The Harlem Globetrotters!

We surprised the kids last night with a trip to go see the Harlem Globetrotters! We got a discount on the tickets through the Cub Scout pack, so we were there with some other families we know. Anyway, it was a lot of fun! Maya was tired and cranky towards the end, though she is still talking about how funny it is. All in all, it was a success! We will be back at this venue in less than a week to go see Disney on Ice. Busy busy!

And a quick video: Right now, we SHOULD be at our town's Easter Egg Hunt, but it's snowing. sigh... The hunt itself was cancelled due to the hard, icy snow that is still covering the fields, making it unsafe for kids to be running around on. They are still putting on an Easter "event," but we'd rather just stay home. Maya is going to a birthday tea party after lunch and, aside from that, we don't have many plans this weekend! For once!!! It feels good! :)

One more quick picture from this morning... Niko was giving Maya "an art lesson" on how to draw an Easter Bunny. They were very serious about it! Love these two lefties!

More Animal News and Trip to the Radio Station!

Now that my political career is over (haha!), I can focus on the important things in life. Like, say, taking pictures of chickens. It was sunny a few days ago, and I felt like documenting our feathered friends. So here they are!

I couldn't leave Corky out, either. Oh, and her FOUR eggs. That's right, she laid another. sigh...

Then, a few nights ago, I went to go get my pajamas on after dinner. I looked out of our bedroom window and something caught my eye at the far end of the yard, right at the treeline. I thought it was a rock, but it was different! Upon closer inspection, it was a fox! We see foxes around here a lot, but I had never seen once just laying in our yard like this. So bizarre! I wonder if he will come back again? Good thing the chickens are locked up!

On Tuesday, we went with the Tiger Cubs to visit a local radio station as one of their "go see it" activities. As someone who once wanted to be a radio personality, I thought it was really interesting! The boys even got to be on the air (check it out here!).

When we got back to the house, we were greeted with a very, VERY bad smell. It was absolutely putrid and disgusting! I don't have a particularly strong gag reflex, but I almost tossed my cookies when I got close to Corky's cage. It appeared that one of her four eggs must have cracked at some point and turned rotten. So it was time for them to go! I held her on a perch in the dining room while Gus took the eggs out of her cage and trimmed away the cloth she'd been using as her next (which probably smelled terrible, too). He replaced her eggs with golf balls, which was hilarious (since golf balls are easily twice as big as her actual eggs!). Corky was not impressed. However, by the next morning, she was sitting on one or two of the golf balls at a time. So I guess she is still trying to hatch them! Poor bird. I tried to get a picture of her sitting on her golf balls, but she is not too fond of me...

Finally, in other pet news, today it's Charlie's arbitrary 10th birthday! We don't know exactly when he was born, since he was a stray, but it had to have been around now and it was definitely ten years ago! This furry little booger has actually been a pretty good pet. He drives me crazy sometimes, but he has always been really good with kids and is just sort of a lovable blockhead. Maya insisted that we get him a birthday present (some cheap catnip toys), and then I had the totally crazy idea of attempting a photo shoot. It didn't go so great, but was fun (and funny) nonetheless. Happy Birthday, kitty!!

And that's what's going on around here! Gus and I booked a vacation to celebrate our ten-year anniversary this summer, so we are looking forward to that. And the snow is melting! No complaints! :)

World's Shortest Political Career!

Like the sign? I was messing around with the sign designer on the Staples website. :-P

Anyway... It has been a crazy few days! I last posted on Wednesday... that night, I suddenly started getting text messages from a number of people here in town. They were panicking, because there are two School Committee seats open this year, and only two people running... one of whom is the universally-disliked incumbent, while the other is her hand-picked puppet. Not exactly good options, especially when a LOT of things happened in our town last year (a well-liked principal was fired, for one, due to this woman's personal vendetta against her). And the deadline to go and "pull papers" from the Town Clerk's office in order to get on the ballot was 1pm on Thursday. I guess my name started flying around as a potential candidate, and the texts started rolling in. And I thought about it... I started to like the idea. I could do it, and do a good job! So I went to the Town Clerk's office on Thursday morning and got the papers. So did two other people, both of whom are on the same page as me. By bedtime that night, I had collected well over the 33 signatures I needed to get on the ballot. It felt pretty good!

Then, yesterday, I finally heard back from the State Ethics Committee. I had called them to see if it would be a conflict of interest for me to be on the school committee while substitute teaching in the district, since that is my plan next year. Long story made very short: It could be. And there are ways to get around it, but it is very complicated and may not work, and then I would have to quit the school committee (which is a three year term, unpaid). And that's no good.

