Josh Renaud's weblog detailing the exploits of his family in Ferguson, MO, USA. Starring Yoli, Jadzia, Ludi, Josie, and Joseph Renaud.
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For our three girls, tangles are a terror.
My girls have beautiful, long, straight, dark hair. But their hair tends to get very tangly. Ludi’s hair is the worst of the bunch, and that is primarily because she gets a lot of food and other substances in it.
When it comes time for combing, you can count on the crying.
… Until this week!
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This year’s Northern Lights was a lot of fun. We got there early enough for the girls to check out the petting zoo and to decorate a few cookies before the parade. We got a nice spot to watch the parade (while eating hot dogs), then we ate some free cookies and drank hot chocolate, visited with friends and neighbors, made peanut-butter-sandwich reindeers, rode on the train, saw a REAL train rumble past, and watched the tree lighting. There was a bit of whining and complaining along the way, but overall the children (I keep wanting to write “the girls”) did well.
We’ve been wanting a piano for a while and decided this Christmas was the right time to get one.
We found one pretty quickly that seemed good to us: it was old and had a key out of tune, but it was in Ferguson, just a few blocks away.
We’ve been counting down the days until we could have it delivered. Today was the day! Check out this video of the girls in action:
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Tonight Ludi earned her Cubbie vest in AWANA.
She was very proud to finally get it after several weeks of memorizing Bible verses.
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My nephews came to stay in town with my parents for four days. It has been a fun time for our girls. The first two days we went over to Nanny’s house to play.
The girls love any excuse to see their Nanny and play in a different locale. But the addition of their two cousins to the mix makes for icing on the cake.
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Today the weather was so amazing that I could no longer put off a small project I have long wanted to embark on: finding family gravestones at Calvary Cemetery in St. Louis.
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Here’s a little more background on the birth of our first boy, Joseph Martin Renaud.
Monday night I was working a sports design shift at the Post-Dispatch. The Cardinals home opener and breaking news about Stan Kroenke’s intention to buy the Rams kept me busy all night.
I got home around 1:30 a.m. Tuesday. I found Yoli in the kitchen making crepes to eat at breakfast. She had intended them to be for the whole family. But at 12:38, she had her first real contraction followed by a couple more over the next hour. “The baby is going to be born sometime today,” she told me.
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Jadzia, Ludi, Josie and Josh model their sweaters (and poncho) for “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” Day.
We also watched two episodes of the older girls’ choosing: “Windstorm in Bubbleland” (opera) and a recent episode featuring author Eric Carle and a fortune cookie man in Make-Believe.
If you haven’t already tried it, you should “take my Mister Rogers quiz”:http://interact.stltoday.com/blogzone/multimedia-archive/entertainment/2010/03/mister-rogers-neighborhood-quiz/!
Also, here are some links to articles from several news outlets:
* “‘Mister Rogers’ still looms large in Pittsburgh”:http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/17/us/17pittsburgh.html
* “Fred Rogers’ ideas celebrated at conference, museum events”:http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10078/1043992-53.stm
* “Volunteer Day Promoted to Honor Mister Rogers”:http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory?id=10148531
Ludi has a runny nose, and had a slight fever. This certainly isn’t as bad as some other bouts we’ve had over the years. But it’s amazing how just a little sick goes a loooooooong way with these girls.
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At the end of January we took a trip to the Magic House. It was our first outing somewhere in a while with the girls. They had a blast, but of course it couldn’t last long enough for them.