More Fun with Food

When I was in Chicago recently, Stubbie said something to me like, "You guys sure do have fun with food." It occurs to me that that's very true. We like to celebrate holidays with food and enjoy coming up with ways to make cooking and eating fun for Carter. (Plus, I enjoy making foods into colors they shouldn't be.) In any case, that comment reminded me that I've been meaning to post these pics of some fun we had with food a couple of months ago. I can take no credit for the idea. Thomas found it on a blog. But it was fun. Carter thoroughly enjoyed helping to prep - and eat - this!

Wrestling

John is getting to be sturdy enough for some gentle wrestling with his big brother. They both seem to have fun with it. I love hearing them enjoy each other.

John Recents

I have been known to say, "He's lucky he's cute". And he is. SO very cute! Right?!

Tour DeCatur 2012

Thomas and Carter ran in the Tour DeCatur today. They did a 1 mile fun run together and then Thomas did the 5K. Carter did a GREAT job on the mile! He ran the whole way, and they clocked in at 10:28. Pretty impressive for less-than-6-years-old. He now wants to run the 5K next year. I told him if he runs a couple more 1 milers, we'll do it!

Cousins

I took this video a couple of weeks ago. It's a little long (2 minutes), but it gives you a pretty good picture of each of these kiddos personalities.

Homes Sweet Former Homes

Last week, my work took me to NYC and Chicago. It was so nice to visit my former home cities. There are things that I just love so much about both places, and at the top of the list is the people I know that still live there! In NYC, I got to have dinner with my friend Paul (Joo was out of town - boo!), and in Chicago, I got to have dinner with the Stubblefields and breakfast with the Martens. It was such a treat!

The bottom view is from the window of my hotel room at the Four Seasons in Chicago. Now that I work for Boys & Girls Clubs of America, I don't usually stay at places like the Four Seasons, so it was a real treat (due to the meeting I was there for taking place at the hotel). Now, I learned something very interesting on this trip. This go around with breastfeeding, I have found it much more difficult to travel and pump milk than it was five years ago. This is largely due to the fact that hotels used to be very accommodating with refrigerating things for me and freezing my ice packs, but I have had the hardest time getting hotels to do that now. Several hotels have cited something about health department restrictions on refrigerating things for guests, so I thought perhaps that there may be some new policies at play. But that theory was disproved when I asked at the Four Seasons and they were only too happy to take care of my milk and ice packs. This lead to the realization that the difference is most likely due to the very different quality of hotel that I was staying in five years ago when I worked in the corporate world versus now...

St. Paddy's Day

We enjoyed a lovely, green-themed, spring day today.

Thomas and Carter started the day with a 1 mile fun run

Then we tried to fly a kite, but there wasn't enough wind

So Carter put the weather to good use and played in the fountains

Then we had green dinner

And green dessert!

Teeth

John has two! Both on the bottom.

Carter also has a new one on the bottom -- and a crisp one dollar bill that the tooth fairy gave him for the one he lost this week!
(Which happened while I was traveling, which makes me a sad mama).

My Week (so far) In Numbers

5
talks and workshops presented

4
pounds of milk pumped, chilled and schlepped

3
nights in myrtle beach (and four very full days)

2
times I stepped foot outside of the hotel (and the second time was to go to the airport)

1
tired me


The upside of traveling: My boys were all happy to see me when I got home. John was the most expressive, but Carter warmed up when he realized that I was home in time to take him to the family reading night at his school (pajamas required). Thomas seems quite relieved to have me home. I'm trying to avoid mention of next week's trip for as long as possible.

Yep, that's 4lbs of milk

"Well, that happened..."

...was Elizabeth's response to the incident when she heard about it.

You may recall that recently, Carter got a great haircut in the style of Uncle Park.

His hair looked like this.

Also recently, cousin Anna decided that her hair needed a little self trimming.  We didn't think anything about it, but then yesterday afternoon while playing with a friend who had come over, Carter came out of the bathroom and asked me to look at his his hair.  From a few steps away it looked like he had gelled it back, so I put my hand on his head to see just how much gel he had used.  I felt nothing but hair.  I then started actually to pay attention to what was happening and this is what I saw.

Oh crap.  So I kept my cool and headed to the bathroom and found this:

Thankfully, his friend had not been involved, Carter had just decided he wanted his hair short like another friend Max (not present), and knew how to use scissors.

I called for an appointment at his kid salon for that afternoon, but alas they were booked all day.  So after going to a basketball game that night and church the next morning, we headed to the salon to see what they could do.

As expected, it was buzz cut he wanted and a buzz cut he got.  He got pretty close to the scalp in places so there is still a few spots to see, but all in all, a #1 buzz evened it all out, and it'll grow back! This is the oldest looking haircut he's gotten yet.  I guess the Uncle Park loses out to the buzz.