New Hampshire Friends

Our friends Nancy and Andrew are here from New Hampshire, so Danny and Annelise have been able to play with their friends Isa and David.

"Girl, You're Amazing"

So Jen stumbled across this wonderful book called Girl, You're Amazing, written by Virginia Kroll and illustrated by Melisande Potter.

If you're trying to raise a strong girl--or want to raise a strong boy who isn't intimidated by strong girls!--this is really an amazing book. It's a beautifully written long poem with some fantastic pictures! These kinds of "message" books sometimes can be preachy, but this is a gem.

Here's a quote:

"Girl, you're amazing, the help that you lend!
Loaning lunch money--again--to your friend,
helping your brother with math he finds tough, seeing the puppies are fed just enough.

Girl, you're amazing, the power you've got!
Cooling a quarrel before it's red-hot,
telling the truth when you're tempted to lie,
looking the class bully right in the eye."

And lots of other surprises.

The bad news is that the book (published in 2001!) is already out-of-print. But you can get it on Amazon used and perhaps at your library.

Postcards from America

Jen recently found out about a fun online activity that we've got the kids involved in.

50 families--one from each state--sign up and agree to send a postcard from their home to everyone else in the group. The postcards are mailed out alphabetically, which means that the family from Alabama mails 49 postcards first, then Alaska, then Arizona, and so on until Wyoming finishes off.

What that means is sometime in June we'll be mailing 49 Maryland postcards to a family in each state of the Union. And when it's all done we'll have a collection of 49 postcards from across the country!

Here's a picture of the first three:

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Easter

On Easter Jennifer and I went with her parents and Danny and Annelise to a friend's house for Easter Dinner.

Here's a picture of Miss A in her spring dress looking for Easter eggs:


And here's a picture of the kids parading to the neighborhood park:




Danny is off in the distance on his scooter (just to the right of the 25 MPH sign), and you can see Annelise in the foreground on her scooter. The whole afternoon was wonderful!

Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Museum

Today we went with the kids and Jen's parents to the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Museum in (can you guess?) Baltimore. The B&O Railroad was America's first train system, running between Baltimore and the Ohio River Valley. The museum is s a gem of a place with full-size trains that kids can go in, historical exhibits, model trains, and more. Here are a couple of pics:

Above is a picture of Jen's parents and the kids talking to one of the museum volunteers.


And in the second picture the kids are in the back of a tiny horse-drawn wagon.....the kind that trains quickly replaced in the middle of the 1800!

Cupcakes

Here's a picture of the cupcakes that Jen made for Annelise's birthday. Great, aren't they? (Those are mini-marshmallows and some type of cake decoration on the top.)

Miss A turns 4!

Annelise turned 4 at the end of March, and instead of having a big party we decided this year to keep it small with just a couple of her friends over for pizza and play. Annelise had a great time!

Guest Blogging

Jen has been writing on this blog for some time now and it has been a great way to document the life of our family and her thoughts on things. She hasn't been able to do much posting, so she's kindly allowed me (the dad!) to do posts on Hazelnut Eyes.

My entries will mostly be photoblog posts with pictures of the kids and of our life here near the nation's capital. I hope you enjoy!