With my birthday in early March, we had some fun celebrating a couple of different times. I had the honor of celebrating my birthday with Pete's sisters again this year and we had a wonderful family dinner followed by pictionary. The kids had so much fun drawing pictures for everyone and were ecstatic when people guess what they were drawing. The next evening, we went to a Japanese Steakhouse with some of our wonderful friends in the area.
We traveled to Indianapolis the second weekend in March and were fortunate enough to make it a little bit of a longer trip and got there Thursday evening. We went to a charity event on Friday night and it was a lot of fun to get dressed up and have a night on the town with my siblings and their friends. We went to see a movie with my mom and I had lunch with 5 of my old high school friends. It was a great visit that unfortunately started with Grace puking and ended with Claire puking. Thankfully, nobody else got sick!
My mom came to visit for a little over a week while our kids were off on Spring Break. Pete and I took full advantage and went up to Cleveland for a one night getaway. We had dinner at a nice steakhouse and played some poker at the casino. During the week we had a great time going bowling, playing games, and celebrating Claire's birthday.
We celebrated Claire's birthday on a Thursday night with 20 friends at a local bounce house. All the kids wore their pajamas and jumped around. The next night we had a quiet dinner with family and friends. We took Claire to breakfast on her actual birthday, decorated eggs, and put together a portable basketball hoop for the kids to play with.
Our Easter was wonderful. We had a great time celebrating with my mom at lunch and then went over to Pete's family's house for the rest of the day and had a great time relaxing and enjoying the wonderful weather.
Claire started out March getting her expander placed in her mouth. I have had to take a "key" and crank the expander wider and wider 28 times. Tonight was our very last crank and I am so proud about how well she did with the whole process. Claire continues to prepare for her 1st Communion in late April and March had 3 activities in addition to her Sunday school. She is getting really excited. She started her girls basketball league at the YMCA and they are undefeated. She has a really great time with basketball and has improved tremendously. We absolutely love to watch her play.
Grace has been taking piano lessons every week. Getting her to practice can be a challenge, but she has no problem putting on a before-bed-concert for us and we all just sit on her bed while she plays. She is reluctantly in swim lessons and we continue to tell her that if she wants to swim without her floats this summer, she has to stay in swimming lessons. That usually does the trick. She loves school and reading and has completed the 1st grade sight words.
Jake started out the month with a speech evaluation and the group of professionals all feel like his pronunciations of "K" and "G" will come with encouragement and they all felt that he was ready for kindergarten. After talking about it, Pete and I decided to start Jake in kindergarten this upcoming fall. He is so very excited and we are so proud of him.
Here are pictures from our month of March:
Jake at his speech evaluation
Kim, Kristen and I's family birthday celebration
Grace got invited to a fancy birthday party for one of her friends - they got their hair, makeup, and nails done and walked a fake runway. It was adorable!
Birthday celebration at the Japanese Steakhouse
Movie time with Grandma!
Fancy night out with these wonderful siblings
Date night in Cleveland
Pete and the kids took down the swingset and made big plans to build a bigger one in the fall
We celebrated the anniversary of my dad's passing on March 21st. Sometimes its hard to believe its been 5 years and this was the first year I was able to be with my mom on this day. It will always be a hard day for me, but we had a good time celebrating his life with some of his favorite foods - corn dogs, onion rings, and dilly bars!
Claire at her pajama bounce house party
Claire's family dinner birthday celebration
Claire's birthday breakfast
Decorating Easter eggs
Basketball from Keith and Debbie!
Basketball hoop for the kids
The first of many kids vs. parents baseball games - the kids won 10-8
Neighborhood Easter Egg Hunt
Easter morning
Fresh haircuts for all!
We went to a Cleveland Cavaliers game on March 31st with Pete's coworkers in his company's suite - it was my first Cavaliers game and we had a great time!
