Happy Spring!

 An outing to see a sweet puppet play, "The Winning of Kwelanga."

 Nathan continues to amaze me with his artistic abilities. This is his pencil sketch of Leonardo da Vinci, which he drew for a 7th grade block.

 The amazing Mama who takes care of Nuriel while I work just had a baby, so there's been lots of babywearing-imitation happening at our house. 

 I had a fabulous 38th birthday. I've been dreaming about Venice, so Nathan drew this picture inside the birthday card he made for me. Noah got me banana pudding (yummy!) and Nuriel kept insisting that it was HER birthday. :-)

Nuriel planted some Easter grass on Palm Sunday morning...

 ... that evening we got some unexpected snow, which resulted in a fabulous snow day that Monday.

 By Wednesday the grass was already this tall!

 Using some pea shoot sprouts and coffee & vinegar, I dyed some of these eggs with my students.

 A visit to a local Alpaca fiber festival with these sweet little one, just a week old.

 A fabulous creation by my friend Mindi - in exchange for a set of rainbow bunnies for her daughter. I love this dress!

 No chocolate bunnies were devoured in our house this year, but the Easter bunny did bring a chocolate carrot with the bunnies I had sewn from felt for Nuriel. {She loves her chocolate.}

Map

This is a map. It's a gorgeous map ten 7/8th graders (Noah's class) drew & shaded by hand for the school's auction that took place a few months ago. It brought in a nice sum for the school. It's a stunning piece. I just had the opportunity to create some over-sized postcards for the students to have as "memorabilia." I thought I'd share. Amazing, huh? (You can click on it and enjoy a slightly larger view.) Noah is known for his small, neat handwriting. Amongst other things, he wrote the "Key."

Noah's Writing Blurb

I attended the "Friday Gathering" at school this morning with Nuriel. Noah's class presented snippets from the Creative Writing block. Here's what Noah shared:

Yesterday I was holding my baby sister. She got hungry, so she started pushing her face against my chest hopefully. When that did not work, she grabbed fistfuls of my shirt and tried to force them into her mouth. Earlier she had been face-planted in my brother's chest. When she couldn't get any shirt into her mouth, she started to fuss loudly so I gave her to my Mom and the problem was fixed.

Sweet, huh? Long weekend ahead! And it looks like sunshine!

Paua Pilot

Spring is here! What a beautiful day it is. Here's a pilot hat to go with the Wee Lil' Paua Sweater. I have about 1-1/2 skeins of that wonderful, luxurious Malabrigo yarn left now. I will either make some knee-high cabled socks or some no-seam booties next. I finished this pilot hat last night, just before Noah's 7/8th grade class play, "The Sunshine Boys." He was Al Lewis. It was a hilarious play. He did a fantastic job with his part, but has been in bed all morning with an icky stomach virus, thus missing much of this beautiful sunny day. Nathan is working on his Platypus report. So far, so good.

A Fighting Gnome

Noah smiling at his basketball game last night. The RWS 'Fighting Gnomes' finally overcame an unlucky streak and with much skill won the game 22:20 with Noah scoring a basket and doing a bit of rebounding. Go gnomes!

Twelve.

Twelve candles on your cake, ehmm, stack of cinnamon rolls...

Noah, my oldest, is twelve today. I can hardly believe it. I was only 21 when he was born, but he was indeed a planned baby. :-) Born on a cold, snowy January night in Germany. Stuck shoulder. Vacuum extraction. Clavicula fracture. Meconium aspiration. - Noah spent his first week of life in the NICU, and I was so, so excited when I could finally take my baby home and nurse him and snuggle with him.

Noah - eating his favorite take-out from the local coffee shop (black bean burrito) after a 'Fighting Gnome' game here - is the brainiac of the family. The one who reads a football or soccer score and remembers it for ever. The one who could jump the 27s timestable in 4th grade. The one who has read the Harry Potter series so often that he has entire sections memorized. In 5th grade Noah read Jimi Hendrix's biography & became a huge fan of his music. (He was Jimi for Halloween, too.) Hendrix got his first guitar when he was about Noah's age. So, we've been looking at guitars on Craig's list etc. - trying to find a nice used one for this birthday...

Technically Noah is a 6th grader 'into' the Roman 'thing.' But Noah goes to 7th grade, which is working out nicely for him. - Above an explorer map he was working on over the Christmas break.

One more year, and you'll be a teenager! :-) (OMG! Help!)
I can't believe that either!

Happy birthday, my dear Noah! I love you so much.