Meet Bandit, our new bear

Daddy went to Texas and came home with a HUGE bear, whom we dubbed "Bandit". The kids LOVE him!

Gage -- on the move and getting into trouble

Gage is into everything...drawers, dishwasher, plants, Savannah's toys, the refrigerator...he is trouble, and looks to be loving every minute of it!

Project Butterfly

Two weeks ago, the mailman delivered a butterfly kit, which Savannah was very excited about. We started out with 6 baby caterpillars who we watched for 7 days before they turned into chrysalis (cocoons, essentially). Mommy and Savannah were fascinated watching them. When they changed they all crawled to the top of their jar, hung in a J shape, and started shaking. You could literally see them changing as you watched them. Once they were in chrysalis form, they sat for 8 days in their butterfly house. This weekend we "hatched" six painted lady butterflies. This morning Savannah decided it was time to let the butterflies free, so we released them this morning. That was probably a good idea because Smidgey had discovered them flying around their house and was trying to get to them. I could barely get her to look at the camera this morning...she couldn't take her eyes off the butterflies. We hope to see them around our yard. What a neat little project.

Savannah's First Dance Recital

Last night was Savannah's first dance recital, held at the Brooks Center on Clemson's campus. She was *very* excited to dance on the big stage. I was not planning to buy the DVD, but after her performance, we changed our minds about that. They danced to "A Spoonful of Sugar". She is the youngest in the class, with most girls 4-5 years old, but she did great. She fell down at one point (whoops!), and at the end of the routine all the girls lined up and filed out - except Savannah, that is. She was distracted and just standing in place with a bunch of girls stuck behind her. But, she realized she was holding up the line and then ran across stage to catch up. It was a very cute 3 minutes!

Loving springtime.....

We have had a great spring playing in the pool, feeding the birds, gardening, etc. This spring alone we have planted 21 trees and about 30 shrubs. Phew! That's a lot of digging. Savannah has 1 month of school left, and is excited about her dance recital next week. She'd better be excited, her dance costume cost a fortune! Gage is busy growing -- he walks along the furniture, scoots on his belly, says mama and kkkkkkk (we think that means cat, he says it every time he seems Smidge), he claps, blows raspberries, waves, and does a few other "pet tricks". He's working on crawling but isn't quite there yet.