We like to watch the sports

Today we have watched more sports on TV than we have watched over the entire last year. (Occasional visitors take note, we have acquired a  t e l e v i s i o n . We hear it's all the rage.)

Tennis in the morning.
Rugby in the afternoon.

Hockey this evening.

During a break, Jbird went out to practice his own new sporty skill: riding without training wheels. He was busy studying the big kids at the park and pondering the mechanics of a wheelie.

While watching the Stanley Cup playoffs:

n: "there sure are a lot of *itches on this."

smith: "excuse me?!?"

n: "there sure are a lot of *itches playing."

smith: "what?!"

n: "there are a lot of *itches playing hockey. Tomavich, Orescovich. There's a lot of vitches."

Go Canucks!

April. In Photo Collage Format.

My desire to post weekly has been usurped by busyness.

First and foremost was the boy's camping trip. As in, no girls allowed. For a splendid 3 days/2 nights I had the most spectacular time all by myself. I was responsible for only myself, cleaning up (or not) after only one person. No schedule. Whatever I felt like doing. And I felt like going out and eating sushi and watching Hot Tub Time Machine. And I felt like doing a boatload of homework (part of my busy-ness has been taking web design classes. I've succumbed to the dark side.) And then I felt like going to a friend's party, but never got there. Instead I stopped by his house and scared him.  Probably the only time I'll ever be able to say that. We stayed up late talking about horror movies. yippee. it was splendid.

This was what was happening with the boys:

Then came Nbear's dance debut. His class has been learning the fast moving styles of Bollywood dancing, courtesy of another parent, and had been invited to dance at the Dragon Boat Festival.










Then there was Nbear's piano recital.



Goofing off afterwards.



Posing with the maestro(a?)



Baba & Grandpa came up that weekend for all of the nbear festivities and we helped Baba celebrate one of her own: a birthday! We stuffed ourselves silly at brunch and then at the end of our busy day we had cake and the customary candle licking (does everybody do that?) Happy Birthday Baba!

Spring Has Broken

I know it is old news now, but before Spring's first hurrah, we had a touch of winter's last hurrah: snow. Giant fluffy flakes that didn't immediately melt upon landing and lasted all day. Tiny snowmen sprung up all over town. [double-click the pic to see the flakes. otherwise this picture is entirely unimpressive snow-wise, I know.]

And then Spring Break was upon us and we celebrated at the Kite Festival (mere days following the snow, I got a tiny sunburn...)

Here's Smith's vintage 1970s kite.

The boys working the strings.

And then we embarked on the *perfect* camping trip. It was not crowded. It wasn't too far away. The days were warm, in the upper 60s. The nights were cool, in the 40s. We remembered all the fixings for s'mores. There were no bugs. No fire ants. No rain or flash floods. No trips to the ER. No rocks under the tent. We could see stars. We could hear the rush of the river below.

We have a new thing in our house.
Those who know us well are really tired of me talking about the sofa because:
a) we are indecisive. (should we get the current one recovered or buy new?)
b) we are spending adverse. (this will make 6 posts in that category)
c) I'm married to an architect. Whereas for most couples there is usually only ONE person who has a strong opinion about things like upholstery, we have two. So there has been a lot of time going to look at them and then sit on them and fingering fabrics. and not coming to an agreement.

so we've been talking about it for at least the last 4 years. Even my mom was astonished when I told her. She doesn't say "Oh...my...gawd" very often.


But our old dear finally bust a seam and was spilling her guts. Here she is in better days.

Not one to let things go (see our walk-in closet) we threw a blanket over her and retired her upstairs to the reading nook. I guess that's the "old folks home" for furniture. Maybe someday she'll get a new coat.  In the meantime, we lounge on this lovely.

She looks so non-chalent, so perfectly matched, that you almost don't notice her.

I suddenly feel like a cat will be landing on our cosmic doorstep before long. this sofa looks too pristine....

Easter Post. Before summer hits.

It's a busy week but instead of procrastinating on youface I thought I should post the Easter bits before it's summer and no one wants to see my eggs.

See my eggs? In their edible chocolate nest? With the scary off-putting green sugar grass? It couldn't all turn out picture perfect. But the coconut, pistachio and chocolate eggs couldn't have been cuter.

Here are some urchins wandering through our weeds scouting out eggs.

Apparently Jbird realizes that all good holidays center around candy and donned a Halloween costume.



Inspecting the haul.




Finding a brand new thing to do with our brand new "pond." It's not much more than a fancy big bucket sunk into the ground, but it has plans. In the meantime, it floats the Easter Egg Boats.

Hope ya'll had a good one.

The Natural Order of Things

Today Smith taught the boys to play RISK.

Several hours later, the boys ganged up to defeat Smith. And so it goes with RISK and Smith.

What is it about him that makes people want to gang up and beat him at RISK at all costs?

Two Funny Things

If I ran into you this week, you've already heard this story, sorry.


Smith & I had a busy Saturday morning, where I was returning from my thing just as he was about to leave for his thing. He was literally pulling out of the driveway as I was pulling up to park. Technically speaking, an adult was on the property the entire time. But in that 30 seconds of unsupervised time, I walked into the house to find:

child #1 bleeding and crying

child #2 had put a stepstool on top of another stepstool and was on his tippy toes to reach the Dove chocolate in the pantry

**************

In lieu of watching the superbowl, the boys had the treat of watching PBS's Nature program while the rest of us yelled "who dat?!" in the other room. They were of course very enthused. Nbear shared with me later what they watched:

"They had a naked mole rat on the Nature show tonight! I can't figure out why though, because it was a show all about ugly animals."

ah. the first lesson on beauty and the beholder. Here he is beholding his newly adopted "Justin."




The stuffed version looks waaaay cuter than the real thing. click if you dare.