They all axed for you

We went on down to the zoo this past weekend. Patrick and Peyton got to go Saturday night with their Cub Scout pack and spent the evening learning about reptiles. They even got to go on a night time hike through the dark zoo.

Elliana and I enjoyed a girls night where fingernails were painted, we ate Mac and cheese, and we visited her pal Luca. There may have been a kiss between her and Luca to end the evening, which my friend Laura and I agreed was not the best idea, but we couldn't stop laughing).

Anyway, back to the point - Elliana and I drive down to the zoo Sunday morning (in our matching girl shirts) and spent the day checking out the animals. I just wanted to share a few pictures.



























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More Pictures from Peyton's TKD tourney

Another Dad took a bunch of pictures of Peyton's TKD tournament last weekend, so I thought I would share a few of the ones that Peyton is in. 

Call me Carly Rae Jepsen, Maybe

Elliana LOVES to sing. This is one of my favorites to hear her sing along to.

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Peyton and James

Peyton got a programmable robot that he named James for his birthday. He has shown some interest in coding so this will help him develop that skill!

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TKD tourney

Peyton participated in his first TKD tournament on Saturday. He competed in the Kata and Sparring categories. Here is a video of his Kata (he placed 4th in this category).

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Wacky Wednesday

Three minutes before Peyton needed to walk out of the door for school today, I realized it was Dr. Seuss's birthday and therefore Wacky Wednesday at Peyton's school. I managed to throw a few things together to help him out, but I don't think he'll be the wackiest kid in second grade today. Hopefully he will have fun with it anyway.




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Alrighty Then...

Walking into Tae Kwon Do this evening:

Patrick to Elliana: "Can I hold your hand while we cross the parking lot?"

Elliana: "No"

Patrick: "Then, can I hold you?"

Elliana:"No"

Patrick: "What can I hold?"

Elliana: "You can hold the door open for me."

Then, later....

Me: "Elliana, I brought you a book back from my trip to Philadelphia" (I should add that it is a beautiful kids book of Van Gogh paintings)

Elliana: "Well, I don't want it. I wanted an Olaf book."

Oh, to be 4 again!




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A weekend in Philly

I know most of ya'll don't read the blog to hear about me. But there's a small chance that my Grandma still wants to know what I'm up to, so bear with me.

I've been in Philadelphia this weekend while Patrick has held the fort down with the children. I'm pretty sure he'll be a little grayer by the time I get home. He leaves for his annual ski trip on Wednesday (this time to Salt Lake City to visit Will and Cory too!) so don't feel too sorry for him.

Anyhoo, I went to a conference - Understanding Interventions - for professional development to help understand strategies meant to recruit and retain minority students in science. My colleague and good friend Josh gave a talk about the data we have that shows that GRE scores aren't a good predictor of success in graduate school (for the sciences). People seemed really interested in his talk, so hopefully he'll get around to publishing his data soon.


The conference ended Sunday at noon and my good friend Jess, who was a post-doc in my grad school lab, came and met me for the afternoon to hang out. We stopped for an authentic Philly cheesesteak, of course. One, whiz, with.



It was a beautiful day so we walked everywhere and went to the amazing Barnes Foundation Museum, which made for a fantastic afternoon. It has the largest collection of Renoir paintings, over 180! We so got to see some Van Gogh, Monet, Picasso, and Degas too. (No pics of the paintings, sorry!)

The Philadelphia city hall is a beautiful building, so...I took a picture.


When we were in Philly over the summer, Peyton really wanted to see the Ben Franklin Bridge, but we never actually got to see it. This picture of the bridge is for him that I was able to take on the drive to the airport.


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Phoenix or Bust!

"The trucks are all lined up. They're getting ready to go to Fenix Awazoana to visit Aunt Tobi."

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The Close Race

Here is a video of Peyton's car racing at the pinewood derby. Each car races 4 heats, one heat in each lane. In this video, his car is in lane 2 - the angry bird. He won this particular heat, but because the rankings are determined by the overall average, he came in second place, 0.0029 seconds behind the first place average.

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A Miracle on Scout Sunday

Today was Scout Sunday at the church that sponsors Peyton's Cub Scout pack. The scouts served as greeters, readers, and ushers, and Peyton did a great job reading his lines.

