​Every year we send a package to our Japanese friends, The Murata’s and they send us one back.  The kids always get so excited to open up the Murata’s package every year.  The girls were really excited by the cool erasers and everyone enjoyed the fun Japanese candy.

SWIM MEET MARKINGS
APRIL 13, 2018​

​I love watching the boys swim and especially love seeing their arms marked up with their events and lanes they will be swimming in each meet.  It is such a joy to watch them work so hard during every meet.

​In preparation for my half marathon in June I have finally added in long mileage days.  Today Mike was kind enough to bike next to me while I did a 10-mile run.  We had the WORST headwind and it was more like me running and then looking back to see where Mike was. The wind was so strong that it was hard for him to catch up to me after my 2-mile water break. It wasn’t until after the turnaround point at mile 5 that we were able to meet back up together. The nice tailwind and the ever so slightly downhill grade helped me run fast during the second half of my workout. I was able to manage 7:30 miles, which was amazing.  

We took Peter out to Longhorn steakhouse for his birthday.  He wanted to wait until after swim season to have a party with his friends since he is avoiding sugar during the swim season.  He enjoyed his burger and fries and loved his presents.  We gave him a Switch game called Rocket League and a extra game pack for his Legend of Zelda game. He was thrilled to also get money from both sets of grandparents.  

​Ever since getting our new family room furniture we had planned on getting new photos for the wall.  We decided to put the Japanese thin wraps in the office and order metal photos with pictures that I took all around the world.  After finally ordering the large Seattle skyline photo I finally sat down and prepped the other photos to be printed.  We were so happy with the way the collage turned out on our family room wall.
 
After the loft got a fresh coat of paint it was time to update the walls.  We got a pushpin map of the world and a new quote for the wall.  Then we added clocks with times from the different places we have lived.  The final piece was ordering a fun chair for the loft.  The loft definitely has a more older kid feel to it now.  Super fun!

​I got the best little note in the mail today from Emma’s social studies teacher.  She had such great things to say about our Emma.  This came from the teacher that not many students like so it meant even more that she took the time to send this nice note.

​The best word to describe this month with Madeline is FUN. She is really starting to talk more and become more interactive when she plays with us or with her toys.  Her vocabulary seems like it has doubled. There are so many words she can say in addition to many animal sounds and quite a few letter sounds from the alphabet.  She really understands when we explain things to her.  If I tell her that we have to wait to go outside until we do something else first, she responds by saying, “ok.”  Madeline loves songs and can sing quite a few songs along with me.  Even if she doesn’t know all the words she still sings through the songs with certain words that are recognizable.  Her favorite song to sing lately is Popcorn Popping.  She can even do all the actions. It is adorable.  Lately, she has liked singing it to her baby.
 
Madeline loved Easter at the beginning of the month.  We got her a basket this year and she loved hunting for Easter eggs in the backyard.  She got so much joy out of putting those eggs her in basket.  If anyone tried to take an egg that she saw she let it be known.  It’s not surprising that she liked to put the eggs in her basket because she seems to enjoy putting toys into other things.  This is one of the reasons why she is so good a cleaning up her toys when she is done playing.  We sing the clean up song and she is right there putting everything away.  That’s not to say that there aren’t times when she isn’t naughty.  I walked into the bathroom one morning while I was cleaning the kitchen and saw that she had pulled most of the toilet paper off the roll.  She was having a blast playing with it.  Before telling her no I ran to get my camera.  Then we cleaned it up together.  It’s amazing how she can be a stinker and so cute all at the same time. 
 
One of Madeline’s favorite things to do is watch Little Einsteins on the iPad.  I will usually let her watch it when I am cleaning up the kitchen or taking a shower. She loves to sit in the big chair in the family room.  Most of the time while she is watching she will click on other apps on the iPad. She is too smart for her age and can navigate quite well through the iPad.  That is one reason why we took off the YouTube app.  
 
Madeline is super happy and also super goofy.  It is not uncommon for us to find her dressed up with a bunch of necklaces, carrying her purse, with her bunny ears on, and talking on her phone.  One time she came into the kitchen with the plastic rings on her feet and her sunglasses on.  It’s like she knew she was funny because she had the biggest grin on her face as she walked towards me.  She has even tried putting on her own pants and shoes.  One day she grabbed a pair of pants from her clean pile of laundry and tried to put them on over her other pants.  To her credit she actually got on leg through.  Then she proceeded to play with her toys.  It was kind of funny.
 
Madeline loves to be outside and will knock on the backdoor until we take her outside to play.  Lately the weather has been really nice so we have gone on many walks.  She loves to run on the sidewalk and pick the dandelions off the grass.  She gets quite a collection and then hands them to us to hold for her.  She loves seeing the birds fly in the sky and spotting the bunnies.  We made the mistake of letting her wear shorts at first and she ended up getting her first knee scrape.  It didn’t help that she reopened that cut a few times the following days even with the band-aid on.  From then on we put her in pants to go on walks until her boo-boo healed.  She was not a fan of the bath while her knee was all scraped up.  It took her quite some time even after it healed to be ok sitting in the bath again. Aside from going on walks we have taken her to the park more frequently this month.  Her favorite thing to do is go down the slide.  She doesn’t care for anything else at the park except for the slide. We even tried putting her in the swing but she was not a fan of that. 
 
