Splish - Splash

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday weekend.  The kiddies were a little under the weather this weekend, but still managed to get some fishing and swimming in at Grandma and Grandpa K's house.

Millie was feeling a little better this morning so after walking Noah to school we took a detour on the way home at stopped across the street for a little run through the sprinklers.

She started out just putting her hands in the sprinkles...

She was soon over her shyness and started running right through the streams of water...

By the end she was pretty soaked and had no fear in getting up close and personal with the sprayer.

She squished all the way home.

Tree Update - Spring has Sprung!

I'm not sure if you can tell from this picture, but there are finally tiny leaf sprouts on the tree out front. Yes! It is quite a welcome change from the blanket of snow that covered it just a few weeks ago! Bring on Spring!!

The world is not my trash can.

Since tomorrow is Earth Day, I thought I would post a couple things I do to help make the world a cleaner place...

I haven't always made a focused effort to take care of the environment like I probably should, but in the past 6 months or so I have tried to get a little better at the 3R's - Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

I have trouble with the last R - Recycle (see below), so I try to make it up by focusing more on the other two.

REDUCE

I bought these great reusable bags that I LOVE. I use them instead of getting plastic grocery or shopping bags everywhere I go. In the past two days I have saved 6 shopping bags by using my cute reusable bag instead. I do have one exception to this rule so far - I still get bags from Target, but my reason for that is because I REUSE them to put stinky diapers in...instead of using a Diaper Genie and in my opinion Target has the best plastic bags.

I have also worked on reducing the amount of paper towels I use. I admit, it is sooo much easier to grab one, use it once for just a little drip and toss it out only to grab another one to use for something else. In order to realize that there are other ways to clean up spills, wipe messy faces, clean the mirrors, dry your hands, etc I decided this would be a good thing for a PTA (paper towel abuser) to give up for lent. Yes, I am proud to say I made (6.5 weeks?) paper towel free! It wasn't easy...especially on day 1 when Bowman decided to heave-ho in the kitchen - it would have been MUCH easier to clean it up with a huge wad of paper towels as I usually do, and it was very tempting, but I did not.

REUSE

For some reason I have a recent sense of guilt when I throw plastic containers out with the trash. I have been trying to come up with ways of reusing them instead. These are just a few of many plastic items I reuse.

I love the plastic coffee creamer containers (the liquid kind). I use it as a plastic bag holder for the car. It fits perfectly in the cup holder in the backseat and makes it easier to grab a bag to collect any garbage that might get left in the car (I guess this is another reason I keep the bags from Target). I also figured out a way to inter-connect the handles when putting the bags in the container so the next bag comes out just a little to make it easy to pull out). You could also use it to make salad dressing in...it has a nice pour spout and you can stick any unused dressing back in the fridge.

Another favorite that you will find all over my house are plastic takeout containers. They are great for storing small things like crayons, office supplies, items collected on nature hikes...the options are really limitless here!

RECYCLE

Here is why Recycling is a little tough for us.
Our dumpster is fenced in and unfortunately there isn't room for another container. The only option would be to separate and collect it myself and drop it off at our closest recycling center. Maybe I will make this a goal for the future, but right now, I have a hard enough time getting to the grocery store, post office (future post to come on this one!), Target, etc. I can just see myself collecting items to recycle and having good intentions of dropping it off, but running out of time because someone had a meltdown and then leaving a container of stinky trash in the back of the car. I can hear Jon now lecturing me now...ooops! :o )

So there you have it. The few things I do to try to make the earth a little cleaner for us all to live. What are the little things you do on a day to day basis to help out?

An Egg-cellent Easter!

Happy Easter to everyone! We just returned home after vacationing in Florida for the week (more on this in a future post), but we still had time to color eggs and await the arrival of the Easter Bunny. Noah was excited for his visit this year. He had a great time hunting for eggs while Millie watched and giggled. After he found all his eggs he kept asking where the Easter Bunny was. I told him he visited while we were sleeping and Noah's response..."That Easter Bunny, kinda sneaky!" Yes, he is!