The other two people who pulled papers on Thursday and myself were planning to meet to figure out which two of us should actually run, since we are all on the same page and we don't want to split the vote... the important thing is to get the incumbent out and make sure her puppet doesn't sneak his way in. But because of the conflict of interest issue, it looks like I am out of the running. Which is honestly a huge relief, because there had already been discussions of fundraising and campaign events and all these things, and my head was spinning. So, 48 hours later, my campaign pretty much died. haha! And I am fine with it! Maybe one day, when I am done teaching, I will go for it. But for now, I will be content to help and will let the other two candidates put giant signs in my highly-visible front yard. :)

And in other news... Corky has laid a third egg. SIGH! haha!

Bird News and Niko's Spring Performance!

So I realized just now that I never mentioned something fairly significant... A few weeks ago, Cookie the rooster started crowing! He crows randomly off and on every morning. He's done it as early as 7:30 and as late as noon. And really, he isn't very loud. I took a video of him doing it a few days ago. Keep in mind that this was taken about a foot away from him, two feet at most! Inside the house, we can barely hear him. I'm sure it will be different in the summer months, when the sun rises earlier and we have our windows open. Not gonna lie... I don't look forward to being woken up by Cookie! Let's hope he behaves himself! What this also means, though, is that we are approaching the time when we will have fertilized eggs. And Gus' parents sent him an incubator for Christmas, so guess what we will be doing this spring? That's right. We will meet the next generation of our chickens. Our friend (and the kids' former preschool teacher) also has chickens and a rooster, so we will likely hatch some of her eggs as well. It is going to be a lot of fun!

But, speaking of eggs... This is just weird. Our African Grey parrot, Corky, turned 12 years old on Sunday. Niko and Maya went to go sing "Happy Hatch Day" to her, and Niko yelled, "MOM! CORKY LAID AN EGG!" Well, she had never done that before, and I honestly figured they were seeing things. So I walked over to take a look. And, what do you know??? She had laid an egg!

And the next day, she laid another!

They are obviously unfertilized, since there is no male parrot. And birds do lay unfertilized eggs (as evidenced by the chickens, who do this every day!). It's just that parrots lay them far less frequently than chickens. Obviously, it's been twelve years already! But she is very nurturing of her little eggs, and it's just amazing. We will leave them in there for a month or so, until she realizes that they aren't viable and abandons them. Then we will take them out and throw them away. But seriously... Our parrot laid eggs! Bird hormones in this house are out of control!

In completely different news... The first graders at Niko's school put on a spring performance today. The focus was on both Spring and Women's History Month. They did a great job! I recorded the entire thing, but Niko's speaking role is at just after the 4:10 mark. And a few more pics, just because... our St. Patrick's Day outfits yesterday:

And Niko looking handsome this morning. I mean... horribly un-handsome. He doesn't want to be handsome because he says all the girls in his class LOVE him and he doesn't want to encourage it. haha!!!!!

And our back yard... goodbye, sled trails! See you next winter...

The Ides of March

Alright, so it's not technically the 15th, but I needed a title and it sounded good. Plus, I likely won't blog before the actual Ides of March, so why not?

Anyway... March is off to a fantastic start! We have had a bunch of days with temperatures above freezing, which is beyond exciting. Our huge piles of snow are beginning to shrink down a bit. The biggest icicles have fallen off of the roof, and you can hear the constant dripping of melting snow and ice from the roof. And we've seen the sun! The days are getting noticeably longer and more comfortable. And I couldn't be happier about it! I am also happy that I toughed it out and kept the back deck clear, because now is the time to sit back there and bask in the warmth while there are still huge piles of snow everywhere else. All that hard work has paid off!

Now, we could still get a snowstorm or two, so we aren't totally in the clear yet. But at this point in the season, the temperatures are much higher, and any snow we get is unlikely to stick around. We made it through February! HALLELUJAH!! That is always the worst winter month here!!

We also made it through our first major winter illness. It was a virus that took us all down one by one-- first Niko, then me, then Maya, then Gus. But we are all feeling a lot better now. The kids still have slightly runny noses, and Gus and I both have lingering coughs, but it looks as though we are going to survive. Everyone is back to school and work and feeling fine. So hooray for that!

Because of the bug in our house, we had to reschedule a playdate that Maya had been really looking forward to for a while. But it finally happened today!! I brought her friend Lily home from school with us, and the two girls had so much fun. I love watching Maya play with her friends! We made pizza, did an art project, went sledding, and the girls played Barbies and board games. It was all very sweet. I took pictures. :)

I made sort of a resolution last month to have playdates for Maya more often. She has been invited over to so many little girl's houses this year, but we need to reciprocate! So I've decided that Tuesdays are good playdate days, since I am in her classroom that day and can just pick up whichever friend is coming with us. Easy peasy.

In other news... Maya is getting all of her six-year molars and is in quite a bit of pain. Poor thing! And Niko announced today that he has a speaking part in the first grade program next week. Something about Amelia Earhart. I can't wait!!!!!