Wordless Wednesday..(obligatory Princess shot)

For the grandparents...

In with the Old

In an effort to declutter, I've recently been going thru all the boxes that have been moving with us from one assignment to another, but haven't been unpacked for years. They've remained unopened for 452 (read 5) moves and I keep thinking I should just get rid of them--toss them to the curb without a glance back. I mean what could be so important that I haven't missed in the last 7 1/2 years? But of course, I couldn't resist-- what if there was something really important in those dusty, tape starting to curl up, faded boxes? So after unpacking them, there is nothing of importance to report-- some old decor stuff, like the grapevine wreath laden with pink and blue flowers with lace (ick-- what was I thinking??!??), a couple of misshaped melted candle-like-things, barbed wire (don't ask) and my old Calvin and Hobbes books. I pulled out the books, set them aside and continued my task at hand. When finished I couldn't find the books-- walked outside where Two was engrossed...

I have to say, I thought he'd be laughing a little more while reading-- I know I certainly did. When I brought that little fact to his attention, he replied, "Yeah, but I bet your mom didn't have a camera in your face either." Touchy, touchy....

Then I knew he was messing with me when he did this:

April Shower of Photos (catchin' up)

The monkeys are constantly back out on the trampoline since Spring has finally sprung. Thought I'd share some recent pics of their fun. I decided to mess with the color a bit to make things interesting, and here's what I came up with..

By George, we've had a great day!

One of the boys most favorite saints is St. George. How could he not be-- knight, dragon, blood, fighting... What's not to love?

Today we read this and talked about what kind of dragon St. George might have encountered. All I can say is, wow, what great and VIVID imaginations these monkey boys have.

Oops better run, methinks I hear dragon wails and cries of human victory!

April Showers--day 22

It was a good idea--the whole 'go about the house and create an art project outta random stuff' to celebrate/honor Earth Day and then post the pictures here. Well that didn't happen. I'm sure those of you who know me had a nice laugh over the very idea. Hey, sometimes my follow through is great. It is. Sometimes....Cut it out; I can still hear some of you laughing.

Anyoldhoo, we did do something 'green' for Earth Day. We went about and gathered all these up to be recycled.

There is a really great program on how to recycle old Crocs (aka: The best and most comfortable no-stink kid shoe I've ever seen) It's called SolesUnited and you can read all about it and how it works here. Fabulous.

We also watched some of Planet Earth. Then the boys all thought of different ways/means of conservation and illustrated them in their notebooks.

Oh, and we took in lots of fresh air today and wore green while doing so.(does that count?)

Today is....Earth Day

Your Life is 68% Green

You live a very green life, and you're aware of how your actions help the earth. Of course, it's hard to be totally green. But when you make a tradeoff, you know why you're making it.

How Green Is Your Life?

I think for today, we'll scrounge around the house and create something artsy with our recycled finds. Sounds good in theory, doesn't it?? I'll post pics later of our masterpieces. ('Cause just in case you don't know by now, every child's artwork is a masterpiece-- at least that's what they try and convince me of when they catch me pictchin' the 547th drawing of our sick family...)

MVP

***WARNING*** This is another LACROSSE post, so those of you that might find it boring-o, please skip-o. ;-)

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So this weekend should have been filled with FOUR lax games. However, weather and TRAFFIC (grumble, grumble) narrowed our schedule down to one. Ah, well, such is life. It was nice not to have to split up the gang though and give focus to One, who by the way, was just named MVP. This is what his coach had to say:

I just wanted to pass along our Game MVP's for last Saturday's game, our first MVP and captain did an excellent job on defense and has been doing an excellent job on defense the last three games. At halftime he asked me if he could sit out for a while because he said something was hurting him, I looked at him and asked are you really hurt or if I put you in on offense with a short stick will that speed up your recovery and he smiled, so I then knew that the pain if any was not too serious. I then told him that if he really wanted I would sit him out for a bit but the way he was playing defense with scooping and clearing that he was doing a great job and that I needed him out there as he was my main guy on defense clearing the ball. I told him the pain that I thought he was feeling was more around the lung area and just being tired from all that running he had been doing and he again smiled and said okay coach I can play, he went out in the second half of the game and continued to have a great game and from what Coach Walker saw he took a pretty good hit at one point and got up and continued playing.

There was one play I'm not sure if you could hear it but Arlington had the ball on the ground and they were in front of our goal and trying to fight for the ball, then out of nowhere one of my defensive guy starts pushing hard at the Arlington player-- but the funniest was hearing that player say, "This is my house". Yes that was your son, screaming "Get out of here, this is my house" it was good to know that at least I had one boy taking pride in the defense. It was just before halftime, and he had the Arlington player looking at him funny and saying, "okay,okay".... So that was my laugh from that game.....

Way to go One! And of course, as any proud Momma would do, I have to post some pics from the game. Here's just some good ol' defense:

And here, One gets a hold of the ball and makes for a great fast break, takes the ball down field, makes a great pass that leads to a team goal.

A swing, and a miss......

"Run Foooorrrrrest, ruun...."

Ha. Scenes like this always remind me of The Gingerbread Man. "Run, run as fast as you can. You can't catch me, I'm the Gingerbread Man lacrosse playin' kid (.??..)"

A little pitiful, isn't it? In my world I relate almost every situation in life to a children's picture book.

Where you want to be in 3 years??

This was a huge poster advertisement that was behind my head while we were riding the Metro the other day. I caught Two reading it and heard him say in all seriousness after doing so, "Wisconsin".

The Papal Chase-- in detail

This was such a once in a lifetime event for us that I wanted to catalog it in detail.
We left the house at around 7:30 on Wednesday morning.
We drove into DC to Pentagon City where we parked and boarded the Metro.

Took the Metro to the Foggy Bottom-GWU station.

Staked our claim Found our spot at Washington Circle around 9:30 and began our wait.

We brought activities for the kids to do:

Alright-- truth be told; I didn't have it together enough before the event to have done the posters ahead of time, so we had to bring the stuff with us. But, hey, it all worked out...

There were plenty of security folks: secret service, police, bomb dogs, motorcycle police, helicopters, etc.

The boys were well entertained:

We managed to catch up with our eldest who went with a local ConQuest group.

They were all there in bright yellow shirts. You could see 'em comin' from a mile away:

Then the excitement began to build as The Holy Father started to come around the turn. He paused for a few seconds just before he entered the the road where we were. I got all teary eyed and my heart began to race.. then his driver must have wanted to make up for lost time, because it seemed like he just raced by. :-( But not before I snapped these:

The lighting was terrible for taking pics-- I was staring into direct sunlight, but it's him! And we were there--20 feet away. And it was awesome. I even caught a picture of him waving at the monkeys. At this point on the route, mine are the only littles in his line of sight. They were waving and holding their bright yellow signs. Dh's video confirms it.


When it was over, the monkeys were a bit disappointed-- they thought he would go by at Disney parade speed. They wanted it to last longer but were still thrilled that they saw him and he waved to them. Only the princess was still bottom lipped about the whole thing. "Momma, I taut I cud hug him. I wanna hug him."
Me too Sister...

Papal Chase

Today was GREAT!! We spent the morning readying ourselves for the pope's visit. Made it out to DC in plenty of time to get a great front-row-joe spot (we were about 20 feet away from him as his popemoblie came by). Lots of pictures, but that'll have to wait-- it's late and we're going house hunting tomorrow.. but I'll leave you with this: