Bless his little tired heart!
It was at this point I decided to put him in his room! What if he fell of his chair? 
He has been coughing a lot at night, so I suspect his sleep at night hasn't been very good. Poor kid...guess we should figure out what to do about the allergies!
Gwen has blossomed, as her teachers at school tell me. She is quite the sweet little girl. She is becoming more independent and often makes lovely conversation, for her age. She is coming along in the writing department. I think she has a long way to go, but as a right hander I keep out of it, so I don't confuse her poor left handedness. She is in a lovely phase where she will ask me to spell things out for her and she will right them down. She knows some "sight" words, I was rather shocked to see that, but very proud of her. While she was on spring break I brought her to Bible Study and she had all those little boys playing games and being quiet and mostly out of trouble. She has no problem being in charge. But, I think she sometimes just watches a lot especially if someone else is in charge and she doesn't want to do what they are doing. She seems to not always stand up for herself, if no one has taken the lead she will, but won't always defend herself, so we will have to work on that a little. I don't want her beating up on people, but I'd like her to learn not everyone will do what she wants to do all the time so she's not such a sore loser. I am sure that will come in time! 
Gwen and Nate are definitely in a lovely phase of getting along, it certainly makes my life easier that they genuinely like each other and want to hang out together. I have noticed that now that Nate has gotten older the playing is getting a little rougher, plus Nate's I don't care attitude about bugs/insects is really having a good influence on Gwen the "AHHHHHHHH A BUG" screaming phase is tapering. She doesn't always love the insects but she often says "oh what a cute caterpillar...." I am afraid we might have bugs coming into the house, because my children bring them into the house! I am not looking forward to that at all.
Nate is something else; a real charmer! He has all the ladies fooled. He is mostly potty trained, unless he is particularly tired, (apparently like today). He only seems to have accidents at home though, so I am pretty happy about that. Well not really happy about it, until I just typed it out just now and have to say, if he's going to have an accident anywhere I'd rather it be at home then when we are out somewhere. He is a talker and he loves music, if he could sing and listen to music all day, he would. He is a little crazed sometimes, but he seems to be pretty smart and sometimes follows directions the first time you tell him...that is of course if he isn't tired, hungry, or has to pee! He is sweet and affectionate. He gives anyone he knows hugs and kisses. 
In other news, my kids are obsessed with pets. They pretend to be dogs and lap water out of bowls/cups, whatever. They walk each other on leashes. It is quite cute. I guess one day we'll have to get them a pet. Probably won't be for a few years yet. 
Sadly we forgot to bring their baskets so we got some boxes from Eric's work.
Here is a picture of the kids with the "Easter Bunny"
The kids got up Easter morning and did their home egg hunt, but sadly because of Gwen's attire we won't be posting any pictures of her...but enjoy the pictures of Nate!
Holy man, it was hard to get them to find their baskets, they just didn't get it. I kept trying to get them to find them, but they were more interested in the eggs. Finally they found them. Here is Nate working on his puzzle.
We had a nice Easter dinner, Gwen helped me ice with the cake. I didn't get to that to mid-day on Sunday. But it didn't matter, it was yummy and it was done in time for desert! 
Hopefully I will get to the last Easter post sometime soon!
Nate enjoyed playing with the beads.
Here she is hard at work.
I think Nate took this picture!
Here she is proudly showing her Rosary. 
Some of the beads weren't the easiest for her to get on, so I had to help her, the Rosary is kind of gaudy, but she's 4 and she likes it and is proud of it.
Some of the teens decided to play duck, duck, goose with the kids, while the eggs were being hidden. Gwen didn't want to and Nate was super excited to play. He totally didn't understand and ran every time someone said "goose". He as usual brought smiles and laughs to everyone there!
Nate getting some eggs, he is pretty good at it now!
The kids seem to be having a good Easter, we will be eating early afternoon and they are SO excited to eat more candy and they seem pretty happy with their puzzles and new game. Happy Easter everyone.
