St. Patrick's Day

This year's St. Patrick's Day decorations included shamrock's stuck to the walls, green & white balloons, gold & green necklaces and green shamrock sunglasses. Kherington loves playing with balloons so those are always a hit for holidays.

We hosted playgroup at our place and the kids had fun coloring their pot of gold pictures and putting St. Patrick's Day stickers all over the place (another benefit of going to the base...6 pages of 50 stickers for just $1!). For lunch we had spinach mac n' cheese (I'll post on the recipe blog later), cucumbers, kiwi and green apple. The kids seemed to have fun and 4 of them even played with the SAME toy for 10 minutes :).

For dinner I had planned on steak, brussel sprouts and green potatoes, but we switch the potatoes to leftover mac n' cheese from lunch. I think next year kherington might be old enough for ryan's leprechaun friend lucky to make an appearance...we'll see :).

March Madness Picks

Kherington's method of picking this year took a little more creativity. She didn't want to play with the blocks so instead she colored. Different colors represented high seeds and low seeds. She usually likes to color, but she wasn't as interested in that as normal so we ended up bribing her...if she colored with two different markers (one for high and one for low) she could have a piece of chocolate. She really liked that :).

Her final bracket

*You'll notice that some match-ups didn't get colored on...she ended up handing me a couple blocks right before bedtime to finish off her picks :)

How does her bracket actually stack up? Well, her Final Four consists of three smaller schools and one potential winner (according to the experts). The teams are Princeton, Memphis, Kansas, and UCSB. She is going for a rematch of the 2008 championship game that her Dad and Grandpa attended. I suppose she has heard me talk about how cool a live Final Four experience is, so she wanted me to relive it through her bracket. One day will have to take her to her own Final Four.

Anyways, we will see what unfolds in the next couple weeks!

Our Bottomless Pit

Kherington eats EVERYTHING. It's about 6:00pm and we have yet to have dinner (which I'm sure she'll down) and so far she has had:

• 2 bowls of oatmeal with craisins
• 1 apple
• 2 pieces of toast
• 2 plates of pasta with meat/carrot sauce
• 1/4 cup sauteed endive
• 1 wedge laughing cow cheese
• 1 slice peach & blackberry tart (made by an Italian using ingredients from her garden in Italy)
• 1 bowl spanish rice
• 2 whole carrots (big carrots not baby carrots)
• 3 clementines
• 5 sticks gouda cheese (approx 2 ounces)
• 1/2 yellow bell pepper

Valentines Day 2011

Kherington was still getting over a cold on Valentines day so there was no playgroup which was sad, but we still had some fun.

We had a yummy breakfast complete with hashbrowns, eggs, homemade heart shaped english muffins, blood oranges and blood orange juice. Kherington had her very own Valentines day box complete with 3 Valentines (Ryan and I both made her one with candy we found in my purse). She enjoyed tearing the hearts off the wall and popping the red, pink and white balloons.

For dinner we ended up doing stuff mushrooms, parmesan potatoes, broccoli, salmon and toll house pie (and we'll be having the exact same thing tonight :).

Paris

We've now lived in Belgium for over a year and FINALLY decided to make a trip over to Paris. We had originally thought about spending a weekend there, but in the end decided to make a it a day trip and decide if we liked it we'd plan a future overnight trip.

We took our time getting out the door in the morning (didn't leave until 9 or 10) and drove all the way to downtown Paris. It took awhile getting across the city, but since I wasn't driving I thought it was cool to just look around and see the people and shops and sites. We parked right near the Eiffel Tower and spent the day walking around. The street sales people that walk around selling knick knacks were pretty aggressive there (more so than any other city we've been in)

We walked along the river up to the Louvre. Kherington found some bushes that had paths through the middle of them (I think they were for dogs or something) and spent some time exploring them. Oh and funny...she was running around a cobblestone courtyard and with Ryan following her a couple yard behind and in 2 minutes I saw 2 different people take pictures of her. Her picture really is going to be all over the world!

We also stopped at the Notre Dame Cathedral and I'll be honest I wasn't all that taken away with it. Not to say it wasn't cool, however after being in so many different Cathedrals I find most of them very similar. Sometimes I wonder if I would think differently of them if I were Catholic.

Of course we stopped for some food along the way. I missed out on the pictures of our sweet crepes, but below is the Kebab Kherington and I shared (surprisingly she loved the meat AND the fries) and Ryan's Savory Crepe.

Overall, I thought it was a cool city, but over hyped...more like there are other cities that I like just as much or more, but if you only have time for a couple cities in Europe it definitely makes sense to go here. We think we will go back (and actually go into some museums) and stay out of the city at the end of the metro line (probably near the airport) to get a cheap hotel and metro in.

Rainbow Bear II

Rainbow bear is Kherington's favorite friend. She didn't do the binky thing or suck or thumb, but she LOVES this bear. It goes to bed with her each night, comes out of bed in the morning, and has made many trips with us. When she gets hurt or is sad she'll run grab Rainbow Bear and give him a hug.

Well, about a week ago we decided he was in need of a bath, so into the washer he went. Since we don't have a dryer and bedtime was rapidly approaching we were trying to figure out how to dry him faster. Ryan whipped out my hair dryer, turned it up to the highest heat and held it up against the leg...this was the result:

We jumped online and after a little searching were able to buy a new one off amazon.co.uk for $23 including shipping (better than I thought it would be considering this bear was mine when I was younger, but just sat on my shelf). While we waited for it, Rainbow Bear had a 'cast' that Kherington enjoyed picking at and I was getting concerned that the switch might be a little rough. We got home from the store one day and the package was sitting at our door...Rainbow bear had come with us, but I had stuck him in the stroller basket. I decided to just keep him there and break out the new one. I kept the tag on (so I could take the picture below) and told Kherington he had an earring. The switch was smooth as can be!

30 weeks

About 10 weeks until baby #2 makes his debut...I not really sure what to think about that.

In case you haven't heard, March 30th is my chosen due date, so we'll see if the little guy cooperates with my timeline.

I don't get sick while I'm pregnant. I even managed to avoid the stomach flu that EVERYONE had over Christmas (I guess I'm just a carrier). I do however get tired. With Kheringotn it wasn't that bad because she was active during the day so I got a quality night sleep each night. This little guy is not as considerate. He has decided that night time is the perfect time to start dancing. So now I stay up WAY to late and sleep in as late as possible. Ryan gets up with Kherington in the morning and plops her on the bed at the last minute before heading off to work. I then get up and count the time until Kherington's nap time comes so I can go back to sleep. I don't have much else to say about being pregnant, so we'll leave it at that.