spring fling

These future raccoons were pretty pumped to visit the spring fling event at the local elementary school. The event was pushed inside by the sleet and snow, but it was fun to play inside the school!  We were happy to see some familiar faces and feel like we are becoming part of the neighborhood community.

captain abearica

Kicking off KC's birthday week with a trip to Build A Bear where both bunny brothers were super excited by the superhero line of tiny duds.  Captain Abearica came home with a very happy almost three year old!  

easter bunny

The new bunny was a major improvement over sad bunny of years past.  However, the wicker bench and trellis was replaced by the inexplicable faux grass pillows, hot pink bench, fake rocks and very fake flowers?!  Way to kitsch it up Fair Oaks!  We pulled out the matchy match again just to match the kitsch.  And blue pants = simple JOY!

tidbits

-- Thanks to Super Pat and Erin Go Bragh for the fun new book! - Aiden set the story to "dramatic music" for Super Pat's fan club site - teehee

-- My new keys and tablet are all up and running - My first wedding edit had Donald Trump as a guest!  Ha!

-- This has got to be the last of the snow on March 26!  It got icey pretty quickly so no spring snow men.  There were flowers buried under that snow!

--We got a new hybrid Roland piano for this guy who is really keeping up with his piano!  Getting geared up with pedals and real hammer action now!

--These Outshine popsicles made from veggies are really good (and the boys have no idea they are made from veggies).

--Visiting the school Aiden will attend for first grade and getting a chance to hear about the lunch room (highlight was a copy of the menu!), meet a great 1/2 mixed grade teacher, and play on the playground.

sugar mama

We visited a new ice cream shop that has really yummy hard ice cream (which really reminded me of the Scooters batches I used to scoop up in the summer).  Aiden is excited to enter the tshirt contest for a year's supply of ice cream.  So with his art direction we created these two options - wish us luck!

iron men

The comic book shop stop before going to the grocery and the movies on a grey weekend afternoon.  They brightened these guys day by giving them iron man masks.  

path

Sometimes it's just as simple as taking that path you pass by every day... We probably meandered twice the distance of the path thanks to Keaton's running back and forth, but it's all good.  We made it to some swings (boys favorite) and then some brunch (Mom's favorite) after checking out all the furry friend real estate.

two and a half

My littlest buddy up to last October... Two and a half years! I wake up lately and my very first thought is how is it possible that Keaton is almost 3?! It makes me the most unique blend of happy and sad.  Same with this video:

Keaton 18-30 months - Happy 2.5! from LB on Vimeo.
Music is JJ Heller again - When I'm With You

popsicles

Spring brought on a new batch of Popsicles, which we could unfortunately keep frozen outside right now.  Here's how Keaton feels about that:

We will see if we get some spring sledding in tomorrow?!

huggies

These running hug guys!  

Good days are good.

experiment

The new watering can was decorated and then inspired a carefully recorded experiment.  When the snow melted there was only a small amount of water left!  Now he wants to come up with "more interesting things to experiment with..."

one and a half

It's Throwback Thursday, right?!  I must be feeling sentimental lately as Keaton's third birthday quickly approaches. I was frenzied searching for the half birthday videos that I never made! What a sham and I didn't even remember not making them - second baby syndrome I suppose, even though I try to avoid it. So I figured, I still have the video snippets, why not make one now!? Better late than never and he will still like seeing it in this time capsule of sorts twenty years from now, right?
 
Keaton six to eighteen months - Happy Half Birthday! from LB on Vimeo.
Song is by JJ Heller - I Get to Be the One

And here is Aiden's six to eighteen months for the true sentimental folks out there:
Happy Half Birthday! from LB on Vimeo.

I owe Keaton his two and a half year old video too ;) - Coming soon...
I did do his first six months on time ;)
http://ababybrennan.blogspot.com/2011/10/half-eve.html

brothers

Love these guys!

knock knock

Lotsa playing, sledding and knock knock jokes today...

happy snow patrick's day

We woke up to about eight inches of snow that some sneaky leprechaun must have been excited about - because he wrote ha, ha, ha all over the snow drifts!  He left green magic milk and sneakily peed green in our toilets!  Mr. Lucky got some new mustache/goatee glasses depending on who is wearing them.  There was a giant coded note left that turned out to be the lyrics to What Does the Fox Say - because of course that is a leprechaun's favorite song!  There is a snow day (everything including the federal government and even J's flight to sunny Toronto was cancelled).  More lazy day shenanigans in store...

slippy

swingers

tidbits

More bits of tid - first a quick commercial break - Our house is missing a 12 inch around plastic mixing bowl full of softened butter!  Seriously, this is such a mystery, and I have a feeling this story will go down as a family legend.  I was planning to make banana bread, so I unwrapped the butter (wrappers in the trash so this is for sure - I did check because after looking for over an hour I thought I was losing my mind), put it in the big blue mixing bowl on the counter, and then went on a FaceTime call with our recently returned from Down Under Grands. (Yay!)  At some point, Keaton must have bounced into the kitchen and swiped the bowl and hid it... Or as he claims a man came in and took it and left with it in his police car... But he has led me on many wild goose chases, I attempted to give him an early Easter present as incentive to help uncover the hidden bowl, and my conclusion is that he doesn't remember where he put it.  I'd recently tidied up for J's jam session with a buddy and I swear this place is actually not full of many places a bowl full of butter could hide!  This is just totally bewildering! 

