Biggest bad hair day ever!

On Friday morning Abbie came down in the morning, took her normal trip to the bathroom and after looking in the mirror came running to me to proclaim that she was having the "biggest bad hair day ever" (really those were her exact words). I tried really hard not to laugh and convinced her to let me take her picture - she didn't want it taken at first but she finally conceded as long as I promised to fix it for her right after I took the picture. She's so funny! But in her defense she was having a bad hair morning for sure!

She spent the rest of the day playing dress up and coming up with, again her words, "the perfect costume for Halloween". In case you can't tell it's a combination of her Cinderella dress from Halloween last year, a cat mask (a hand me down from the family I used to nanny for in NY), butterfly wings, pink kitty rain boots, and on occasion a pair of flower sunglasses and pink beads or a purple hat whatever sparks her fancy at the moment. Where do they come up with these things? This is a get up for record book!


Today I am grateful for a little girl who lights up the room when she enters. If we could all have just half the love for life that she does this world would be a happy happy place! What do you want to be when you grow up? I want to be as loving, happy & carefree as Abigail!

Uncle Donny is this how you do it?

One of the things I remember about my little brother growing up is that anytime he was working on something intently his tongue would stick out a little bit. Last night I caught Kassie doing the same thing as she played with a toy - it brought some fun family memories flooding back. I just had to take pictures & share.





Today I am grateful for my brother, for the great brother he is and has always been, well most of the time ;) - I love you Don!

Big Brother

Dan caught Nate reading to the girls the other night - caught a little bit of it on video & in some not so great pictures - it was so fun to "catch" him being so sweet to his sisters - he really is a great big brother.



We are grateful Nate is learning to read & loving it!

Watch out world here I come!

Kassie is mobile, she is a bump no more! I was starting to think she was going to skip crawling and go straight to walking, but once again my children have shown me just how little I know. She started crawling at the ward activity on Friday - I finally got a couple of decent videos of her to share (I won't tell you how many tries it took - egads).





We are grateful that this sweet little girl is part of our family - she's growing too fast!

Baby Goats

Our old babysitter (she grew up and moved away to college - Nate & Abbie miss her!) is raising pygmy goats. The mom had babies about 4 weeks ago. The baby goats came to visit primary on Easter Sunday (another post for another day). We called to see if we could go visit them today, it was a ton of fun! Nate thinks that the more the baby goats climb on him the better they like him, so he would lay down on the ground and let them climb all over him. Abbie wants them to name the baby girl goat "Sparkle 'cause she's a girl" whatever that means.








I am grateful for neighbors with cool animals the we can go play with - it was a great day!

Family Pinewood Derby

On Friday our ward had a family pinewood derby activity. It was a crazy busy week, but I did my best to make a derby car for the family. It didn't win any races but Nate thought it was cool - so in the end it was all good. I roped Dan into doing some work on the tires/axles - we learned some lessons hopefully ones that we can use to make a better car next year when Nate gets to compete in his first cub scout pinewood derby. Not bad for our first derby car & it was (mostly) made by a girl...

PS.Notice Nate's lack of bottom teeth - he had 2 pulled this week - there's a rather large gaping hole in his mouth right now.

The process in pictures:












I am grateful for good family fun - we had a great time!

Asparagus - It's green, it's yummy, it's hard to swallow

Ok so when my kids are babies they are awesome eaters they've all eaten just about anything (especially their veggies) then for some reason I just don't understand they get picky. Nate & Abbie both loved all the baby veggies plus several we would steam (broccoli & cauliflower just to name a couple) and now their veggie in-take is just this side of non-existent - it makes me a little crazy. So anyway, on Easter Sunday as part of dinner we steamed some Asparagus, Kassie was very interested so we let her have a piece to play with/try. She loved it. We grabbed the camera to get proof that a) I feed my kids veggies and b) at some point in their lives they really liked them (ammo for future reference). She was so cute, and then......


