A Couple of Cute Chicks!

It's chick season and we decided to add to our brood. Chicks are always a delight and watching them grow is amazing as it seems they double in size over night. We'd like to introduce you to Reddy (named by Sadie. We have a Brownie, afterall.) And Louise, named by me in honor of one our favorite book characters Minerva Louise. It's hard to tell them apart, I know, but a mama always knows her babies. Louise is darker with more black and Reddy is larger.

These two little girls are Rhode Island Reds, a hearty, well-laying breed.

I think they will get along just fine with the other girls, but only time will tell if they officially get along without too much hen-pecking!

Easter 2012

We spent Easter in Napoleon visiting grandma and grandpa S. and lots of aunts, uncles and cousins.

Grandma always boils about 12 dozen eggs for the kids to dye. There were enough kids that they had to dye eggs in two shifts. While the second shift was dying the eggs the first shifters went to the communtity egg hunt.

The egg hunt was supposed to be held at the city park but was moved to the community center because of high winds. Before we left Eli said, "I hate egg hunts in the park, because there are lots of good places to hide eggs, but they never use them." Boy, was he disappointed when he saw this:

But, that didn't stop him from finding picking up a few eggs.

The crew at the egg hunt:

The most interesting event happened at about 4pm Saturday when the sewer backed up. This is a very unfortunate event when you have lots of people at your house and you've been drinking pop and kool-aid and coffee all day. Luckily, the Catholic Church is right across the street so we just ran across the street and did our business over there when we needed to. Luckily, I have a brother-in-law who is a plumber and he knows how to call in another plumber to do the job. Hah! By 11:00 that night we could use our own facility once again!
With all of those cousins around you'd think the kids could find something better to do than this:

When Easter arrived we hid eggs in the yard. They were pretty well hid and the kids had to look for the eggs. But, they were too fast for me. Luckily Madisen posed for me:

The Tramp!

 We are the proud owners of a brand new 15' trampoline. Come jump with us!!!

Sugarin'

Our good friends, Candy and Mary and their boys, Carlos and Luis, invited us to their house for pancakes and fresh maple syrup. Candy tapped trees for the first time and was just figuring out how sugarin' works, but we had fun watching her efforts. This year, with the weather being so crazy, has been an odd year for sugarin'. Lots of people didn't even bother tapping trees this year as it needs to be warm during the day and cool at night, but it never got really cool enough at night to produce as much sap as usual. Candy gave it a whirl and it was well worth her effort. The syrup was delicious!
Here is the sap boiling. Lots of sap = a very little amount of syrup:

Tasting the syrup:

Straining the sap before the final boiling which took place on the stove:

The kids played and played and played while the sap boiled. It is a loooooong process:

Man, I wish I had pictures of them eating the pancakes. They were delicious!

Jack Came to Visit

Dennis' brother, Greg, and his wife Michele were heading to San Antonio for a conference and needed someone to watch Jack. We happily agreed to it and enjoyed every minute of it. Sadie enjoyed playing the big cousin ("like Emily," she says) and Eli was bummed that he had to go to school every day. Jack is a pretty easy toddler and reminded me a lot of Eli at this age. As long as Jack got to do whatever is was that was a part of Jack's routine then Jack was as happy as a clam. He has an intense focus and can sit and entertain himself for quite a while. He knows all of his letters and numbers (seriously, I have a bag of magnetic letters and numbers and he'd pull them out at random and say every letter) colors and shapes. And he happily does whatever you ask him to do.
The only bad thing is that he arrived in the midst of our sickest week here at our house. Jack made 2 trips to the dr. once for Eli and once for me. By the time Jack left, we were all on antibiotics and Jack was too! But, we did manage to have fun doing lots of other stuff that helped us forget about the coughs and runny noses. The weather was amazing so we spent lots of time outside. Here are some highlights of Jack's stay:
A trip to the gym bin (at the begninning of the week we still had a lot of snow so it was hard to be outside as it was wet and slippery). He loved the pit and would say "C'up Sadie" which was his way of saying cover-up sadie. So we would hide Sadie in the blocks and she would jump out:

No trip to a cousin's house would be complete without a bathtub picture:

One of Jack's favorite things, pushing "the button":

Pusing "Jack's bike". I love that the chickens are in this picure, seems fitting considering how much Jack loved chasing them:

Breakfast (and lunch and supper) of champions-- Pancakes-- it's about all we could get him to eat:

Sadie Rides on Two Wheels

Sadie was bound and determined to learn to ride her bike without training wheels. I thought that she wasn't quite ready as she wouldn't ever let me let go of her seat and her balance was all off. True to Sadie form, she decided she was going to do it so she did it. There was a long day of screaming and falling and pushing her bike over and kicking her bike and blaming me for her falling and more screaming, before she was finally able to do it, but she did it.

