Mother's Day 2011 (The Prequel)

On the night before Mother's Day, mom made dinner for us.  Yummm...anyway, I ended up spending the night.  I stayed up in the loft.  As you'll see in the photos, the kids were so sweet to come and wake me up.  They brought me a gift and then mom made a butter braid and scrambled eggs.  The kids helped make scrambled eggs with MawMaw.  Awesome morning!

Photos  

Mother's Day 2011

This was a GREAT Mother's Day.  We celebrated with my mom on Saturday night.  We had an awesome dinner at their house: marinated chicken, roasted potatoes and carrots, and wonderful green beans...completed with a homemade blackberry pie.  Yummm.  We were having fun, so I just spent the night in the loft there and the kids stayed in their usual spots with MawMaw and Doo Dah.  Mom made a tasty pastry this morning and scrambled eggs.  Thanks for making the morning special mom!

Then we met Nana and Emily at Lowe's and the kids helped me pick out new flowers for the front landscaping.  From here, we went home and got cleaned up and gathered Sam.  We met Em, Steve, Gigi, and Nana at Julia's for a late lunch.  We had a great time and took some good photos. 

After rest time at home, Nana came over and helped me and the kids plant my new flowers.  Sissy wasn't feeling so well today, but she made it through.  Overall, lovely weather, lovely family, awesome day.  Thanks to all the "mom people" in my life.  I couldn't do this without you all.

Zoo Trip, May 2011

So I've got lots of blogging to catch up on, but I've got to start somewhere.  I'm going to start in the present and work backwards until our fans know all the fun stuff we've been up to for the last few months!

Last week, Patrick's pre-school class went to the zoo.  Patrick and I rode the bus over to the zoo with his classmates and teachers.  This brought back lots of "fond" memories for me, but Patrick seemed to enjoy the novelty of it. 

He and I had a few hours there on our own checking out the bears, zebras, lions, tigers, and the American Wild Ass.  I made the mistake of giving Patrick the correct name of this animal...I just couldn't leave it at donkey.  He spent the rest of the day interjecting "ass" into the conversation.  :)

Anyway, my mom and dad brought Eva over and we had a picnic lunch together.  Then we saw the monkeys, gorillas, chimps, rode the carousel and the train, visited with the penguins and puffins, and spent some time looking at the flamingos, ducks, geese, etc.  We had lots of fun.  The weather and the company were great!

See photos of our day here.

Long Time, No Blog...

Ok, so I've been a very bad doggy and haven't kept up on the blogging.  Lots of goings on in the Hooligan Household.  Most significantly, I made the decision to leave real estate.  I won't use this fun space to bore you all with the details.  It was the right decision for our family right now.  Anyway, so for the time being, my days are filled with all the things I was doing before, just not quite the break neck speed.  We made it through the seemingly unending winter and are looking forward to being out of the house this spring. 
As you'll see in the photos, we had fun sledding with our neighbors/friends up the street Nick and Emma (and their moms).  The kids also made snow cones with Sam made from sleet from the back deck at our house.  The kids were made with V-8 fruit juice and Sam's was made with Tarantula tequila.  There are several miscellaneous photos: fun day at MawMaw's, Story time with Nana, Libby sleeping with Patrick, and so on.

Patrick is finishing his last weeks of preschool.  I cannot believe he is growing up so fast.  I can still remember Sam and I trying to decide if we were ready to have a baby...seems like maybe 6 months ago.  Patrick is doing well in school and we are so proud of the awesome little boy he is becoming (and he's so handsome too). 

Eva is getting sassier by the day and is already riding a bicycle (with training wheels).  She is wearing big girl underwear part of the time now...we're still working on the potty training.  She got a big girl bed a few months ago and is doing very well with it.  She is 2 and a half already.