Paige Is Back In The Saddle Again

Spring riding lessons started back up last night at 5:15. We dropped Megan off at her friend, Meghan's house on the way out of the development. Megan was happier hanging out with her friends than watching her sister ride horses.

Speaking of saddles...Paige can fetch her own saddle and heft it up onto Cece's back now. I think she has grown quite a bit since last fall.

I asked Paige on the way to lessons "which horse do you want to ride?" . She said she didn't know and she was wondering who else was going to ride with her. Miss. Ginette usually has two riders per class plus her helper (neighbor girl Harla). We were the first ones there so when Miss. Ginette asked Paige who she wanted to ride Paige didn't hesitate when she called out Cece's name.

Cece has a mud puddle issue...he doesn't like them. Paige knows this so each time they came to this mud puddle she would make him walk around the entire thing before continuing on.

After lessons as we were driving back out to the road Paige said " Riding lessons are like therapy, when I'm out their riding I don't think about anything but me and the horse". She said it's nice to give her brain a break from school and homework. This made me smile because I know exactly what she's talking about.

Here are some of the "April Fools Got'chas" from our house this year.

Paige did this one to me...the old post it note on the bottom of the mouse so it acts dead as a doornail. She also taped the handle of the faucet sprayer at the kitchen sink so my shirt got soaked when I went to rinse her thermos out.

Paige requested that I put neon purple food coloring in Megan's milk at breakfast. I told Megan it was a "new grape milk" instead of the usual chocolate or strawberry. She wasn't having any of it! So I had purple milk on my cereal.

Paige gets on the school bus for middle school before Megan gets up. So before Megan went off to school I helped her turn Paige's room "Upside Down".

We don't have any pictures of the last prank of the day...but I will do my best to describe it.
Before Megan and I returned home from Megan's dance classes Mike and Paige blew up a bunch of balloons. They did not tie them shut but they twisted them and shut the ends in the door. That way they would fall down and the air would whoosh out. They did the door from the garage to the house and also Megan's bedroom. It was a big hit!

Here are the pictures from Sunday, March 21 when we spent the afternoon at the auto show.


Paige and her penguin.

The girls stood in a long line to get balloons sculptures from Matt the Balloon Guy http://www.protwister.com/
He was pretty amazing, he could twist those balloons so fast while he was chatting with the kids and I never heard him pop a balloon and he never looked at his hands while he was working.

Megan and her monkey.

Speaking of monkeys they had the big tall rock wall up for the kids to climb. Megan climbed it three different times. She made it to the top two of the three times. They had to disconnect the button for the siren on the top because the folks at the auto show kept thinking it was the fire alarm. So when Megan got to the top she gave us the thumbs up!

Mike in the new claustrophobic Camaro. The side windows are very low profile and it feels a little like a cave for being such a big car. When I sat in it I had Mike go stand in front of the nose. I would not feel comfortable parking this in a parking lot that has those cement block things between each space. But not to worry I don't think there's a Camaro in my future anytime soon!


This was the last shot of the day...Megan makes the windows look big!

We spent the first day of Spring fishing!

I bought my fishing license at work on March 16th, because I knew that as soon as it warmed up Mike would be eager to go fishing. Luckily I was not scheduled to work on Saturday (3-20), it was sunny and warm (in the low sixties) so we decided to spend the first day of Spring fishing at Prairie Oaks. We packed up the kids and the fishing gear and headed to Anderson's to get Mike's fishing license. We also grabbed a five dollar pizza at Little Caesars for a quick lunch on the run. Nothing worse than going fishing on an empty stomach. Especially with kids in tow.


Our first stop was at our old hangout over by the creek. We didn't have any luck..not a bite not a nibble....nothing at all. It was a little windy and it was blowing our way so we got a lot of practice casting out.

After fishing for a while without any luck...not even a nibble, the kids made their own fun by making boats out of leaves and sticks and launching them down the stream that flows into the Darby.

Megan and I hanging out on the foot bridge that goes across the creek. After a while we headed over to the "dog pond" and the only thing we caught there were some sticks and weeds.

Mike even had the girls cast into the "kid's pond" over by the parking lot and they still didn't catch anything.
Megan drew a cute fish picture with some art supplies from her backpack. I guess she was "visualizing" her catch of the day.

Around 5 o'clock we packed up and headed around the bend to "Beaver Pond" . This was the first place that we fished with Dave and Jie last year.
The girls wanted to rest in the Explorer for a bit, so Mike has some quiet time to fish by himself. After snacking and reading and resting in the car the girls wanted to go see if their dad was having any luck. Mike had just caught his second fish when we got there with the camera. This peaked the girls interest so I went back to the car and got the rest of our fishing poles. We ended up fishing until it got dark, it was almost 8 p.m. when we pulled out of the parking lot and headed to Steak and Shake for a yummy late dinner.

Paige was our "Official Fish Recorder". She made up a new chart to record our catch. She writes down the date, type of fish, size (she insisted on measuring each fish). if it was kept or released and who reeled it in.
She said she's going to design new fishing badges for the 2010 season.

This was my only keeper of the night a 10 inch Crappie. Of course Mike had to catch his big brother (it was a half inch bigger than mine).

Paige was also the photographer for the last part of the day. I guess that is why I am in so many of the pictures...and they are not arm length self portraits.

Megan caught a few fish and this decent sized Blue Gil.

The days of March are flying by...getting longer, a little warmer and much busier. I have a ton of pictures to share so I will try and get them posted as time permits.



These first pictures are from March 14th, Joe Boxers 10th birthday celebration. Paige and Megan had not seen Joe since before his big back surgery in February. So it was important for them to see that he is recovering nicely and he's the same ol Joe, but with a slightly weaker back end. He started water therapy a few weeks ago and he is getting stronger each week.



Joe enjoyed all of the attention and the doggy treat cake. We enjoyed some scrumptious brownie cupcakes with rich chocolate frosting and fresh strawberries that Deb had whipped up.