Roadtrip to DC

We've been wanting to visit DC for a while and I had heard about the cherry blossoms so we waited and found a weekend that worked perfectly.They were in full bloom and so beautiful!!Picnic lunch
It was amazingly hard to get this picture! It wasn't necessarily the kids not cooperating, but the photographers. Every time, every person seemed to cover the monument with our heads. We even tried kneeling down and that didn't even work.
It may have been only 80 degrees but it felt HOT! We were grateful we brought along our stroller and scooters. We felt like a real city family.
Gorgeous dayI tried to explain to Rachel how cool it was for her to do things like this that I could only read about when I was in school. She liked that.This next series of pictures really make me smile. We may have made a little bit of a scene.

The reflecting pool is under construction...sad.
TommyShe's actually pretty goodThe White HouseNo family trip is complete without a visit to the hotel pool, right? We got an amazing priceline deal on a hotel just a few blocks away from it all.
Seriously, photographers...you couldn't get the whole capital building?
Saturday was rainy and COLD. We spent it indoors at the Air and Space museum and the natural history museum. Not many pictures...maybe my allergy attack, laziness, dead battery, who knows.
A butterfly landed on Rachel's head, and one landed on Tommy's shoulder. He was so happy that he had nectar on his shoulder.
We made it in 3 hours there, 5 on the way back. Blah! We avoid the fast food chains, but we still had some awful awful food. Is there any trick to getting quality food while traveling? I'd really like to know! Otherwise it was a fabulous vacation. I love spending time with my family.

The Leprechaun

St. Patrick's "Preschool" at our house. They loved their rainbow kites.The day before St. Patrick's day the kids spent all afternoon working on a little house for the leprechaun. You can see it is even complete with a green pool for him. I later found a couple notes Rachel had written to him. They got a little ruined from water but here is what they said:
"Dear leperchaun,
Please do not lie to me. I Belive in you. I want to Be friend with you. I will Be nice to you. I hope you'r nice. Do you want to Be friend with me?
You'r secret Admiyr,
Rachel"
"Me (Rachel) and Alai (my friend) want to know if you'r true. Send a note Back to us, Please. We are Amarican not Irash. I Think you are real. I love St. Patricks Day, do you? I hope so I think you are a nice man. love, Rachel
can we Please Get you'r Gold if you say no I'll follow the rainbow"
Cute right? I usually do green food for the holiday, I've never mentioned anything about any leprechauns...so I had to oblige. They struck gold!
This little girl knows the sound of the treat jar. Can you resist? I cannot.
Green lunch. Tommy was super proud. He helped pick out most of it at the grocery store. Green smoothies are Tommy's favorite lunch request. We have them almost every day.Monet family art day tooJust a few days later Rachel came off the bus SO excited to show me that she found a four leaf clover. I was amazed. I didn't know they actually existed. I've never been able to find one myself.I love having chances to celebrate and I love how my kids get so excited about it.

(Can anyone tell me is there an easy way to get the blasted date off these pictures? I didn't realize that it was doing that. My kids must have been playing with my camera. I can't get me flash to work either.)

PI Day!

Pi day was a big thing here in Princeton, they did a lot of things to celebrate it. We didn't know about the festivities and missed most of it over the weekend but Jake learned of a tour on 3.14 around Princeton all about Einstein and so took a lunch break on a beautiful day to do it.

This is the only memorial in North America dedicated to Einstein. We learned some fun things about him, like how quirky he was. On rainy days he would carry an umbrella, but it wouldn't be open. He didn't like socks and wouldn't wear them. He never learned how to drive a car, he walked and biked everywhere.
This memorial was tucked in the back of a random wool shop.
This was Einstein's house. Not too far from ours. It is not open to the public. Supposedly another Nobel Peace Prize winner lives there. They told us on Halloween he dresses up as Einstein and hands out candy. Hm, we just might.And of course, we just had to top it all off with some pie!

Maple Sugaring

Last weekend we ventured out to a state park to learn the art of maple syrup. I first learned about this a year ago, but being without a car made it difficult to do. So I jumped on our second chance. It's been a few years since we converted from Aunt Jemima to the pure stuff and we're even bigger fans now. We now understand why it's so expensive too!

They first taught us how we can distinguish a maple tree. In the summer you can do it by the leaves, but in the winter when you tap the tree (in it's sleep state), it's a little trickier. It's the branches...they have opposing branches as opposed to alternate branches. Interesting. Rachel found a Red Maple leaf.
They taught us how to drill the hole and "tap" the tree (hammer the spile into the hole)
You hang a bucket on the spile and watch the sap ooze out. Sadly, this winter was too mild for the trees to produce much sap, so we didn't see any as I had hoped. But, we bought a spile and we have some Maple trees in our backyard, so we're going to do it next winter. Supposedly it looks just like water, because it is...96% water. They say it takes 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup. So yes, we'll collect it for the sake of the process, but then we'll just go buy some at the store. And that is why it is so expensive, including the trees being only in the Northeast and Canada
To get the syrup from the sap all you have to do is boil it and let the water evaporate away. The different Grades of syrup are just when it was tapped during the season. The early stuff, Grade A, is lighter and, Grade B has a richer maple flavor.You can tell it's done, not by the color, but by the temperature...once it reaches 6 degrees higher than the boiling point of water (or something like that) Here's Tommy doing the math.
Then we had a taste test to compare the difference between the store bought corn syrup stuff, to the stuff they tapped in the preserve. No comparison! Tommy had to do a few extra dips to make sure he knew which one he liked best.
We finished off the night with pancakes for dinner, of course. And when Jake goes to Trader Joe's there's always some extra treats in the bag...Maple leaf cookies (which were so yummy) and Maple flavored shredded wheat. I love it!

18 months old

My baby is fitting in with the big kids nowand taking care of her own babies




I guess she's not my "baby" any more. It seems like she's changing and growing up more and more each day. Although she's become quite a bit crankier lately, she's still the sunshine of my life.

Oh how I love her...let me count the ways...

1. She's recently learned the word "no" and will sometimes shake her head and little finger too. It's so high pitched and so cute
2. Whenever she sees the kids getting a treat she will stand and hold her little hands, palms up together, waiting to get her share...can we resist?
3. She's easily offended
   
4. She'll say "where are you?" when she's looking for you, although it sounds more like "ere a oo"
5. Sometimes we'll get a good pucker when we ask for a kiss and more often than not, it's a snotty one
   
6. She loves building towers with blocks and reading her books
7. She's really good with puzzles
   
8. I love when she tries to sing along to the music in the car
9. She knows how to use an iphone
   
10. Some of her "words" are: hi, hello, bye, uh-oh, gone, cheese, peek-a-boo, go?, Daddy, Mommy, baby, banana, one, two
    
11. She'll pull her little hand up in her sleeve to trick us that she has lost her hand
12. She can give pretty good tickles
13. Has a funny fascination with the fire alarm
14. She puts her garbage where it belongs
    
15. She knows everyone's shoes and will bring them to everybody as a nice little hint
16. She can even open the front door...dangerous right?
17. She blows kisses to her daddy every morning when he leaves for work, or anytime she finds a purse or backpack.
    
18. She's so cute...I love her big belly, her baby cheeks, her cheesy smile...and did you notice that hair?! Yea, she actually has some.