A day at the zoo

My Kitchen My World: Turkey!

I took some liberties with the Turkish theme, adjusting a food network recipe and adding some common Turkish ingredients and spices. The noodles and meatballs (which were not the lamb that most Turkish meatballs are made of) were a hit with the whole family! Always a good thing! Add some mini pitas and hummus and some mini salad greens and you have a totally kid friendly, fun, Turkish meal!

More pics from a that warm spring day!!

Leslie, Chris, Avery, and Mitchell have been here visiting with us this week.
It's been a great week.
The weather has been wonderful and the kids have been very entertained playing with their cousins. These pictures were taken last Saturday on the first really warm day, warm enough to break out the swimsuits and sprinkler!!
Leslie and I spent the day checking out a homeschool fair and shopping while the men took the kids to the park. Fun for all and sunburn for a few, ouch!

A warm Spring day

Bird Sightings

For all the bird geeks out there.... you know who you are!

Julia spread some bird seed along the top of our deck railing recently and we've been getting quite a few visitors. Our favorite ones are these cardinals. They've been with us all winter, but this is the closest we've been to them. They are very quick to fly away if there is any movement, so we have to be very careful and very slow, but I managed to get my camera and take a couple of shots. I feel lucky to have this shot of the two of them together.

The little lady looks like she's giving her guy an earful!

While I'm at it, I thought I'd throw in a few pictures that Kevin and Natalie took while they were out on a walk.

A woodpecker....

and a pair of mallard ducks.

Easter

Well, Leslie, I guess these pics are for you.

As far as I can tell, almost no one else is looking at the blog.

The kids and I tried out this metallic easter egg paint. It was messy, but it did make some cool looking eggs. If only I could figure out the magic formula that makes the egg shells easier to peel. We had a stubborn batch this year.

I like this picture because everyone is smiling...

But I like this one because you can see all of Quincy's outfit and her CUTE shoes!

Natalie helped her pick out the outfit. I was more than happy to hand Q some money and tell her to shop on her own, I'd have died if I had to spend all those hours at the mall!!

Love this action shot!

That's Abby, Natalie's sister with Quincy. The whole Jamison family came over for Easter dinner. It was nice. I was glad to have more than just Dan and the kids to cook for and the kids all get along so well.

A Spring Outing

The weather has officially turned and Spring is here. Yay!!!
The kids and I went back out to Manassas to check out some of the trails that we hadn't been able to get to last week. It was fun to check out the pretty little flowers along the path. The trees are still pretty bare, but there's the promise of new leaves to come.

Under that closed-mouthed smile of Grant's are his new braces. His teeth have been very sore and he's had trouble eating and talking, but it's getting better. He has advanced from milkshakes and pudding yesterday to spaghetti-O's today. I'm hoping he'll be able to eat more than mashed potatoes on Sunday!

Williamsburg and Manassas

We aren't exactly studying American history this year, but, living in Virginia, it's kind of hard to avoid. We started our Spring Break by visiting Williamsburg with Natalie and our friends, the Wilsons. I reminded Julia that this is where the American Girl, Felicity's story took place. It's been a while since we read those books, but recalling them helped her put some of the buildings and such in perspective.


Once upon a time, I could have used one of these to keep the kids in one place, not anymore... now we have TV's and computers that seem to keep them immobile.

Grant looked like Gollum as he squatted down to eat his precious candies.

Sunday, we went to Manassas.

It's only 15-20 minutes from the house, and has lots of walking trails, so we plan to go back more often.

I didn't know how much my "northern" attitude had been passed on to the kids until we were watching a video about the battle.

Grant asked me who were the good guys. I told him that that depended on who you thought were the good guys, but the union forces were the little blue blips on the screen and the confederates were the red blips. "Oh.", he says too loudly, "The blue are the good guys!"

"SHHHHH, SHHHHH, SHHHHH!

We're in Virginia. Someone might kill you!"

Stonewall Jackson looks like Superman, check out those arms!