A Dog's Life

A Dog's Life, originally uploaded by curtisbridges.

Kevu: Feelin' Old.

Life is Good

Life is Good, originally uploaded by curtisbridges.

Life is Good

Ally's play date with Lily

Ally had a play date with one of her all-time favorite people, Lily Jeans last weekend. Lily left school last year and Ally has really missed her, so we try to get together from time to time on the weekends. Casey seems to like Lily a lot as well, so he made sure he was a part of most of their activities that day as well. Here are a few of the pictures from that day.

Parental traits passed down...

When it comes to bedtime: Ally takes after me, Casey takes after Pam. Let me explain. I'm a frequent insomniac, sometimes it takes me a while to fall asleep.

• If there is anything on my mind
• I just did something interesting
• There is something half-way interesting on TV
• I have something big or stressful planned for the following day

I'm pretty much guaranteed to get less than 5 hours of sleep, often under 4 hours. Pam on the other-hand, will fall asleep by 9:15 if she is reading or 9:30ish if she is watching TV.

Casey is usually asleep within 20 minutes of being put to bed. There have been times, after a very busy day where he can be asleep before we finish putting Ally to bed immediately after putting him down. He has even asked to go to bed on his own before!

Ally, however, can sometimes still be awake at 10:30 at night, long after Pam has fallen asleep. Tonight, as I walked by her room at 8:45, she was making shadow puppets on the wall. There have been times where she does this huge project in her room after we've all laid down for the night, making Valentine's cards for all the kids in her class, for instance.

Just random parental observation #538.

Kids' Art

Lately, the kids have been generating a lot of art. Luckily, this week a lot of it has been created for me, which is great. First, Ally depicted her favorite animal also known as Dad inside a lamp. I don't ask, I just am a proud Dad...

The following day, Casey added his two cents but in a more traditional "boy" way:

Gardening Day

Yesterday, Casey and I worked in the yard, fixing some of the dead spots in the grass...

 Today, we spent the whole day gardening, this is in front of the dining room window...

 This is near the mailbox...

Both kids drove the tractor...

After, the kids played in the back yard...

Ben's Birthday Party

Ally was invited on Saturday to one of the cooler birthday party destinations in a while - the Currier Museum in Manchester, NH.

First, they toured all the sculptures:

 After gaining inspiration from all the existing sculptures, they went to the art room to create some of their own works of art:

And finally, posed for some silly pictures for Ben to remember the experience by: