Let’s see…what we have been doing the last couple of months?

Nolan had his hip-hop recital in June, which went very well. He has learned lots of new tricks and has been working on perfecting his tripod into a handstand move—probably not an ounce of fat on this kiddo!

The dance always ends with a little freestyle (he is doing the coffee grinder here)…

and a group picture! (This was the dress rehearsal—not the actual show, which sort of explains why 4 kids are not in performance clothes!)

We also took a big family vacation to Montreal and Quebec City, Canada to see where Kelly was born and lived for the first 6-7 years of his life! In this photo is the Quebec City hotel we stayed in called Hotel Clarendon. It is the oldest standing hotel in Quebec City and located in the heart of Old Quebec.

Our hotel view—which was wonderful for the two of us obsessed with rainbows! :)

We took a horse and carriage ride through Quebec City to get quickly acquainted with the city’s lay out and best places to view/eat. Our guide’s name was Pierre!

It was an excellent tour!

Quebec City is very unique as there is a large wall that encircles a huge part of the city. The top of the wall is very wide (big enough for a small vehicle) and grassy—a stark difference from walking along the great wall of China’s stones!

I really loved all of the beautiful old architecture and stone work, including the bridges in and out of the walled city area as well as the cobblestone lined streets. I had a hard time finding things NOT to take a picture of!

“Oh what a beautiful morning, oh what a beautiful day…I’ve got a wonderful feeling…visiting Quebec today!” (Side note: It’s okay to pretend that the excessively happy smoking french guy is not really drawn on the wall!!)

This building is the Quebec Parliament building where all of their government decisions are made. The building is amazing both inside and out. The three of us went on a guided tour and learned that the province of Quebec makes up 1/3 of Canada’s population!

Inside the parliament building there were many stained glass windows. This one was one of my favorites as it went up to the ceiling and then back down the other side too.

This is Quebec City’s Notre Dame Basillica…a little smaller than the ones in Montreal and Paris.

Now, you have to know a little more of the story behind this. Apparently in both Quebec City and Montreal street performers are everywhere. On this day Nolan and Kelly decided to take a little break and watch the performer while I went around photographing everything in site (including the ND Basillica I just showed you). I was gone less than 10 minutes and when I turned around…I was surprised to see my WI kiddo (with his tie-dye Brat Fest shirt on) standing next to the street performer and joining his show. Of course I had to stop and come back over to see what they were going to do!

It’s a little dark as I forgot to change my exposure switching from sunny blue sky to in the shade, but I think you can still tell that Nolan is like a straight stiff board and the performer, Vincent is rotating him around. He also had Nolan try a hand stand on the two bars visible below. After this was complete…everyone clapped and once again I walked away. (This is important for the next photo.)

When I heard the crowd cheering I turned back around to see what Vincent was doing next and realized that now Kelly and another gentleman had become his helpers. I had to walk back over again to take pictures of this too! Vincent proceeded to use Kelly and the other man as replacements for his bars!! Apparently Vincent thought we would be good tippers!(or between Kelly’s belt and Nolan’s smiling brat tie-dye shirt we were more than obvious tourists!)

One of the tallest and more famous hotels in Quebec City is called the Chateau Frontenac. It is only about 125 years old, but has many memorable stones and pieces that are more than 300 years old. It sits right on the St. Lawrence river and has amazing views. Part of the upper section of the hotel was under construction and to my amusement I noticed that the construction sheeting covering that side of the chateau had the chateau’s side painted on it. From a distance and at certain angles it looked like the Chateau without any construction. I thought that was a really cool idea!

This cute little building is the oldest restaurant in Quebec City and was built in 1677. The windows are so tiny because they were brought over from France in barrels of Molasses. It appears though…that they were able to clean the molasses off!

For some reason that we do not yet understand…there were Italian restaurants everywhere. I felt a little frustrated at times because I just wanted oodles of French and French Canadian food—not Italian food! :)

This is the Chateau Frontenac again as dusk is setting in. I bribed Kelly into taking the kiddo back to the hotel for bedtime while I wandered the streets—just me and my Canon.

Don’t get me wrong…I love Nolan more than anything, but I would never be able to take a photo like this (really you need to view it much larger!!)…

or one like this and answer all of his 1000 questions at the same time! I think he was happy to be asleep too! I have really only barely grazed on the amount of amazing things we saw on vacation (I took over 1400 photos in Quebec City alone). All of the pictures in this post were of our 24 hours in Quebec City. I am hoping to post some of Vermont (the go between) and Montreal very soon too. I hope everyone is having a great summer!! See you next time!

Today I learned that chickadees use their beaks and their feet to crack a tasty nut shell open!

I think chickadees are daydreamers too—what a beautiful view!

Since when does 6 look so grown up? (did anyone notice the t-shirt? :)

Look at all those freckles that appeared after our trip to Texas!

I don’t care what anyone else says—up here 75 and sunny means it’s hot enough for smoothies!

Yum—EGG SALAD SANDWICHES!!!

So, exactly how many can I eat? And can I have these in my lunch for school and can you make these every weekend and…

I think this makes number 3 and the egg euphoria was definitely penetrating Nolan’s brain!

This year we decided to do tye-die Easter eggs—they turned out awesome and somewhat brought back Airbender memories!

Not an ugly egg in the batch!

These 2 are pictures of a hail storm we were subjected to back in April. It caused a lot of roof and siding damage in our neighborhood and up and down Airport Road, plus the west side of Madison. It started out dime sized and coated everything like snow, then paused and all I can say for sure is that the hail became big enough that I could no longer be outside takign photos and inside it sounded like the war of 1812 on our walls and ceiling! The second photo is a chunk of ice I grabbed after the storm to preserve in the freezer. What? Don’t you do that too? :)

Then…a week or so later (just before May) we received a really bizarre collection of weather—the meteorologists didn’t even know what to call it. It was snow mixed with sleet and sometimes rain and then more snow and somewhere int here tiny bouncy ice balls too. I was only able to collect the tiny ice balls.

The early May weather was great though. Kelly even decided to give the famous dragon kite a try…

with some pretty good success…

well, at least until the dragon kite decided it was too tired to go again.

Despite the rather wacky weather for both April and May…it was still fun watching all of the foliage come awake for Spring.

My Murano needed some fine tuning a few weeks ago (it is already 8 years old!!) so the car place lent me a 2010 Murano for the day. Of course this didn’t occur to me until after I was seating comfortably in the driver seat—what a sneaky ploy on their part. They were clearly marketing the car too! I mean seriously—check out the backseat. Where are the cracker crumbs, books and toys??? I had totally forgotten what a car could look like sans kids!

Check this out—Nolan thought this was the coolest new feature—a moon roof for the front seat and the back seat!

OMG!! I had to share this too—they added a button to open/close the back hatch (my Murano’s hatch only opens from the outside). In fact, it was so exciting—-do you know how much easier that would have been when my hands were full of child, grocers, stroller, book, hats/mittens, etc????—that I had to play the beeping sound (of door opening and closing) for anyone and everyone I saw or spoke to that day! I guess you could say they had me at the hatch button!

Yes, that is Mr. Nolan Senecal under all of that gear and yes, we’ve (at least for now) opened the door to hockey. If anything doesn’t look quite right—that would be because I have no idea what hockey players wear, where the pads go, etc. I sort of just googled it and made it up the rest of the way. It ended up being okay—just a few minor tweaks here and there. I at least knew nothing was supposed to cover his eyes.

Nolan’s been taking skating lessons for almost 3 years…he decided he was ready for the next challenge—and I have to say it looked really cool/amazing seeing him in the full gear and out on the ice.

You’d think he wasn’t even wearing the 10lbs of gear that I know I put on him!

We are lucky for now…for his age group it’s mostly cross-ice. If there are games they are small—like 3 on 3 without the pushing and shoving. We won’t have to be super worried until he’s 8-11.

