Sarah's First Violin Recital

Sarah played The E String Concerto in her first violin recital last Friday! She sat very nicely until it was her turn to play, then got up and did a wonderful job!
Thanks to our friend Lisa in Spain for the music that Mommy used to play the piano part.

Preschool Graduation

David graduated from preschool last Friday! The kids all sang The Alphabet Song, Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, and The Itsy Bitsy Spider for a packed room full of parents, grandparents, and siblings. We also enjoyed a video slide show of pictures from the year while snacking on popcorn and orange drink. Finally, each student got a certificate from one teacher and a scrapbook of momentos from the year from the other teacher. It was a great morning! David enjoyed having all of his grandparents there to see him, and we had a good time playing Giant Frisbee outside and grilling hamburgers for lunch.

Our Garden

We have our backyard garden pretty much ready now! Grandma and Grandpa brought us some compost and helped us put up the fence last week. The little helpers scooped dirt and smoothed it out with a bulldozer that measured how deep the dirt should be. We also planted some squash and cucumbers. They are already up!

Make Way for Ducklings!

Guess what we found in our backyard yesterday? A mommy duck and her little ducklings!

Wednesday night we kept hearing a peeping bird sound, and I wasn't sure what it was, but assumed it was a songbird enjoying the spring weather. In the morning, the kids and I went outside to see the garden, and I noticed a duck like the one in the picture flapping around in the neighbor's yard. Note: we didn't take this picture, but it did look like this one when it flew. I think it was a Black Duck. That was pretty exciting! Our cat also got outside and seemed to be prowling around, chasing the duck a little bit.

Pretty soon, we noticed that she kept making more of those loud peeping sounds and going back into the lillies by the other house's foundation--where there were several fuzzy little ducklings! We tried to catch our cat to keep him out of the way, and the mommy duck herded one wayward duckling (that had been wandering around) over under our lilac bush while the others stayed hidden in the lillies. She then led the big group away, across the yard and across the street to another vacant house, while the little lilac duckling peeped away, sounding very worried. We finally got the cat inside and the kids hid under the blankets on the clothesline to watch the drama. Eventually the mommy duck came back from the other house to look for her hidden baby, and the baby went running across the yard right by Sarah and her tricycle to meet with the mommy and go to their hiding place. We all rejoiced at the safe reunion!

Breaking the pinata

After all the fun of making the pinata, we had to break it.

It took two rounds of children swinging at it, and then both Mommy and Daddy to finally release the treasures inside!

Yes, we are using a snow brush/ice scraper to hit the pinata. It's probably not the traditional stick, but was light enough for Michael to swing, and it had a pointy end.

Daddy finally finished off the pinata with a mighty swing, sending candy, a whiffle ball, a pinecone, and a shoe flying across the yard. A good time was had by all.

Happy Cinco de Mayo!

Today we celebrated Cinco de Mayo by making a pinata and having yummy tacos for supper. Here you see the kids making pinata paste out of flour and water. Michael thinks it is pretty yummy. Sarah was in charge of squishing the flour lumps, and she did a great job! David is overseeing the whole thing.

After mixing up the paste, we took it outside with some newspapers and a balloon to start building our pinata. Everyone enjoyed dipping the newspaper strips into the gluey goop and smearing them onto the balloon. Our first balloon popped, but we quickly blew up another and stuck the glops of newspaper all over it. It worked pretty well, and we were able to finish it up without incident, other than the dried flour paste all over everyone's hands and clothes.

The pinata dried for most of the afternoon, sitting in the sun on a sand bucket. David and I were just discussing whether everyone else would want to see the balloon pop when they drove up in the van from their trip to find a bicycle tire innertube. It made a really neat sound when the balloon pulled away from the dried newspaper!

To decorate our pinata, we decided to use the gold spray paint leftover from Christmas. That was fun! Dan finished filling and decorating it while the kids rode their bike/tricycle/little car around the parking lot.

Here is the finished pinata from our fiesta:

We had a great time trying to break it with an ice scraper. The directions said to make 3 layers of newspaper, but we've always had trouble breaking homemade pinatas, so we only did one layer, and it still took us quite a while to get through it! Next time, we will try reinforcing the top while making the bottom a little less sturdy.