well, as usual, we’ve been slacking with the updates. finally put up some more pictures from february and march, including some from today’s ’snow day’.
last night about 5-6″ fell all over the twin cities. shoveling the stuff was a major chore. almost every school in the metro area was cancelled. minneapolis schools started 2 hours late. st. paul, however, decided to keep schools open, even after a snowplow rolled. that was enough for me to declare our own connell family snow day. bill still went to work, but they were without email for quite a while. the girls and i spent the morning playing in the snow. i filled up some old bike water bottles with watered down paint and we painted the snow. we made snow angels, snow balls, and sculpted a snow mermaid and snow tiger in the front yard to guard the house. i pulled the girls around on one of the sleds through the backyard. greta was beside herself with joy - she loves the snow. we had a fun morning, spending about 2 hours in the snow, then came in for mint hot cocoa and kettle corn.
we are happy to all be healthy (knock on wood). the last of the colds seems to have passed (again, knock on wood). i did my first tri already, the tri-u-mah, and did really well (3/28 for my age group, 1/28 on the bike for my age group, and 8/78 for women overall). i’ve already biked 438 miles this year (mostly indoors, although i was able to do a 23 mile ride outside on saturday - pure bliss!), and run over 100. bill has also had a few commuting rides this year and has been busy building up his new cyclocross bike. long story, but he designed a website for a new local bike shop and is basically being paid in bike parts. no complaints here, since the new bike will be VERY cool! pictures coming soon.
ella is busy reading and amazing us with her vast knowledge. on saturday, she did a word jumble - taking things like ‘lcbicye’ and figuring out BY HERSELF that is spelled ‘bicycle’. we suspect she was able to read long before she was reading outloud to us, because she’s already able to spell many words by herself (including spelling cookie, ‘kookie’, too cute!). she’s been spending a lot of time on the bbc website, putting together fossil bones of mammoth and dinos, and also playing games in the ’school’ area of the bbc site. she ‘won’ one game that we think was a simulation of the british standards test for 1st or 2nd grade. go ella! she is also very into ‘annie’ lately. we rented two versions of it, and she’s been walking around the house singing ‘tomorrow’ at the top of her lungs. ella just saw ‘annie’ for the first time and lurves it! she’s been singing all the songs at the top of her lungs. today she was singing ‘hard knock life’.
‘it’s a hard knock life, for us,
its a hard knock life for us!
no one cares for you OSTRICH
when you’re in an orphanage!’
its ‘no one cares for you a smidge’ hee heee heee.
one of the versions is one i saw when i was little. when we put it in, ella asked very earnestly ‘mama, did they know how to put sound into movies when you were little?’ hee hee. we had watched the silent film ‘lost world’ a few weeks before, so it was an honest question, but it really made us giggle. other ella funnies: 1. first, she has a magnetic calendar which we update each month. it comes with a ton of little magnets for major holidays. this month, we put up st. patricks…and ella put up yom kippur. she liked the magnet. anyway, the other morning she decided that it was yom kipper. i asked her if she knew what the holiday meant. she didn’t, so we got our her children’s dictionary and looked it up. when she found out that the holiday envolved fasting she said ‘we don’t have to celebrate this one.’ 2. same morning, at breakfast, we had eggs. she asked ‘is this egg UNEASY?’ there are two others that were really funny, that we are both drawing a blank on. as soon as we remember, we’ll post them. she’s full of witty comments lately.
fi is as cute as ever, but is also very very mischievous . for example, last week i bought two pounds of coffee beans at j & s coffee bean factory across the street. whole beans. i was upstairs helping ella in the bathroom when - spooooosh, shruuuuuush. both bags, dumped. do you have any idea how far oily coffee beans can travel? i do! we’re still finding them around the house. and i won’t even go into how she likes to take off her own diaper. a good step to on the road of potty training, but…well, i won’t go into the yucky details. let’s just say she’s wearing this mama out lately. there are some cute pictures of fiona decorating bill with the loops from ella’s loom grandma sandy got her. very stylish, bill!
my aunt eileen was here for a 2 week visit and just headed back this weekend. the girls had a wonderful time visiting with the two davis sisters. andrew was also here for a few days, and the girls enjoyed spending time with ‘uncle ah-choo’ as fi called him. hee hee.