One thing seems to be true no matter what—ice or not—gravity always wins!

Quick sidebar: I’ve been doing a special art program (that the school runs for all of the grades) for Nolan’s K class and for the month of April I presented some info. on Monet, showed his famous lily pad paintings and then had them create a special art project related to the month’s theme. We did a combo of oil pastels and water colors and the kids loved it.

Holy cow—it has been a year of the silly bandz. If you aren’t sure what I’m talking about click HERE for a description. I don’t remember how many jelly bracelets I had back in the 80s, but I think Nolan has me beat!

The goldfinches have arrived—yeah!

I took another photo class…and had the opportunity to go to my favorite photo teacher’s home (in boondocks, WI) and play with his ultra fancy (and expensive) lenses. This photo is one of my favorites that I took with my favorite lens (a 17-55mm w/soft focus in macro) Anyone have an extra $1,300 they wanna give me so I can buy this lens for myself??? :)

Grandpa Sam and Grandma Kathy were here for Mother’s day weekend and we stumbled upon an amazing Mother’s Day brunch—on the lawn and away from the outdoor heaters. Some how we came and went and I didn’t manage to take even one photo! We also made it down to Madison’s zoo—and to our surprise everyone else had the same idea! We’ve never seen so many people at the zoo, but we aren’t usually there on the weekend either! By afternoon it was hot—in the mid-70s and very sunny! We also noticed that Madison’s zoo’s foliage was at a different stage than the trees in our yard—it was like we drove into summer. It’s amazing how much lots of concrete can change things! Look at this poor grizzly… doesn’t he look hot to you?

We officially swapped Nolan’s bedroom and our home office room. We decided it was time he have a little more space. He also upgraded from a toddler bed to an official twin. Things are looking up! Thanks for checking the webiste still—6 years later. Have a great week!

Yep, I stood in the middle of the street for this one. The things we’ll do for the perfect shot!

My favorite angle I think…

We learned some interesting things about the TX state capitol while we were in state. First, we learned that the TX capitol is the largest state capitol in our country, but not the tallest. This fact seems to annoy the Texans and what seems to be even funnier is that the Wisconsin state capitol building is one of the 4 capitols taller than the Texas’. Oops? :)

So, these two picture have to go together and although I could have put 10 to complete the “story” series I had to cut down a bit. So here’s the cliff notes: Aby scored 2 goals at soccer game, which means we go eat ice cream. After ice cream the kids play on blue cow and make a new friend boy with blonde hair. Very quickly boy walks over to blue cow and tries to climb up. Eventually he pulls over chair, puts foot on tail and climbs onto cow. Nolan then climbs on chair uses other foot and in an awkward and almost injury causing way manages to get on top of blue cow. Aby, however, in an attempt to be ultra independent insists on moving the chair, or using different sides or angles, but doesn’t make it on top of the blue cow. After many attempts to reason with her and show her what they are doing they are still unsuccessful at getting her up there. We really thought..one of the boys was going to grab her butt and push, but that never happened! Anyway, at last Nolan convinces Aby that he will climb up there and then offer her his hands to help her get up—she finally accepts the help and finds herself on the cow. It was absolutely hilarious to watch. P.S. Check out Nolan’s hands in photo number one!

We spent Sunday afternoon at the Austin Children’s museum—and that rocked. Here Aby is making me something delicious to eat— although I think it turned out rather crunchy and plasticy.

Nolan made me some stew and he was giggling so hard I was worried to look in the bottom of the bowl and see EVERYTHING he put in there. (Sometimes it really is better not to know!)

Kelly and Nathan found themselves recycling more often than usual…especially with a squealing audience…

and we had some great family band moments…

“…twirl me in circles, daddy!”

Whose steak do you think will land in the sand first?

No, there’s no competition in our genes at all…

OMG—they opened the slide!!!! And it was really dark in there! giggles, giggles, giggles—let’s do it again!

This always makes me think of the Omniplex! So they don’t have speed blur behind them, but I kind of like them frozen in time. Funky!

