What I've been up to...

1.  Finding a school for Poppy for next year.  This one has been both stressful and time consuming.  Because we live in the city, we can't just send her to our neighborhood public school (well technically we can, but it wouldn't be a school that you would ever want to send your child to).  We've been researching, attending open houses and testing for a variety of schools.  So far our choices are:

- a public school that has a large gifted and talented program.  Poppy recently went through IQ testing to see if she would be eligible for the GT program, and we also entered her name in for the lottery for the non-GT part of the school.  There are over 1000 applicants for both of these programs and there are only 60 spots for both programs, total.  Which means her chances of getting into this school is slim to none, but we're still holding out hope.  This school would be our first choice.
- we have been looking into two private schools.  I hate the idea of paying so much for her elementary education, but if we had to, we absolutely would.
- we are entering her name into the lottery for two charter schools in our area.  We're still doing the research on these schools.
And I'm so sick of thinking about this.  It's really stressful.  All of the lotteries and test results are announced in early April, so now we pretty much just sit back and wait.  Ugh.

Our future scholar!

2. Baking bread!  I have been trying to bake our own bread for the past 3 years.  This has resulted in a lot of really, really bad loaves of bread.  I've thrown in the towel quite a few times, but recently tried again, this time with the help of a bread machine!  I borrowed my MIL's and gave it a try.  The very first loaf was a success, but still needed some tweaking.  Finally, this morning I made the absolute most perfect loaf of bread, ever!  I am so proud of myself!  I can't believe it has taken me 3 years to do it, but I did and now I see lots of yummy fresh bread in our future.

Sam is obsessed with the bread machine.  He stands there and stares at it all day.  He's a weird kid.

3.  Playing nurse.  Sam got his first stomach bug this week.  Yuck.  And then Poppy got a touch of it and Marc got it.  Double yuck.

Love this kid.

4.  Making green smoothies!  For Christmas I got a Blendtec blender and it has changed my life!  (ok, not really, but I do love this blender!!!)  I have been drinking green smoothies every day for the past 6 months and I was burning out the motor on our old blender.  Now that I have my super powerful blender, I make even more smoothies and everyone drinks them with their breakfast.  Poppy has been going through a major growth spurt and she is so proud to tell everyone that it's because of the spinach she puts in her smoothies.  Both Poppy and Sam can be pretty picky about their veggies, so I love the fact that they get their daily dose first thing in the morning.  Here's the recipe I started out with...

1 apple, cored and sliced (but keep the peel on!)
1 banana (I freeze mine first so that the smoothie is colder)
juice of 1 lemon
handful of frozen fruit (we usually do strawberries)
2 handfuls of fresh baby spinach (the more you drink these smoothies, the more spinach you'll want to add!)
1 cup water

Blend and enjoy!  You won't believe how great these smoothies taste and make you feel!

Mmmmm!  I love green smoothies!

5.  Piano practice!  Poppy has been doing so great at practice that her teacher has asked her to perform at a concert.  I cannot believe that she is going to be performing all by herself on a big huge stage in front of hundreds of people.  She is excited and ready!

Ballerina by day, piano player by night!

So, yeah, that's what I've been up to.  Super exciting stuff.  I've also started really thinking about how my maternity leave is almost over (well, I do have 7 more months left, but that will fly by).  I have all sorts of thoughts and feelings about this, but that's a post for another time...

These two crack.me.up.