There was a pot luck following the church service. (I brought my mozzarella cheese ball, tomato, pasta salad, because that's what I bring to these things). On the way to the church, I realized I hadn't brought any food for Elliana to eat, which I usually do. I'm surprised I don't have a stash of it in the car. When the time came to go through the line, I let her get a plate and choose what she wanted. She wanted a roll. That's it. I asked her if she wanted some ham, which I've heard she eats at school sometimes. No, thanks, she said. I just want bread. As we went down the table, I offered her everything. She wanted nothing. So, I filled my plate with a little of everything and we sat down to eat.

We sat down next to another little girl, probably around 8 or 9. She had some bread and ham on her plate, along with a couple of brownies and a whole lot of whip cream. I'm not sure if it was the influence of the older girl's plate with ham, or the fact that there was a reminder of dessert if you eat a good lunch, but suddenly, Elliana wanted ham. And then she went back two more times for more. And then she knew she could have a big ole brownie. With a ton of whip cream on the side that she could dip her brownie in. Note: she did NOT want the whip cream on top of her brownie. In any case, the girl ate something from the pot luck offerings. There's a first time for everything.




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Cub Scout Pinewood Derby!

Peyton placed second for speed with his car at the pack pinewood derby today. That means he gets to go to the district pinewood derby! I have a few other pictures on my camera and on Patrick's phone, so more later.





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A Reading Machine

This kid is loving reading right now, especially the Harry Potter series. We read the first book together, and started reading the second book together, but he got tired of waiting for me so he just decided to fly solo. He was mid-way through book 2 on our flight to Baton Rouge two weeks ago, so I figured we just needed to lug that one book around and that would last him until we got back. Except he finished it as we landed in Baton Rouge, and I had left book 3 at home. Silly mom.

I ran to Barnes and Noble and bought him four other chapter books from other series that he likes and he tore through them by the next day.

Once we arrived back home after the thrill of a trip to Mardi Gras, he cracked open book three. Now, a week later, he's about midway through book four.

The only problem with so much interest in reading is that he doesn't hear a word I say. Not that he ever hears me anyway.



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Happy Valentine's Day!

It was a day full of love over here!

I recently got a crepe pan thingy (an early bday present from my dad!) and decided I wanted to make some dessert crepes for Valentine's Day. I recently had a very tasty crepe in the Atlanta airport, so surely I can do this, right?!

I read a few tips and tricks about making crepes, watched a few you-tube videos, and figured I would be good to go. My dad's advice: be prepared to ruin the first couple that you do. Nah, I got this.

Or, maybe he was right....






There must be an art to this. So our artist neighbor friend tried. His looked as good as mine.

Patrick was taking notes watching us fail and now it was his turn. He must have been a professional crepe maker in another life.





He made a very nice round crepe, folded it in half, added some strawberries, bananas, and Nutella, then wrapped it up. It was very tasty!

In other news, Hillsborough has a gourmet chocolate shop. I always go in there to buy gifts, but I've never had such special chocolate all to myself. Check out the beautiful chocolate my valentine gave to me! (Sorry, I already ate one).




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Pajama Day

Today was pajama day at Elliana's school. Unfortunately, she was running a temperature this morning so she couldn't go. We're assuming that her fever was probably due to the vaccinations she had yesterday. She seems to be fine this evening and will go back to school tomorrow.

So, we stayed in our PJ`s at home today instead.




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The Below 40 Degrees Rule

Peyton and I are planning to run a 5K together in April. We started running a few times a week together after the first of the year. We did well at first. And then it snowed, we did some traveling, and well, we've had to repeat week 1 of our couch to 5K training a couple of times.

With the fun of Mardi Gras and too much king cake behind us, we wanted to get back into the game tonight. We got about 1/4 mile away and decided to turn around because it was cold. Read cold. Like 32 degrees cold. So we decided that we were going to enact a no running in weather below 40 degrees. We might have to repeat Week 1 again because the current forecast doesn't look promising for a run anytime soon.





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We're back!

Since I'm taking a break from Facebook for Lent, I'm coming back to the blogging sphere. I know how much family and friends like to keep up with everything we are doing so I'll be posting here instead of Facebook. Stay tuned!


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Location:North Carolina