Learning how to skip rocks from the pros…

Yep, that poor fishie is missing it’s little eyeball!

Uh oh…

are words even necessary?

“Watch this Aunt Natalie…”

“I have only one leg!”

A well loved light pole…

One reason never to get rid of anything!

Now, seriously. What’s with the missing letter “i”? It’s not like one more letter is going to be too long for the sign or anything like that. It’s kind of like Oklahoma’s Git-n-go. Why does misspelling the word “get” make it a faster stop? Can someone explain this to this okie turned midwesterner???

Oh yeah, this was the “traveling bar” that was indeed traveling so fast I could not get a clear photo of it. Maybe that’s where the letter “i” went!

Hmm…interesting…

Yep, we are a visitor…now if we can just get on that duck boat with nobody looking….

QUACK!!

Yes it was monstrous and yes it was really expensive, but it was really fun—and thank goodness for fast reflexes to avoid wet lenses!!

Yep, they’ve done it. They’ve built a building that looks like an armadillo—complete with an armadillo tail!

Another picture???

What a great trip! That’s all for now—what a double post. That should make up for some of the gaps…shouldn’t it? Coming up next? That would be my crazy 6 year old in full/complete hockey gear!!!

Welcome to Austin, TX!

We went to a park with free roaming peacocks…and I found myself wanting to spend the entire day there!

The kiddos enjoyed the park too.

Even the dads found something to keep themselves busy—yes, they are both holding cans of the drink called “Rockstar”.

I offered to take a father/daughter picture and although big bro thought he’d be funny with the arm—the picture turned out beautiful!

We found an extra person hiding in ours!

The 2nd plane to TX was bumpier than a Jeep on a gravel mountain road and that meant that 1)the motion sickness (and vertigo) symptoms weren’t going to leave me alone for a few days and 2) Kelly would be the adult riding in the backseat…for the whole week!

Nathan took us to his favorite Friday night hang out. It was a market, a restaurant, a live music stage/sitting area and a playground. What else could you possibly need?

Oh yeah, it also had large birds that swooped down at your food or landed on your plate for a quick bite if you weren’t looking! (yes, that bird has a french fry in it’s mouth!)

We took a brief tour of the outside of Aby’s school—and checked out some of her work on the window.

The kids loved clowning around on the school’s playground and…

Uncle Nathan left some souvenirs behind (a red frisbee and a pink soccer ball up high in the trees branches and a little skin tissue in the tree’s bark!)

The states are painted on the basketball courts…and Aby and Nolan had a fun time finding Wisconsin and Texas—man I had to zoom out to fit Texas in the frame!

“Anything you can do I can do better…”

Kelly got his moment with the fairly new Stevie Ray Vaughn statue—one of his favorite musical icons.

I had the kiddos transcribe thank you/appreciation letters to their parents…oh, maybe I was a little biased…:)

We went to Aby’s soccer game Saturday morning too and I am glad she was playing and not me—as it was hot and sticky that day…

but she didn’t seem to notice! (Maybe it was knowing she’d get ice cream after scoring those two goals that helped keep her cool!)

And OF COURSE we had to fill up on incredible TX barbeque—I could smell it in the air the moment we stepped off the plane!

Even Kelly got his fingers dirty with a few bbq slathered ribs…

and found him self on the crazy side of the table again!

“Anything you can do I can do better!”

You didn’t think we were going to bbq only once did you? Check the signage out—is there anything they don’t sell?

Bring on the sauce!

We played Scrabble almost every night that we were there. This board was our game from the very first night—check out my game starter with “Lobsters”!! That netted me over 70 points! Take that dictionary man…:)

“Anything you can do I can do better…”

We balanced out the bbq with a very tasty french breakfast! Aby ate like normal and Nolan ate his plate, some of mine and some of Kelly’s—we have no idea where he put it all!

Just north of Austin we took a tour of the Inner Space Caverns. The openings were huge, with large rooms and tall ceilings. It was incredible. Aby and Nolan both took the chance to leave a little bit of their body oil behind.

