Quarterly Update?

It has ended up that I am writing this over several days. So I am going to internally date stamp, but hopefully I'll finish today....
Monday 5/19/14
Among other activities, Richie is in a class called Tiny Ninjas. He looks so cute in his little blue outfit. However, today we stepped it up a notch. He had been very good at the Standing Bear Defense which we practice a lot: "Heal Stomp! Spread your legs. Elbow up! Step back. Heal-Palm! Grab, Knee, PUSH!" But today, he learned, "Eyes! Nose! Throat! Ears! Knee! (in groin) Stomp foot! Clearly, I need to start wearing protection. Including a cup.

Sunday 5/18/14
Times are busy, what can I say. I think there is a bit larger activation energy to update the blog since the passing of my grandmother last year. Alas, the urging (occasional nagging) of my other relatives are inspiring me to try to incorporate this activity back into my routine.

Spring has sprung in our little town, although it's tough to tell by today's temperature. We just finished a spring shower while Richie plays with our neighbor's grand daughter Emily while her parents help clean up their parents porch furniture.

The grass seeds that I planted last November and fertilizer are apparently hard at work, although there are still a lot of clovers in the back yard. Although I have not been able to because of all of the rain, the lawn needs to be mowed about twice/week. Grass is also coming in the back of the back yard where we had to cut down the tree. In fact, to that end, ML and I (most ML) raked up and bagged all of the leaf litter and ground clutter and such. We bagged up about 7 of those tall yard paper bags full of crap! Now, hopefully, all of the dirt/mud wont wash away before the grass comes in!

Oh! We're going to a chicken themed birthday party today. That should be interesting!

Last weekend, we made a little weekend road trip to Baltimore to see some old haunts and see some friends. We had a good time seeing old friends and visiting some haunts, including the Maryland Science Center...before our membership finally expires. I still think, although the MSC is smaller than the Pittsburgh one, Maryland is more inventive with their space and interactive with their employees. You see various employees with little rolling learning stations all over the place at MSC.

While in the hotel in Baltimore, we had to explain to Richie how regular TV work. That you cannot just rewind it and you cannot pick the show you want to watch like Netflix. He also figured out what commercials were and started making up his own. When we returned to Pittsburgh he made up a new one complete with a song and MSRP: "Mega Balloon! Mega Balloon, if floats and falls. Mega Balloon, if floats and falls. Now 3000 bucks! Shop at Target."

I went to a conference for a week in San Antonio, so there will be some pictures of the Alamo in there shortly.

Going in little farther back in time, we had a nice visit with lots of the family this late winter and spring including, Omie (Omie-Omie-with-the-pony-tail), Pap-Nat, Honey, Eli, Sammy and cousins Samantha, Tim, Will and Ella! Oh! And my aunt Carole! How could I forget that? At one point we had 9 people sleeping in our house. We took on some damage, but the worst part was SOMEBODY wiped boogers (bloody ones) on the back of my new leather couch! No one as of yet has officially stepped forward, but I'm going to run a DNA test and find out who the culprit was!

Okay, another step back. Two days before the coldest day of the year, we discovered that on of the trees in the back yard was starting to split!


And it was going to his the synagogue behind our house!


So we had is chopped down. It was minus a million outside. Very cold.


Desperately trying to keep warm this winter.


On a warmish day (minus a thousand) Richie wanted to climb a tree. Or at least sit in one.


ML had her birthday and enjoyed the cake and icing that I made from scratch!

Somewhere on my phone is more pictures from the visit I think, but this was when we had the 9 people sleeping at our house. This is my cousin Samantha enjoying dinner down the street at Every Day Noodle.

Here is our last Snow of the year....3/26/2014

 

Fire in fire place. Fire GOOD!


 I got to see the sun rise over the Alamo during my trip to San Antonio!

 Richie with his buddies Dianna, Kara and Ella! He calls them his sisters and they call him their brother. When Richie tried to tell his school teacher about his sisters, she told him that he doesn't have any sisters. He tried to explain to her but to no avail.

This was from some other visit.

We went to a Frozen themed birthday party for one of Richie's classmates and he got his face painted!

Spring has put a spring in Richie's step!

In Baltimore, we had a view of the Domino Sugar sign!

Richie and Zander play Star Wars in the dinosaur section of the Maryland Science Center. This is their Millennium Falcon!

His is the new merry-go-round next to the MSC

We stopped by our old fire station and took a few pics.

One of his old friends, Madeline, from Toddler Morning Out was there at the same time. She said, "Hi Richie!" Richie leaned over and said, "How does she know my name?!" Chip off the old block. You can see her in the picture in the driver's seat.

We took this picture just before we moved to Pittsburgh! He grown so much in the 8 months.

Nose kisses with Mama. Apparently they used to do this. I had no idea!

Richie hunting ducks at the waterfront in Canton.

Back in Pittsburgh, we were at a Chicken themed birthday party for his good friend Simon...Yes, they have several chickens one of which is calm enough for photo ops. At some point I will post the picture of this little chick that decided to sit on my shoulder instead of my arms. Arrg! Pirate Chicken!

Here is a picture of Richie with Simon at school. We did not get to take one of the two of them at the party.

This was the chicken birthday cake and chickadee cup cakes. You can see the deviled eggs and there was chicken salad sandwiches and chicken nuggets for the kids. The father was explaining to us that they tried to make everything chicken themed. But they could not complete the theme because they wanted to serve some hummus in case there were any vegetarians at the party. His wife does make an excellent hummus. I looked at him and said, "Chick Peas!"

