We've had a crazy and hectic couple of weeks around here.  I was planning on doing individual posts for each event, but well, you get a photo dump instead.  Here we go...

My birthday started with breakfast in bed.  This was a first for Sam and I think he could get used to living like this...

and we finished celebrating my birthday at Shogun.  Sam did not take his eyes off the hibachi chef for 1 second....

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Poppy's end of the year piano recital...

She played "Go Tell Aunt Rhody" and she did such a great job!  We are sooo proud of her...

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Poppy had her first ever soccer game!  She is loving soccer this year...

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Her last day as a 4 year old.  I begged her to not turn 5, but she refused.  She said we can always pretend she's still 4...

This is what I got when I asked her to smile for the camera...

Strawberry ice cream cone cupcakes to take to school for her birthday...


Her birthday lunch was a sprinkle sandwich (which she loved, of course!)...


And then we had Marc's family over for a Korean dinner followed by birthday cake...

She could not believe I put real suckers on her cake.  She barely took a bite of her cake, went straight for the suckers and then told everyone all night "They're real suckers, ya know.  Really, they're real.  You can eat them!"

Sammy enjoyed his sucker too...

and Poppy even played a few songs for everyone at her party...

One of the favorite gifts- the book that goes along with the Arietty movie (which was sooo good, btw)...

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In addition to non-stop partying lately, Marc has been building a treehouse/playset in our backyard.  Everyone is sooo excited about this...

Both Poppy and Sam are quite the helpers...

 

It's going to be so cute when it's done - I can't wait!

Speaking of being so cute, I could just watch these two play together all day.  Today they were pretending Sam was the doctor and Poppy was the doll's mommy...

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 Happy mother's day!  Hope everyone had a wonderful day.  Mine was filled with family time and relaxing...

Stay tuned - Poppy's big birthday party post coming up next...

Poppy's piano recital

Tonight was the spring recital at Poppy's music school.  There were about 15 students performing and Poppy was the first one.  She has been practicing her song, Lightly Row, all day lately and we were so proud of her when she performed it perfectly up on stage...

You could tell that this time around she was not nervous at all about going up on stage and performing in front of a crowd.  I still can't believe how quickly she is learning to play the piano and the fact that she still loves it so much.  We are sooo proud of her!

Poppy's first concert performance

*Proud mama alert*

Today was Poppy's much anticipated concert debut.  As I type this, I am still in shock that she did it!  Her teacher asked her if she would like to perform on stage sometime before Christmas and her answer was, "No, I will let you know when I am ready."  And then after Christmas her teacher asked her again and when I mentioned that we would go out for ice cream afterwards, she quickly changed her answer to, "Yes!  When can I do it?!"

Here is the video, followed by a play-by-play in pictures...  (The concert was at her music school - Buffalo Suzuki Strings.)  (and check out Sam trying to get on stage just as Poppy was going on and then you can hear him applauding at the end)

Waiting for her turn to perform...

Introducing herself...

 She did such a great job!

Taking her bow...

And the sweet treat afterwards...

We are seriously so incredibly proud of her.  She has gone through such a transformation over the past few months - growing up both physically and mentally.  And I am so excited that we stumbled upon Suzuki Strings.  It was just this past summer that Marc and I both thought Poppy might like piano lessons and when I checked around for a place that would teach her at 4 years old, Suzuki Strings was the only place that I could find.  It has been a huge time commitment, but seeing how confident Poppy was up on that stage makes everything worth it.  I am a seriously proud mama today. :)

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.

Poppy's piano debut

Poppy is still doing awesome with her piano lessons.  Just a few weeks ago she went from learning little songs on just one hand, to her first real song using both hands.  The first week trying to learn this song was rough.  But one day something just clicked and she figured out how to do it.  She absolutely amazes me.  Especially because I have been practicing this song just as long as she has, and I can't even come close to playing it.  

My favorite part is that she absolutely loves playing!  She loves practicing!  Almost every single time she walks by the piano, she stops to play a quick song.  And Sam is not far behind her with his love of the piano either, I'll have to post one of his videos soon...

piano update

Poppy has been taking piano lessons for about 3 weeks now.  She is blowing me away with how fast she is picking this up.  I mean, blowing me away.  And she absolutely loves it.  We are taking lessons at Buffalo Suzuki Strings and the suzuki method is very unique.  The first part of the process is that Poppy has a cd of all the songs she will be learning and they encourage her to listen to the cd daily.  So I put it on her ipod and we have a copy in the car and surprisingly, she asks to listen to it all day long.  And it's so peaceful that it calms Sam down if he starts crying in the car.  I can't even remember the last time we had to listen to her princess songs - she really prefers to listen to the piano music.  And then  as soon she realized the songs on the cd were the same songs she was learning to play, it made her want to practice even more.   She has already learned how to play 4 variations of twinkle, twinkle and her first real song, Honey Bee.

Between her daily practices (which she unbelievably has yet to protest about) and weekly lessons and music classes, this is all very time consuming.  But seeing the results so quickly and to see how passionate she is about it makes it all worth it.  

And as promised, here are all the rats we have in our house.  A rather unusual amount of rats, wouldn't you say?