Life in the Pfaff Lane

Monday, April 18, 2011

Being a Pfaff has made me realize that there need not be an official end-time to birthday celebrations. If you were born on, say, October 12th, there's no reason you have to ONLY celebrate it on the 12th. You could have cake and ice cream with your family on your birthday. Then, your friends can take you out for birthday lunch a few days later. Then, you can have a party that weekend and invite all the people you like to hang out with. I didn't do exactly that for this birthday, but we did celebrate it three different ways. The only reason we stopped was because Dylan and Zoey's birthday was coming up.

We went out to dinner with friends on my birthday, then after we moved into our house, we went out to dinner with the kids at our favorite neighborhood "Asian Bistro" as Owen likes to call it.

Hibachi bar rules!

Mmmm. Dynamite maki!

I'm so proud of my adventurous boys.

Then we went home and met cousins, Auntie, Uncle and Nana and Papa for dessert.

Two little peanuts!

Coral and Zoey, just three months apart.

Wesley eating his soup...and ten hours later, still eating his soup.

Stealing the frosting from my cake.

Papa and Coral.

Mmm. Yummy cake. Owen is playing with the Amish Friendship bread in the background.

Dylan both signing "food" and pretending to eat cake very seriously.

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Our Glorious Backyard

I have said it before and I will say it again, I seriously underestimated the greatness of our backyard gulley. When we were looking a the house, I thought it was the opposite of an asset. "Oh the kids won't be able to play games in a big flat yard..." Uh, they have spent so many hours already, just checking out the menagerie that the little stream provides, I don't know why I was worried about them not being able to play yard games. Being a child naturalist is far superior to any plans I had for them in a flat backyard.

Right now I'm in the process of ordering them some field guide and orienteering books on Half.com and Amazon. The learning ride never ends, and I'm so excited for them, for us, to start exploring more and more in our amazing back yard.

It's unreal how full of life that creek is! This is one of the creatures the kids have discovered since we moved in.

Just watchin' "Squirtle".

Squirtle

Here we are hiking along the creek behind the neighborhood houses. As I waded through I realized that it was a bit like Rainbow Valley. Ahh, Anne of Green Gables...

There's even a sand beach! ;)

I'm so excited for the kids in the summer time. I bet it will be a veritable haven of delight for them. I just hope the bugs won't be too bad. Tick check!

Some Catch-Up

My computer has been out of commission for awhile and after Jonathan got the desktop set up for me, I was having trouble uploading my photos to it. Now, we're finally back up and running. Here are some tidbits from the past weeks.