the Month of Forest

March is definitely Forest's month. It includes his birthday, NCAA March Madness, and availability of Cadbury Creme Eggs in most stores. If I had my act together, I'd bake him an apple pie for 

Pi Day every year to add even more special-ness to his month, but at least we made green pancakes for St. Patrick's Day. Making "yummy delicious" pancakes (of any color) is one of Forest's many talents.

The girls of the house greatly enjoyed celebrating his 34th birthday. He came home from work for lunch, presents, and cake.

 

 

 

 

In the evening I got Forest all to myself--a sitter came over to watch the kids while we picked out some manly shoes for him and went to a restaurant for dinner. The birthday boy scored us a free chocolate souffle for dessert.

I hope he had fun celebrating another year. 

St. Patrick's Day came next in our Month of Forest festivities. We are not very Irish and generally don't give too much thought to this holiday, but this year Ramona was so excited about leprechauns, rainbows, gold, and the color green, I put just a little effort into the green part. And I dug up a rainbow-y onesie for Paula.

Green pancakes for lunch, green clam chowder for dinner.

Green angel food cake with green whipping cream for dessert.

This week it was time to tackle our brackets for March Madness. Lately Ramona has a hard time with anything that involves decision-making, so she got a little overwhelmed by all of the choices at first. But eventually she got into a groove and made her picks.

Her champion: The somewhat obscure NCCU Eagles.

Mika seemed a lot less stressed about filling out her bracket. I think she enjoyed sorting through all of the team logos.

For a while it looked as though she was going to choose Oregon (Donald Duck) or Florida (Gator = fire-breathing dragon) for her champion, but in the end she opted for the Massachusetts Minutemen. Naturally, they would beat the ducks and the dragons, because they have "shooters" (guns). I love two-year-old logic.

This year marked Paula's very first bracket. We have never filled out a bracket for a child this age, so in the beginning we weren't certain what method to use for determining her picks. With Ramona in utero, we pressed on my belly and felt for kicks. When Mika was six months old, she was old enough to reach out and grab cards with her preferred team logos. For our barely-toddler-aged girls, we used bribery and set snacks on the cards to help designate chosen winners.

Paula missed out on an in utero bracket, and she is still too little to intentionally grab cards, much less snatch food off of them, either. So we decided to watch her eye and head movement for cues to complete her bracket.

 

It ended up working quite well--most of the time she would turn to focus on one logo before the other with two cards held up in front of her.

After two sessions of eye-movement picks, she made her final decision: UNC is her chosen champion.

Because of all the effort expended on filling out brackets for our daughters, Forest only spent about five minutes on his own bracket. And I didn't even bother. But we had fun keeping up our family tradition for this time of year--all a part of celebrating the Month of Forest.

A name and a blessing

Last weekend, Paca came to visit--just in time for Paula's baby blessing at church. It was a quick trip, but he still shared some quality time with the girls. There was synchronized napping with the baby:

 

. . . cuddling on the couch:

 

 . . . making faces at the baby:

 . . . and reviewing old baby photos:

Sunday morning, we tried to take a few pictures before church. Right when it was time to start snapping photos, we saw Mika had rubbed a red stamp all over her face. Since I had my camera ready, I snapped a photo of that, first.

Then we got some pictures of baby Paula to help us remember her special day. This first one reminds me so much of Ramona on her blessing day:

 

 

Finally, we took turns getting pictures of ourselves with the baby:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She is such a happy, well-behaved baby. In fact, during the actual blessing, Paula was much quieter than her sisters were. Ramona and Mika were climbing and clamoring, causing a fair stir from our little pew as they excitedly watched Daddy bless their baby sister.
Happy Blessing Day, Baby Paula!

29 for the first time

Another birthday rolled around for me last week . . . this one #29. It was good--busy (and tiring) but good, just like most days these days. I spent the morning with family and flowers.

I spent the afternoon and part of the evening at a women's conference for my church that I helped plan and organize.

My responsibilities at the conference included welcoming our 300+ attendees from the podium (eek!), introducing our various speakers and presentations, and moderating a group discussion (still with the 300+ attendees). Maybe not my preferred birthday activity, but I was glad to do my part and didn't sweat too badly.

I also got to participate in a slightly more comfortable part of the program with my cello. Back in Iowa I arranged a little string ensemble number for a church youth meeting--I dusted it off, pulled together some musicians, and we played it as our final musical number for the conference.

The chapel didn't have an orchestra pit or much open space in the front, so our little ensemble was in a very unconventional formation--but we made ourselves heard and our sound made me happy. The whole conference felt very successful, and I definitely felt like celebrating by the end--celebrating the great turnout and spirit of the meeting, celebrating that it was over, and celebrating 29 years with my baby and my sweetheart at home.

Twenty-nine is good, although a lot of the time I feel much older--perhaps it is the sleep deprivation or the bewildering fact that I have three children now. Also, I wasn't openly mistaken as a high school student this past year. And I'm okay with that.

I wish I could sleep a little more and shower more frequently. It would be nice to have a few more moments of calm and a few less moments that evaporate in chaos. But I guess fatigue, greasy hair, and fast-flying days are just part of this stage of life for me. And I'm okay with that.

Valentine Wishes

For Valentine's Day I had three main wishes: 1) To spend time with my loved ones (of course), 2) To eat strawberries and chocolate, and 3) To get pictures of of my daughters in matching pink attire. 

My life is so good that I am almost always surrounded by those closest to my heart. I'm sure I take it for granted that wish #1 comes true all the time--not just on Valentine's Day.

My life is not quite so good, however, that our family never gets sick. We have had all kinds of runny noses, coughing, sneezing, and even a little bit of puking in our house the last couple of weeks. I got hit with some of this pretty hard on the 14th, so neither chocolately fruit or photo shoots happened that day.

Thankfully, Presidents Day was much kinder, so wishes #2 and #3 both came true then. Here are the results of wish #3:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was obvious when it was time for the photo shoot to end, but I am so happy that my Valentine wishes came true. And that these three little valentines love each other so much.