Will March Madness ever end?

It's April 1st and there's still so much excitement from March oozing into this month. Unfortunately, my version of March Madness does not include filling out brackets or watching basketball games. It consists of dealing with back-to-back illnesses. Here are our team's stats*:


3 sick kids
2 sick adults
7 colds
24 hours of stomach flu
3 doctor visits
2 hospital visits
15+ breathing treatments (we own a nebulizer now)
6+ loads of throw-up and bugger filled laundry just from this week
6 extremely interrupted hours of sleep a night for the past 3 weeks
2 boxes of used tissues
9 movies we've watched just since Saturday (I have no idea what our grand total for the month is, but it's high)
6 sprinkle doughnuts that I got at the store yesterday to help us make it through the day

How do we compare to your team? I don't know if all of that will get us a good seed, but I feel we're at least a pretty strong contender for the N.C.A.A. Championship**.


An exclusive photo of the team during a warm-up drill. The coach thought eating sprinkle doughnuts would be a great way to prepare the team for the next round of germ fighting. Unfortunately, it didn't help. They hardly ate them at all. That's when you know there's something wrong. Also, Noah wasn't allowed to participate in the warm-ups because he's a baby. But he sure did try to butter up the coach by smiling and looking cute.

*Actual stats may vary. Exact records were unattainable due to severe fatigue on the part of the record keeper.

**Never-ending Child Ailment Association

We cage the animals at night

A must-try recipe

Ingredients:

Water

Rice

Dried Beans

Elbow Macaroni

Plain Cheerios

Directions:

Pour all ingredients in a plastic cup and place in freezer for a few hours. Once solid, remove cup from freezer. Run hot water on the outside of the cup and take out the ice creation. Enjoy!!

Aside from a 5 year-old even more fascinated with freezing stuff, this is what you end up with--

Anyone want to help me do the dishes?

The outtakes

This is what you get when you try to take a nice picture of three little children who are all excited about a holiday and who are rushing so that one of them won't be late for preschool (clearly, Noah's the best behaved of the bunch):

Oh and we're Irish too..

That's why we're celebrating St. Patrick's Day!!! I love celebrating small holidays like this one because it adds a bit more excitement to life. Yesterday, while making cookies, I filled my kids' heads with all kinds of stuff about leprechauns. Apparently, I didn't do enough filling because the whole evening, Eli kept asking me questions about them. By the time he was in bed, I had a headache from trying to answer all of his questions. He wanted to know EVERYTHING!!! For example: Are leprechauns really real? How do leprechauns get around? Do they come out at night or during the day? If I see one can I scare it? What happens when a leprechaun is sad? You get the idea. Seeing the curiosity and twinkle in his eyes made the annoying questions worth it though.

So, we made cookies last night to leave out for the leprechauns to entice them to come in to our house and maybe leave a pot of gold or two. Surprise, surprise, they came, ate their cookies, left some gold and vanished.

Do you like the "rainbow" where they left their gold? I like doing arts and crafts too. I don't think the kids should get to have all the fun.

Eli found the stuff this morning. They all got a kick out of their sparkly cups and gold coins. Noah's leprechaun left him some baby food. Eli especially liked the rainbow. He's too smart to trick though. He knew it was not a real rainbow right away because there was no red. (Sorry Eli, we only had pink.) He's going to do some experiments on the rainbow after preschool today to find out how the leprechauns made it. I'm anticipating a big mess to come. Maybe those leprechauns will come back to clean it up!

HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY!!

My kids are POLISH!!

Well, I actually knew that already. I'm Polish, so of course they would be. They just reminded me of that fact last night at dinner. They tried kielbasi and pierogies for the first time and loved them!!! Aside from their stunning good looks and superior intellect, they have now made it clear that they have good taste in food too--all Polish characteristics. My Papa (he's the one we get all our Polishness from) would be so proud!

There are three kinds of people in this world

1. Those who don't wear socks to bed.

2. Those who do wear socks to bed.

3. And those who go to bed wearing knee-high John Deere socks pulled all the way up with their pajama pants tucked into them.

Which kind of person are you?

Why I need to invest in a helium tank

I need suggestions

The kids and I need something new to listen to in the car while we drive around. We do a lot of driving and I'm sick of the "silly" songs Cd's we have. I didn't really like them to begin with. Now, I pretty much hate them. The only reasons why I keep listening to them are A) that's all we've got and B) the kids sing to them, which is really cute. We could just listen to the music I like, but I don't think Dave Matthew's Band sings about child-appropriate topics and The Used is a bit too edgy. We do listen to the Phantom of the Opera sound track. The kids call it "scary music", but that's getting old too.

So, what do you listen to? By the way, the radio's out because mine hasn't worked in about 6 years. Please comment; I need help!!!!!!