Evelyn as Bunny

Happy Easter! This is the girl with some Bunny ears on and let me say that she did not want this photo shoot, that may come across on some of her expressions, hey, at least I didn't add the one with her bawling her eyes out.
We wish you lots of jelly beans and no loosened fillings.

Back in the Saddle

As you can see, the Dynamic Duo are back and at their adventures. Bean decided that Choppah should go out and have some fun in the swing. By the way, sweats pulled up over cowgirl boots is the new black.....

Headaches, Wind and Very Tall Tales

My head feels as if there is a huge green vice clamped around it and some giant is tightening it down.... yes, the old sinuses are flaring up. This is going on week two of a constant headache for me. Some days are worse than others. Today? Very bad indeed. I am on the verge of throwing up from the pain but I am fighting it because I know that it would make it hurt worse.
I said the following or something very similar in an email to my sister in law:
"It seems that as soon as my head started hurting, Evelyn suddenly developed a love of singing very long and non-sensical songs at the very tip top of her voice. I never knew that the voice of a three year old could penetrate steel in order to turn your ear drums to mush and cause excruciating pain in the frontal lobe while simultaneously being the cutest thing that you ever heard and leaving a part of you wishing that it would not stop".
Les came home from work to "batten down the hatches" so to speak. We are expecting at least 50 knot winds with possible tornadoes in the early morning hours. The wind has already picked up and we are listening to it blow through our trees, it sounds nice now but I know that if we were still in the beach box, that place would be shaking like a leaf. We are planning on moving Bean's mattress down to our room for the night just to be safe as she is upstairs in a room with alot of trees outside her windows. I don't plan on telling her the real reason why as I don't want her to stress every time the wind blows but, I have yet to think of a plausible cover story.
In other news, Bean has begun spinning tall tales and it just cracks me up. So far this week, she has been caught in a Mexican Ice Storm and her truck blown off the side of a mountain, she has flown thru the sky with birds and her arms got tired from the flapping, she has found a faerie in our yard that was dressed in a green bathing suit and had yellow hair and Ev taught her to say " Fu Mei", she has had a tiny vampire biting her feet, she has rescued her Papa when he was lost in a storm and had a wounded leg, there are other stories as well but, I think you get the picture.
Also she has been talking NON-STOP for three days. Les says that she is the only human that can speak on the inhale AND the exhale and that, obviously punctuation is highly overrated. No kidding! She was playing some sort of game wherein one of our bureaus was a car and she was going to Ohio to deliver chocolate to her Grandpa, but her baby had to go and so did the ginormous bag full of odds and ends. So she was experiencing some logistical trouble and she was constantly muttering and talking and fussing and grunting. When I asked her if she could maybe just play quietly and think in her head instead of talking (yes my head hurts that bad and well, she HAD been talking and singing for about 10 straight hours)----- She looked at me as if I had just turned green and sprouted another head and said " Well, NO, I NEED to talk!", man, if that doesn't sum it up.

My Husband

Leslie and I have been together 14 years- it's not our anniversary, by the way, I was just thinking about this man of mine..... It's hard for me to believe that many years have gone by, when there is still a part of me that can never quite get enough time with him. I was very lucky to find him at an early age, and then by some miracle I realized that I would be silly not to marry this fella, even if we were only 20 and 21. We have been through some adventures and rough patches that's for sure but the thing that amazes me is that I have never stopped LIKING him. He is smart, really smart (if a bit absent minded), funny, good looking, strong, kind and an all around great guy. He has been my strength during some very hard times, he has made me crazy at times (as I am sure that I have done the same to him), he makes me laugh, he stands by me, when I am nutso, he says "hey psycho chill out"- what more can a girl ask for?
I knew that I had it made that he was my friend and husband and that I was lucky beyond imagination to have him. That was until he became a father... He is absolutely a great father to Evelyn. He is patient and kind, he teaches her how to just have fun and get dirty, he doesn't let her get away with much but he does it in a firm and patient way. He always puts her first and he knows how to make her feel very special.
Thank you Leslie for just being you and being the kind of person that I am proud to know and have as a husband, after all of these years, I wouldn't change a thing. I have loved every single minute that I have had with you and I am not sure that I will ever have enough.

A Whole Bunch!

We have had a busy few days here, so I have some pics to post. I would have taken many more pictures than I did but Bean has been feeling the hate for the camera lately, so I have been trying to back off. It's hard though, I really enjoy taking pictures and I am sometimes desperate to catch all of those little moments and expressions. This past weekend we had a Bowling Night, it was a success again, fun was had by all and this time Bean was rolling that ball down the lane on her own. We had Sushi (I have a religious love for the stuff), and Evelyn slammed on some rice. It has been warm, so we have been outside for 2 days running, monitoring flowers and bugs, sighting the first mosquitoes of the year. So, here is your "whole bunch"....

A difficult combo, total cuteness AND camera aversion.



We go out for Sushi, Bean chows "Chinese Rice" and uses chopsticks to do it.




An askew shot of Bean enjoying Story Hour, one of the highlights of her week.


She likes to keep a close eye on the progress of our few Daffodils. We call that the "Imperious Finger", I just think it's funny to see that tiny finger pointing things out.


Here, she is, out in the warm weather, inspecting "flowers" and such.

A Conversation with Bean

Last night we were driving home, along a dark highway. The skies were clear and the stars were bright- fodder for the imagination....
After a few moments of quiet, Bean pipes up and says
"Mama, I have something to say."
M: Ok Bean what have you got?
B: WWWWEEEELLLLLL......
M: Yes?
B: What I want to do is to get on a big, shiny Rocket Ship with Mama, Papa and Bean and I want to go way up high and go to the stars. Doesn't that sound wunnerful?
M: (astounded) OH YES! Evelyn that does sound wonderful.
B: Mama if we got up there in our Rocket Ship would we fall right back down or would the wind keep us up there long enough to touch the stars?
M: Well, we would have to use our big rocket ship engines to get us up there but once we were up there, we could just use little engines to float, float, float up there with all of the stars.
B: Mama, I really want to do that, when can we do that?
M: We won't be able to do that for awhile, we don't have a rocket ship.
B: Oh. Well, Mama? Have you ever touched a star?
M: No I have never been able to, but it would be so great,I can just imagine it.
B: I have touched one, alot of stars!
M: You did? That's great! What did they feel like?
B: after a few seconds.....CHEESE!
M: Cheese?!?!?! (while laughing of course)
B: after much consideration...NO! Not cheese they feel like, you know that scratchy stuff on trees (bark), like that but they are a little bit hot and a little bit bright but you wouldn't need sunglassses.

That's my girl. She has a mind full of imagination and wonder and this mind can, I guess, just spontaneously figure out certain rudimentary concepts of the mechanisms of flight because, well, neither I, nor Les have ever talked about rocket ships versus earth bound flight with her. Actually I have never even talked about Outer Space with her, silly me, I was waiting until she has the concepts of different states and countries down before I talked about planets and galaxies. I think it's amazing how kids can just bust through the walls we put up around them, how we think they are only able to understand so little , when they actually understand so much. I guess I will pull out some of Leslie's Astronomy books and let her get a good look at some stars.

Just Bean