Friday on the Levee

I'm a week behind...last Friday was beautiful and our family had a great outing to Newport on the Levee. We traversed the Purple People Bridge and amused ourselves at the incredible playgrounds at Sawyer's Point (at least I think that's where we were). We finished up the evening with a feast of delicious pizza and salads at Dewey's pizza.

From KY to OH

This is what you get when you ask Noelle to pose in front of the flowers:

And this is what you get when we ask Sadie to pose in front of the flowers, "like Noelle did."
Fun on the tire swing

"Guess What Animal I'm Thinking Of"

When I need an activity to keep the kids from driving me crazy at the lunch table or in the car...or anywhere really...I will play a game we call "Guess what animal I'm thinking of".

I think of an animal and then the girls, mainly Noelle, has to ask yes-no questions to figure out what the animal is. Here are some sample questions:

Does it have fur?
Does it have 4 legs?
Is it bigger then you?
Have you ever seen one in real life? (rather then in a book)

Recently Noelle has been trying to play this game with Sadie. It's obvious that Sadie doesn't quite "get it", but the results are very humorous. Here are 2 examples:

Noelle: Sadie lets play "Guess What Animal". You think of an animal and I'll guess it.
Sadie: Ok
N: Does it have 4 legs?
S: No.
N: Does it have 2 legs?
S: No
N: Does it have 3 legs?
S: Yes.
N: Is it a spider?
S: Yes!!

Even funnier is the fact that Noelle didn't see anything wrong with this and thought they'd had a great game.

Sample 2
Noelle: Sadie you think of an animal and I'll try to guess it
S: OK
N: Does it have 4 legs?
S: No
N: Does it have 2 legs?
S: No
N: Does it have any legs?
S: No
N: Is it bigger then you?
S: No
(at this point I thought Sadie was just saying No to everything, so I tried to trick her)
Me: Is it smaller then you?
S: Yes
(okay so much for my theory)
N: Is it a cupcake?
S: YES!!!

Ummm, isn't this game called "Guess What Animal I'm Thinking of"? Again, Noelle and Sadie seemed perfectly pleased with their accomplishment.

Blame It on the Rain

Wasn't it Milli Vanilli that sang "Blame it on the Rain"? That has nothing to do with anything, but I'd like to blame it on the rain for my lack of motivation last week. This week's cool, dry temperatures are giving me nothing to blame, so I better get something done this week!

On Saturday when the rain finally broke (but still threatened) our family felt like an adventure, so we headed to a park we aren't too familiar with; Devou Park. It was nice to get some fresh air and let the kids run. We attempted a family picture with the skyline in the background, but you can see for yourself how successful that was:

Anyway it was a nice time as a family.

On Sunday Brad and Noelle went on a "date" together. They went rollerskating while Sadie and I hung out at home. The Children's Ministry at church had rented out the rink for 2 hours so we thought this would be a "safe" time for Noelle to try out rollerskating. It also had me reminiscing about the many times our church rented out our local rink during my childhood.

When Brad and Noelle came home I was excited to hear what Noelle thought of her first roller skating experience. Her reply was something like this "I liked the food best." Apparently, once she got the skates on all her confidence and excitement drained away. The evening was saved with a hot dog, popcorn and blue slushy. But overall, it was still a good time spent with Daddy.

With all the rain we've also sprouted a whole bunch of I-don't-know-what. They're in our front flower bed which previously had flowers in. I'm assuming they are Cosmos sprouts (the flowers that we planted there in the summer), but we'll give them a little time just to see what they turn into. We figure they'll get too cold pretty soon.

Happy Juice and Fat Straws

Simple pleasure make every day a little brighter. This Spring we discovered the generic brand of Crystal Lite. (basically sugar-free Kool-aid) Brad's favorite is the fruit punch flavor. After a few weeks of seeing Brad drink a lot of it, Noelle asked him why he was always drinking the red juice. Brad said it was just a happy drink.
From then on we called this drink "Happy Juice". We've also discovered 2 mixed drinks, using Happy Juice as a mixer - Fresca with Happy Juice and Ice Tea with Happy Juice.

Sadie especially likes the Fresca mixer. She pronounces Fresca as "Sucka" so the official name is "Sucka with Happy Juice".

I'm more of an Ice Tea and Happy Juice kinda girl - due to the caffeine and all.
I also have a fondness for fat straws, which McDonalds excels at. This cup originally contained an iced latte, but I couldn't part with the appealing cup and fat straw so it's been keeping me hydrated with many a drink. Simple, I know.

A Work in Progress

Brad has a good bit of time off this month and Behr paint was on sale at Home Depot last week. The combination has put us into "project" mode. Unfortunately we are completely inept at picking paint colors. So the paint sale has come and gone and our house has become a paint palette.

After sampling 4 Behr paints and still needing something just a little different, I went to a local paint store and got some personal help. The "paint man" was so generous to loan us his entire color wheel. NOW I think I know what we're getting...you'll just have to come back for the "after" picture. (yes, I know the picture of the girls is sideways. I'm waiting on a good family picture to put there. It could take a while)

Here's Brad's project. This use to be the nursery and it will become the guest room. There's a lot of patching that needed to be done here.

And since the mattress and box-spring are out of the guest room, Brad created a little fort for the girls to play in while we're busy with our projects. We just set the mattress on top of 2 cabinets in the basement and...instant fort. They added the accessories - sleeping bags, books, etc...