Second Grade School Project

We've had an extra busy week with all the routine activities, getting everything prepared for First Communion, and last but not least -- Simone's second grade project on famous Americans.  When she first got the assignment to select a famous American, Simone consulted her iPad and chose Katharine Hepburn completely out of the blue.  Needless to say, the entire family has learned an awful lot about Ms. Hepburn in the last few weeks.  Her project was to make a report, a timeline of her life, and a speech -- which Simone will present to the class in an "American Wax Museum" exercise next week.

After lots of research, practice pages, cutting, printing, pasting, and organizing, Simone finished her project today.  MISSION COMPLETE!

One fun fact we learned about Katharine Hepburn is that even though she has won more Oscars for acting than any other actor -- four best actor awards-- she never accepted any of them.  She believed that she didn't need prizes for doing what she loved to do.  After thinking about it for a minute, Simone thought that philosophy made a lot of sense.

Now just to figure out how to get this big, inky poster to school tomorrow morning -- of course it's calling for pouring rain nearly all day.  It's just never easy, is it!?

Happy Easter!

Hard to believe it's already that time of year again, but....  We had a very tradition-packed, mostly-relaxing Easter weekend at home this year with Uncle Jim, Aunt Jenn, Jack and Sam.  We began on Good Friday with our annual egg dying and made these brownie egg nests.  I'm very seriously considering making these all year round because they maximized the edge of the brownies, which everyone knows is the very BEST part!!  chewy and oh so yummy.

On Saturday morning, we brought our Easter basket to church for blessing.  

Packed full of all our traditional breakfast items for Easter morning.

And on Saturday evening, we once again held our annual flashlight Easter egg hunt in the backyard.

As usual, all the kids just had a blast searching for eggs in the dark.

Amazingly, we were all awake and ready in time to make 8:30 mass on Sunday morning! Talk about Easter miracles.

Simone had little interest in being pals with mommy this Easter.  She and Jack were best buddies all weekend --totally inseparable.

As Uncle Jim would say, we feasted like Romans all weekend, but Easter dinner was the highlight.  Mommy made homemade french onion soup, Uncle Jim smoked a leg of lamb and a prime rib, and the piece de resistance -- a huge homemade carrot cake (with NO WALNUTS!!woo who!)

Easter down, and just a few weeks now until Simone celebrates her First Holy Communion.  We'll be sure to post lots of pictures from that special day!

Second Grade Musical

Last week was Simone's school musical that she's been looking forward to for months.  She was so excited about mommy and daddy coming to her school to see her in her very first school show, as well as mommy staying for lunch in the cafeteria afterwards.  

The name of the show was "Music All Over Me" and each of the second grade classes performed a song and then a big finale all together.

The school had tshirts made for each class, and you'll notice Simone's class was in orange.  I couldn't zoom in any closer, but here's a short video of her class song, called "Hop Till You Drop".

Sitting with her class.

A smile of excitement and relief after the end of the show.


Definitely the scholastic highlight of the month.  In April she'll be focused on her school research project on a famous American.  Never a dull moment!

CLIMBING!!!

With this week's weather and school cancellations, the kids had a LOT of pent up energy waiting to burst out.  So what better way to cure a case of cabin fever than.... climbing!?!?!  This climbing center was the perfect place to chase away the winter blues.  Simone, daddy, Uncle Jim and Jack spent about two hours climbing the dozens of super neat walls that were practically sculptures of art.  Such a fun Sunday afternoon!

First getting harnessed and a quick lesson on the trial wall.

 Then everyone was off to begin conquering all of the steep and sometimes very challenging walls.

This Eiffel Tower wall was the first wall that Simone made all the way to the top.  Mommy was nervous just watching her!!

 The Lincoln Memorial wall was a family favorite.  Both the kids AND the daddies spent a chunk of time on this one.

But once again, it was no match for Simone.  It took a while, but she made it up to the flag!

And who wouldn't love to climb a GIGANTIC bookshelf?  Daddy tackled this one with ease.

