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April 21, 2010

Dancing to Billy Joel

OK, OK, so I've skipped a lot. I haven't written about Easter or Spring break, or Simon losing his first tooth or Adlai's adventures with potty training or just how darn smart and cute he is these days. I'll get to that (soon?). However, this evening the boys were dancing and I decided to record the event for your visual pleasure....

April 20, 2010

Passover

As the two of you who still check this site probably guessed, that last post was for April Fools Day. No, we don't plan on having an entire family move into the garage. Hey, we're running out of ideas over here. Bonus points for anyone who counted the "children" in the photo.

Passover was spent in San Francisco with the Feefadders.

Simon and I dyed the eggs earlier in the day (during Adlai's nap).

We later cracked the eggs on our foreheads.

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Simon asked the four questions by READING them (!) out of his book.

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Adlai felt all grown up with a glass plate and cup and preppy outfit.

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Simon volunteered to try the pickled herring and liked it!

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Grandfather lost the afikomen!

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The boys found the afikomen and exchanged it for gifts!

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All around everyone was in good spirits and had a great time.

April 01, 2010

Family

Things have been going really well for us lately. The kids have been great. My new/old job is going well. Matthew is working on making his video game idea a reality. Also, as some of you know, we had a friend living with us recently, which turned out to be really nice - fun, even! The boys enjoyed having an extra adult around and we enjoyed having someone to chat with after they went to bed. He has since moved into a rental which has left our "garage" aka "bonus room" without much use.

So we started thinking, what should we be doing with the extra space? It feels bad just to let it sit and we can always use extra money to help with the mortgage. Of course renting it out wouldn't really work since we still use part of the space for storage and laundry. We began to consider if there was a way to rent the space without charging much and while benefiting our entire family.

Enter the Barres. We met some friends who had recently worked with a relief organization after the earthquake in Haiti. While there, they met a really nice family who had lost their home and were interested in starting over in the United States. They lived in a small apartment before and don't mind that we have limited (and shared) space. He is trained as a software engineer, she is a domestic goddess and their nine kids are delightful.

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The kids

So we're going to try something new. Michelle will take care of all of the children when they are not in school leaving Matthew time for more contracting gigs. She'll make the kids meals and prepare dinner on most nights. Beaudoin will be looking for work in the area once his visa clears. Their kids will attend our local public school starting in the Fall.

We're all really excited about this new adventure!