A few items of note..

The last day of school has arrived! Here are a couple of picture of David relaxing in the car before the school bus came.

The kids also finished up their year of piano lessons with a recital.
They each performed 2 songs and did a lovely job.

Carina's 15th birthday

Carina is now 15! Amazing! She had a quiet birthday at home. We made chicken rolls and blueberry pie to celebrate her birthday. Shield your eyes, there is a lot of flame involved below!

Carina managed to get the candles blown out!

Happy 15th Birthday, Carina!

A week of Concerts

We had a very busy week. We had 3 concerts to attend for the girls. Tuesday, we went to Carina's, Thursday-Annie's concert, and on Friday-Kathleen's concert. They were nice and we got to go out to Dairy Queen afterwards for some ice cream!

Kathleen's chorus and the Sand Hill elementary chorus got together and performed for the lunch room ladies during their annual dinner. It was nice. She did a good job!

Annie had her Kindergarten concert. They performed 3 songs.
Annie is standing next to her best friend Zoey (girl in pink)

Carina performed in the chorus concert "ENCORE" It was quite a good show. They performed it at the Townsend Center at the UWG campus. Here she is in her "thriller"costume.

Duets with James

Wow! Guess what! We have high speed internet as of last night. So I decided to try and post a video on the blog. I am very excited about this. We have had dial-up internet for 11 years despite lots of trying to get high speed! And we finally have succeeded. So enjoy Carina and James' duet on the piano!

Nestlings

It has been a week and a half, so we ran out after dinner tonight to check on our little nestlings!  They have grown so much!  They are covered with fuzzy down and are starting to grow their adult feathers. Sadly, only 2 have survived.  There were 4 little naked birds last week, but we only counted 2 tonight.  But these birds look strong and healthy , so it looks like they will make it.  

They are so cute!  I'm sure they will soon be flying out of the nest!

Musical medleys

David discovered that he could play most of the melody on Master the Tempest is Raging with Carina on the piano.  It has no flats or sharps so he was keeping up pretty well.....

Of course, this inspired all of the other children to run and find every other musical instrument in the house to play along too.  So we had Peter on the coronet, Kathleen and her friend Hope on harmonicas, Annie and David on the recorder, and James and Jared on the tupperware drums!  I took a video also, but you'll just have to imagine the beautiful NOISE that has come out of the kids.  (my connection is too slow to upload videos)

Springtime in Georgia

Spring has arrived beautifully in Georgia and with it the gardening bug... So being unwilling to dig up our hard clay soil with  a shovel, I decided that we should have raised bed gardens. So we built 3 using the cinderblocks that used to be surrounding our old regular garden.  We are very excited about the gardens!  We have planted tomatoes (grape, cherry, romas, and amelia) in this bed.  We were also out of room in our herb garden, so the basil and the chives also got planted here.  We have another bed which is hosting the cucumbers, zuccinnis and the watermelon (hopefully the bunnies won't eat the watermelons this year).

Our Herb garden:  German thyme, cilantro, parsley, sage, rosemary, and oregano.

While we were making our garden bed, we heard chirping from the plum tree, so we investigated and discovered that the eggs had hatched.  We have baby birds!  Little naked, blind baby birds.  We were getting ready to spray the tree with Sevin, but will now have to wait until the birds grow up!

There are 4 baby birds in the nest (no idea what they are.

The kids said the eggs were blue, so maybe robins)

Sleeping baby birds.  So fuzzy!

We took pictures with our camera from above the nest, making sure not to touch it, so the Mama bird will come back.  Apparently this little nestling thought we were bringing lunch!

James

James is 18 months old on the 29th.  He is such a fun little lad.  I love getting very wet "tisses" and hugs.  He quacks nicely and loves to make animal sounds.  It is to cute to listen to him learn to talk.  He is my sweet loving boy who is growing up incredibly fast!

Sweet James!

James playing playdough with Jared

Posing for the camera

Annie and fireman James

David, fireman James and Annie!

Jared's 4!

Jared turned 4!  He wasn't really excited about this number on his birthday.  He thought 5 sounded much better.  We woke him up with his birthday presents which resulted in him pulling the blankets over his head and saying that he was sleeping!  He emerged from his blankets when David showed him that he had presents!  Suddenly 4 was good!

Jared wanted a Sponge Bob birthday cake, so I copied one of his toys.

Happy Birthday Jared!

Silly birthday boy!

Jared blowing out his birthday candles!

James and Jared playing with one of his presents. 

Playdough with Star Wars stamps.  They love it!

Grandma Katie's Birthday

We had a great visit from Grandma Katie and Granddad Clawson the last week of March.  It was a very special visit.  Annie did her best impression of a leach and as you can see from the picture below, that Grandma Katie was her favorite victim.  She clung to Grandma pretty much the entire time!

Grandma Katie turns 59 this year, so we had the opportunity to celebrate a few days early.  

Grandma Katie opening her cards and presents with the eager help of Annie and Kathleen.  James gave her his handprint!  He made that card all by himself!

I found out that Grandma Katie's favorite cake is pound cake.  So I made a citrus sour cream pound cake.  It was really yummy!

Granddad Clawson with David and Peter

Grandma Katie with Annie and Kathleen

Jared grinning for the camera while Granddad 

tells a Hercumer and Eloise bedtime story to the kids.

Granddad Clawson

We can't wait till their next visit!

Three Piggy Opera!

Annie's kindergarten class did a Stellar Performance of the 3 Piggy Opera.  It is the story of the 3 little pigs put to music.  Annie was the 3rd little pig and she sang her songs so well.  I was VERY impressed with the children.  

It was the one of the best school performances I have ever seen!

The three little pigs and their piggy parents!

The cutest little pig around!

Peter's Wolf Badge

Peter earned his wolf badge!  He is a very happy cub scout and we are very proud of him.  He got his award at the Blue and Gold Banquet!  Good job, Peter!