our honeymoon all over again as I watched our plane take off without us... (we missed our honeymoon flight, tho we were staying @ Hilton O'Hare, thus resulting in 8 hours of airport sitting)

It was a bit tense, due to the long line of angry people that needed to be re-assigned, just wanting to reach their Spring Break destinations. After a lot of back and forth, they confirmed us on a later flight to Memphis. But, due to all the Spring Breakers heading south, most flights were full or overbooked out of Memphis, so we couldn't get a confirmed flight out till 7:40 in the evening ....tho we would be standby for all earlier flights.

Well, needless to say, I was that really annoying customer in Memphis that just kept going up to the counter. I just didn't want him to forget about us :) It worked, Tim and I squeaked on and got the last 2 seats! We made it to Baton Rouge by late afternoon.

By the time we got there, we had been traveling for about 14 hours. We got our rental car and headed to our hotel room, eager to just relax, go out for dinner, and put the day behind us. Well, the pictures of the hotel we viewed online didn't quite match the accomodations we recieved. So, the next morning I dropped Tim off to take the first 2 of his tests, and I promptly checked us out of the hotel.

I drove around in search of a Starbucks and new hotel, and stumbled upon a very quaint area of town. The streets were lined palm trees, complete with uniqe outdoor shopping and restaurants. Yeah! It nearly matched the picture I cooked up in my mind of how it was supposed to look! A few hours later I picked Tim up from his test. We ate at one such cute little restaurant outside near a fountain, watched birds search for crumbs on the pavement, and enjoyed the warmth of the sun on our skin while we sipped our coffee. It was so nice. After lunch, I promptly left Tim on a bench to study and took off to take a peek in all the delightful little shops.

Later that day we went for a walk through a nature preserve...aka swamp, in hopes of taking a picture of an alligator for the kids...their only request. I was scared stiff after seeing all the pictures of snakes people took in the nature center, so I wasn't the greatest company at first. No alligators, but we did stumble upon 1 snake, a few lizards, and a guy from Holland, MI lol.

The next day, Tim had 2 more tests in the morning. He was done by 10am, so we decided to drive down to New Orleans for the afternoon. Delightful for me, too many people for the likings of Tim.

All in all it was a very nice, much needed little respite....for me at least :) We spent many, many hours eating out, talking, stolling, shopping, enjoying the sunshine, and just being together.

Tim passed all of his tests, so that's great too :)