He took them all out and put them on his head, and told us he was Mater! This weekend we helped with the Used book sale at school, this is Eric's type of activity. I signed him up to clean up and we went a little early and he bought a lot of books and talked about it all weekend. While we were there we looked at Gwen's classroom, I don't know if you can read her praying hands...
it says "I pray for Lana's dog Chewy and my family and my Uncle Eric". What is funny is we do special intentions everyday and we pray for our friends and their dog who has been deceased over a year, they've never met the dog, but we pray for him, everyday! 
I think I have previously mentioned my free tulips and I think it is kind of funny that I planted all these tulips and I got all the pink on one side and all the yellow on the other. But these last to pop up are so pretty I made the kids pose in front of them. I think you can see we chopped off Gwen's hair! She wanted it to be short like her friend's I am pretty excited about it, she looks cute and so much easier to maintain!
Here they are listening to facts about great NC sports figures.
Here is Nate riding in the canoe, who knew he was allowed to climb in there! Gwen was too chicken to do it, but a museum employee said you want to get in, Nate said sure!
We went to a guided tour of the State Capital. Eric didn't think it was that impressive. But we did get to sit in the seats.
Apparently the Capital building burned down, but one of the things they managed to save was this picture of George Washington, I think it is one of 3 paintings of him. She said it was very heavy! 
This was a the other side, I don't remember which side was which! We got to go upstairs and see from top...we thought it was interesting because 2 newspaper reporters sat right up front.
I took a picture of where people could come and sit and watch. It looks fairly uncomfortable.
We also thought this was interesting, apparently they wanted a sculpture of George Washington, they asked Thomas Jefferson who he suggested. He suggested a guy from France who had never met George Washington, and the portrait that was sent never made it, he found a bust of George Washington and was inspired to make him look like Mars, the god of war. 
Apparently the men tried to get this out, but it was too large to fit through the door. Fortunately, they were able to re-create this gem for our Capital!
I thought why let that go to waste, so I picked it out of the trash. (It was on the top) I thought even if it didn't work for Nate we could give it to one of my friends' kids. Nate loves the thing and uses it all the time. He uses the pedals unlike the other bike we have, so I guess we will keep it. He won't even let Gwen use it.New trike from Melanie Ubil on Vimeo.
To be sure, I am not the only one potty training this time, Gwen seems to be doing a lot of the work for me. We have been very busy, I don't think Nate and I spend that much time at home anymore, which makes the potty training difficult. Nate totally gets it, which makes this time easier. Last week he just said I've got to go potty, Gwen took him to the potty and took care of it, awesome! She also fielded the pottying today during nap time. Which was great because I could only tolerate so much of sitting on the potty after the terrible ride home! 
I think they are very pretty, the best free thing I have secured...
So then we took some pictures of his "work".
Then I decided maybe we should enjoy some outside time. Nate was in agreement so we went for a walk. Nate went for a little run down the hill and in the field. He had a good time. Here you can see more of the "damage".
I decided to do something fun for St. Patty's Day. I am not a huge fan of beef...and the other day we were at a grocery store that was giving samples of corned beef, neither of the kids liked it, I thought why make a meal they won't eat anyway. So I decided to make an all green meal. I was even going to make green cupcakes, but changed my mind...maybe some other time. So today I made green noodles, cabbage and green smoothies. The green smoothies were a hit, although Eric was doubtful. Seriously could not taste the spinach, just tasted like a banana smoothie and I got some spinach in Gwen...score! Man who knew you could sneak veggies into smoothies and you can't even tell! 
The kids were distracted by the ability to sit outside and eat for the first time this season.
And, Nate asked to go to bed at 6:30! You can tell that I might have had him outside too much today. He even took a nap. I guess drawing all over yourself with permanent marker will tire a boy out...(and no I didn't wash it off him, I mean if you go through that much effort, you might as well wear it all day with pride)
Charlie brown dancing from Melanie Ubil on Vimeo.
Superstition from Melanie Ubil on Vimeo.