Chicken cake butt.

Snow Man

Finally had the right kind of snow to make a snow man. Too bad there wasn't much of it left, but had funny anyway!

Pics from my phone

I've had some problems with my phone lately mostly related to a lot of spontaneous rebooting. Turns out it is likely from a failing power switch. I loosened the phone and then tightened it back together and, surprisingly/luckily it started working again. I went to copy some pictures off of it and found some interesting shots from over the last year:

This was at our favorite Mexican restaurant in Baltimore where Richie discovered his love for cheese cake.

Just before we left Baltimore, I snapped a couple of pictures of this Arabber selling fruit. Moments later, his cart was crushed by a car. Fortunately, he was okay. See this link for the story: http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2013-06-27/news/bs-md-ci-arabber-accident-20130627_1_arraber-car-crashes-arabber

One of our last visits to the Maryland Science Center. We do miss that place and living so close to it!

Here is Richie in the cab of the 18 wheeler used to move our stuff to Pittsburgh:

Flash forward to this last week in Florida. Here is Richie at the Shell Factory. Pretty much the only place in Ft. Meyers where you can still get whole shells.

Here is cousin Sarah, all grown up!

Richie playing with his cousin Michael

Cousin Jared with his favorite stockingstuffer...a stuffed broccoli

ML and aunt Ginger playing Richie's game, The Crystal Portal on my iPad....until all hours of the night!

Wet Halloween

We got rain as our trick this year. Interestingly, the businesses that are down the street from us hand out candy from 5:30 - 7p, so no one was trick-or-treating at the houses until after that. Not surprising, but unexpected. Richie was dressed as a knight. ML was dressed as a soaking wet mother in the trench coat!

We set up our front porch, but this was before the heavy rains.

Warrior Knight!

I have a feeling we'll be seeing this costume used beyond Halloween!

BIG Changes

This is going to be a text only post...sorry everybody....I just cannot seem to find an opportunity to get pictures posted....

During this last week, Richie, somewhat spontaneous started READING! He's sounding out words and we've been testing it by giving 1st reader books that he's never seen. Some words he has memorized, others he has to sound out. This is VERY exciting for me because I've been a little concerned at his lack of interest in making this step. He's known his letters and sounds for about 2 years.

Another big changed happened to Richie today. I took the Nintendo DS away. Not in time-out. I'm done. Or rather, he's done. It has been a progressive battle that usually surrounds it and so I told him that I'm taking it away until he can better balance play, work and studies. He cried for a few minutes, but he seems to understand and is hoping that he'll be ready by the time he's 5 or 6.

In other, happier news, Richie has been enjoying Pre-school at the JCC down the street. We've been investigating the different kindergartens and elementary schools in the area. We had a 3 hour tour of one today. They did a nice job having one of the second graders give us a tour (with her mother). Richie announced that he was in love with our tour guide because she was so nice to him. I tried to explain to him that she is supposed to be, that it was her job, but then I realized that it was just too complex a conversation to explain the nature of a service industry. :-) Richie invited her over for a play date, which I thought was cute but too much of a conflict of interest for the adults. But maybe I'll throw caution to the wind and invite them over for a little play date. We've now toured three different schools in the area and I think they all of different things to offer. And, if all else fails, our local public school is actually pretty good according to our pre-K teacher.

We all continue to enjoy the area and love our house! We have had some challenges, including our dishwasher deciding not to close properly and leaking onto the floor and having to replace our refrigerator, but the challenges haven't been too great. We've started putting up some sheers on the downstairs windows. Part of this came up because the people that trimmed our trees really cut back one of the big shrubs in front of our dinning room window that blocked street traffic from seeing in. I think the sheers are nice in that we can still see out.

We also had the roofer come out this weekend. He did much of the roof, but needs to get a cap for the secondary chimney and decided to do the tall roof and point the secondary chimney when he's got the cap to put on. He did a nice job and fixed many of the slates that were sloppily installed.

Ugh, on the down side, we STILL. HAVE. STINK. BUGS. I just put one in the toilet.

Richie has started doing some after school programs like Tiny Ninjas! His teacher makes them to push-ups when they get into trouble. Richie likes showing us how well he does push-ups at home! He's also been swimming at school and will start doing an added lesson once a week. But I don't know first hand how that is going.

Going back further in time, we had a really nice visit with Omie, when it was still warm outside. Hopefully I'll get around to posting some of those pictures...some day.

On the home front, we started looking at Stickley furniture in the late summer. Two weeks after we visited the local store, they (Stickley) closed the store. We went to the sale but realized we were about to pay as much for as bed frame as a hand crafted one that we had really liked from a store around the corner from us in Baltimore. So we decided to buy the one in Baltimore, which is actually hand crafted in Peru (http://www.artesanosdonbosco.com/). Now we just have to get around to getting a mattress for it and move out of our guest room. Then we can start having guests! Oh wait, too late.

Another cute spontaneous outburst, Richie went up to Mama and said, "You know who my best big-boy friend? Uncle-Curly! He's almost as silly as a clown." Of course, I thought it should be me, but now that I've taken the Nintendo away, I'm sure I'm off of that list for quite some time.

One last thing, and maybe the most important. Richie came up with the cutest little saying a couple of weeks ago. He claims that he made it up, but it is the cutest thing. "Love is nearby!" And if you ask him where it is, he'll point to himself.