Nice out; Madelyn and Olivia take a hill

What happens when the winter suddenly rolls back for a day and spring decides to make an appearance in St Louis. Park time-that's what. The girls and I headed over to Forest Park which is conveniently located across the highway from our digs here for a little frolicing. Frolic we did. We found the biggest hill we could find and proceeded to engage in some heavy duty rolling and the obligatory photo-ops.

Fighting off the malaize

Ok...as usual we are taking our time in putting on new posts around here. Not that there hasn't been anything going on since a month ago. Just another case of trying to keep up with everything after staying up all night.

The first event that deserves mentioning is Madelyn and Olivia's great teaparty adventure. One of the girls in Madelyn's preschool class had her fifth birthday and in honor of the occasion held a teaparty. As you can see below, the girls were more than ready to put on their finest for the occasion.

By far my favorite has to be Madelyn giving herself the fish hook. Why? Who knows; she's just creative like her old man in that way.

In other news, I just recently got back from my trip to LA. Now the stated purpose of said trip was to attend the ACI spring conference (read American Concrete Institute, for those of you tend to glaze over when I talk about such things), and I'd say the trip was very productive. The more newsworthy portions of the trip was, of course, linking up with Kaboom for dinner at the Stinking Rose-a garlic infused restraunt that I think I still am reeking of-and rocking the crowd with our massive karaoke might at The Brass Monkey. Ok, truth be told, Kaboom did most of the crowd rocking, but I think I held my own with a very strong rendition of "Santa Monica" by Everclear. No word yet on offers from any labels.

Finally, the biggest news our family's long overdue return to our home in Houston. Next weekend (Apr 12 & 13) we will be making our way back home to the friendly confines of Spring. We're excited to get back into our house (I'm less excited at tackling my backyard after such a long period) and begining the work we've got planned for our house. Once we've settled in we fully intend to fire the grill up again and resume our near weekly barbecuing. Look forward to seeing everyone soon!

Park it

Olivia turns 2

Princesses gone wild

At long last...

A new post!

I don't know if we've been getting lazy here in the Bice household (probably) or if my wack-a-doo schedule is propagating a ripple effect through all aspects of my family life (possibly), but we have been exceptionally lax in the posting department. It's not that we haven't been taking pictures (we have) or that nothing has been going on (when has that ever stopped us?) but the act of sitting down and getting pictures off the camera and online for everyone to devour and wallow around in has seemed like a bit too much lately.

I was just looking and the last pictures that Erin posted were circa Halloween. Since that time we've had Christmas and a birthday (hooray, Olivia--you're 2 and intent on destroying all that you touch). We've also moved to yet another apartment here in St Louis, experienced our first big snowstorm here and had visits from all grandparents.

Madelyn has also begun preschool. This has been an interesting experience in its own right. Although I know she's learning her letters and numbers, according to her all I'm sending her there to do is to "play":

"Madelyn, what did you do at school today?"
"I played."
"Yes, did you learn anything? Any letters or numbers?"
"No. I played."

Hooray! Education triumphs again! In actuality, she has begun trying to write her name and seems very interested in learning how to read. Olivia, of course, wants to do only that which her big sister does and constantly tells us that she wants to go to "her school". Nothing is more entertaining than the days when Olivia gets to visit Madelyn's class (valentine's day party and Daddy reading to the class). From the moment we come into the class room, our two little girls are inseparable from each other. It really is funny that despite the seemingly constant bickering at home over whose princess is whose, once released into the outside world, our two girls cling to each other.

Anyhow, enough of my rambling. Life is still good in St Louis and we probably have another month and a half before we get to return to Houston. We've been hearing that several of our friends are at Purdue are taking jobs there, so we may be coming back to a town suddenly full of people that we know. How crazy.

Well, this year is quickly coming to a close. I thought I'd take a minute to wish everyone a safe and happy Holiday. We are going to be spending the holidays in Woodstock this year. We didn't think we'd be able to, but we are still here in St. Louis so we can spend Christmas with my side of the family. I am excited to be in Woodstock, it's been a few years since we were there on Christmas.