A pose with Simone's favorite cat on the Alice in Wonderland wall.

Victory!  all the way at the tippy tippy top.

This cool wall had light up balls that blinked.  It was a harder climb than it looked though.

And this one was just plain cool.

And that was our Sunday afternoon!  Daddy was excited to get a good workout (although he may be less happy in the morning), Simone loved playing with her cousins(and getting all of her energy out) at such a cool place, and mommy (terrified of heights) had fun taking pictures of everyone having fun!  Success for all.

Disney on Ice

Well, it doesn't get much colder than this weekend, which we've been spending snuggled indoors watching movies and doing some housework.  Last weekend, however, after skating lessons we met up with two of Simone's cousins for a little Disney on Ice up in Baltimore.  We got second row seats, so we had a great view of the show which featured Cars, the fairies, Toy Story, and the Little Mermaid (Simone's favorite).

Grabbed this light up fairy wand from one of the street vendors.  Simone HAD to have it, only to find out it sings in Chinese --lol!!

We had dinner afterwards at a GREAT place -- b A Bolton Hill Bistro.  If you're in Baltimore, we highly recommend it.  We've eaten there twice now and had simply the coziest, most delicious experience with excellent service.  It seemed like such a short visit with the boys, but we'll see them again soon enough.

Ice Skating: Take 2

Well, with only one lesson under her belt, we were amazed at how much better Simone was on the ice today.  And by better, I mean she was vertical for nearly all of the lesson (as opposed to on the ground!).  She only fell down four times the entire lesson (last week I lost count after 5 minutes).  It was amazing how much more confident and balanced she was already.

Simone made it back and forth across the rink, forwards and backwards many times without falling.

They worked on some bending down while gliding....

Today they also introduced the backward wiggle.  I thought it was hilarious watching the whole line of little ones shake it like a polaroid picture!!

And finally, I found this shot on my phone from a few weeks ago when we went to get her new skates fitted and sharpened.  She was over the moon happy!

Simone's really enjoying these lessons and I have to admit, it's pretty fun watching her.  It's a great way to get the family up and going on these cold winter Saturdays!

Learning to Iceskate

So, holidays are over and we are back into full swing for 2015.  Our first week brought us a winter storm, two days of school closings, and a delay on top of our regular schedule of work, school and activities.  This weekend was equally busy with taking down Christmas decorations, having playdates, and watching movies.  But the highlight of the whole week was Simone's very first ice skating lesson on Saturday.  She has been excitedly waiting for this since Christmas, and despite the fact that she spent far more time on her bottom than actually skating, she really loved it.  She can't wait to go back next week.  

The whole event was probably much harder on mommy and daddy than it was on Simone.  After a very short tutorial on how to fall without hurting yourself, they threw them right onto the ice with a complete "sink or swim" philosophy.  Here's Simone holding onto the wall for dear life, but she was totally brave and didn't stay there long.

I won't lie, watching her fall over and over and over again, hurt my heart(and my stomach), but she didn't mind a bit and didn't suffer even one bruise.  I kept trying to convince myself that she's much closer to the ground than I am, so it didn't hurt as much.  I can tell this is gonna take lots of practice, but we saw her balance and confidence gradually improve even in the span of 30 minutes.  

Really not too bad when you think that she'd never even stepped foot onto the ice until 10 minutes earlier.

The still shots are great -- they make it look like she can already skate!  lol!

By half way through, she was even confident enough to try to wave at mommy and daddy.

I was really surprised to see them start teaching the forward swizzle to kids who could barely even hold themselves up.  I guess there's no point in waiting.

And by the end of the lesson, Simone could ALMOST keep herself up skating back across the ice.  I love the boy in the dark blue coat, who decided it might be easier to just crawl back off the ice LOL!!!

We were so proud of our little girl for hanging tough through the whole lesson.  She's eagerly awaiting the next session, and I suspect we'll be spending some extra time at the rink between lessons!