March Madness

March was a whirlwind. Here is some of what happened:

Trips to the zoo. We love the zoo. We have zoo passes, which I totally recommend to any family. With the Family Pass, we can get in two adults, and 4 children. Babies are free, so my friend Julie and I, our 4 kids and 2 babies got in for no charge! Hannah's favorite part is the petting zoo. It's like she comes home when she gets in the pen. She has to pet every single animal in there, and then when we finally have to drag her out, she has to bid each one farewell. Daniel on the other hand, well we're just trying to get him to not walk BEHIND the animals...

I decided to redo Daniel's room. Actually, I didn't really decide to, but I just decided to peel a bit of wallpaper off, and before I knew it, I had taken all the wallpaper down. Then I HAD to do something. I'm so thankful to my mom, and to our friend Sydney for coming over and doing what it took to get that room liveable again! I don't have an "after" picture yet, but I repainted the room, and we're doing a train theme in there. It made it totally worth it all when I took Daniel in to see it. It was like watching Extreme Makeover. He was ecstatic! He touched the walls, ran over to his bed, threw off the comforter and starting shouting "TRAINS!!!" as he traced the trains on his new sheets, detailing what color each engine was.

We had our fifth anniversary. You can read about that below. I'm still amazed!

For St. Patricks Day Peter made green eggs. OK, so Daniel looks a little pained in the picture, but let me assure you that he was just trying to get them in fast enough! It looked so disgusting that I just couldn't get any down, but the kids think Dad is a superhero now. Caleb became The Speedcrawler. He is into EVERYTHING. I've realized that since we've moved to the country, I no longer freak out at him getting a little dirty, or even eating a little dirt. Now I just try to "limit" the dirt intake. Fortunately, his favorite activity of the day is bathtime!

Daniel starting singing real songs. If I could post an audio clip, I would. He's got the tunes down. His favorite songs are "Doe, a Deer" (from The Sound of Music), the Doxology, and The Old Rugged Cross (he calls it "Cross Song"). "Doe, a Deer" sounds something like "Doe, a dee, a fee-a dee. Ray, a drop of golden SU! Me, a name, I call mySEF! Fa, a ong ong way to ru!!! (The capitalized syllables are emphasized heavily.) He also surprised us by quoting a Bible verse that Hannah had taught him when he wasn't being kind to her - Ephesians 4:32: "And be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ has also forgiven you." You go, kids!

Hannah has been so sweet and helpful. She wants to learn and "do school" all the time, but she's a good sport about waiting, when one of her brothers has an emergency to be attended to. Here she is doing Mrs. Potatohead while she waits for me. She also passed Level 2 in her swim lessons. We are so proud of her!!! Peter got his riding lawn mower. He is so cute. He has been wanting one of these, almost as long as he has wanted to live in the country. He just tools around with his ipod blasting sermons to him. He loves working outdoors. Good thing, we have a LOT to do keeping it up.

My cousins came! Actually, Allison is my cousin, but Hannah thinks that she is Allison's cousin because they are much closer in age. They came to help us celebrate Dad's and Caleb's birthdays! Dad turned 60, and Caleb turned 1, both on March 29. Dad loves sharing his birthday with Caleb, and Caleb thinks his Papa is so much fun. I'll write more about these 2 of my favorite guys at a later time.

The Gators won. For those of you not following the 'gatormania,' as I like to call it, this makes them back-to-back champions of the NCAA tournament. Peter and his dad are big Gator fans, so this was huge. I don't know how to insert a link to read about it, and Peter is not available to quote right now, so you'll just have to believe me, this was a big deal.

And that's all I have time for today!