Here are a few of the eggs we colored. I thought Noah would lose interest after decorating just a few, but he surprised me by saying..."Do more, Mommy, do more!" We colored 17 eggs with only a few casualties. Next year I will have to hard boil a boat load of them so Noah and Millie and Mommy all have enough to color. (Mommy had a little trouble at first giving her eggs to Noah to color after he quickly colored all his - so we worked together to decorate the rest and that made us both happy).

The flowers in the picture above were made with coffee filters. We folded them in half, then in half again, etc until they were as narrow as we could make them. Then we dipped them in the remaining dye, unfolded them and set them out to dry overnight. The next morning, we made them into pretty flowers by layering and twisting and holding them together with a pipe cleaner stem! I'm sure you could do this anytime of year using food coloring as well.

Tree Update - Spring?

(I wanted to post this last weekend and completely forgot, but I still wanted to make sure it gets added)

I haven't done a Tree Update in quite some time, but you haven't missed much. It has been the same old, bare bones, brown tree for quite a few months now. For the past three for four weeks I have been taking quick peeks at it, keeping my fingers crossed hoping that maybe THIS will be the time I see the first signs of new Spring growth. Well Sunday there were some changes from the boring brown...

These were NOT the changes I had in mind! I guess you never know what to expect from Mother Nature sometimes. She loves to keep us guessing. The funny thing is that on Jan 10th, I posted this picture of the tree and 'couldn't stop looking at how pretty it was'. It is interesting how a few months and a couple 70 degree days just a few weeks ago can turn an average cold, snowy day even more bitter!

Luck O' the Irish

St. Patrick's day is a big deal in Chicago. We did our best to celebrate all things green this year...


On the Saturday before St. Pats day we went to see the dying of the Chicago River. Every year since the 1960's (I believe) the river is dyed bright green to celebrate the holiday. I have lived here for almost 9 years and have never witnessed it! So we packed up the kiddies and watched it first hand.
*Interesting fact: An orange-colored, vegetable-based, powder dye is used to turn the river green. As soon as it hits the water it turns the bright green you see here.

On the following Tuesday (the actual St. Pats day) we started the day off right with breakfast. Boy was Noah surprised when he saw his oatmeal and milk were both green!. Kinda gross looking, but he didn't mind at all!

Later that morning we had a great day planned with our friends Lizzie, Mary and Katie. It was a beautiful day with temperatures in the low 70's so we went to the park to play and then we all had a picnic lunch by the lake. Lunch included a few green favorites- green bagels, green grapes and pesto chicken pasta salad.

After an very fun, but exhausting day, Noah and Millie cooled down and took a relaxing green bath...

(we didn't have the orange, powder they used in the river so we settled for Crayola's colored bathtub tablets)

...and finally, Mommy relaxed in her own way after everyone was tucked in for the night. Jon made me a delicious Green-na Colada and it went great with the shamrock cookies we made the day before. YUM!

Spring Training

Maybe I am getting a little ahead of myself, but we are SO ready for spring. I am not usually one who complains much about winter, but this winter has been a tough one. This year it seems like we are a little more stir crazy than usual, probably the difference between having just one kid, versus having two now? Or maybe it is the three weeks of sickness we recently endured! Anyway, today we were eager to get out of the house and enjoy the sunshine and slightly warmer temperatures!

We headed up to the lake (Lake Michigan) where we usually take Bowman to run and swim. Montrose Beach is a beach that is designated for dogs to run, swim and just be dogs. It is so funny to see so many dogs (easily 100+ in the summer) running, chasing, fetching, swimming, etc all in one place. Today we passed on the beach and instead played in the open field/park area across the street. Here we ran Bowman (he loves to fetch his tennis ball) and played baseball with Noah.

Last year, Noah was mainly interested in hitting balls off the tee or off this ESPN baseball machine that he loves, and it was amazing to see how great his hand-eye coordination was for a then two year-old! This year we bought him a new glove so he can practice catching and throwing. We had such a good time taking turns hitting, catching, throwing and running the bases.

Noah trying on his new glove.

Millie sitting on her blanket cheering us on...in between fistfulls of leaves - yuck!

I hope everyone was able to get out this weekend and enjoy the sunshine too!