Eli's Recital

Last Monday, May 10, Eli performed in his first dance recital. As you probably know, he's been in a Mother's Morning Out program once a week where he does ballet, tap, and gymnastics. The recital was with his ballet class. He loves it! Eli and his friend Mia do the MMO together, which is another reason he loves it. She is the one you see in the pictures, and she is to the right of him in the video. I'm sure this will be blackmail material later, but for now, it's so stinkin' cute!

Here's the big dance! At the end you can hear John yell "shake & bake!". This was code for, "go Eli!" because Eli didn't want us to yell his name. He thought Shake & Bake would be much funnier and less embarrassing, I guess.


After the recital, several of the little girls in his class got flowers. When Eli saw this, he also wanted flowers and got upset. You can see this in the picture of him next to Mia with her big vase of flowers. John tried to remedy the situation by giving him 60 cents from his pocket, but that didn't last long...wasn't quite the same. The fact that the girls kept coming up to Eli and saying, "Look at my pretty flowers!", didn't help either. Once they realized that he was sad, a couple of his friends gave his some flowers for him to keep. Problem solved! Although, he doesn't look to happy in the picture I took of him with his two flowers, he really was...he was just sick of me taking pictures!



































































Jed also had fun at the recital, as you can see here! I captured this moment of Jed kissing Mia's little sister, Eleanor, goodbye. Priceless!














Here's another great picture that was captured by Mia's GG. She wanted to get a picture of Eli's blue eyes, but got him picking his nose instead!



















Afterwards, we walked across the street to the frozen custard shop and had some yummy treats. Memories were made, and it was a fun night all around!

Love

This video made me happy. I hope it does the same for you!

Makin' Stuff

Last weekend was a productive one for us! A couple Sundays ago, I took a Sewing Crash Course for Beginners at my new favorite place, The Stitch Lab. I loved it, and it gave me a little more confidence in my sewing abilities. I want to learn more! The hard part is finding the time to practice. In the class we all made a reversible tote bag. Eli saw mine and wanted one of his own, so I let him help me make one. He even picked out the fabric, which I think was a great choice! His favorite part about sewing was pushing the pedal and hammering the pins into the pin cushion. All in all it was a fun time and the bag turned out well.
















John was busy last weekend, too, making a fence. Boone and our neighbor's dog do not get along through the fence and always go crazy trying to attack each other through it. A couple weeks ago, Boone stuck his nose through and got his lip bit by the other dog and ended up having to get stitches ($300 later!). We had been planning on building a barrier for that side of the fence for awhile to stop the dogs' attacks. We had to do it ASAP, though, after Boone's incident. So, John enlisted some help and had the fence built in one day! The cedar is from Craig's List...$20! I think it looks great, and it matches the other fence he did around the garden.
I also want to mention that the boys helped with the fence building as well. Eli did plenty of digging and dirt moving with his shovel and construction trucks. Jed was perfectly content to observe from the fort or on a nearby rock. The next project is to build a shed, so I'm sure there will be plenty of help with that, too!

A couple of interesting aricles...

I thought these were worth posting here.
When I read the first article, it reminded me of the kind of lifestyle John dreams about. It basically describes some urban farm type stuff. I wouldn't call myself a Radical Homemaker like the women in the article, but I do try to live a more simple and sustainable life. Really, mostly because of John's influence and ideas that have resonated with me. He'd much rather be the Radical Homemaker, I think! Anyway, I think it's a good read. Click here.

I wanted to post this article because it talks about birth/breastfeeding in the US. The contrast between the two birth experiences in the article is the reason I chose to have a home birth with Jed. With our home birth, I got to have the ideal birth experience described in "Birth number 1" along with many other benefits of being in the comfort of my own home. It sounded like they were talking about a home birth in that first experience. I should also say that my hospital birth experience with Eli was much like the first birth experience in the article. That's probably due to the fantastic and informative birthing class we took, which focuses on the Bradley Method of birth/labor. We also chose a doctor who was supportive of natural birth and our birth plan. I wish that every birth experience here in America could be like that ideal hospital birth described in the article. I've also read that recently home births have been on the rise in the US, and unfortunately, I think the second birth experience explained in the article is one of the reasons why. It's just sad. Hopefully, hospitals will come around. We deserve it!

Eli is 4!

Eli's birthday was on Saturday, the 10th. We had a party in the park at 9:00 am. It was a morning party so we thought it would be fun to do pancakes on the grill. Those were a success! We also had breakfast sausages and fruit...oh and cupcakes, of coarse! I decided to make some cupcakes from a gluten free Zucchini Brownie recipe I had, so everyone unknowingly got a little nutrition from the cupcakes. They were really good if I do say so myself. You can check it out here on my sister's blog.
The party was perfect. It was great because the kids could play on the playground while the adults visited at the picnic tables. Plus the kids could get all their sugar high energy out while they were there. I highly recommend a park party because the kids can run around and play all they want, the clean up is easy, and it's also free! An added plus for Eli's party was the weather. It was a little chilly in the morning, but warmed up nicely.
We had a busy weekend with two other birthday parties to go to, but we survived! Eli has one more celebration to do with his friend Mia. She couldn't come to his party and Eli was upset about that, so I promised him that he an Mia could do something fun for his birthday. I think we may go to the zoo.
I can't believe my boy is four! Four years old means that he's really a little boy now, or big boy as Eli would remind me! It's cliche to say, but time really does go by too fast!

Here are the pictures. I didn't get one of Eli blowing out the candles because he got embarrassed when we were singing Happy Birthday to him. So, I got a pic of John blowing out the candles. Unfortunately my camera ran out of batteries during the party, so I missed out on some good moments. Oh well.

Happy Easter!

Hope you had a good Easter. Ours was nice and low key. We did do an egg hunt in our backyard and this is how it went...












While John was hiding the eggs he found that one of our chickens, Marsala, had laid some eggs in the ivy by the fence. Her eggs are lighter and smaller than the others, so we know it was her. No tellin' how long they've been there!

Earlier in the week, the boys got to decorate eggs with Mia and Eleanor. Here's Eli with his eggs:










Eli wanted to take pictures of some of the plastic eggs. I guess it's abstract photography.

Jokes and Roars

Eli taught Jed how to roar like a lion. It's funny until they get to roaring back and forth and it's so loud you can't hear anything! Here is a video of Jed roaring...not the best of his roars, but you get the idea.


Eli has also taught Jed how to tell knock knock jokes. After he says "me", and you ask "me who", he usually will point to you and say "you". He didn't quite get that far in this video, but it's still funny! Oh, and sorry for the shakiness...Eli took this video.

Tow Truck

Remember Eli's favorite white truck that sat in our driveway for awhile? Well, it's gone. We decided to donate it after months of trying to fix it with no luck. I, for one, was excited to see it go. John and the boys, however, were not. We will likely get another one that works better and share it with some friends. Anyway, the day the tow truck came to get the truck was very exciting for the boys to watch, to say the least!