Well, lets see what's going on in our lives. We are actually happy to be home the last couple of weeks, since we have been traveling quite a bit lately. We are still here in St. Louis while Jake works on his project for work. I am starting to miss our house. We were in Houston 2 weekends ago and the girls didn't want to come back to St. Louis, they were very happy at home playing with the kitchen set that they haven't played with in four months. I'm ready to get home and start on some home projects. We'll see when we actually get back to Texas.

Maddie is definitely ready to start preschool, I'm so excited for her to go to school, I think she will just love it.....I hope! Madelyn has informed us that she wants to be a teacher when she grows up. She says she wants to teach little kids how to read, which is funny because she can't read yet. The girls are starting to play better with each other. The girls do fight quite a bit, I hope that gets better. They are so fun to listen to when they don't know I'm listening. The things they talk about just cracks me up. I'm so glad they have each other. I never had a sister so i kinda get to live vicariously through them.

Maddie and Olivia with their friend, Owen.

Happy Halloween!

Madelyn and Olivia are geared up for a serious sweets safari

Grandma King Makes a Great Recliner...

...and an excellent water cooler

Boo!

Spooooooky Princesses

Some quality pumpkin carvings light up the apartment.

What could be scarier on Halloween than a couple of baby-blue clad princesses out for a night of hell-raising and candy consumption.

Madelyn and Olivia get excited for pumpkins.

The zombie prom queen and her sidekick, Princess Elvis

A few recent pics

"I'm ready for my close-up."

"Holy crap! Flying marketing!!!"

Our Family Portrait: barefoot and all

Erin and Olivia after a long day

Madelyn's Big Number 3

We were in scenic Woodstock, Illinois last weekend; the site of such historic events as the filming of Groundhog Day, Jake and Erin's wedding, assorted nativity scene thefts, and, of course, Dick Tracy Days. We found ourselves back in what I consider to be the cradle of modern society for yet another monumental occasion: Madelyn's third birthday party.

We were glad to have so many friends and family gathered together for the party. All of Erin's family was there and a few delegates from the Bice clan made their way up from Texas as well. Both Madelyn and Olivia went nuts over her SpongeBob cake, and all the kids at the party made specific requests for various parts of SpongeBob's anatomy...and Aunt Sarah made sure to get her NC-17 request in too.

Madelyn and her cake

Madelyn extiguishes SpongeBob

Madelyn and her Snow White dolly: a modern day Pinkie and the Brain

...and after you finish eating you can use the cake to clean-up household spills...

Olivia "Cat Lady" Bice takes her kitty on a tour of the playground equipment

View from St Louis

Greetings few and far between readers...

Life continues on here in St Louis. I've somewhat adjusted to not sleeping at night and staring at lots of rust during working hours. On the plus side, however, we do have a pretty nice view from our apartment here.

Jacob Bice: Simpsonized!

For my upcoming cameo in the Simpson's movie, I had to appropriately alter my appearance.

You can too at www.simpsonizeme.com ...Enjoy!

New Jammies in St Louis

Well, this is my first post on here in nearly a year. This can be attributed to the fact that right now work requires me to work between 8PM and 5AM, which gives me some time during the day to work on many ancillary projects that have fallen by the wayside over the past year (such as this blog and those journal papers I keep talking about).

There's been big excitement in the Bice household lately: New Jammies! We were out at the mall and Erin and I made the mistake of ging into the disney store with the girls in tow. We're lucky we left with only pajamas. Nonetheless, the countdown towards the family vacation in November continues.

Madelyn and Olivia model their new bedtime threads

"Thank you daddy for outfitting us for hard sleeping"

In other news, many of you know that my work in St Louis has extended to the point that I was able to convince my clent that there was a benefit to relocating me and the whole family temporarily to St Louis. Thus, we will be in the city of the arch until the first of November (at least). We are excited about being back in the midwest and the opportunities for seeing Erin's family and some of our friends still at Purdue that it affords.