Cherry Blossom Festival: Balloon Launch

The boys and I were at Macon's airport this morning at 7:30 a.m. for the hot air balloon launch. It was spectacular. Alex and Evan waved at all the balloons as they (literally) floated above our heads. Later, once the balloons landed at the other end of the runway, we got within 50 yards of several tethered ones. Being that close gave me goose bumps. The balloons are so, so beautiful -- even the orange one that says, "Hooters" (or rather, it said Hooters until I used photoshop to fix the picture above).

Cherry Blossom Festival: The Trees

Here are some shots from our yard and around the neighborhood. The trees are at peak!

Indiana

Will just left for a Liberty Fund conference in Indianapolis. The boys and I surprised him at Groome (the airport shuttle) to say goodbye. I intended to have a picture to post, but the camera died. This story will have to suffice. It is an exchange I had with Evan earlier today:

Ani: Daddy is going on a trip. He will be gone until Sunday.
Evan: Where is he going, Mommy?
Ani: He is going to Indiana.
Evan: Oh! That sounds like fun. Do they have beaches in Indiana?

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter to all! We have had a busy morning: egg hunt in the yard, Church, presents, chicken nuggets from Wendy's, and now naps! (Well, at least the little guys are napping.) Don't fret; I have a ham in the oven....

For a slideshow of all Easter-activities, click here. This slideshow is 84 pictures long (about 80 too many for most of you). It includes the MOPS egg hunt, decorating easter eggs, goofing in the yard after Alex's school egg hunt, the Church egg hunt, and finally -- Easter morning chez Jordan. Enjoy!

Highland Hills Egg Hunt

Today was the egg hunt at Church. The weather was perfect!



They boys were so excited about candy, they couldn't look up to the camera.

Easter Eggs

Ellen and Grace joined us for an afternoon of Easter-Egg dying. We had a nice time, although Evan's attention span for craft-projects is limited. Alex did his best to keep Grace's attention away from Evan. He pulled out all the stops: no shirt (he took it off himself), fancy dance moves, the works!

Bunny Hop

Yesterday was Alex's egg hunt at school. Someone gifted little bunny ears to each kid. (It was difficult to get the picture of Evan with ears, as Alex did not want to share!)

Yesterday was also Alex's 19-month-a-versary!

Photoshop

... is the bomb. Thanks to my cousin Sarah's tutorial, I am off and running with this very cool program. I'm making a photo book of our trip to Maui, as winkflash.com is running their flat-rate book deal again. Photoshop allows me to create collages and save them as a single .jpg file. Then, I can upload fancy-pants pictures into my book, thereby bypassing winkflash's lame layout options. Here are a couple of pages I've made thus far. This is a real time-suck, but it is fun!

MOPS Egg hunt

This morning, Evan hunted eggs at school while Alex and I hunted eggs with the MOPS group. Just imagine about 30 preschoolers running wild to get eggs. It was great fun.

Alex's favorite part was the Easter Bunny. While most kids were scared of the huge furry friend, Alex couldn't get enough. He'd squeal, "HOP HOP!" and run for her. I made a slide show of some of the best bunny pictures and videos -- but there are about 30 more I didn't include!

(I have the wrong date on the video -- it was today, March 19th)

Happy Birthday, Duncan!

Duncan Scott, my Godson, is SIX years old today!!!

Happy Birthday, Duncan!

Nana and Gramps Visit Macon

Nana and Gramps, Will's folks, were in Macon with us for a whole week. Having them here allowed Ani to spend many many hours at the MOPS consignment sale. The boys loved the undivided attention they received, and Will and Ani loved having extra help. I think we wore them out, though! It isn't every week that they shuttle two toddlers to and from school, the mall, the grocery store, lunches, a birthday party, cut down six trees with a chain saw, clean, cook, do dishes for six, change diapers, clean up potty accidents, get cups of water in the middle of the night, and mow an acre (and that was just the first few days). Thanks, Dan and Susan, for everything.

For a slide show of visit highlights,

including our trip to the zoo,

click here.

MOPS Consignment Sale - Spring 08

A huge success! We brought in $12,000 more than last spring, and almost doubled our sales from Spring 2006. I practically lived at the Hephzibah Children's Home gym last week, but it was worth it. A job well done by all who were involved....

Here is a short slide show of the floor layout (one of my main responsibilities). We estimated about 40,000 items were for sale, from almost 300 consignors.

I'll be running the whole thing next September '08 and March '09. I'm looking forward to the additional responsibility!

Play Ball!

Happy St. Patrick's Day! To celebrate, I made the boys green pancakes for lunch. They loved them. Then, we watched Will play his first softball game of the season. The opponents didn't have enough players, so Will's team won. Those who were in attendance scrimmaged instead.

Here are some shots of the boys goofin' around the bleachers.

Maui summary

At long last, I am finally posting pictures from our Maui trip. Note that I've added some pictures to the previously posted links, so there may be more to see if you want to view them again! As usual, you can click on the pictures in this posting to see a larger image.

Maui Day 1-3

Maui Day 4

Maui Day 5-6

Maui Days 7-8

Maui Days 8-9

What a wonderful vacation! We cant even begin to thank Mom and Dad/NeeNee and Bapa enough. Their timeshare is top-notch, and the opportunity to enjoy such a beautiful part of the world with the boys is invaluable. It was great to have everyone together for such a special vacation. Thanks, Mom and Dad! Love you!

Home again, Home again

We are home. We are exhausted. More pictures soon; stay tuned!

Beach Bums

We've spent a lot of time at the pool and the beach. It is safe to say that the kids LOVE sand. They love to dig in it, build with it, throw it, lick it off their fingers, and crunch it in their teeth!

Work follows her

Mom worked a million hours in anticipation of this trip: weekends, evenings, the works. Wouldn't it just figure that the room she and Dad were assigned the first night was room 1040!?

Aloha!

Aloha from sunny Maui. The temperature has been in the mid-80s and there have been few clouds in the sky. Paradise. (What a great reason for my blog post #100!)

The 21-hour travel day was difficult, but we have funny stories to share in the next post. Thus far, the boys love the pool and the beach. Today we are off to a local farmers' market. More to come soon.