Okay okay!

Alright, so I know I've been pretty slack.  I have a couple of good excuses.  Want to hear them?  Too bad, you're going to anyway.  Firstly, I've been reading.  A lot.  In the last four weeks I've read sixteen novels.  After reading Life Of Pi and Where'd You Go, Bernadette? somebody, who shall remain nameless, got me hooked on the Virgin River series and I've been plowing through those stories ever since.  I do most of my reading in the evening once the kids are in bed (when I would normally blog) or even in the van.  I never used to be able to read while in the car but I seem to be overcoming that obstacle.  I have the books loaded onto the iPad, my iPhone and Tim's e-reader so that no matter where I am, I can read whenever the urge hits, which turns out to be quite often.

The other excuse is that there just hasn't been a lot to write about.  Nicholas is still doing great at school while Ryan stays home with me.  We have been going to the indoor play areas a little more lately and Ryan has started doing "schoolwork" during the day.  Because he will be eligible for junior kindergarten this coming August, we had to decide if he would attend or not.  He doesn't want to go so I made a deal with him.  He will be allowed to stay home with me for another year as long as he is willing to do some school work during the day.  Apparently he thought that was a good deal because has been enthusiastically completing whatever I put in front of him - dot-to-dot, mazes, letters and numbers.  One day he started doing his number dot-to-dot backwards, counting from 20 down to 1.  He's doing very well and is quite proud of his work.  I will need more workbooks soon as he is completing them very quickly.

Yesterday we made a trip to a new French sporting goods store, Decathlon, and for Easter purchased a new bike for Ryan and skateboard for Nicholas, plus a few other goodies we hadn't planned on.  It's a great store and Ry is really pleased with his new bike and helmet.  He picked the most colorful ones he could find and had fun trying them out today.  It wasn't the best day for being outside with snow and not great air quality, but we managed to get out for a little bit - after lots of Easter chocolate of course!  The bunny visited our place last night.

The purple balls on his back are his "weapons" for when he is ready to be a Ninja Turtle.  They are attached to sticks to make swords and both boys keep them down the backs of their shirts.

Nicholas was home for Good Friday and now has the following week off for spring break.  We are planning to go to more play places and perhaps the science museum and I'm hoping the weather will be nice enough for us to get out and do some biking.  We need sunshine, clear air and warmer temperatures.

Aside from all that, the only news I have is that the kids and I will be spending almost the entire summer in Nova Scotia.  We're very excited and counting down the days til we leave.  I'm sure that as the weather here gets nicer, the time will fly by even faster.  It's the dark, dreary days that seems to drag by.

One last little tidbit before I get back to my reading.  Last week we had a play date with some friends and one little, dark haired, five-year-old boy asked me why Ryan's hair is so blond.  I told him that mine was like that when I was little, but he wasn't satisfied with that explanation.  He asked if I wash Ryan's hair with really hot water to get it that color.  I told him that no, I definitely didn't, but he was convinced that there had to be something he could do to get his own hair to be blond, even if it meant washing it with super hot water.  He really, really wants to be a blond.  With his Korean ancestry, I think he'll have a difficult time with that.

Happy Easter and April Fools!

Baking Banana Bread!