Here is a glimpse of Peter, who is always on the move…

As many of you know, we celebrated Annie’s 5th birthday by taking her, along with Margaret and two friends — Cecilia and Sophia — to Miss Lucy’s Tea Room. The girls played the part, and were given all the guidelines upon arrival for how to conduct themselves properly, including passing to the right, getting into and out of one’s chair on the left, and of course, never lifting the pinky finger while sipping tea (which, incidentally, one should apparently never blow on to cool down). What fun it was!

Click on any of the images below for a full view.

A brief exchange with Margaret this evening:

Margaret: “Mom, you took off your shoes wrong.”

Me: “What?”

Margaret: “Yeah, they’re crooked.”

She proceeded to straighten my mis-aligned shoes and I started to wonder whether I should call in the obsessive-compulsive specialists or be glad to have a detail-oriented, conscientious child to counter all those around here who aren’t! Hmmmm.

God bless Margaret.

Today was our cat Gherkin’s second birthday. Here’s a little video in his honor.

from vids.myspace.com posted with vodpod

Okay, this doesn’t have to do with our family at all, except to make me feel that maybe our homeschool art program could be doing more. I was just amazed by this video and had to post it here.

I couldn’t resist posting this video for Oliver, our soccer-loving German philosopher, and Kathryn, our Greek.  Enjoy!

We are so proud of cousin Lily, who completed the extremely challenging 200-piece puzzle we sent her for Christmas, all by herself! Lily is still just 4 years-old, so a 200-piece puzzle is quite a feat! Great job, Lily! And thanks for sharing your wonderful pictures. I can’t help sharing them here! XOXO

Sorry that we have not written in the last ten days or so. This has been a really busy time for us. The girls are up north with Grandma (Omi) and Grandpa (Grampy) so that the rest of us can do some spring cleaning. Here’s Alex with a sample of what we’ve been organizing — in this case, the pantry:

We are so happy to have this chance, but it’s meant not only being away from the girls, but also less time around the computer.

Also, besides the cleaning and organizing, we have one new significant variable: a crawling, curious 8-month-old. Since Peter started crawling about 10 days ago, life has become very different! Suddenly everything is a target, an item to eat, a potential choking hazard, etc. Like the dogs, Peter seems to love the trash. I guess this is an improvement over Thomas, who at this age fell in love with splashing in the toilet. Anyway, it’s been time-consuming. But he is awfully cute!

Meanwhile, the girls have been having fun cooking and eating up north. Here’s the evidence.