St Patty's

We gathered with the Corrigans for our traditional St Patrick's Day meal. Corned beef, cabbage, Guinness, green attire & accessories... (side note, I noticed less people in this group are wearing green each year, what is happening here?!? *cough*teenagers*cough*cough*, this is an outrage - soon I'm going to start pinching people)

We also celebrated a few family birthdays, and I was able to finally make my little Sweet-Kates her own special Sweet-Cake, auntie style. I had promised her that one day I would make her a cake for her birthday, but it's tricky traveling with a cute cake, so I settled on this fun and easy design. She liked lots of chocolate (this is how I know we are related). I love my family!

Happy 11th Katie Bugs!

Marin had to set the record straight "All family-
contained grandchildren are Nana's favorite"

Little leprechauns left chocolate gold coins on our front step!

Date Night

Date nightttttt! It was a close call there with a week of kids with the stomach flu, myself taking two weeks to recover from nasty cold-a-pa-looza, and the risk of healthy remaining family members coming down with it. My parents were in town for the girls' recital, so we were so excited to have a longer time to have "dinner and a show" (my favorite kind of date!), with no rushing back to a babysitter. Dinner at the Screen Door (this time we were smart and shared the enormous fried chicken. It's so freaking delicious but Momma didn't wear her yoga pants to date night, so I had to be real). Then we saw Wizard of Oz, with the tickets Kyle bought me for my birthday! My kind of date night. A perfect night with my man, where we relaxed and thoroughly enjoyed spending time together. Thank you to my sweetie for making it happen.

First tooth out!

Max is 6.5 years old and FINALLY lost his first tooth. The best things come to those who wait ;) The toothfairy brought him is first gold dollar coin!

My little boy with a big, big name ;)

Rolling with the Shoshie

I still call him Shoshie once in awhile (the baby nickname that is slowly fading...) - here we have several classic Marcus moments. He is still my little sidekick while the bigs are off at school!

Pumping but going nowhere fast - classic

A cold day with no shirt - classic

Thug life with the pink plate - classic

Mens Morning

Marcus got to bring his Daddy (and Grandpa - thanks to the timing of piano recital visit weekend) to the preschool's annual Men's Morning. The three manly men loaded up the wagons, and spent the morning doing crafts, eating donuts, and in general just letting Marcus show them around. I wish I had a picture of the three of them, darn!!

Picture of "Marcus' Daddy"

"shaving"

Spring piano recital

The girls had their first piano recital with their new teacher Holly! The recital was at an assisted living home, which is the best idea ever. The residents get to hear kids perform beautiful music, and the kids get a built in audience! Their teacher also has voice students, so it was so fun to hear kids sing and play.  Thank you to Nana & Poppy, Nana & Grandpa for coming and showing your support. My beautiful girls.

Mommy and the kids

Our piano teacher Miss Holly directed Fiddler on the Roof in Portland this month, so I took my big kids to see it. It was awesome, and my kids were laughing through the whole thing. I love children's theater! I can't wait to start taking them to more :) Big kids are fun!

Introducing Costco's newest employee

Everyone who talks to me on a regular basis knows about Marcus and all his "bestht friendsth" at all the stores I frequent. His very best friends are at Winco and Costco.

At Winco it is a hysterical and lovely woman named Olivear (I have come to realize everyone is best friends with Olivear, she is that kind of person who everyone will wait in her line even if it's 10x longer than the others). I always tell her my funny Marcus stories, and she always gives him a sticker for his forehead (and sometimes sneaks him a candy). He adores her and from Day 1 knew how to pronounce her unique name, promptly correcting me when I said it wrong to him. So that's our Winco friend...

Then we have Costco, where his bestie is a man named Bruce. For over a year, these two have yelled loud and boisterous greetings to each other from far across the store, and they run up to each other and "pound it" while everyone around them enjoys the show. I have had multiple conversations with other Costco employees who say things like "I've never seen Bruce like that! It's so fun to see him light up!" - Marcus wants to be Bruce when he grows up.

So... last week I was returning something, and Bruce was standing at the exit marking receipts (cue large greeting with a huge scene between him and Marcus). Somehow this turned into him inviting Marcus to do receipts with him, Marcus holds the highlighter and Bruce checks the baskets. Marcus is instructing all the customers, like he owns this entire place. Entire lines of people are laughing out loud at his antics. So then we finally say goodbye and grab our own cart to shop. We say "See you soon when we bring our own basket through!"- When we got back around and were checking out, Bruce presented Marcus with HIS OWN COSTCO BADGE. He must have printed it in the 30 minutes it took us to get back around. I DO NOT MAKE THIS STUFF UP. Marcus literally blushed and beamed, I have never seen him be so stunned and happy in my entire life.

