You Gotta Love Preschool Parties

I attended my first preschool Easter party of the week with C.B. today (I get to go to Big D's on Thursday). I knew I needed to be there with him as soon as I found out that the Easter Bunny would be making an appearance. C.B. is afraid of anything the size of a grownup that is not quite human. For example, adults dressed in costumes and life-size electronic dancing & singing Santa Clauses scare the bejeebus out of him. The party began as expected - with a harmless Easter egg hunt:

After each child had found an egg the teacher said, "Let's see if we can find a bunny. Bunnies are cute and soft!" So C.B. and the other children began a search for this soft, cute bunny. When the bunny was finally found, the eager and determined look on C.B.'s little face turned into THIS:

Happy Easter!

Brotherly Love

It seems C.B. has discovered that he has the power to make Banana smile. And, as the youngest boy who is not the baby anymore, he seems to enjoy having any kind of power at all. He used his newfound power for about ten straight minutes this afternoon while Banana was in her Exer-saucer. C.B. had her giggling and wiggling, which made him smile too!

Father-Daughter Fun

Friday night we had a Luau themed Father-Daughter Dance for the Girl Scouts at Miss M's school. There were a hundred girls and their dads in the tropically (is that a word?) decorated gym that night. The music was loud, but those girls were even louder. The dance floor area was filled with girls in pretty dresses jumping up and down and screaming when their favorite songs were played. They also enjoyed doing the limbo and slow dancing with their "dates". It was great to see them all dressed up and just having a good time together. The dads were not quite as enthusiastic at the dance as the girls were, but I'm sure they got a kick out of watching their daughters have such fun. And what daddy wouldn't love having a special night out with his little girl? I know Dad appreciated the chance to spend some time with just Miss M. You should have seen the two of them tearing up the dance floor doing the Y-M-C-A!

Reading is Fundamental

We have tried to instill a love of reading and a respect for books in our children. That's why we were so proud to see little five-month-old Banana reading a book to herself today.

However, it didn't take long for her to forget the "respect for books" part, as reading a book became EATING a book. Oh well...she's still young and has a lot of time to learn!

Now We're Cooking!

Miss M and I made dinner together this afternoon. She usually helps cook and often takes over completely, as she enjoys it more than I do. The boys, who are much less willing to help, decided that they would at least like to look like they were helping. Big D went and found the chef's hat he got from school and while he was in the dress-up box he found C.B. a cowboy hat. Then they sat at the counter to play cards while Miss M and I finished up.

Camping

Over the weekend we went camping at Washington State Park. It was our first outing with the camper for the year, and the first time we pulled it with BIG BLUE (our new family vehicle.) Dad said it didn't feel like we were even towing anything. He kept looking in the rearview mirror to see if the camper was really there. We had such nice weather it was ridiculous. In fact, the kids even went for a dip in the river (or the "ocean" as Big D called it.)

We also took hikes, played baseball and rode bikes to the playground. Another neat thing that happened is that we figured out our last name can be spelled using pretzels. We ate a lot of pretzels figuring this out!

Reddy Zoo Homemade Cakes & Candies

Yep...I make cakes. Birthday cakes, baby shower cakes, even cakes like Dark Chocolate Amaretto, Gourmet Carrot Cake, and Samoa Cookie Cake (a Reddy Zoo original.) So far I have really only made them for family and friends, but people are always telling me I should sell them. Since I don't make a whole lot of money as a stay-at-home mom, I'm starting to think seriously about it. I thought this blog might be a good place to test the value of this idea. Here is a sample of the cakes I have made:


Scooby Doo for Big D's #5


C.B.'s choice was Batman


These cupcakes would be darling at a baby shower!


This one actually was a baby shower cake


Elmo is perfect for a little one's birthday


This scrapbook cake was the certerpiece at a Christening


Spiderman is always a hit with the boys


This quilt cake was made for a special aunt










A chocolate basket of strawberries - suh-weeet!

Click here and here for more cake pictures.

If you are interested in a homemade cake, petit fours, or candy for an event or as a gift, leave a comment below with your e-mail address to request more information. I promise your personal information will NOT be posted on this blog. Thanks!