One of my favorite times of the day is getting Madeline up in the morning or after her nap.  She grabs all of her animals and blanket and says animals.  She just wants all of her little furry friends with her.  It is adorable.  Lately all she has wanted is her baby.  She takes that baby everywhere with her and gives her lots of hugs and kisses. She likes to push her baby in the shopping cart and feed her baby the bottle.  She even takes her baby on trips to the store.  I have noticed that Madeline will fall asleep in the car if it’s close to her nap time so now I have to be careful to not do errands too close to naptime.  One day while we were in the office playing, I saw Madeline grab the wipes out of the diaper bag. She wanted one so I gave it to her.  Then she proceeded to wipe the shopping cart handles just like she sees me do at the grocery store.  She just loved being the mommy pushing the baby in the cart with clean handles.  It was too funny.
 
Some of Madeline’s favorite toys to play with are her Little People Farm, the shopping cart, dollhouse, her pink harmonica, purse and phone, and her color wonder markers and coloring books.  She absolutely loves to color and will color a little bit on each page.  
 
Her list of words:
Up, down, off, more, please, thank you, glasses, shoes, socks, boo-boo, head, eyes, ears, toes, pants, bath, molk (milk), book, baba (baby), hot, es (yes), na (no), bag, back, light, this, ok, iPad, Einsteins, bus, nana (banana), berries, buttons, push, circle, outside, bubble, all done, all gone, animals, bop (blanket), sheep, hug, guys, boys, momma, dada, dad, Mike, Pe (Peter), Anu (Andrew), Emma, Abba (Abby), 6,7,8
 
Her list of animal sounds:
Cow, Pig, Horse, Chicken, Duck, Bird, Cat, Dog, Tiger, Elephant, Snake, Rooster
 
Her list of other sounds:
Car, Horn, 
 
Her list of alphabet sounds:
A, B, D, E, F, H, L, M, P, S, T
 
Songs she can:
Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, I am a Child of God, Temple Song, Popcorn Popping, Head Shoulders Knees and Toes, Clap Clap Clap your Hands, 5 Little Monkeys, Wheels on the Bus, Itsy Bitsy Spider, Hickory Dickory Dock, Pat a Cake
 
 
 

​I had the BEST birthday this year.  Turning 40 is no small thing and Mike and the kids made me feel so special on this transition year.  Mike made reservations at our club in the Rotunda room and we had a private party with just our family.   The food was absolutely delicious and there was no one else in the Rotunda that night so we really got to enjoy being a family without any distractions.  Each of the kids wrote me special notes about what they loved about me and got presents that went along with what they wrote.  Abby loved to cuddle with me and so she got me some fun lounge around clothes from Athleta. Emma thought I was kind and beautiful so she got be a necklace from White House Black Market.  Peter loved how I introduced him to running and so he got me a running outfit from Lululemon.  Andrew loved how adventurous I am and so he got me some hiking poles. Mike's present made me go WOW when I opened it up and saw that he had made me a photo album with photos of me over the last 40 years. I had no idea he was doing that.  This really was the best birthday.  

​Abby participated in the ES musical this year and was one of the cards in Alice in Wonderland Jr.  She was so thrilled to finally be doing something she loved.  It was not uncommon for her to be singing all the songs from Alice in Wonderland around the house.  She loved the practices and being able to sing and act with some of her friends.  We even signed her up for voice lessons with Deanna Kirkham.  The day of the musical came and I had the opportunity to see it twice that day.  I was completely amazed and blown away by how talented all of those kids were.  I loved seeing Abby on that stage.  She looked so calm and so natural up there.  It was fun to be able to take pictures for the musical cast and crew this year.  

​It was so nice to have Grandma Anne and Grandpa Franz with us for Easter Sunday.  After everyone was up in the morning we put out the Easter baskets for the kids. Madeline loved her new bunnies and was so excited to eat her strawberry pocky snacks.  The kids were all surprised by the fun things they had in their baskets this year.  Everyone got a fun little toy and a variety of fun candies, including some classic Japanese candy.  This year the boys didn’t participate in the regular Easter egg hunt but instead decided to help Madeline and just hunt for their golden eggs. The girls were in full force trying to find all the hard to find eggs.  Emma got the lucky golden egg with the $20 bill this year. This Easter egg hunt was definitely focused on Madeline and even the girls stopped hunting to watch how cute Madeline was in finding her eggs and putting them in her basket.  There was a moment when Abby found one of the hard to find eggs and Madeline saw her pick it up and put up quite a fuss.  Needless to say we just had to distract her with her pastel plastic eggs instead. When we saw that she was running out of eggs to collect we sneaked some eggs out of her basket and put them back on the grass for her to pick up again.