I smelled it....

Here is a little snippet of a conversation I had with Beck. For those who don't happen to watch the Disney Channel, Handy Manny is a cartoon about a guys and his helpful tools.

Beck has never cared much for the show, for reasons unclear to me.

Me: Hey Beck, do you like Handy Manny?
Beck: No.
Me: Why not?
Beck: Well... his breath stinks.
Me: Who told you that?
Beck: (totally straight-faced) Nobody told me-I smelled it!

Sometimes I can't tell whether Beck is really creative or mildly pathological.

The Witch's Forest

In the past couple of weeks it went from cool to rainy to hot and everything has come to full bloom, seemingly overnight. Trees that barely had buds a couple of weeks ago now have full size leaves and flowers, and literally every surface of this city is covered in a dusting of green pollen. It's April in Birmingham, which is similar to June or July in most places I've lived. This week calls for highs in the 80's every day, and this is just a taste of what's to come. Our backyard, as we discovered last summer, can turn into a jungle after a couple of days of rain, and since we didn't move in until July, I am pleasantly surprised to see that Spring in our neighborhood is actually very pretty. The air is fragrant and bug-free, the grass is soft. Bushes that I thought were dead are flowering. Here are some pictures I took the other night of our house and the yard.

We are lucky to live on a pretty quiet street. You could say that we live on a cul-de-sac, but that isn't quite accurate. The house next to ours is the last house on the street, but then the road simply stops. It's as if it wants to keep going, but it hits a giant wall of vines.

I like to compare it to the wall in the movie Labyrinth, it looks like it stops there, but what you can't see until you walk right up there is that there is an opening to the... Witch's Forest.

There is a little bit of wooded land back there that no one (except neighborhood kids I see sneaking out of there) really knows about. Beck dubbed it the Witch's Forest last summer, and now that it is warm again, we have been making evening trips out there to visit the witch. Usually what happens is we walk down there, look around, throw some things in "the hole," look for bugs, look for good sticks, hit stuff with said sticks, and then Beck will declare that we better head home before we wake up the witch. We have a lot of great conversations out there- sometimes we will talk about what happened to the dinosaurs and why they are extinct (we talk about this a lot in our house). Sometimes we will talk about what bees like to eat. Even if it is getting really dark and I am starting to feel a little creeped out I stay there until he decides it's time to go.

Here are some pictures of the Witch's Forest which, like the rest of Hoover, is currently covered in Wisteria:

The "secret" entrance.

A waterfall of wisteria.

"The hole". You can't tell by looking at this picture, but this hole is actually about a foot and a half deep. Throwing things into it and jumping over it are just two of the many fun things to do in the Witch's Forest.

Russian Easter

This year for Easter we were lucky enough to be invited over to our friend's house for Russian Easter food. We had special Russian Easter bread, breads stuffed with meat and sweet cabbage, ham, and a sweet cheese spread that I think is called Pashka (you can correct me, Kat). Apparently each of these dishes takes several hours and/or days to make, so it's unlikely that I will be re-creating them anytime soon. Everything was sooo delicious, and the best part was that I didn't have to cook or clean AND got to take home a lot of leftovers.

We all stuffed ourselves and then the kids opened their Easter baskets which were filled with chalk, dinosaur toys, hollow chocolate eggs and other assorted goodies.

The D particularly enjoyed crushing his chocolate eggs with his super-human Baylor strength.

Aleksey caught a quick snuggle with Rob...

After food and treats we walked to the park down the street and let the kids run around a bit.

Thanks again for having us over- we're going to miss you guys!

A day at the gardens

Now that we've moved to Hoover, and the Aldridge Gardens are literally down the street from us http://www.aldridgegardens.com/ we don't get out to the Birmingham Botanical Gardens in Mountain Brook as much anymore. But yesterday it was gorgeous out and we wanted to go see if the flowers were blooming at the "old gardens".

There isn't any reason that everyone is wearing red shirts, it just worked out that way. Check out my boys...

 The roses aren't blooming yet, but plenty of other flowers were and the gardens are full of blossoming trees now.

As usual, Baylor preferred to sit on the bridge and throw rocks in the water. He likes to do his own thing.

 The boys playing soccer in the still unfinished living room:

Baylor is really into kicking the soccer ball around, and he is actually pretty good at it. Beck is a little less coordinated, but he really enjoys it, too.

She's crafty...

So, I came to the realization that I was probably never going to learn the proper way to play with our newly found Carrom board (see earlier post). I wondered what I could possibly do with the thing, since the frame is a huge piece of solid metal and can't be thrown away or fit into our car to take to Goodwill (I'm guessing this is the same problem the original owners had when they decided to abandon it in the basement). I've always wanted the boys to have one of those big Lego tables like they have at McWane center, and I've seen them for sale before, but they are usually around $200. I figured that I could probably use the frame and make my own Lego table top for much less than that. I got a piece of plywood from Home Depot big enough to fit the table ($2), sanded it down, and applied four large Lego baseboards with cement glue to the top. The baseboards are usually $15 each, but I went to the Lego store by our house and they had the red ones on sale for 1/2 off.

I think it turned out pretty good. I hope the glue holds. Apparently it is really difficult to glue plastic to other things. The guys at Home Depot know me by name now. When I went there the other day some guy I didn't recognize asked me how my flooring turned out. Maybe I need to drive out to Lowe's every now and then, so I don't look like some sort of crazy fix-it lady.

The D turns 2!

We have a lot of different nicknames for Baylor David- Bay-Bay, Baylon, Peach, Peachtree, Sweet D, Baylor D, but usually we just call him "The D". Since The D is our spring baby and was born so close to Easter, we thought that this year we would just have a couple of friends over and have an Easter themed birthday party. The kids had a great time!

                                                                  
Here is The D on his actual birthday, isn't he a peach! 

For the party we did an Easter egg hunt in our backyard, a harder one for the big kids and a very easy one for Baylor and Aleksey.

                                                                               

Beck had a great time. Baylor was less interested. I don't think he really understood the concept. He preferred instead to throw things into the lake that used to be our sandbox. He is kind of in a throwing-things-into-things phase, he doesn't care as much for organized activities.

After the egg hunt we dyed Easter Eggs out in the driveway.

Then it was cake time.

Bay with one of his presents. We can not wait to open it up and use it. It is supposed to be 84 degree here tomorrow, so it shouldn't be long before we break out the slip-n-slide and other various water games. *Note to grandparents- sorry I didn't take any pictures of Baylor opening your presents. With Rob out of town, and so many other things going on, I just kind of let him and Beck tear into them in no particular order. Thanks again for all of the wonderful new toys!

I do need to mention one special present that I did take a picture of. My sister Peg made the boys a stuffed Brobee doll from their favorite show, Yo Gabba Gabba. At first I didn't even realize it was homemade, it looks that good. I still think Peg needs to go into business one day with all of her jewelry and knits and different projects. Thanks Aunt Peg! Brobee is being loved on every day. Beck even took it to show and tell on Friday and I heard other kids ooohhing and ahhhing over it. Everyone loves Yo Gabba!