Isn't this the best??? I do this blog so I can go back and show my kids these funny things later in our printed books. I love all the fun I have with the littlest kid with the biggest personality.

PS. Now a side note - before this badge thing happened, I was at Winco chatting with Olivear and she stops suddenly and say "OH MY GOSH I HAVE TO TELL YOU SOMETHING!! In the last week alone, I have had three Costco workers come through my line and tell me about a little blonde boy who comes in their store and cracks everyone up. I didn't put two and two together until one of them said his name was Marcus. I stopped and yelled HEY I KNOW MARCUS! He is my buddy here at Winco!" - so now you see, we have come full circle where all his favorite people now know about each other and can share even more in his big, big world.

PPS. Then after Marcus got his Costco badge, he just had to back to Winco to show Olivear, and well she was not to be outdone. Here we have the hilarious picture of her LIFTING him up so he can scan his own groceries. It just goes on and on :)

PPPS. About a month AFTER, Olivear actually MADE A WINCO BADGE for him. We had missed her the last few times we were there, and when we finally saw her, she just about burst. "I've been storing this badge for Marcus in my apron for a MONTH! Where have you been Marcus? I miss you!" So now he has two awesome store badges, and I kid you not, I have had zero to do with all this going down. Other than my utter amusement and giggles at watching it unfold.

My life is awesome.

Marcus
Lil Cutie

Family Fun Night

Quatama's Family Fun Night - fun for all... The highlight was the photo booth this year, in which Marcus immediately pushed the enormous red start button without anyone knowing, therefore out of 5 shots, we got one with our eyes open. FARCUS!!! Love my family. Love our school.

Aesop's fables

Madeline (and all of 3rd grade) presented Aesop's Fables in their class musical! Our music teacher is so fabulous. I am amazing how these kids can sing and perform. Maddy even signed up to get a speaking part, which she did awesome with. I even let her wear her new clicky heels (which she promptly matched with jeggings and knee high fringe socks - totally awesome :) I love her!

Special guests Nana and Grandpa

Snakes and how far I've come

We took the family for a visit to the park, the one with lots of nature trails and ponds. Doesn't that sound so fun?? What we did not anticipate IN THE MIDDLE OF WINTER was a fancy little den of snakes all along one section of trail. It had to be the best day for Marin, and my worst nightmare. But, see, I am smarter now that I have children. I do not allow my fears to control me, because if I did, these naughty little children would torment me day and night (Madeline is the only one who would care to protect my feelings, let's face it). So I am a cool customer, and just stand aloof off to the side of aforementioned DEN OF SNAKES and let Marin hold the baby snake, pass it around to all the siblings, while Daddy laughs hysterically at my sly attempt to not even care there were dozens and dozens of adult and baby snakes all along this path. I don't even care. I am so cool. I am ice.

So anyway, just to prove it, I took a picture of Marin and the babiest of all snakes. Really, the kids were so happy to have snakes to play with. GUH!!!!

I love how she takes care of him. And his little crack too!

Shenanigans

Here we have the quarterly shenanigan roundup :)

His uniform for cold rainy runs in the stroller

Oldest and youngest made up a game. Squish Marcus.

And now squish Marin :) He thinks this game is fantastic

Bumblebee got stuck up here. Eventually escaped

Hanging at the rainy park while the girls have piano lessons

Hanging at the sunny park while the girls have piano lessons

Somehow he makes a tablet with touch-screen work with fleece mittens.

Giving Goldie a little talk.

Goals

Madeline loves fashion. She is always interested in people's fashion choices, and constantly experimenting on her own. She is ALWAYS getting compliments from people when she tries something crazy (and then it works). I need to take some tips for myself, perhaps ;) Recently she wanted to pursue the life goal of owning "heels that click when you walk". Because wedges have already been in the family for some time, and now she felt ready for some clicky action. The "right" shoes must be tested on lacquered store floors, to ensure very loud and prominent clicks.  She found the shoes of her dreams, only to be told she would need to earn her own money for these beauties. I think she had about two dollars in her spend jar. So... for someone who doesn't LOVE hard manual labor, she really kicked things into action and begged for jobs. Let me just say that I got a lot of projects crossed off my list with the help of a heel-dreaming blonde beauty. And here we have the results. Perfection.