Update:  Crazy Mom!  Put it in the microwave!!!!  No one thought to look there, but we did look in the washer dryer and the fire place - nutso central over here!

Left side: The best $5 I've ever spent on a complete (all but one piece!) $99 Life on Mars Lego set with a hangar and tubes the aliens zip around in (Man tua Moms club for the win!).  Right top: Close approach on the storytime bubble machine.  Right bottom: This kid wants to cut for days and I'm getting better about trusting him with the scissors.

Top: Pi day drawing with Pi symbol skirt and Super Pi and his sidekick made another appearance to dance to Pi songs.  Bottom: L: flattening out the garden R: smiles on a new couch cover - so stretchy and awesome refresher

Top: Daddy got to enjoy the special invitation to Aiden's Parent Breakfast (no siblings allowed) Bottom: L: Balloon animals helped with our PB Jacks reunion - it had been over a month!  R: Extra special waffle cone treat

pi day grooves

Super Pi and his sidekick do some serious circle grooves to celebrate the 3.14.14!!

dance

We finally made it back to the family dance and we were excited that some of Aiden's other classmates made it too.  The boys had fun with the dances (even Keaton was with it a little bit) and even more fun during the breaks.  They made up a game called Chicken and Cars - where the chicken tries to "cross the road" and the car runs over him before he can "get to the other side."

glen echo

The sun was shining down on Glen Echo on this brisk afternoon.  I just can't get enough of these fun buildings from the old amusement park.  The boys were hyped up with running hugs and playground time.

super saturday

I'd heard about the Super Saturday theme events at the Air and Space Museum a couple times, but was scared away thinking it might be crowded or for older kids.  Turns out despite a pretty busy parking lot, it didn't seem crowded inside at all.  The place is so huge that everyone spreads out.  The event itself was awesome.  They had fun activity and experiment stations.  One highlight was the rat weight which showed how they measure weight without gravity.  Another fun one was creating your own robotic hand - it was two stacked cups with three looped strings that twisted around the object.  Playing on the foam space shuttle and wearing the space suit were really neat.  The Astronaut D on T homas was there to talk about his missions - one that happened to have all Ohioans with a fun story about how woodpeckers delayed it.  He even had a little test for kids to come up and try to poke into an foam square that was supposed to imitate the layer of insulation the pecker managed to poke through and make 205 holes!  It was a fun story of problem solving for the NASA team trying to launch safely and protect the wildlife.  We will definitely be back for more of these events!

inside goods

On the coldest March VA days in a long time, we put on our snow day hats and some fun bits fell in our laps - like cool 3D puzzle postcards from our Australia tourist grands (the Masters Brennan say thx!), Charley Harper color forms, and the  never ending pigeon activity book (because Mo is a genius!)

rolling

We are getting excited for Keaton's birthday - We are going to have his class over to celebrate with a Three-esta Fiesta based on his favorite Dragon Loves Tacos book.  So we spent a bunch of snow day time making tons of these to hang as a banner.  They rolled the paint with a ball in a box:

would you rather

This month has been filled with more plates of eggs, games of Apples to Apples, and Who Was books that I can count.  He is truly in that sweet spot where the little kid is still there, but he goes on playdates on his own now!

Would you rather live in a tennis court or a movie theater?

A movie theater because then I could watch the Lego movie any time I wanted!

Would you rather only use paint or crayons the rest of your life?

Paint because I like painting better than crayons because it's easier to make circles because I just dip it in the paint, flatten the brush, and swirl.

Would you rather sleep on a pile of legos or a pile of cupcake crumbs?

Pile of legos because then I would just build a bed out of it - I don't have to just sleep on the pokey legos I could just build a bed.

Would you rather have corn chip fingernails or spaghetti noodle hair?
Corn chip fingernails because, noodle hair! I don't want to be bald because people eat my hair!

Would you rather spend the day on the top of a tree or at school?
Top of the tree because I don't think I could eat dinner at school, that would be crazy, but you could bring me dinner in the tree!

Would you rather never be able to eat food or never see anything the rest of your life?
I would pick never be able to see because you see, never being able to eat food, short life!

Would you rather get in a snowball fight with a professional ball player or go in the snow in your underpants?
Snowball fight with professional ball player because going anywhere in my underpants would make me frozen and embarrassed!

Would you rather have a pet panda or a pet otter?
Pet otter because that's for my otter loving mom!

Would you rather write a new Who Was book or a new music book?

Who Was book because I could make a Who Was Aiden Brennan?

fly guy giggle

pipes

We are dreaming up new schemes for our pipe cleaner gang.  Here is the playground paparazzi in action:

brothers

These guys got tons of bonus brother time with the two snow days earlier this week.  Lotsa legos, pigeon activities, air-dry clay, kinetic sand, pig tails, fuzzoodles, cakes, tennis rackets, and turtle shells...