Last Day of Preschool

Today was Evelyn's last day of two-day-a-week preschool.

She has really grown up since her first day of school.

Instead of going to class they had a picnic outside and one last hour of playing with school friends before summer break. She had a great time this year and is already looking forward to going three days a week in the fall.

Mother's Day, Take Two

We had another try at Mother's Day today. Having two healthy kids was quite a change from two weeks ago.

It included waffles, flowers and individually-wrapped Twizzlers, of course.

Happy Mother's Day!

Chocolate World

Evelyn and Brandon visited The Sweetest Place On Earth®.

They took a ride through the factory and spent a few minutes working on the Hershey's Kisses production line.

And holding up some ridiculously large pieces of candy.

Sweet!

Caterpillar, Chrysalis, Butterfly

A few weeks ago Evelyn received a jar of bugs in the mail. It's OK - we ordered them.

After a while these five caterpillars grew bigger and bigger. They climbed to the top of the jar and hung upside down, creating chrysalides. We pinned them up inside the netting and Evy watched and learned about the process. She waited patiently for a week for something to happen.



Then one day a painted lady butterfly emerged. Then another. Soon their net house was full of fluttering orange wings. Evy fed them and took care of them.

Then it was time to release her five new pets.

And to run around the yard and pretend she was a butterfly.



See the whole butterfly life cycle on Flickr.

Mother's Day

You'll notice we haven't posted any pictures from Mother's Day. That's because Brandon has his first ear infection and Evelyn has a fever of 103˚. It's not very much fun around here.

We're calling for a Mother's Day do-over in a few weeks.

Here's hoping...

Field Trip II

Evelyn's preschool class just finished up a few weeks of learning about farm animals with a field trip to Round Hill Park and Exhibit Farm to see some real farm animals up close.

Well, not too close...

Evy almost got within a few feet of a giant pig, a brand new lamb, and a boisterous chicken.

After the farm tour was over all of the kids went up to the playground. Even Brandon was allowed to get in on the fun.



Everyone had a great morning at the farm!

Paleontological Exploration

In other words - we visited the Carnegie Museum of Natural History.



Evelyn had a great time researching prehistoric life. She saw huge dinosaur skeletons, excavated fossils, touched a snakeskin, and held a baby apatosaurus skull. She even crawled inside a life-size replica of a whale's heart. It had a TV in it.

Brandon wore a dinosaur sweatshirt while he rode around in his stroller and smiled at everyone.

More from our paleontology day is on Flickr.

Spring Break

We took advantage of a break in Evy's preschool schedule and did some visiting. The kids had fun hanging out with family and friends, hitting the playground and taking a train ride. A real train ride.

We finished out the week with a special day for Brandon. He was baptized in the same church as Steph and Evelyn.

More Spring Break pictures are on Flickr.

Opening Day

Today was opening day in Pittsburgh and the smallest fans were ready to root, root, root for the home team.





The Pirates beat the Dodgers this afternoon and are tied with St. Louis atop the NL Central. For now. They only need 81 more victories this year to break their active streak of 17 seasons without a winning record!

The kids don't care about about all the losing (although, of course, it's a shame). They just want to dress up in black and gold and wear a baseball glove around the house.

Let's go Bucs!

Happy Easter!

Brandon's first Easter was filled with marshmallow peeps, chocolate bunnies and jelly beans - for Evy. He did like playing with the plastic eggs, though. And getting dressed up with his big sister.



More Easter pictures on Flickr.