Well, it’s not very often that this happens, but we finally had a glorious Easter weekend!  Sunny and very warm… great weather for an egg hunt or twenty, a delicious brunch at my parents house and some general silliness as well.  Not too much to say except “take a look” – you are related to all of us! 🙂

well, just a hodgepodge of silliness, really… but in lieu of anything truly momentous happening at the moment, here’s a short video to amuse yourselves:

Enjoy!

Well, you’ll have to pardon me here, I am having perhaps too much fun with the macbook (gasp, I know, Mark pretends he can’t see it) but I have another little “movie” for you to view.  It was from 2 weekends ago when we were all up skiing.  As you can see, the weather was pretty fantastic.  It was almost too warm to ski, but we muddled through somehow. 😉  Who knew you would need sunblock in February!

Anyway… here is a short snippet of the kids skiing.  We just finished up their 6 week lessons yesterday and they both did a good job of improving.  Everyone can safely ride a chairlift on their own, and Max can manage the basic bunny hills just fine and Sophie has advanced enough where she can ski some intermediate  hills and has more than just your basic “pizza wedge” skills under her belt.  We really lucked out with great weather this season; we had 4 out of 6 bluebird days (which is RARE in the winter here in the Pac NW) so I am not holding out hope that the snow will stick around late this year. We are going to try to get up at least once more this season and then after that… it’s BOATING time! 🙂

Sophie has been on a basketball team this winter.. It’s a mixed group of kindergarteners and first graders… They have practice one night and games on another. The rules are a little lax… Dribbling is encouraged but not required, you can’t steal the ball (not very fun, is it?) and the court and hoops and ball are all slightly smaller, lower, etc. Any way… Sophie has been challenged to focus on playing BASKETBALL while she is on the court ( as opposed to whatever she thinks about while chewing on her hair and twirling around the hardwoods while checking out the ceiling tiles) and tonight’s game was a breakthrough for her… 2 baskets and 6 rebounds! Look out LeBron! Take a peek at the video… Even the other team was happy for her!

In other news, we aren’t too concerned if she’s not WNBA ready…she got her first report card this week and it was FANTASTIC. To quote her teacher… “Sophie is a gem.” Well, we already knew that, didn’t we?

It’s a blogging explosion!  I uncovered a few older videos, put them thru the wringer and presto…a few more to see.  The first is from about 9 months ago…the kids would do this everyday if we let them…pretty sure it wins us “parents of the year” or something…. In any case, on this particular day, they were doing a “workout.”  Indeed.

And, just to be fair, here is the one from Sophie’s Birthday party with the family:

better late than never… we had gotten some crazy candles (crazy expensive!) that needed a blowtorch to get lit, but we got there eventually.  Check out Max’s expression when they finally were burning….

well, we haven’t posted anything for a while… we missed Max’s birthday (it was fun, lots of presses from around the world, balloons, and cake!) and Christmas, which was also very fun… we had a nice quiet Christmas eve dinner at home with just the 4 of us, then all got up and opened presents and had a yummy breakfast, then it was time to get ready for the big family afternoon here with everyone to open presents, eat caviar and drink some yummy lemon cocktails that Mark was mixing up and then sit down to a big dinner.  It was a nice holiday and we have plenty of time to relax and just hang out.  We celebrated New Years Eve in a grand fashion over at my folks house wth a late dinner after the kids had gone to bed, and we stayed up til 1:30AM… it was a really fun night!  We also celebrated Mark’s birthday a little less grandly the next day, too.  We managed to get up to the mountains one day to get the kids fitted with their ski stuff for their lessons which started the first week n January.  But, the one thing that we haven’t been able to shake is some sort of sickness or another.  Max got an ear infection at the very beginning of the year and then Sophie missed nearly a week of school with a bad eye infection, then I got sick and have been battling something for the last 2.5 weeks and it’s still hanging on.  I rarely get sick and so this is a bad one.  THe whole country is actually having what the news talking heads are calling a “Flu Epidemic”, so it’s been a bad year for colds and we still have a month to go at least.  Anyway, it’s not record high heat or fires, but it’s been cold, foggy and full of coughs and sniffles.  Spring can’t come soon enough!

Well, she’s finally 6!  And we have the party pics to prove it!  On the actual day we celebrated with the family at our house for “design your own” pizzas that Mark cooked on the pizza stone on the BBQ.  They were pretty yummy!  And of course, we had birthday cake- pink, of course! And pink bubbly and red wine, and beer, etc.  Sophie had a great time opening her presents (THANK YOU AGAIN everyone!) and seemed to really take her time to appreciate each one and wanted to read the cards, etc.  Then, it was a quick clean up and re-set the party room for #2… this time with 5 of her school girlfriends.  We took everyone to see “The 3 Little Pigs” in downtown Kirkland.  It was really cute, had some fun songs and was just the right length to keep everyone in their seats!  Then, back to our house for pink cupcakes and, yup, you might have guessed, pink lemonade.  The girls had some fun jumping on the trampoline, and then, it was time to go.  Out the door they went with a 2nd cupcake in a box, adorned with a homemade flower clip for their hair and a pink balloon.  We are all pinked out!

So, while I enjoy my rather large glass of WHITE wine, sit back and enjoy the pictures of the festivities!