A Late April Fool's Joke

Today we woke up to this:

I think that's a pretty mean trick; especially since when I checked the weather before Braden left for work and it showed sunny skies all day. I was thinking, "Woohoo! We'll go to the park. Perfect!" Not so sunny and not so warm.

We've already had a rough week. Sunday night Kayla was having difficulty breathing and was up every few hours coughing and wheezing. I took her to the doctor on Monday and she has ear infections in both ears and RSV. So now she's on antibiotics for the ears and albuterol for the wheezing. And now it's too cold to play outside, too bad she doesn't understand that (she keeps standing at the door trying to get out). Time to break out the finger paints!

A very tired and sick girl on the 500-yard drive home from the pharmacy.

Luckily she is feeling much better now.

Moment of Glory

The Dread Pirate Roberts won the voting, but as I contemplated shaving my 'stache to match, I realized that  my mustache is much thicker than his.  As such, if I shaved it up from the edge of my lip I'm afraid I'd look a little too much like Hitler...

...so I went with a progression.  Here are the highlights, pick your favorite!

Mud.

The sun has been out lately, which is a really nice change of pace - a little less dreary.  To celebrate, our little girl discovered one enduring truths of springtime: childhood + mud = happiness!

Also, she LOVES root beer.  We might have a problem...

Mustache March!

March is a time to celebrate!  It brings the end of winter, leprechauns, and most importantly - Tiffany's birthday.  To mark the magnanimity of this wonderful month, I am growing a mustache.  I've started out with a full-grown beard, as Tiffany won't allow me to grow the soup-strainer unaccompanied by the rest of my facial hair (I think she's afraid it would get lonely as an island on my upper-lip - she's always so considerate).  But now I have a dilemma: come March 31st what should my mustache look like?  The possibilities are endless!!  In order to decide, I need the help of YOU, the PID reader.  In the sidebar, you will see a survey, of the mustache that I should try to emulate when it comes time to carve a beautiful specimen onto my face.  Here are the possibilities (feel free to provide any other suggestions in the comments):

Ned Flanders

Hulk Hogan

The Dread Pirate Roberts

Bandit

Ambrose Burnside

The poll closes at 11:59 pm on 3/30, so get in your votes!  Thanks for your input, and remember - every vote counts!

21 Months

Today is Kayla's 21-month birthday. She is such a big girl! These are some of her favorite things right now:

• Reading stories and watching movies
• Mooching food from others
• Goldfish crackers and pretzels
• Ice cream and other sweets (we had Hersey's kisses out for Valentine's Day, I don't know how many she ate before she got caught...but she sure was happy!)
• Sitting on the counter watching and "helping" prepare food
• Trying to use the potty
• Getting her picture taken and looking at her beauteous self
• Swinging like an acrobat (sign this girl up for Cirque Du Soleil!)
• Saying "peeeese!" (ie. "please") to get something she really wants
• Singing, dancing, and jumping
• Cleaning (really, she just spilled some water then got out the paper towels to clean up!)

We love our baby girl who has turned into a toddler right before our eyes.

Spot the Difference!

10 points to the first person that can spot the 10 differences in these 2 photos:

The sun was shining yesterday, so we took advantage of the momentous occasion and headed to the sound, and checked out the Chittenden/Ballard Locks.  It's where the water from lake Washington meets the Puget Sound, with the locks at the point of juncture.  As well, they have a fish ladder where you can see migrating Salmon traveling upstream from the ocean to the fresh water of the lake to spawn.... unfortunately migration season is during the summer.  They have a glass wall set up, kind of like an aquarium, but we only saw one little fish that was having a hard time making any progress.

                      

and so begins our "playing in the dirt" - or rather, mud - in Seattle!

On a side note, have any other bloggers out there ever checked your blog stats and noticed the random search keywords that bring people to your sight?  Some of my favorites here: "incredible edibley", "dirty little girl", "black swans zoo", "find kayla dirt", and "kayla - sweet little chocolate".  Google is incredible.

Oh, and before I forget, those boats at the top are in the locks.  The lake and the ocean are at very different levels, so the locks enable boats to pass through - just like the Panama Canal! We watched them stack the lock full of 6 boats or so, drop the water level, then open the gate and away they went.  This set of locks was built about a hundred years ago - a true Modern Marvel!  Oh and I have no idea if there are actually 10 differences between the two pictures.  So if you can find 10 differences, I just bumped the reward to 20 points, count 'em - 20!

Later we went and checked out the Fremont Troll under a bridge in Seattle (in the header and below)

For those of you that haven't seen/heard about this, it was pretty awesome. Not every day you get to see the troll under the bridge! They're usually so sneaky-hidey...

*Correction*

Here at Playing in the Dirt we aren't afraid to admit our mistakes, and correct them when necessary.  After reading some of the comments - and we love your comments, it gives us great satisfaction knowing that yes, someone actually reads our blog - apparently our last post gave the impression that we drove 3000 miles across the country in 4 days with our 20-month-old toddler strapped in the back seat.  We apologize for this misconception, Tiffany's Mom actually watched Kayla-bear in California while we made the drive, and then flew up to Seattle to reunite us as a family.  While that would have demonstrated our awesomeness as parents, we need to give credit where credit is due, so thank you, Grandma Wolf for helping us out.

We never intended to overblow our awesomeness as parents, and for that we apologize.  That trip with a toddler would have been a nightmare.  However, our awesomeness at wall-climbing can never be question.

 And that, my friends, was truly awesome.