Jansson Family Portrait

Brett was unable to make it to my family's Utah photo-shoot. So my mom asked me to photoshop Brett in. Apparently she doesn't know that I never use my photoshop skills for good–only evil. So here are my 6 offerings: feel free to vote in my poll to the right. Let me know which portrait is the best and I'll frame it up nice and send it off to my mom to proudly display in the foyer.

RESULTS: Numbers 1 & 2 tied, and since number 2 is more of a family portrait, I'll be hooking my parents up with a copy. Thanks for your votes!

And the winner is...

AJ won first place in backstroke! Her FIRST meet! I was SOO proud and as you can tell she was SOOO excited! I think she has found her sport!


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E-I-E-I-O

A lot of you know I have been working on an organic farm every Wednesday for the last couple months. It is a CSA–community sustained agriculture. This farm (johnsonsbackyardgarden.com) provides about 300 bushel boxes to Austin subscribers each week. Basically people either pay for, or work for (me), produce shares. It is hard sweaty work, but so much fun. Every week I bring home a bushel box full of organic produce. You can also buy pastured raised beef, eggs, and goat cheeses. I work more for the experience of learning about farming than actually bringing home the veggies, but it has been a really great experience. Here are some pics.

Brett's 32nd

Well, it wasn't as much fun as the white trash birthday bash (was that only a year ago!!!) but it was fun in it's own way. I just thought this video of the kids was cute and shows their personalities a lot.

The part about Jack going to a birthday party is funny. Both Jack and AJ got invited to birthday parties for their friends on Saturday. So we decided to split up. Well, I had a blast at AJ's party. There were tons of parents there we know from sports and school, and we all visited while the kids swam and we all had a great time. But the moment I saw Brett I knew his party hadn't gone so well. Jack's party was at a friends house and they rented a big bounce house-waterslide. Brett said there was no shade, it was very hot, he didn't know anyone and to top it all off, Jack was a huge baby and wouldn't go down the slide. So of course Brett was joking about that all day. The really sad part was that both Brett and Jack would have had a blast at Cora's party with us girls!

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Mother's Day Tea

Amelia's kindergarden class had a mother's day tea on Friday. We came to their classroom where the kids all served their moms tea, muffins and strawberries with cream. They were all on their best behavior and it was obvious they had been learning about etiquette.

Mrs. Aikin asked each mom to write a little note to their children which we read to them, then the kids read books to us that they made, and gave us some other sweet gifts. Here is AJ reading her book to me.

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Track & Field Day

Here is a video of AJ's track and field day. She had a great time. Brett keeps talking about how much fun he remembers having at his track and field days. I'm sure it made a big impression on the kids as well. Jack just ran wild with the other younger brothers the whole day and we all got sunburned, dehydrated and tired and had a total blast. After school we went straight to the pool to cool off and swam until dinnertime. A great day.

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It's electric...wooga-wooga

Very cool footage of my oak tree in a lightning storm. The camera didn't pick up all of the lightning. It was almost always light to some degree and the thunder was a constant rumble that never stopped. Cool.

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Lake Pointe Lasers

AJ tried out for the Lake Pointe Lasers this weekend and did great. She actually tried out with the 7/8 year old team on accident and still did great! You will notice at the end they are all alone in the pool. That is because a 3 hour try-out and swim party apparently wasn't enough. They stayed and swam well after everyone else went home.

The pool opened the first week of April and we are already getting our money's worth out of it. Everyday AJ just walks to the pool after school and we meet her there and swim until Brett calls to say he's coming home. Tonight he worked late so we were there until 7:00. That is from 2:45-7:00, over 4 hours and I still had to drag the kids away!

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AJ's class spent a very fun couple weeks learning all about butterflies. She can do a killer butterfly life-cycle poster. I'll have to scan it and put it up. She probably knows more about butterflies that I do, and I have a degree in zoology.

Anyway to cap it all off they had a butterfly migration. All the kindergartners dressed up in costumes they made at school and flew through 3 big arches labeled Canada–>Texas–>Mexico. After each leg of the migration they roosted by gathering up in bunches squatting on the ground. It was a beautiful breezy day and the contrast of the orange wings on the green grass was dazzling.

100 years young...

Jack and I were waiting for AJ at school, playing on the playground. Some kids ran up to him asking him what class he was in, how old he was, trying to figure out who he was. He kept telling them he was waiting for his sister. Frustrated that they weren't getting it, he pointed emphatically to me. One of the kindergartners said,

"That's not your sister. She is like a hundred years old."

Look out American Idol

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Here is AJ in the little musical all of the Kindergardeners and 1st graders performed. The songs they sang were super cute and yes...they did have choreography! You will have to excuse the shaky camera work, Jack was trying to climb up my leg.

On a side note, the boy standing on the right is Storm–her first crush.

Pandora Sphinx Moth

Check out this awesome moth Jack found at AJ's school yesterday. I looked around online and identified it as a Pandora Sphinx moth. It looked just like hunting camo. Super cool and beautiful. We kept it in our terrarium all day so the kids could show it off to all their neighborhood friends, then let it go in the evening. I hope it lays its eggs close, I'd love to see more of them.

In other butterfly/moth news, we've got quite a menagerie of caterpillars right now. We've got a monarch, 3 viceroy, 1 swallowtail and 4 huge cecropia moth caterpillars. I'll post on those soon–they are amazing.

But I thought this guy was worthy of a shout out. LOVE the bugs here (most of them anyway. The Cicada Wasps are one of the creepiest things I have ever seen! And we could certainly do without the fire ants.)

A new addition

Meet the newest member of our family–"Scarecat" the scarecrow. AJ did the artwork and obviously birds would be the most scared of a scary cat, something I hadn't thought of.

We are beginning to have a grackle problem. So AJ suggested the scarecrow. I don't have very high hopes for scaring the birds, but it makes me smile every time I look out the back windows.

For those of you unfamiliar with grackles–just imagine a smallish crow who acts like a pit bull on crack. They are SOOO loud, and SOOO aggressive (they will steal food right out of your hand) and I've heard they will eat up tomatoes in nothing flat, so we are going to have to take some drastic measures. Tomato stealing is a capitol offense in my book!

T-Ball Opener

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Just the cutest ball player EVER!!!

Happy 4th Ysabel!!!

Wish we could have been there.