The Donut Race

This weekend we participated in the Black Lake Loppet just outside of Bemidji. It's a very kid friendly race and is meant to be a fun event instead of a serious ski event. The entrance fee is a donation tot the food shelf. People came in costumes, some only wore their underwear... you get the idea. It's fondly referred to as the "donut race" because halfway through the race you have to stop and eat a donut before you can continue. The race is staggered in hopes of a mass finish at the end. The big winner is the person who comes in 13th and everyone brings trophy's and ribbons from other events as prizes. It truly is a blast and the kids got into the spirit of the event.
Here they are at the starting line:

The kids needed some assistance down the first big hill:

It was a beautiful day:

Sadie needed help getting up some of the hills. I think she could have done it herself, but she preferred the ride over the work:

Going down is always more fun than going up:

Taking off skis at the finish line:

Most of the kids only did half of the race (and we took all of the short-cuts on that half so we probably only did a little more than a quarter of the 11K race) so we enjoying our reward at the end of our ski:

Sadie and her first crush Louie ("But mom, He's just so nice to me!"-- believe me, all the girls love Louie):

The Sadies hanging out by the fire:

Picking their prize:

A Sperle Update...

The kids have been celebrating Dr. Seuss all week at school. Monday was crazy hair day. Sadie's hair couldn't be too crazy because we go straight from school to gymnastics. But, Missy, my friend who does Clara's hair to the nines and my hair-inspiration did Clara up as Cindy Lou-Who. It was too cute.

Speaking of gymnastics, Sadie has been going 4 hours a week for over a month now and it is going pretty well. She complains sometimes, but once she's there she's in hog-heaven. It's amazing how much better she's gotten this past month.

Eli's behavior has really turned around this last month and he's a much less grumpy kid. Maybe he just got used to being at school all day, everyday. But, he's much more fun to be around.

Speaking of school, we just received notice that Sadie and Eli both got into the charter school, Schoolcraft, that we were hoping to get into. We are very excited to make this change and I can't wait to give you reports.

Dennis enjoyed his 40th birthday. We went to eat Mexican food and the kids were disappointed that they brought him a shot of tequila instead of fried icecream. Dennis got a beer brewing kit and is currently taking a beer brewing class. He also got books to teach himself how to play the piano. He is not quite a concert pianist, but he is improving!

Dennis also got a promotion at work. He is now assistant chief pharmacist, not to be confused with assistant to the chief pharmacist.

No new news from me. I've just been working on some house projects and playing Martha Stewart, which is quite enjoyable. Next year, I've been informed that I should look for a job as my current job as Stay at Home Mom is coming to a close. I was thinking Housewife might be a good new job, but "teacher" pays more!

What's new with you?

Sadie and Mom (everyday) Date: Doing Sadie's Hair

Sadie's BFF from school has very long princess hair that Sadie has admired from day 1. As Sadie's hair has gotten longer, we've gotten a bit more creative with her hair than just doing a basic french braid, 2 braids or a pony. Thank goodness for youtube videos and for the fact that braids are all the rage right now, because I wouldn't be able to do any of these without it. My general requirement is that they don't take more than 5 minutes to do after combing out beacause that can take forever! Here are some of the highlights:

Two-strand crown to a twisty side braid:

Pretzel knotted buns:

Two braids, pretzel crossed in the back:

Single french braid, low and to the side:

Braided bun pony:

Side fishtail braid:

Waterfall braid to pony:

I'll post more pics as we continue to play with her hair. Her hair, while in the mid-back still needs to grow about 2-3 more inches for me to do all of the things that I want to do with her hair. She loves getting her hair done up and loves getting compliments from strangers.

Barnelopet

Sadie participated in the "Sons of Norway" Barnelopet (which means kids race). Sadie would tell you that "it isn't a race, everyone wins!" Which is true, everyone does, in fact, get a medal. But, it is a race in the fact that you get a racing bib, they say "go!" at the beginning and there is a finish line.

Sadie, by the way, puked all the previous day, but she did not want to miss the big race. Eli missed it because he threw a tantrum about skis and then decided he didn't want to go, which was fine with me because I was home sick with tonsillitis.

Back to the race, you can tell it was a balmy day as a lot of the kids were just skiing in their snowbibs. Dennis said that as soon as they said go, Sadie got a determined look on her face and took off like a rocket.

The race is about a kilometer in the trees so the parents couldn't see how the race was going, but Dennis said as soon as she came around the corner and could see the finish line, she picked up speed to pass 3 more kids at the end. She crossed the finish line and said, "Dad, I'm too tired to go any further..." They celebrated with a pizza party.
She was happy with her performance and said that she "is really starting to get good at gliding."
We also just bought a used pair of skis from a friend so they'll be able to go anytime they want!!
Way to go Sadie! We're really proud of you!!

Happy 40th Birthday Dennis

40 looks good on you. Hope the next 40 are just as good as the first...

Festival Recital 2012

It was recital time once again for Eli and Sadie. This was the "festival recital" and all of the students played duets or as a group. Eli and Sadie's ability group played Frere Jacque on the xylophone, hence Sadie's beret. I think it was great for them to play as a group because it really helped their listening skills and the importance of a steady beat and timing. This was actually the best that they played it as a group so they were happy with their performance. Enjoy!