Penn State Chics Dig Nerds

At least I think spring is coming.  It sure has not felt like it yet.  At lunch time when I took these pictures, it was still only 36 degrees.  I guess it is warm enough for the daffodils! This is the only place that they are blooming.  The ones at the front of the house have just barely poked through the ground.  This spot gets more sun than anywhere else on our property. Miniature Daffodils The kids, still decked out in their hats and mittens. Can you tell that I am excited for spring?  Most of our activities are done for the winter, so now we need some warmer weather to play outside (comfortably)!

At Christmas, I compiled our pictures from 2010 into a slide show with music.  I put it onto a DVD with all of our videos from this past year and gave it to some relatives.  Here is just the slide show of pictures:

We have been battling head colds the past few days, so we decided to stay at home tonight.  As a special treat, we mixed up some brownies.  It has become a little more complicated to do things like this since both kids want to be involved. Now for the best part.... licking the spoons!

I'm a little late putting on our Saint Patricks Day pictures.... but better late than never! We spent a lot of the day with Will and Kelly.  Some activities were planned for the kids to enjoy their Saint Patricks Day.  I cannot take credit for any of these creative activities!  We cut paper-- which was a huge hit!  Then, we glued the bits of green paper to make a shamrock shape on the tan paper. For lunch, we served macaroni and cheese dyed green by spinach puree.  It tasted good!  Plus, thanks to Kelly's creativity, we had kiwi cut into the shape of shamrocks. We had shamrock shaped breadsticks that were glazed with spinach puree, too. It was so nice on Thursday.  The kids played outside a lot and it was really hard to get them back inside.  We all really enjoyed the MUCH warmer temperatures. At one point, Brady went to pull up his foot and he pulled up his leg and stuck out his lip.  His shoe had fallen to the ground belo...

Today was Brady's 2nd birthday.  Natalee insisted that we needed to make some mini cupcakes to take to the community center with us today-- so we did.  Everyone stopped playing for a minute to sing to Brady and eat mini cupcakes! I still cannot convince Brady that it is his birthday.  He is still singing, "Happy birthday, mommy!" We already had a mini party on Sunday with Todd & Kate and Gram & Pap.  Tonight, we just invited the Ruckers over for dinner to celebrate Brady's birthday with us. I guess Brady has a good technique because he blew out his candles rather easily! YUM! Natalee was quite pleased with the cupcakes that she helped to make. All the kids were extremely willing to "help" Brady open his presents.  Please excuse Meg's nose!

This morning we made some macaroni necklaces.  It was still way too wet outside to do very much.  I wasn't sure how Brady would do with this activity, but he actually did very well.  Both kids concentrated and made beautiful necklaces. The concentration! Ta-da!

We had a surprise snow on Sunday evening.  We were supposed to get a lot of rain.  All rain.  However, it switched over to snow.  And, we ended up with at least 7 inches of snow!  So, the kids and I went outside to enjoy the snow.  It sure was pretty.  It did not make good sled riding, however.  Our sleds just stuck to it. It was so pretty sticking to the branches. Would you like a snowball?

Natalee's drawing skills have improved a lot lately, so I thought I should show them.  She is now applying more of her imaginations and observations to paper. This is from the library last week.  We traced her hand to form the duck.  Then she cut it out and glued it onto the paper (the beak and legs were pre-cut).  Natalee decided to add grass, sunshine and some flowers.  I was impressed that she wrote her name so small this time! A few nights ago she rather quickly drew our family.  She told me there was something wrong with her picture of me (no hair!).  I loved that she put a goatee on her dad.  She gave herself plenty of hair and then put short hair on Brady and her dad.  Lastly, she added some sunshine.  While she did not take much time to put this picture together, I thought the elements of it were very cute!

This past Sunday, we had the pleasure of enjoying a PSU women's basketball game with the Buckles family.  I did not take any pictures, so these pictures are courtesy of the Buckles.  This was the PinkZone game, so there were quite a few people there and there was a lot of pink.  Natalee caught a t-shirt today!  She and Lilly both stood up and cheered.  I was hoping the cheerleader would give it to Lilly, but she actually gave it to Natalee.  She had been wanting the cheerleaders to give her one all year!  One of the folks around us had given one to her earlier in the year that they caught.  So, she nicely gave hers to Lilly. It appears like Lilly is choking Natalee, but they are actually tickling each other! Brady begged Lilly for some of her pretzels :) The girls got into the cheering.  Everyone at the game was given a pink pom-pom. After the game we went to Long John Silvers (yuck!).  We had won a free meal there through ...