Life happens

It's been a busy couple of weeks, and I seem to have gotten out of the habit of blogging!

DD1 got a place at Coral Academy of Science for next year. We are thrilled! Assuming everything works out (I'm a little gun-shy after our 1st grade fiasco with DS), it will be wonderful having the older two attending the same school. DD2 starts preschool three mornings a week next year, so I'll be sans children for 12 hours every week. Right now that seems like an eternity, but I'm sure the time will fly. I will probably do some coursework online so that I can go back to work at some point.

On April 17, DD2 turned 3. In our family the birthday person always gets to choose the menu for dinner. I always think it's interesting to see what the kids want. DD2 chose sugar snap peas, raw carrots, and homemade macaroni and cheese, accompanied by chocolate milk. Desert was baked pears with custard sauce.

Her "big" birthday present was a bicycle. Neither of the other two kids have had a bicycle this young, but DD2 is very coordinated and was having a difficult time keeping up with her siblings on the trike. She rides the new "big girl bike" very well.

DD1 had her school Spring Sing that Friday evening. Unfortunately I don't have any decent pictures, as the grandmas in front kept standing up. DD1 gave three performances -- singing with her Kindergarten class and Spanish class, and playing recorder with both Kindergarten classes combined. It's always a fun event.

My ILs were in town, so we had a birthday brunch for DD2 that Saturday. She chose the menu again; banana-blueberry mini-muffins (recipe from Cynthia Lair's "Feeding the Whole Family") and fresh berries. The rest of us also had omelette, but DD2 doesn't much care for eggs. For the second year in a row, we had a panda birthday cake (from the Cake and Flower Shoppe).

On April 22nd, DD1 had her first (pre-Primary level) RAD examination/presentation. She was very excited and had a fun time. We made a real occasion of it; DH bought her roses, and I took her out to lunch (at Josef's) afterwards.

We went camping this weekend. Most places around here are still closed, so we went down to Washoe Lake State Park again. No snow this time, and just a little wind. Lots of exploring, bike riding and general relaxation. Good times.

I came back to Reno on Saturday morning for the YMCA summer camp signups. DS went there for a few weeks last summer and had a great time, so we wanted to be sure he got into the camps he was interested in. I stopped by the house to grab a couple of things, and found that a picture had fallen during the M4.7 earthquake on Friday night. Not a big deal, except that the picture in question was hanging at the top of the stairs and fell all the way downstairs. There was glass all over the landing upstairs, all the way down the stairs, and all over downstairs. It certainly scatters well on a hardwood floor! The frame broke, but the picture is intact, so we'll be able to get it reframed.

We've had quite a lot of earthquakes in Reno in the last few weeks. I was in Safeway on Thursday afternoon when two (M4.1 and 4.2) hit a few minutes apart. I was in my freshman year at Stanford during the Loma Prieta earthquake(M7.1) of October '89, and this was nothing compared to that, but the jars and cans coming off the shelves was a bit nerve-wracking. I couldn't believe the number of people who just stood in the aisles with things falling around them! This morning we were woken by a M4.2. Current Reno earthquake info is available from the UNR Seismology lab.