My fun week!

Sarah had her conference last week. The teachers said they have never had a child in this age group who knew all her upper and lower case letters and could write her first and last name, count up to 30, cut with scissors so well, and do math and science with good skills. They said she is really smart and wanted to know if we were going to put her in Pre-K next year or second grade :). Sure I guess we could put her in second grade with Jenna.  That was pretty exciting.

 This week I attended the Faculty Symposium and had a wonderful time! I met faculty from all across the country and got some good ideas to implement in the classroom. I went to several presentations and discussions and loved getting to know everyone. I was on the planning committee and I really enjoyed it.  

Sandy, Cyndi, Me, John, and Joe from Columbus at the Faculty Symposium. Ryan is not pictured - apparently he didn't eat breakfast this day. John is from Columbus but actually now works for corporate Devry

 On the final day of the symposium we made/stuffed bears through Build-a-bear and donated them to St. Jude's Children's Hospital. It was a heartfelt team building exercise that everyone enjoyed. I got to know Joe from my campus better and found out he has read many of the same books I have read, including the Windup Girl and pretty much all of the fantasy and sci fi books I have read. He has also read an Alloy of Law the next book for our book club!

The team for the build-a-bear competition at the symposium - I was on the committee so I couldn't be on the team

All the Columbus faculty together

I'm so glad I attended - it was a wonderful experience! Another Columbus faculty could not attend at the last minute and we missed him.

I was gone this week and missed my kids quite a bit. Today I took Sarah and Matthew to a park for "fun" and Matthew went a little crazy. He needs a leash. We went with Tricia and her kids Addie and Tyson. It was fun to get out!

An example of Matthew running away from me at the park at an alarming speed

Jenna at the First Grade Girl Scout Hoedown

Sarah see-sawing with Tricia's kids Tyson and Addie

 67 points on Quiddler today

Ikea and Easter

For Easter we all went to Missy's house and her church for Easter Sunday (well - minus Matthew, he stayed with my parents). We also got to know Dave her fiance better. It was a blast! There is a park near Missy's house we went to with a huge hill that lots of kids were rolling down. Some adults may have rolled down the hill too but I won't mention that part.  It was a fun time. We also went to Dairy Queen - yum! Missy's church was so much fun. Especially since Dave was playing guitar and Missy was singing in the band. They sounded great.

Sarah loves hyacinths

Last week my Mom asked us if we would be interested in buying their Taurus. Yipee! Their car has 89,000 miles on it whereas our Taurus had 145,000 miles on it. And most importantly it was clean. I mean no ground in goldfish crackers, hard as rock raisins, or wheels from some unknown McDonalds toy on the floor. This is exciting. Of course Erik said we are keeping this car clean! Yea right :).

Last weekend Jen, Nicole and I went to Cincinnati on our annual girls trip. We went to the Jefferson Outlet malls, Ikea, and Jungle Jims Grocery store. It was an awesome trip! I had never been to Ikea and really loved it. I also loved Jungle Jims and spent lots of money on specialty cheese and dark chocolate - yum!

I also spent lots of money on clothes for the kids and fancy skechers shoes for Jenna at the outlet malls. On Saturday evening we met my friend Julie at Panera. It was wonderful to see her and catch up. We'll definitely have to plan a camping trip to Cincinnati to see Julie and Randy and go back to Ikea this summer :)

Me and Julie B

Nicole, Me and Jen on the girls trip

The girls at Missy's church on Easter Sunday

I have gotten pretty nervous lately about this triathlon. I'm not sure I can do it and I really don't know what I was thinking. How can I swim 1/4 mile, bike 10 miles, and run 3.1 miles when I haven't done these things yet. And do them all together? I'm not sure about this. I run about once or twice a week and bike once or twice a week but I never swim.

When I bike I drag Sarah and Matthew in the bike trailer. My bike is also pretty heavy (and old). The bike trailer weighs 23.8 lbs. Sarah and Matthew weigh about 64 lbs together. 23.8 +64 = 87.8lbs that I pull behind me. I weigh 122 lbs. So I am pulling 87.8/122 = 72% of my body weight when I ride. This means when I buy my fancy new road bike and ride by myself I'll probably break the sound barrier since I'll ride so fast :).

81 points on Quiddler today

A childlike faith

I took Jenna and Sarah to Stations of the Cross at St. Joan of Arc on Good Friday. In the sea of people going through the motions reading the words, there is Jenna. She is reading too. But she is not distracted; her mind is not wandering. She was reading the words and absorbing them.

After the 10th station I look at her and she is crying.

She is crying.

Hearing about Jesus beaten and bruised was difficult for her. Her heart is so open, so genuine, so pure.

What is my faith compared to hers?

I can learn so much from one so small...

All the months of the year

April = awesome.  How awesome you might wonder? Well I'm glad you asked that. It is 5/12 awesome. I can actually say that because I ordered all the months by my favorites. Obviously.
Here's my list of months from least favorite to favorite (sorry January)
12. January - too cold
11. Februray - ditto
10. March - still cold
9. November - Yea! Thanksgiving!
8. August - summer is winding down but still a great time of year
7. May - transition month just to get to June, but the weather is wonderful!
6. October - pumpkins and trick-or-treat. Yea!
5. April - waking up after the cold, I love the beautiful flowers and blossoms
4. December - Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year (at least I heard that somewhere...)
3. September - The leaves are turning color, the weather is mild, it is nice outside
2. June - what's not to love? seriously? June is a fantastic month
1. July - my birthday and a full month of summer. Love summertime!

Sidewalk chalk fun

Yes they dumped out the bubble container on the steps and started rubbing the bubble wands in the liquid

Two weeks ago we had board gaming night at our house. It was an awesome time and I think everyone had fun. I made two types of dip and had vanilla wafers and graham crackers to dip in them. They were scrumptuous:  Cookie dough dip and red velvet dip.  It was a really fun time and I appointed Missy as the photographer.

Yummy dips for game night

Ticket to Ride! Notice Dave really studying that blue train!

Railroad Tycoon. Erik dominated this game - surprise! surprise!

More railroad tycoon

More Ticket to Ride. I won this game. The hosts swept this game night

In other news:

1. I saw the Hunger Games movie. It was an excellent book adaptation movie. They did a great job keeping the spirit of the book in the movie.
2. I finished Queen of Men by Joel Cooper. This book is a good fantasy fiction book and the writing is improved over his first book (which seemed more young adult to me).
3. I also finished Feast of Souls by C.S. Friedman. This is the first book in the Magister trilogy and I'll wait on the second one until I finish some other books I'm reading now.
4. Our Coo* book club is reading the Windup Girl. There are many interesting concepts in the book, however I'm not sure I care about the characters all that much.
5. I just started reading Rhett Butler's People. I love Gone With the Wind and this story is from Rhett Butler's point of view - he's such a scoundrel!
6. My friend Brian is a celebrity. He works at Ford and makes a cameo in this video at about 53 seconds into it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=-us8xt-3PNw I didn't realize Ford was so exciting!
7. 66 points on Quiddler today