Tunnel Vision

Go Red-guins! or Pen-wings!

The Penguins and Red Wings go at it for the second straight year in the Stanley Cup finals tonight (Game 1, 8:00pm ET). This has become quite the war for bragging rights between husband and wife around here! Be sure and vote on the right for how Katie should break the tie for the family...

Renoir Girl

Took this picture of Katie at a public garden while awaiting the Escape's 50,000 mile servicing this morning (in advance of our summer vacations)...

More Fun in the Sun (and Mud)

Katie and Traci met up with buddies Cristina, Allison (2.5 years) and Jacqueline (4 months) at yet another local nature center. The Hidden Pond Nature Center was a pretty cool stop because it had a fantastic playground, a huge pond, a building with hands-on displays, and tons of trails. The kids had so much fun, and the moms actually got a chance to hang out and talk. Despite all of the wonderful flora and fauna surrounding us, the biggest hit of the day with the kids was definitely the MUD PUDDLES! While Allison stayed relatively clean, Katie got filthy, filthy, filthy - but loved every minute of it. We finally had to call it a day when we found one too many ticks crawling around on our legs. YUCK! Please check out the photo album to the right!

What Should We Get, Dear?

Awww... young love or best friends? You decide. Katie and Patrick (almost 3-years-old) went strolling on their own at the neighborhood farmers' market this morning. (Don't worry, the moms and little sis Colleen were not too far behind.) They were holding hands, nonchalantly looking at all of the pickings. Ultimately, they decided on some rhubarb cake and strawberries. After filling up on those treats, they had some more fun chasing each other up and down a nearby field. Ain't love grand?

Immaculate, if but for the Moment

Mike and Traci decided to go a slightly different route this year in terms of their Mother's/Father's Day gifts. There will be no flowers, candy, jewelry, ties, or any such nonsense. Nope, we went for the ultimate joint gift: a one-time professional spring clean of our entire home. We finally cashed in today. And it was worth EVERY penny!!

Katie and Traci stepped out to run a few errands this morning, and when we returned, every square inch of our place was cleaned, dusted, polished, you name it! Even the refrigerator was thoroughly scrubbed! Do you know how heavenly that is for a pregnant woman who can barely bend over anymore? In the above picture, I found Katie in her bathtub admiring how shiny and clean her bathroom fixtures were. (Don't mind the toys she already started chucking everywhere - we said CLEAN, not tidy!!) After we went around everywhere oohing and aahing at the cleanliness, the extremely OCD mother/daughter duo unfortunately had to put things back into place after the cleaners had rearranged to clean. Yep, we both noticed everything!

But, boy, after you get to experience this once, you sure get jealous of the people who have the money to do it all the time. Traci is already yelling at Mike and Katie to keep everything as spotless as we can for as long as possible... Yeah, that'll last...

Window to the World

For the last 18 months, Katie's bedtime routine has included a visit to her front window to get one last glimpse of the world before going to "sleepy sleep." Now that she knows more words and is generally more interested in everything, it is getting harder to pull her away to her crib. Tonight, I tried to capture a brief version of the experience in the above video clip. It's been too long since we posted a video