My Daughter's Ballet Costume

Here is E's ballet costume. Her ballet class is performing in a recital on Memorial day weekend. We won't be in town because we are going to a wedding. Her class will be performing to the song "The Rainbow Connection".....the one that Kermit sang in the Muppet movie....but not that version of course! Here she is showing off her costume for T.

My Family's Unscheduled Stay at the Cleveland Residence Inn

The original plan called for us to fly from Providence to Texas via Cleveland on a Tuesday, spend Tuesday night in Texas and fly to Florida on Wednesday. A crazy plan given we have two kids. But we bought our burn tickets first and for a very good rate. And then I later saw the Florida tickets for also a very good rate. But when I tried to change the burn tickets to accommodate Florida, it suddenly got expensive. So we had two sets of moderately priced tickets. And when you have to buy three tickets, every penny counts.

I don't have the patience to tell you the entire story so here is the bulleted version:

• We flew from Providence to Cleveland
• It was very icy in Cleveland and they closed the airport
• We called our sister in law who got on the internet and got us a hotel room (thank Goodness!). Many people weren't able to get hotel rooms and slept on cots at the airport
• We waited in the taxi line for 1 hour, only to find that the taxi wouldn't take us without car seats, which had been checked and loaded onto the airplane
• Luckily, the airlines had started to unload the luggage from the planes and we were able to find the two carseats, but were too tired to look for our bags
• We made it to the Residence Inn
• The Residence Inn carries an inventory of Stouffers spaghetti and meatballs, beer and wine. We enjoyed all of the above
• We had only 6 diapers left
• There was a kmart across the street from the hotel. T walked over the next morning when it had stopped snowing and bought some diapers and toothbrushes etc
• I was able to convince Continental to fly us directly to Florida instead of back to Houston on Wednesday
• I did not have my cell phone charger, but T did
• We arrived in Florida about 20 minutes later than originally scheduled
• Our bags arrived very early (about 3am) the next morning
• All was amazingly good, considering what it could have been

Lesson learned: we will only take direct flights to Boston for now on, as a late night flight to Boston beats a night in Cleveland any day!

Our Residence Inn Room as we departed for the airport

The view from the hotel room Wednesday morning.

My Favorite Burn Picture

This is the best picture of the entire trip.

My Burn Trip

At the beginning of the month we went up to MA for the annual burn. We arrived early Saturday evening after a marathon trip and drove out to the house.

All the G's had already left and gone to the hotel. The house looked great so we headed back to the hotel to join everyone for appetizers and cocktails. It was wonderful to see everyone and the cousins had a great time playing.

E came down with a fever and cough on Saturday night, something that plaugued her for our entire week-long trip. Thankfully, Tim called our pediatrician on Sunday and was able to get an Rx.

Unfortunately, due to wind, there was no burning permitted on Sunday. But we had a great time walking around the lane and spending some time at the end of the road.

Here are some photos from the trip.

Hanging out at the bridge.

Z had just woken up from a nap here I think. He is so bundled up; it reminds me of his referral picture.

E and her friend, Snaily.

My, It's Been a Long Time Since We've Posted

Well, a lot of things have been happening since we last posted:

• We traveled to Massachusetts to have the annual G family burn


• We spent the night with friends C and Z


• We spent an unexpected night in a Cleveland Residence Inn due to the Cleveland airport being shut down as we were trying to fly home (no more indirect flights to Westport for us!)


• We spend a few days in Florida visiting J's family


• We visited our favorite snack shack on the beach during bikers week in Florida


• The children has terrible fevers and colds


• The parents of the children had colds


• We had fun at our Church's Palm Sunday celebration


• Aunt T came for a visit and spent an extra night because her flight back home was canceled


• Z got a haircut and we had lunch with Dad at his work


• We saw a Chinese drum troop at an outdoor theater downtown (very cool)


• We dyed Easter eggs


• We celebrated Easter


• I received E's quilt back from the quilter!


• We took Blue Bonnet photos of the kids

I'll be doing to catch up blogging with photos over the next week or so.

My Daughter's Boyfriend?

Today I was dropping the kids off at school and ran into another mother there. Ms. J said that her son, W and E were sitting together on the bus the other day when their two classes went on a field trip.

One of the other teachers told Ms. J that W said “I’m sitting next to the most *beautiful* girl” (Ms. J has an English accent so it sounded lovely the way she said it). I though that was just the sweetest thing.

A few moments later when we got into the hall, E said to me “Can I hold W’s hand?”. I said that she would have to ask W, since sometimes boys don’t want to hold girls’ hands.

“But you can hold mine”, I said. She said “no” and walked backwards to her class! Once on my way to work, I called T to let him know that we’re going to have a problem once E hits her teenage years!

My Daughter's Funny Faces Series

Here is a series of photos of E taken at lunch last week. Yes, that is blue marker on her forehead. That is what happend when Mommy doesn't pay complete attention when E is drawing. Luckily is was washable marker.