“Spring” Break

Although we’re technically on Spring Break this week, it doesn’t feel like spring!  It started out feeling kind of normal – a little coolish for March, but when we got the snow on Sunday night, that was just depressing in my opinion.

On Saturday afternoon we got a visit from Mousey.  The four of us girls walked up to Sweet Frog and did some chalk drawing in the driveway.

    

On Sunday, we got a visitor for a few days, Riley.  We’re watching our friends’ dog for a few days while they are away for spring break, so he seemed to enjoy all the good smells coming from Mark’s smoker as he made ribs for dinner that night.

   

We enjoyed a great evening of dinner, hanging out, and playing with our good friends, the Clarkes.  Nina had fun playing puppy peek-a-boo with Jonah, and all five kids had fun goofing around in the basement and just being kids.

 

The Clarkes left on Sunday night and the snow came.  I can’t believe we got several inches of snow and we’re past the middle of March!   We visited our cousins at Mousey and Poppy’s house yesterday to play in the snow, and we’ll see more of them today.  As far as having a dog in the house goes, Riley has been very easy and Nina has enjoyed it, but I think Riley really misses his family.  He perks up every now and then to get some attention and give doggie love, but I think he’ll be super happy to see his family come home tomorrow.

  

Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Cowboys…

…or Cowboy fans.  They might end up owing their friend a dinner at Reston Town Center for having a worse record than the Redskins.  As the blog is able to document so well, Mary stepped up with a challenge just before last year’s preseason starts.  As seen in the comments section of this post, she threw a bet out there from Dallas Nation.  As we all know in Redskins Nation, Dallas fans lost the bet of having the better record for last season, and Mary paid up tonight with dinner at Vapiano in Reston Town Center.  I had the host snap a picture with my phone so I could document the win and post it on the blog as an official win for Redskins fans.  It was a fun night with a great friend, and I didn’t even make her wear a Redskins hat all Saturday after the Super Bowl (but that would have been a great picture to go with this one!).

Family Time

To round out the weekend with the Williams family, we spent the afternoon on Sunday at Algonkian Park.  It was a beautiful day to enjoy doing anything outdoors. Days like yesterday make me so ready for spring to be here to stay.  Speaking of being here to stay, I know two little girls who are really excited to have their cousins back to stay!  They really enjoyed their time together.  We had a great weekend celebrating birthdays and spending time with family. 

More Celebrating

On Saturday evening we continued the birthday celebrations with dinner at my parents’ house.  Since we’re celebrating four March birthdays that all happen within  10 days of each other, we had a big family dinner to celebrate them all.

If you didn’t know already, Lyla loves jelly beans.  In particular, she loves Jelly Belly jelly beans.  Richelle found a Jelly Belly cupcake jelly bean holder for Lyla that she loves!  She also loves gardening and digging, so Mousey and Poppy got her a bin of her own gardening supplies.  She’ll love that as the weather gets warmer!

 

    

After dinner we were treated to a fabulous performance by the girls.  It’s never a dull moment when all the cousins get together! 

   

Lyla Turns 5!!!

It’s hard to believe, but our little Lyla turned five yesterday!!!  She has requested that we don’t call her “Little Lyla” anymore now that she’s a big five year old, so I guess that’s the last time that I can call her that.  Anyway, our Lyla turned five yesterday and had a little party with some of her friends.  We sprung Nina out of school early (since we were having a lunch time party), and since Lyla loves bunnies, that was the theme.

We had lunch, played games, ate cake, and played some more.  Even after her friends left, the party continued for Lyla because her cousins stayed for the rest of the day and a sleepover, so the festivities continued right into this morning.  Lyla shares a birthday with Bo, so he came by on his lunch break to see his birthday buddy!! 

We are truly blessed to have Lyla in our family.  She is so funny, sweet, thoughtful, and unique.  We love her so much, and we really enjoyed celebrating her yesterday.

   

  

Snow Day

Although it certainly wasn’t even close to the huge snowstorm predicted, we did get a decent amount of snow today.  The kids had off school, and Mark’s office was closed, so we were all home for the day.  Mark took the girls out in the back yard to make a snowgirl, then they did a little sledding at a neighborhood hill.  The snow was a very wet, slushy snow, so the sledding wasn’t the best, but the girls did have a great time just being out and playing in the snow.  I have to say that I’m not sad that we didn’t get as much snow as forecasted.  Once March arrives, I’m ready for spring!  It looks like all this snow might actually melt in the next two days, so we were glad the girls got to enjoy a fun day in the snow today.

 

 

Jump for Heart

Yesterday, Nina participated in Jump for Heart at her school.  She got donations from sponsors and was really excited to be part of the event.  Leading up to Tuesday, she did quite a bit of practicing, so she was ready to jump for her hour.  Nina did great, but she was pretty tired by the time the event was over. With the snow day today, we were thinking she’d be tired enough to sleep in this morning…no chance!

   

 

Everyday Stuff

As I’ve mentioned before, one of the girls’ favorite things to do with Mark is wrestle.  They call it Tickle Tackle.  They get tickled, they get tackled, and they love it!  One other thing they’ve always done with Mark since they were babies were pushups or more like bench presses.  They go stiff as a board, and Mark sees how many reps he can do.  This was the first time they’ve ever done a double stack though.  They made it 1 1/2 times before they fell over!

If Nina was allowed to eat pasta ever day of her life, she would.  Since she was walking around with rigatoni on every finger, I named her Nina Noodle Hands.