Yes, that looks like homemade ice cream, but it’s actually all rock!

And of course it wouldn’t be a complete trip without a great sunset! Thanks for a great week big bro!! Enjoy the pics and I’ll have part II up soon!!

Playing in the snow! The first picture is one of my favorites of Nolan in quite some time. It’s hard to get him just relaxed and smiling naturally–too much over thinking the smile. And of course he had such a beautiful smile!

Yes, being the Kindergarten room parent this year has really increased my baking hours–for better or for worse. I did not burn any of the lemon poppyseed muffins, which is great, but I did put small pink candy hearts on top and thought it a good idea to put them on in the oven. Alas, they melted. So, the daily lesson? Candy melts in a 400 degree oven!

Yep, Nolan had to stay home and miss the ever-so-cool Valentine’s Day party at school. I was the guilty mom for a day…and then he was so sick he missed the entire week and then I was so sick I was on oral steroids for two weeks…and at that point I had decided it was the right thing to do!

40 and sunny means too warm for sledding and just right for a little spring fever!

Here are some of Nolan’s school projects. He is reading really well and his handwriting is looking great—he’s had a busy Kindergarten year so far!

As room parent I was in charge of our room’s carnival booth for the school’s big winter carnival event. It was a little fun…although my plan to have the kids help me with the information on the signs didn’t go quite as I thought it might. Somehow, though, the people that came to our booth were able to figure out the number of tickets and number of rings anyway.

Nolan participated in the after school chess program this year. He loved it and beat Kelly and I both multiple times afterwards….

He has also really gotten to know his 5th grade reading buddy, Robert. This is a program where the school has the different 5th classes come to the Kindergarten classes and either read with the kids or listen to the kids read to them.

THE SCIENCE PROJECT…woes….

So, the directions in the kit actually said to stack 2 paper cups on top of each other with a hole in the top for lava flow, but what it didn’t say is that lava may flow out of seam where two cups meet. It was kind of cool to see it flow up and out of a cup, but not as cool as it would have been coming out of a small hole! So….

ADULT MALE ENTER STAGE LEFT:

Hmm…what else do we have that is taller and has holes? A martini shaker—yeah!

Oh my gosh…Papa made a mess…that is soooo awesome!!

Let the birthday celebration begin!!! Mama made special carrot cake muffins to celebrate my birthday with my classmates. They were awesome and I got a surprise 2nd one in my lunch box!

Mama wasn’t sure the kids would be into the carrot cake and cream cheese frosting, but every kiddo ate one and at least half the class asked for a second one!

Despite a major asthma flare-up and an excessive amount of steroids, I was able to crank out 28 party invites for Nolan’s hip hop themed bday party.

We are gearing up for the big party. Nolan decided that this year he wanted to do a hip hop party at his hip hop dance class studio—and I was so glad we weren’t going to have 24 kids in our family room!

There was also the special birthday cake…yep, I made it up all by myself and maybe even got a little carried away with the candies…although I had a certain somebody’s help with that.

Here is the whole crew for the party…17 including the birthday boy! They all got to warm up to fun music, learned an actual hip-hop dance routine to a popular Usher song, plus played with both hula hoops and a parachute—and of course ate my delicious chocolate cake. It was an incredible party. Below I’ve posted pics from the dancing and playing and at the bottom I posted a video of the learned dance routine that they all performed for the parents at the end of the party. Thank you to Move Out Loud dance studios—Stephanie you are amazing!

Okay…so when I saw the “inflatable boombox” available for purchase on line I guess I didn’t realize that it would be so large you wouldn’t even be able to see Nolan’s head. However, I have to say it was friggin’ hilarious every time he attempted to put it up on his shoulder…even his teacher couldn’t contain the laughter it invoked!

These are just some of my favorite dance moves she incorporated. One was called the DJ–with left hand on left ear (& invisible headphones) and right out straight in front like your rubbing a record. The hip-hop hooray hands up movement and my favorite the “zombie” walk. Check out the video below to get a better idea of the action part of these moves.