The Reddy Zoo

The Reddy Zoo was established in 1995 when we got married. At that time, the Zoo consisted of the two humans (us), one cat (Lou) and one dog (Kenobi). And we were living in an apartment. Not much of a zoo...YET!

Soon after the wedding, the Zoo moved to a new location, but not before adding another resident, Dave the dog.

Once in it's larger location, the Zoo quickly began to expand. Scully came along during our first summer there.

By Christmas of 1996 our house was already quite a zoo, with three dogs and a cat.

Our next resident, however, had only two legs and considerably less hair.

Miss M changed everything. Before Miss M came along, the animals were like our kids. Once we had a real kid, however, they knew they had fallen down a notch on the totem pole. Fortunately, they all still loved her.

Continued below

The Reddy Zoo - Part II

Unfortunately we had to find a new home for Dave the dog when we discovered we couldn't keep him in the backyard. We nicknamed him "Houdini" because each time we'd try a new way to keep him in, he'd still get out. He was hit by a car once (thankfully unhurt) and he REALLY irritated the next door neighbor (a story we won't tell here.) Needless to say we were worried about his safety. Even though we were very sad, but we just couldn't keep him anymore.

Since we were missing our dog, and since Lou was not the friendliest cat, we decided to get a kitten. We thought that if a kitten grew up with a toddler (and survived being picked up and poked and prodded) she would probably turn out to be a very sweet cat. We went to the pound and picked out an adorable little calico kitten. We named her TK-421 after the only stormtrooper mentioned by name in the movie Star Wars. We usually just call her TK, unless she's in trouble. And by the way...she DID turn out to be a very sweet cat!

It wasn't too long before our niece's guinea pigs had babies. They were so cute, and we were told they were pretty easy pets. Being the crazy people that we are, we said, "We'll take two!" We were lucky we got two males, otherwise we could have had many more.

Rascal and Baby Squeak took up residence in Miss M's room. She was very good about feeding them and petting them...at least at first. Cleaning their cage was, of course, the responsibility of the Zookeeper. Yeah!

As if two cats, two dogs and two guinea pigs weren't enough, the Zookeeper decided to add a frog to it's resident list. Pooch, a White's Tree Frog, made for an interesting pet. Nocturnal by nature and fond of being alone, we didn't see much of Pooch unless we threw some crickets in his cage. But he was a cute little guy and very low maintenance.

Continued below

The Reddy Zoo - Part III

We finally figured out that we were adding more pets to the Zoo because we hadn't been able to add more children to our family. Miss M was almost four when we decided to apply to adopt a baby. She had been asking for a brother or sister for quite some time, and we had been praying for a baby. We finished the application process in June of 2001 and we received a call about a baby boy in October. After three and a half months of anxious excitement, Big D came home on Valentine's Day 2002.

But we didn't stop there. We just knew that we were meant to have more children. As soon as Big D's adoption was finalized, we put in the application for another baby - thinking it could take a while. We thought wrong. We actually got a call about C.B. the week after we sent in the application...also the same day we sold our house and bought a new one. C.B. was only two months old when we brought him home. We moved into our new house the next day. What a weekend!!!

Were we done now??? Not yet! We needed another girl to round out our gang, of course. So as soon as C.B.'s adoption was finalized, we put in another application. But this time it was different. This time we asked specifically for a girl. And this time we had to wait. More than a week. More than a few months. More like two years! But Banana was worth any amount of waiting.

A lot changed over those two years of waiting. Our frog and our guinea pigs (all of whom we got at around the same time) seemed to have roughly the same life expectancy. They all died within a few months of one another. Not only that, but our beloved dog, Kenobi, reached the end of her years at around the same time. That was the toughest loss of all. We will never have another dog like Kenobi. Sigh.

The humans finally outnumber the pets at our house, but it is still quite a Zoo here. Things certainly have changed quickly though. Ten years ago we had three dogs and a cat around our Christmas tree. We have two handsome little boys and two beautiful girls around our tree this year.

Updated December 2006