Chocolate face

Easter egg hunt at the church Sat.

(This shows the difference between Burmuda grass, in the baseball field by the church, and Rye, surrounding the church.)

Sabrina cons Russ into opening yet another chocolate

Leslie swan picture

After church

Ghosts in the Playroom

Sabrina and Leslie came in our room early one morning to report, wide-eyed, that there were ghosts in the playroom. "We heard them. They sound like this, 'oooooooooohhhhh, ooooooohhh," Leslie said.

"Pigeons," Russ and I said together. We've caught the pigeon plague. Russell looked online and found a Rent-a-Hawk for a day service, which gets rid of them for awhile, but then they always come back.

Hawk

This might help with the pigeon problem! I took this picture out the master bedroom window.

Sisters

Today we told Leslie and Sabrina about the classes they could be involved in this summer.
Leslie said, "I love ballet!" and whirled around the room. She also got very excited about the art project class. "Can you draw anything you want? I'm going to make a mermaid princess!"
When I asked Sabrina which class she'd like to do, she said, "Give me a soccer ball so I can kick it! I want to kick a ball!" And demonstrated by kicking at the blanket on the floor.
It's fun to have such polar opposite personalities in one family.

Graham is awesome!

We just watched Graham's music video. He's great! We loved it.

Optimus Prime Scott takes on Megatron Russell

A Green Lawn for Dancing

Those wispy trees will one day produce fruit, we hope. :)

Anyone want to buy a fancy house?

Leslie and I checked out a rather posh house in our neighborhood that will be finished in a month. The buyers dropped out at the last minute, so Richmond hugely dropped the price, putting it about into our range, but we still have no regrets about our stair-less, tile-less, roomy eminently child-friendly palace.
But, if you're looking for a very grand home--Anyone want to come and live by us?
Richmond's website--

Visitors

Pictures taken with the timer on the camera never quite work out, do they?
Have we mentioned that we LOVE having visitors? :)

Shark Tooth Lost

Good Helper

Sabrina is an excellent household helper. Given a bottle of softscrub and a scrubber, she removed all the burned spots from the stove.

Leslie's Birthday

Leslie had a lovely birthday party with the family, much to our relief. We had the usual cake and ice cream on her birthday, then on Friday, we went to the zoo and rode on the carousel and the bus, two things on Leslie's birthday bucket list.
Leslie spent the carousel ride clutching the post and closing her eyes, shaking her head every time I spoke to her. "I can't talk, Mommy, I have to focus!" she said. She didn't allow me to let go of her long enough to take a picture. But she enjoyed it enough to not rule out the possibility of riding again. :) Sabrina jumped onto the nearest creature and bounced up and down, disdaining all offers to help her hold on. They both enjoyed our day at the zoo.

Flying Leslie's Birthday Kite

When he gave her a kite for her birthday, Leslie found her Daddy is an expert kite flyer.

What we did for Russell's break

Thursday we measured the yard, drew up a plan, and calculated square footage (In AZ no one has regular, rectangular lawns--a paramecium or amoeba shape is required). Then we went out to the yard and started following the instructions, which required "spading to a depth of four inches." Working hard together, we had at least one square foot spaded to a depth of .04 inches. So we cleverly rented a rototiller, the most powerful machine I personally have ever operated. It was well worth the $70, as it would have taken us 4 million pick axe strokes to perform the work it did in a couple of hours.
Friday we went out to rake the yard smooth, at which point we noticed we don't have a patch of dirt in the backyard, as I used to suppose. No, we have a patch of fine dust coating several cubic tons of rock, which we industriously removed.
Sat. morning at 6:30 the sod arrived, and by early afternoon, we had a LAWN!!!!!
(It's Sunday now and I'm still a bit stiff. I tried, successfully, to not throw out my back lifting the sod, with the result that my legs feel pulled in weird places. Russell admits to no stiffness whatsoever and credits his workouts with kettleballs for making him strong. I wonder if playing World of Warcraft obsessively just makes him immune to all earthly physical sensation. Sabrina climbed the back of the couch and sat on his head and he continued playing. Poor Russell, he only has a few hours left to finish his quest for the magical Lunaris bow, and then he has to go back to school tomorrow.)

Parentals Visit

A Really Good Hair Day