Mom My Ride

Lots of people I know have mini-vans and LOVE them. I had a discussion with some of my friends about how wonderful vans were and the next day my friend sent this video. It's hilarious, I showed Andy, Abby and Jake and now they always ask to see the "mom my ride video".

Estee wants to fly

We have acctually started using our video camera we got for Christmas. So we are sharing a funny one of Estee flapping her arms--she looks like she wants to take off. She does this whenever she is excited to see someone. I hope the video gives it justice because it's pretty cute in real life!

Spring is Here!

We had a fun BBQ to celebrate the warm weather in Ann Arbor.
We had a lot of fun and especially enjoyed the following:

Scooter Rides!

Visited with friends.

Played football!

Yummy cake!

Andy's Football team wins the Championship

Saturday Andy's flag football team won the championship! Andy played a great two games and Dan was able to coach the winning team! It was a lot of fun to watch too. Way to go Andy and Dan!

Here is link to all of the pictures:

http://picasaweb.google.com/janieward1313/FootballChampionships

Jake learns to ride his bike!

Jake learned to ride his bike yesterday!! I went to the store and when I got back Dan had taught Jake to ride his bike. Yea, go Jake!

Here are all the Jake bike riding pictures:

http://picasaweb.google.com/janieward1313/JakeRidesABike

Raccoon!

It's hard to tell from the picture, but this is a raccoon in our squirrel trap. We have had much success with our new bigger squirrel trap. We have taken 6 squirrels to a happy home in a forest far away from our house. Now this raccoon has joined them.
It was a little freaky to see this cage full with something a lot bigger than a squirrel. I thought it was a skunk from the window because it had a stripe of white on it. It was moving all over the lawn trying to get out of the cage. You can see the cage is covered in mud and grass from tearing up our lawn. I was really glad Dan was home to take care of Mr. Raccoon, he probably would have bitten my hand!

Jungle Java

Jake inside the jungle net

Spring Break was all this week. With temperatures in the 30's (during the day) we had to find indoor activities to fill the "I'm bored" days. Two of the days we went to Jungle Java the indoor jungle gym place that just opened here. Jake had a smoking good time here, he played, ran, jumped, climbed and whatever else they do there for a full 3 hours. With only a few "I'm thirsty" breaks. I don't know if you can see from the picture but his hair was soaked and dripping with sweat. He had a great time.

Abby inside the tree (with Flat Stanley) at Jungle Java

Abby had a good time too. She had her friend Swetha there and other girls from our church were there as well. Abby had hurt her toe the day before and didn't like how it got all twisted around in the jungle gym area. So she and some of the other girls had a little art table where they kept themselves busy in between frequent request for money to buy snacks.

It was here at Jungle Java that Estee did her first forward crawl, she did two forward movements in a row. I am counting that as a crawl. She has been so close for a while and she can actually go backwards pretty well. The forward crawl is proving difficult for her to coordinate.

I crawled! Watch out Ward household (and world)!

Oh, Easter

Here are the kid-lets with there Easter baskets (do you think Andy's is big enough?)
We had a fun Easter today! We went to church and when we got home the Easter Bunny had left our baskets and eggs for a hunt. The Easter Bunny very wisely left the eggs and baskets in the house as the outside temperature was 32 degrees. It's really not quite right that it's spring break, Easter and it's been spring for a few weeks and it's 32 degrees! I am sure the complaining about the weather is getting old, sorry.

Estee enjoyed her first Easter candy with the wrappers on.

The hunt is on for Easter eggs!

Dan was home all day with us, it was very nice. You can tell by the look on his face he loved when I turned the camera on him. :)

We took some pictures of Estee in her Easter dress.

For all our Easter Day pics here's a link http://picasaweb.google.com/janieward1313/Easter2007

Estee tries pepperoni pizza

As much as I hate to reveal my super healthy eating habits, I couldn't resist showing this one of Estee discovering for herself how good pizza is......

I guess I left the box a little too close and looked away for a minute. I found her chomping a piece of pepperoni! At not quite 8 months old she probably shouldn't be eating pepperoni, or cheese, or tomato sauce. She sure was enjoying it though. I had to grab the camera and take a picture.

It may be all in my head, but I don't think she likes her plain rice cereal quite as much as she use to!!

Naughty Squirrels

Some of you might want to call the Humane Society and some of you might want to head over with your shot gun. Hopefully neither of those things happen! We have a small squirrel problem which we have had since the fall. Squirrels are cute furry little animals that just climb trees and look cute with there bushy tails, right? Wrong! They have invaded our garage and are eating the wiring (as far as I know none of the lucky buggers have been electrocuted while biting through wires yet). They also ate through the Christmas lights while they were hanging on the trees, this could partially be my fault since the lights were out far too long and we just took them down this weekend. The worst thing (in my eyes) they have done is eat 100 freshly planted tulip bulbs! I had sprayed each individual bulb with some expensive spray called "squirrel-b-gone" which guaranteed squirrels would not like the taste and in turn would not eat your bulbs. I actually think it attracted the squirrels, those bulbs disappeared fast! I love tulips and this was the last straw for me. I told Dan he could get the BB gun he wanted and I bought the trap myself. We have had the trap set off and on in the garage for the winter with no luck. Saturday, we decided to put the trap outside and see what happened. Sunday morning the kids were watching the trap out the back window and saw a squirrel successfully get trapped in the cage!!Don't be fooled by the cute little innocent face.

Here he (or she) is demonstrating how they bite through wires (garage or Christmas lights)

Because of this recent success in the catching of a squirrel we spent lots of time yesterday resetting the trap and trying to catch more of these rodents. It would be especially rewarding to catch the ringleader squirrel, we can pick him out because he looks like he has a shaved tail, all the other squirrels have these bushy cute tails and his looks like it's been shaved or is soaking wet. Don't even start to feel sorry for him, he alone has eaten all of peanut butter, chocolate chips and cashews out of the trap then set it off without being trapped in it many times.

After the squirrel was trapped I called Dan on the phone to tell him the good news, luckily he was on his way home from the hospital. He jokingly said, if it's the one with the shaved tail, I might have to kill it. Abby overheard this and was out on a peace march for the squirrel before Dan pulled in the drive-way.

For all you tree hugging, Humane Society loving, squirrel friendly people out there. Our friend Mr. Squirrel was safely released into the wild far away from our house (Dan was tempted to spin him around a whole bunch so he couldn't find his way back to our house).