Julia's Drawings

Julia has just started drawing pictures that resemble people and faces. Here's a picture of a princess with glowing and shimmering hands and hair -This picture is of someone celebrating their birthday with a balloon -
This picture cracks me up. In case you can't tell, it's a smiling banana -
Julia didn't tell me exactly what she drew in this last one, so we'll call it a picture with various designs.

Preschool Easter Egg Hunt

Julia's preschool had a Spring party this morning, including an Easter egg hunt.In order to keep things fair between all of the classes and kids at the preschool, each class had a section of eggs to hunt. The eggs in Julia's class's section were labeled with the children's names. All the friends were helping each other, giving eggs to the proper owners - it was so cute!
Here's little Julia at the end of the hunt, all smiles.
And one more photo op:

Evelyn's Train Layout

Evelyn made this train layout over the weekend. It works perfectly for the girls' wooden Thomas trains, especially since there are two places where little Julia can sit in the middle. (This also makes my job easier, with Evelyn able to build her own train track layouts.)

Buddies

After Julia set up her dolly - who was sick and injured - Rosie sauntered up and made herself comfortable. These two little girls play so well together.

Dorothy Fairy Princess

This morning Julia asked to put on her Dorothy costume. Then she wanted to wear the purple fairy wings. Then she wanted to put on her Cinderella crown and Cinderella shoes. And what did Julia want to do, now that she was all dolled up? Why, paint, of course.Here's the little Sunshine, working on a flower masterpiece.

Story Times

Here's our littlest bookworm, being read to by anyone caught sitting down . . .
. . . and I'm an easy target since I have been sitting down a lot!

Cherry Blossoms 2012

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington, D.C. The only problem? The mild winter encouraged the Japanese cherry trees to bloom way ahead of schedule, which means all of the events and programs don't start for another week.

But the good news is that Troy and the girls (along with Grandma Luster) went down to D.C. this morning to check out the trees. They were in full-bloom and just beautiful.

St. Patrick's Day Pancakes

Evelyn wanted green pancakes for breakfast since today is St. Patrick's Day. I'm out of commission with my knee, so Troy took it upon himself to whip up a batch of homemade pancakes...and he even found my Wilton's coloring gel to make the pancakes green. Impressive!

Knee Surgery

This past Monday I had surgery to repair a large section of missing cartilage in my left knee. I have been on a cartilage donor list since the beginning of January, so I was surprised when my doctor's office called on March 2nd to say a donor had been secured. I had ten days to get things in order before my surgery - this procedure will have me on crutches until the end of May.

The OATS procedure went as planned. As my doctor put it, it was a perfect match. Both the size and curvature of the donor cartilage fit perfectly into my bad spots. However, as with all of my knee surgeries, there was a new area of missing cartilage that is difficult to repair. My doctor did a microfracture procedure, which is supposed to stimulate cartilage growth, and we'll cross our fingers that it works.

Meanwhile, I am lounging around on the couch, frequently icing my knee and making sure I stay on top of my pain medications. I will start physical therapy next week - even though I cannot put weight on my leg, I still need to keep my knee moving so the new cartilage has fluid moving around it. I'm going to try my best to be an awesome patient!

The Lorax

After striking out last December with our choice of a PG-rated kids' movie ("We Bought a Zoo"), I have been apprehensive to take the girls to see a new movie not rated G. But guess what? "The Lorax" was perfect! (And it's rated PG!)

As with all books-to-movies, I had the girls read Dr. Seuss' book first. You could tell the movie makers followed the picture book very closely. Most of the characters were the same, and the movie's story line was the same as the book.

Julia and Evelyn loved the musical numbers sprinkled throughout - Julia even got up and danced a couple of times. There were sad parts that made the girls cry, but there were lots of funny parts, too. If you have read the book, you know there is an environmental message about saving trees, which was also very clear in the movie. But that message was presented in a kid-friendly way.

Overall, "The Lorax" was a great kids' movie. Once it comes out on DVD, I'm sure we will add it to our collection at home.

Weird Sleeper

How can Julia sleep like this?!?