Keeping it weird, with my work peeps

One of the highlights of March was my trip to Austin, Texas - the nation's capital of "keeping it weird." The occasion was the SxSWedu conference - a really cool coming together of loads of innovators & educators! It was fun and exhausting and confirming that I made the right choice all those years ago to leave the classroom and enter the world of education policy and research.

Here are the iPhone highlights - ranging from my first breakfast taco, photo bombing an NBA icon being interviewed, the coolest chairs we've ever blogged from, insanely warm weather, some funny moments, live music, sight-seeing, and the reason we were there in the first place (sessions, book signing, a Bill Gates keynote & a highlight for me which was interviewing an amazing kid inventor and his mom.)

Gates Keynote: My coverage of that HERE

After it was all said and done, I was ready to go home. And home started to feel really far!

But, alas, I was home before I knew it!

Nothing beats coming home from a trip and finding my favorite three people at the top of the CVG escalator!

The girls were thrilled with their souvenirs. I found Josie the armadillo she wanted and Bea's Texas pony hasn't left her crib since the night I returned from Sx. That's actually a SXSW shirt she's rocking there, too. She was so excited at the airport that she peeled off the shift she was wearing to put it on. 

The next work trip will be to ASU in Arizona in a couple of weeks. Better bust out my summer clothes!

the weekend that was

March has been absolutely cray! So, a relatively quiet weekend was just what we all needed before we kick everything back up a notch for April.

We rediscovered our old downtown haunt and had a great breakfast at The Coffee Emporium. 

We hit the Aquarium right as it opened. 

We started our seeds and worked more in the greenhouse!!

Josie & I joined friends for The Ballet Toybox.

We relaxed. We walked. We cuddled. We colored. We cooked.  

We enjoyed.  A lot. 

Bea's Birthday Part One

There's a flood of Little Bea's Big Birthday coming. Brace yourself for epic amounts of cuteness from her party this weekend. Until then, here's a little post on the actual big day and our quiet Four Schneiders celebration at home together.

Here's a video of Bea singing happy birthday to herself:



Her actual birthday on Friday the 8th wasn't exactly perfect. She was SOO sick with the flu and the poor little thing just didn't have the energy to get excited about much of anything. She couldn't even eat her cake.

We were also all recovering from me being out of town all week, which always takes a few days to get back in the swing of things. THANK GOODNESS we decided to push Bea's birthday party back a week, because she was still quite sick on what would've been her birthday party on the 10th.

We did manage to squeeze a little ceremonial "actual birthday" celebration on Friday evening that included cake, presents and blowing out candles.

When asked what she wanted for her birthday, she asked for an airplane and popcorn. So an airplane and popcorn is what she got. :)

Her favorite present though was actually two boxes of Annie's Fruit Snacks - that she calls "Baby Gum." She was over the moon happy about this special surprise!

Josie spent a solid hour making this card/poster all by herself. It really is so special. 

Won't be long

There are little sneak peeks of spring everywhere. We are all so eager to get back outside! We've had a couple of warm days to whet our appetites (with one random snow in between). Here's some evidence that our favorite time of year is approaching...

Mother Daughter Book Club Month: 100 Dresses

Last month we were the hosts of our "Blueberry Girls" Book Club.  We were really, really excited to have the families over to our house because we only just recently started feeling settled enough to have guests at our new house.

This month's book was the classic - The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Este. Each month we choose a chapter book to read with our daughters and then meet at a rotating house to have a potluck dinner, discuss the book and do related crafts. We chose books from the A Mighty Girl website and discuss themes related to growing up as a girl.

Here's the scene before our guests arrived:

After an interesting book talk about bullying and accepting each other's differences based on the actions of the girls in the story, we moved on to everyone's favorite part of book club - the crafts.

While we were reading the book together, Josie noticed the beautiful and unique illustrations and asked if one of our crafts could be to make illustrations like the ones in the book.  We set up a colored pencil and watercolor station for the girls to create their own illustrations in the style of  Louis Slobodkin.

Next, we made paper dolls with fabric scrap dresses. Our friend Julie (and former teacher of Josie's) who now owns Sewn Studio here in Cincinnati donated two bags of beautiful fabric to inspire the girls to make their own dresses. (Please go check out this beautiful shop if you haven't already & they have really cool classes.)

 Here are the girls' dresses. Isn't it fascinating how different they all are?

Josie's Doll

Our next bookclub meets this weekend. Many of you have asked for more info about how the club works, and it's exciting to hear other moms are considering family bookclubs. I highly recommend it!

Here's the link to Neil Gaiman reading "Blueberry Girl" on youtube. If you have a daughter and don't have this book, change that quickly.