Wedding Bells...

This is the actual conversation we had over breakfast.

C1: Mom, guess who I'm going to marry?
M: Who, Caleb? Is it Savannah or Hailey?
C1: Hailey!
M: Does she know?
C1: Yeah. I asked her and she said yes.
M: How did you ask her?
C1: We were in handwriting and I said, "Will you marry me?" and she said yes.
M: That's really nice, Caleb. Hailey is a nice girl.
C2: (whining) But I want to marry my brother.
M: Camille, you can marry another boy. You can't marry your brother.
C2: I'm not going to marry anyone except my brother. So there!

There you have it!

For the record...

There are only 13 days until I turn 29 again. (I'm not sure that I want to claim 30 this year.)

So all of you folks who plan to send me a birthday card, remember that the post office raises the price of stamps to 42 cents on May 12.

Tiny Dancer

So the other night at dinner Rob and I got into a rather heated discussion about the song Tiny Dancer by Elton John. Rob is notorious for singing the absolute most wrong words of a song, thinking, of course, that he's totally right. You should hear the crazy things he comes up with.

Anyway, for the record, it's: Hold me closer tiny dancer

NOT: Hold me closer I'm tired of dancing

Here are some snaps of our tiny dancer, having fun dancing in the driveway.



Here one may argue that she's trying to ride the broom, but I promise there was dancing involved!

Cute Baby

Chloe just loves playing outside, and it is becoming increasingly more fun as she figures out how to do more than eat sticks.

Here she is standing by her little walker. She loves to push this thing around the yard.


And here you can see she has branched out from sticks to chalk. Or whatever else she can find on the ground.

Get on the Bus!

Watching Caleb wait for the bus is the funniest thing. We can see the bus come down the street from our kitchen window so on cold or rainy or lazy mornings we just wait at the door until we see the bus before Caleb runs out to catch it. (It picks him up at the bottom of our driveway.) On nice mornings, however, he goes outside to wait - and when all the stars align at our house, the rest of us go with him.

Here are some snaps of Caleb waiting for the bus last week. Please notice his attire. You'll notice on this day he added a lovely pair of dinosaur socks pulled up as far as they'd go. Now that is what we call a fashion statement!





The kid is so excited to get on the bus!


We live at the bottom of a cul-de-sac so the bus picks Caleb up, drives down the street to pick up a couple of more kids and then turn around and head back past our house on the way to school. We like to wave to Caleb as he goes back by - Camille loves to do this and even Chloe gets into it now that she's figured out how to wave on cue!

Twins

My mom found these adorable dresses for the girls and they were so sweet dressed as twins for church on Sunday.

Camille insisted we give Chloe a little sprout. You can't see it but we even added this cute little diamondy flower clip so she sparkled! I can't wait for her to get some more hair so we can really do her 'do up cute!


Here's Chloe giving Daddy some love.

Sweet Potato Pancakes

With Rob working as much as he does these days (I thought once he was out of school we'd see him more...) I am always looking for something to make for dinner that is easy, fairly healthy and that I know the kids will eat. Tonight I hit the jackpot with these pancakes. The recipe came from the Moosewood Restaurant New Classics cookbook. I made one small alteration but they were fantastic!

Here's the recipe as I made it (in shortened version...y'all know how to cook pancakes so I'm going to skip their lengthy how-to)

Mix: 1 cup peeled and grated raw sweet potatoes
peel from one orange, grated (called for grated lemon peel, but I had oranges, not lemons)
1 egg
1 cup milk
2 tablespoons oil

Add: 1 cup flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons sugar

Combine and cook.

Surprisingly, the kids did not balk at the sweet potato in them. The pancakes had a delightful citrus flavor to them so we didn't need to douse them in syrup (or whipped cream and sprinkles, my kids' favorite). This is what Caleb and Camille had to say:

"Mom, these pancakes aren't good. They're delicious!" (Camille)

"I don't like these pancakes. I LOVE them! I like them! I love them! I want some more of them!" (Caleb) He picked up this little ditty at school. Nice.