Thursday, April 3, 2014

Easter Eggs

 Easter is a approaching so we engaged in the traditional dying of the eggs.  Our family is not too fond of hard boiled eggs, so I blow out the innards instead.  This results in hollow eggs to dye and a bucket of egg yolks for use in french toast and popovers.   We used the wires run through the hollow eggs in order to hold them down in the dye.  With two boys, we had to have enough bowls and colors for everyone :-) 

Tamlin has always been a haphazard egg dye-er.  He tends to favor the greens and blues with lots of chalk designs.


 Jude was much more (seemingly) thoughtful with his eggs.  He would deliberately choose his color...or multiple colors.  He tried for purple, but ended with a bluish-brownish color often times.  He liked reds and yellows the best...and stars, lots of stars drawn with chalk.

Both boys look so serious here!
And you can see their latest hair trims via the "House of Mom's Scissors."  I did keep Jude's hair slightly longer, but trimmed up the sides and shaved the bottom, giving him the uber-sheik bowl cut.

 How funny are these two photos?!  I don't know how I got nearly the same expression on both their faces.  Oh, you can certainly tell that they are our sons.

And here are some of our awesome egg results = beautiful.  The other great thing about blown eggs is that I can keep a few from year to year for our Eastery displays.  I love making these memories with the boys...especially because I can remember dying eggs with Grandma Elsie in her kitchen (with the big boiler full of dozens of hard boiled eggs).   Happy times...and hoping for spring to come quickly.

Monday, March 31, 2014

Memory Monday - Parlor Trick

I remember my dad telling us that he had a horrible accident when he was younger and that he could now remove his finger at will.

Yes.  The ol' pull off my finger tip parlor trick.

When I was little, I was quite convinced this was totally real.  Eventually, when I was older, I did figure it out and perfected my own technique for pulling off the trick.  Now, I have a captive audience :-) 

I showed Tamlin and Jude that I could pull off my finger.  Cool.  Well, Tamlin thought it was wicked cool but Jude was very worried.  Jude is also worried when someone "steals" his nose too.  "Momma's finger owie?  Finger gone?" 

Oh well.
I had better learn a new awesome trick soon.

Sunday, March 30, 2014

New toothbrushes

Toothbrushes that have a light-up timer...Makes brushing teeth at night uber-fun. 
They both insist on turning off the lights now.

 Green means go

 Yellow means almost done.


 Time's up!

 Tamlin:  We brushed our teeth!
Jude: Yeah!
 Tamlin: See!  I have clean teeth!
Jude:  We brushed our teeth!

Jude:  I have clean teeth too!

Saturday, March 29, 2014

Friendships across generations

Last weekend, the boys and I headed to our friends' house for a birthday party.  This is one of the awesome benefits from our move...we are now so much closer to old friends, which means more visits.  Here we headed to see Scott and Jennifer and to celebrate their younger son's birthday.

Scott was our friend way back from our Westminster days.  Jennifer has become a friend ever since their wedding (She is so perfect for him).  Jennifer and I must have been on the save fertilization wavelength, since both of had two sons within months of each other.  Aaron is a month younger than Tam and Issac is two months older than Jude.  How close is that?!  Here's Brian and Tamlin and Scott and Aaron way back in the early part of 2009.  I think the babies look very much like the fathers :-)


Well, after so many years... we are all still good friends.  On Saturday, the little ones got a chance to be friends too.  I think that Tam and Aaron had a blast playing with transformers together.  The wee ones still pretty much played by themselves,but near each other.  
Rich, another friend from way back college days, was able to make it to the party as well.  He brought his two kids too.  They are a little older than the wee ones, but still had fun.   Good times.
We really ought to try to get together more often this summer so that they all can play together.

Wednesday, March 26, 2014

A bit of drawing time

Jude
Our budding artist
Who really needs a haircut





Thursday, March 20, 2014

Jude's Shoe Obsession

 This is Jude....
He has opinions...
Strong opinions...
One such opinion is about shoes...
Shoes!
He will not wear boots. Either the boots that fit or the boots that are slightly too big.  I gave up on boots this winter.
He would wear his blue Croc shoes all the time if we let him.
Blue shoes!
His previous favorite shoes were pink Croc shoes that I had picked up at a rummage sale.
Pink shoes!
Crocs!
Well, the favorite blue shoes are growing worn and I fear they won't last through the spring, let alone the summer.  The stores are already gearing up for the summer months, so sandals are all out and on sale currently.  We decided to go ahead and pick up some shoes for the boys for our future beach adventures (as soon as the weather warms a bit).  We found some off-brand croc-like shoes.  Tamlin picked out a pair of red ones.
And Jude?
Well...
Jude picked out the pink alligator / triceratops ones.

Brian and I looked at each other and shrugged.  I told Brian that I didn't mind our son in pink shoes if he didn't.  It certainly isn't a battle I care to fight and I have to problem letting him express himself as long as he wears shoes. Brian didn't care about the color either.

So Jude now owns pink alligator shoes.