Playing Catch Up

Do you ever feel like you are living in an alternate universe? We just took a family mini-vacation over the past few days and I completely unplugged from work, email, facebook, cell phone... It was an enjoyable vacation :) And I feel like I "woke-up" to some things that I haven't been thinking about, focusing on, keeping up with. One of them was this blog (of course, since I'm sitting here posting now). The other was our family photographs. Kirsten takes really great pictures and consistently loads them to Snapfish so family and friends can see them, order them, etc. My job is to order prints and keep them chronologically filling our family photo albums that neatly line the bookshelves in the spare room. Well... when moving said albums, I was horrified to notice that I shamefully haven't done that part of the job since October 2007! In case you were wondering, it is now November 2010... I'm more than 3 years behind :( I guess in the scheme of things, if this is the only thing I have let slip in my crazy life full of deadlines and responsibilities, I shouldn't be too hard on myself. But this somehow feels like a BIG hole in what I enjoy doing and what I pride myself on providing for our family archives (not sure if that's the right word, but I'll use it anyway).
So, I just ordered 400+ prints from Snapfish to get us caught up through January 2008... hey, it's a start!
Now to find some photo albums and get ready for the onslaught. I'll never really catch up, since Kirsten will continue to take lots of great photos. But maybe I'll get within 12 months of reality!

Emmett's 6th Birthday

Great pool party at our place! Happy 6th Birthday Emmett... such a big boy now! Look out first grade, here he comes :)

Rockin' 50s Show

Emmett's kindergarten class was part of a 50's singing and dancing extravanganza at Henry Elementary. It was amazing! The kids all dressed up and they sang and danced really well. This is a picture of the boys with E's kinder teacher, Ms. Woolen. And another during our walk to the school before the performance. Such cute, tough little guys!

Water Day at Henry!

They did a full water day at Henry today, with the Fire Department and major quirt guns and everything. The kids and faculty loved it!

The chicks hatched!

Emmett's kindergarten class obtained 17 fertilized chicken eggs in early March. They were meticulously maintained by his kinder teacher, Ms. Woolen, with Kirsten's supervision (as the community chicken expert). 16 of them hatched over Spring Break last week and they were so tiny and cute. We sold 8 of them to community members looking to start their own home flocks and gave 2 to another kindergarten family. SInce hatching, they have lived on/near our breakfast bar in a rubbermaid bin... until this morning. This morning, Kirsten built them a pen using some old shelving that was in our salvage pile. The 10 day old chicks got to spend their first time in the dirt and the sunshine. They are so cute!

That's our dog, Maxie, trying to figure out how she can catch and eat them. She hasn't been too happy about us having baby chicks in the house and out of her reach, but she's getting used to them slowly. Emmett is also sitting in the pen with them, he is proving to be a very good chicken Daddy.

Our beets are ready!

Kirsten harvested our first beet today. Time to figure out how to pickle them and also try sauteeing some of the greens.

Can you see the zucchini flowering behind her? We already have more than 4 zucchini growing, plus some very nice crookneck squash comming in... Our garden has been very fruitful so far and seems to be coming along nicely. Have yet to see any tomatoes? So we'll see about those.

First miniature golf outing

We took the boys to their first putt-putt golf experience today. Totally fun! Surprisingly, Emmett's first shot on the first hole was a hole-in-one... I am not joking! We were so excited :) He is really good at seeing the angles. He got another hole-in-one later inthe game too, but was very upset when he didn't win the free game by getting the center hole on the 18th.

Harrison wasn't too into it, except when there were those "secondary" holes that led through tunnels to another part of the hole. He enjoyed trying those out to see where the ball would go. It was pretty funny that he was golfing in his Superman costume :)

We all had a great time!

Hoppy Easter!

We had a great Easter Sunday. The Easter Bunny brought Emmett a remote control robot in an "egg collecting" basket that he can use to gather our real eggs from the hen house. Harrison received the coolest green Bakugan guy ever, delivered in a new bike helmet. We spent the morning with various egg hunts and a couple of outdoor yard projects, then headed to Grandma and Papa's house for a nice Easter dinner. The weather was gorgeous, nothing like Tucson in the Spring!

Here's a great picture of the cousins during an Easter egg hunt in Grandma and Papa's backyard. Great job getting them all to look at the camera, Kirsten :)