Greenville Zoo

Mom, Nora, and I spent a morning at the Greenville Zoo. We had fun looking at the animals. Drew recognizes many animals now, so it was exciting to see him name the animals and even do a few of their sounds.
Drew and Nora by the elephants

Drew and Mom by the giraffes

Drew and me

After our morning at the zoo, we met my friend Shannon for lunch at my favorite - Corona! It was a nice day!

Baby Goats

While we were with my family, we spent a morning in North Carolina at Carl Sandburg's home. The highlight of the trip was getting to see the baby goats. There was a two week-old goat named Bella and two day-old twins who hadn't been named yet. The twins were so adorable in their little dog sweaters. Drew loved petting the goats!

Trying to pet Bella

My dad helping Drew pet Bella

Petting an adult goat

My mom helping Drew pet the baby goat

The little twins

Mom and Drew looking at the chickens

Drew had such a fun time with the goats, and we enjoyed watching him with them.

Easter Egg Hunt

I apologize for my blogging absence lately. The past few weeks have been busy with traveling, getting back into the routine here at home and at school, and a massive basement clean-out.
Drew and I went to Greenville for Easter and the week following while I was on Spring Break from school. We had a very nice time seeing family and friends there. Drew got to do his first Easter Egg Hunt while we were there. We filled plastic eggs with his favorite - M&Ms (which he calls "M-ez") and scattered them throughout my parents' front yard. I was sure he would run all over and grab them up. I was wrong. He did not want to go in the grass or into the flower beds, so we had to move all the eggs onto the sidewalk. Once the eggs were on the sidewalk, Drew was finally ready to gather them, but he didn't do it very energetically.

My mom tried to help him put the eggs into the basket.

He realized that there were M&Ms in the eggs, and from then on, all he wanted to do was eat candy.

I will try to blog several times this week and include more pictures from our time in Greenville.

Snow

It is snowing here again. It hardly seems like April with snow falling and the need for winter coats. I am very ready for some spring-like weather!
I got the Slice die cutting machine in December, and it came with a card to send away for a free design card called "Seasons." I had seen what was on it, and I knew it had some snowflakes. I started this layout about a month ago and got it almost finished, but I was waiting for the new design card to come so I could add some snowflakes to finish off the page. My new card came yesterday, so on our snowy April evening last night, I finished up the page. This page is based on a sketch from http://pagemaps.com I finished this page while Jim and I watched the NCAA finals. UNC won, so I ended up doing pretty well in my brackets. Jim put my brackets on ESPN.com, and of all the millions of people who did their brackets there, I ended up ranking 39,210. I was pretty proud of myself!

Layered Strawberry Cheesecake Bowl

This recipe is originally from a Kraft Magazine. I found it posted on a friend's Facebook page and made it this weekend. It was very good and very easy.

3 cups sliced fresh strawberries

3 Tbsp sugar

2 pkg. (8 oz) Cream cheese - Softened

1 1/2 cups cold milk

1 pkg (3/4 oz) Vanilla Instant pudding

2 cups thawed Cool Whip, divided

2 cups frozen pound cake cubes (1 inch cubes) - I baked my pound cake myself.

1 square Baker's Semi Sweet Chocolate (I just used some semi-sweet chocolate chips.)

Combine berries and sugar. Refrigerate until ready to use. Beat Cream cheese with mixer until creamy. Gradually beat in milk. Add Pudding mix - mix very well. Blend in 1 1/2 cups Cool Whip. (I accidentally put all the Cool Whip in, and it was totally fine.) Spoon half of mixture into a 2 1/2 qt bowl. Top with cake cubes, berries and remaining cream cheese mixture. Refrigerate 4 hours. Melt chocolate and drizzle over the top of the dessert. Top with remaining 1/2 cup of Cool Whip.

I also melted additional chocolate and dipped a few strawberries to use as a garnish for the dessert.

I divided this into two parts and sent half to the Scallys with dinner on Friday night, and I saved the other half for us. We really liked it, and I will definitely make this again.

I used my mom's recipe for the pound cake. Here it is:

1 box Duncan Hines Butter Recipe cake mix

4 eggs

1 cup sour cream

1/3 cup oil

1/4 cup water

1/4 cup sugar

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Grease and flour a tube pan. Combine cake mix, eggs, sour cream, oil, water, and sugar in a mixing bowl. Beat at medium speed for two minutes. Pour batter into pan. Bake 45 - 55 minutes or until cake tests done. Cool 25 minutes in pan. Remove from pan and cool completely.

ABC Album

This is the ABC album I made as a baby gift for the Scallys. Each page has room for a horizontal 4x6 photo (or two 4x3 photos) and a tag for journaling or another small photo. I have included all but the B/C pages. The picture I took of those pages came out as a vertical shot, and as much as I tried, I could not get it to rotate to a horizontal one.

Jim thinks I should make these books and sell them on Etsy or Ebay. I might try that after school gets out.

Jim is at the Final Four games this evening! He was able to get two free tickets from a guy who golfs at Rackham, so he and Kevin Johns are there tonight. They were so excited! I filled out brackets this year, and I had picked three of the Final Four teams correctly. I picked Michigan State and UNC as my final two, with UNC winning it all. I am excited to see if my final two and my winner are correct!

Little Artist

I bought Drew some fingerpaints last weekend, but I hadn't had the courage to get them out and let Drew try them yet. Last night, it was just Drew and me at home (Jim had to close at work), and Drew needed a bath, so I decided to let him try out the paints before his bath. We got out his IKEA easel from Mom and Dad at Christmas, stripped Drew down to his diaper, and let him paint. He LOVED it! He was fascinated by the paint on his hands.

He just laughed and laughed the whole time.

His painting method involved smacking his hands onto the easel as hard as he could and then laughing hysterically.

He eventually decided to try out the foam brush too.

Drew ended up with paint all over his belly, arms, ears, hair and even on his nose.

One brush just wasn't enough!

Painting was messy, but so much fun!