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We ended up having preschool at our house last-minute this week because of sick friends, and had a great time celebrating Dr. Seuss's birthday!  We took a mini-field trip to storytime, and had friends for lunch with feet sandwiches, pink ink drink, and cat cupcakes that I made with Emma the day before.  Not super fancy but Carter has talked about the pink ink for days.  His little preschool group is so fun.  (Also, you can't see it in the picture but Carter was holding Danny's hand since he was a little nervous to be so close to Thing 1, who is kind of naughty in the book.  :) 

The boys were much more interested in flying airplanes than doing the craft, but Emma was excited about it when she came home from school.  

I love Dr. Seuss.  I love reading to my kids – it is one of my favorite things to do together – and his books are some of our favorites!  When I asked the kids that afternoon, these were their favorites:

Carter:  10 Apples Up on Top

Emma:  The Foot Book

Zach:  The Cat in the Hat 

Me:  hard to choose.  But I love the page in One Fish, Two Fish… where it says, "Look what we found in the park in the dark.  We will take him home.  We will call him Clark.  He will live at our house.  He will grow and grow.  Will our mother like this?  We don't know."  It always makes me smile.  Thanks, Dr. Seuss.

There are 2 zoos in the Cities – one that is free, and one that is decidedly not.  We have been to the free one lots of times, and the non-free one once (with free passes.  ha.)  Some generous donors paid for all the 3rd graders in Rochester to go to the expensive zoo, have lunch there, and ride the monorail.  Zach was SO excited.  As luck would have it the Cities had quite a bit of snow that day, but off they went anyways, and he LOVED it.  He was one of the only kids to take a camera (a small spare one that we set to a low setting so he could take more than 8 pictures on the tiny memory card) and he came home with 65 of them.  Here are a few for memory's sake:

jumping wolf (his favorite picture)

the buffalo 

coral reef

the komodo dragon (don't see those every day!)

When he got home he couldn't stop smiling telling me about it, and I couldn't stop smiling listening to him.  Good way to spend the extra day we get this year!  

Infinitely better than science fair 2011.  Why?

The game LIFE on the ipad

We didn't show up an hour early to set up (screeched in at the last minute, which worked out just fine)

Extra snacks for the littles during the snack break made them super excited

Zach had lots of fun showing off his electromagnet that he built for his project

We were upstairs this time (with a beautiful view)

Nate went and got the car 10 minutes early and picked us up out front so we didn't have to wait in the elevator bottleneck for half an hour.  

And oh yeah, I wasn't extremely pregnant with huge swollen legs.  Instead I was holding a darling baby, who slept half the time.  

Yes, INFINITELY better.  :) 

Carter made me suit him up in all his snow gear to go out and play in the "snow".  At least it was something!  This has been a crazy winter!

and they have flown by.  She climbed up three stairs today – time for the gate at the bottom!  

The cake theme for the blue and gold banquet this year was "Night at the Movies" – and Zach and Nate had a great time decorating their cake.  As you can tell, everyone else had a pretty good time too (this may have had a lot to do with the leftover frosting…)

Zach's cake award, by the way, was "The most inter-galactic cake of all time".  He was pretty proud.  :)

Meg gets super excited about 2 things:  baths, and going outside.  Since she is so crazy in the tub, it is easier to take pictures of outside.  So here you go.

(trying to crawl out the open back door into the freezing afternoon)

Luckily, it was a grown-up's birthday.  But the truth of it is, being sick, having to work, being sick enough to come home from work, taking a nap, and getting woken up to have to go back to work until 10pm isn't that great for a grown-up's birthday either.  
The kids helped him open presents as he headed to the OR, he ate his birthday dinner at 10, and we all had cake together the next night.  He's been looking forward to this birthday for a long time (it marks the age at the end of the training road) and I guess it had to be memorable!

 
plus heart cinnamon rolls and family fondue night.  I LOVE this holiday! 

(I woke up to Emma headed outside to shovel the deck for my valentine.  So sweet! – although I had her promise to wake me up first next time.)

We went downtown to get Zach's glasses adjusted after a full-contact basketball game at school on Friday left them a bit (or a lot) crooked – and had no idea it was the ice sculpture day of Winterfest.  The funny thing is that for most of winterfest the ice would have been melting, but this day (and this day alone that week!) it was bitterly cold.  Of course it was packed downtown, and we got to park on the roof of a parking garage, and walk all the way across it since the elevator was broken in the building nearest to our parking spot, and had forgotten (with our mild winter!) that in Minnesota you need hats and gloves and scarves.  So, our tour of the ice sculptures was quick – but our errand to get the glasses adjusted was much more exciting than we had planned.