The Lieslands

Mari was running into our house yesterday and as she made the turn to come up the stairs she fell and ‘got all twisted up.’ She cried for a while, so we decided we had better take her to the Dr, and sure enough, she broke her leg. Right now she has a temporary cast. She will see an Orthopedic next week for the final judgement.

Andrew lost his first tooth tonight. He was very excited and might still be awake upstairs.

I apologize for the red-eye here. I tried to clean it up, but was having some serious issues.

This year we spent Easter in Kansas City, with Mary, Casey, Joe, Colin, and Luke. We had a great time. The kids were worn out and Elliot and Mari both fell asleep in the car on the way home. The weekend included basketball, life, soccer, a farmstead, s’mores, egg dyeing, egg hunting, church, and grilling.

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It’s official – after two and a half years of speculation, Andrew has a loose tooth. As expected, it is one of his bottom, front teeth. He is excited about the loose tooth, but not about the pain.

Elliot is officially finished nursing. For the past few weeks he had still been nursing before bed and occasionally during the day. His form had degenerated and Susan didn’t think he even wanted to nurse anymore. So they other night while he was ‘nursing’ she said, “Elliot, do you want to stop nursing?” He said, “Yes,” and that was that.

Last night I asked Susan how she felt about it and she said “It was kind of anticlimactic.” I agree. After almost six and a half years an important phase of her motherhood and our parenthood has come to an end. It was only a year ago that we night-weaned Elliot, and now he is ready to be off on his own, well, almost.

Today Susan asked Andrew what his favorite bands are:

1. Black Eyed Peas
2. Lady GaGa
3. Ingrid Michaelson
4. Justin Bieber
5. The Beatles
6. Pearl Jam
7. Michael Jackson
8. 10,000 Maniacs
9. Ani DiFranco
10. Patty Griffin

Elliot slept until 9:15 this morning. Not too shabby, but tomorrow should be a rude awakening for the kids when they have to get up early for school.

Looking for some last minute bracket advice? Check out our Expert’s Picks:

• Andrew’s Bracket
• Mari’s Bracket
• Elliot’s Bracket

Yesterday we got out for our first bike ride of the year. We left with the intention of checking out the flooding the has followed all of the snow we had and it didn’t take us long to find it. The best part of the ride was the ride home. On the way there Andrew was on the tag-along and Mari and Elliot were in the trailer. On the way home Andrew rode his bike and Mari rode on the tag-along, both for the first time. Well, it was not Andrew’s first time on his bike, but his first time riding it a significant distance.

Here in Des Moines, like much of the Midwest, we had a terrific Winter. Our first major snow storm was in early December and we had snow on the ground for almost the entire Winter. We had at least four inches of snow on the ground through all of December, January, and February, most of the time having at least 12 inches. We all had a great time sledding and playing in the snow.

Now that most of it has melted it is time to clean up.