She did go on and eat some more, so she wasn't traumatized over the experience - whew.

Monday was picture day for school & Abbie wore her Easter dress - so here's a couple pictures of the girls in their matching dresses, just not together (Abbie on picture day & Kassie on Easter trying to get some chocolate) oh well maybe another time.



Today I am grateful that Kassie (more or less) slept through the night. Baby steps - we'll get there!

Happy Easter! or The Devil wears Huggies

Yesterday was a crazy busy day for us. One of Nate's friends from church had a baptism & birthday party that we went to, and for some crazy reason I had a dental appointment scheduled on the day before Easter (not sure what I was thinking there). So by the time that normal Saturday errands were done, plus our extras, plus time for Dan to prepare his lesson & time for me to finish my sharing time preparations - getting ready for Easter happened REALLY late. Dan and I started for bed at 1am at which time Kassie decided to wake up (we still have no clue what her deal was) - & stay up until almost 3am, hence my sub-title. As I crawled back into bed thoughts of the craziness of the day ahead of me (40+ sugared up kids in primary) seemed more than I was going to be able to handle. Nate & Abbie were up at 6:15 anxious to see if the Easter Bunny had stopped by. After a supervised (to control sugar intake) egg hunt we started to get ready for church. Church went surprisingly well. The girls looked adorable in their matching dresses (yea no pictures - sorry, I'm blaming it on lack of sleep - I didn't even realize I hadn't taken pictures until we were home & everyone was changed out of their church clothes). My sharing time was good fun - I wish I had brought my camera (again thought about it way too late) - baby goats in Primary - yea there's a story here - another day perhaps, and I think I got my message across - bonus! They had fun & learned something at the same time - the perfect combination for all! After church the kids played with the treats/toys that had been left for them. Abbie has re-hidden the eggs several times so far & in her words she's "practicing to be an Easter Bunny. I've got to learn more about finding eggs so I can be a good Easter Bunny mom" Ummm - ok. Nate humors her & will go find them all again, when he's not busy assembling legos and Kassie has had a great time with the eggs in general. She's still trying to figure out what all the tasty treats are that brother & sister are so intent on - no luck for her yet. Just empty eggs to play with - but so far she's ok with that. Not much new really just a nice day with the family. Celebrating a very special day. Here are a couple of the pictures I was able to get.

Cassie and her basket of eggs - it's a little low in this shot - she kept dumping them out - we'd pick them up , she'd dump them out again. A great game for an 8 month old.

Abbie got some new sun glasses in her Easter Basket - they are pink so she loved them. Nate had just asked a favor of Abbie a minute before I snapped this photo, she put on her sunglasses pulled them half way down her nose, looked over the glasses at him and let him know "I am very busy with my own things can you please stop bothering me?" Well at least she asked nicely??? What an attitude she's got - 5 going on a sassy 16.

Well it's movie time. We are going to watch Disney's Robin Hood as a family. Time to be done for tonight.

Today I am grateful that for an elder brother who loved me enough to do what it took for it to be possible for me to be with my family forever. A love so unconditional, a sacrifice so selfless that I may never completely comprehend. A gift I cherish always, but on this special Easter Day, a reminder of just how invaluable a gift I've been given.

Grandma Terry's Easter Package

Abbie is counting the days until Easter. She is so excited for the Easter Bunny to come & leave her a chocolate bunny to eat. Church is at 8:30 so getting ready could be very interesting this week (although I can't wait to put my girls in their matching dresses - they are sooo cute!). Grandma sent a warm up gift, it was very well received! (This video won't be interesting to most - but Grandma really wanted to see their faces so this is mostly for her)




I always close my posts with something that I am thankful for. Today I forgot to give Nate his morning meds (for his ADHD), he had a very rough morning at school. What I am grateful for is 3 fold, first a teacher that was insightful enough to contact me to see what might be causing Nate to have such an off day & second, the ability I had (since I work from home) to drop everything, get the girls into the car & get Nate his meds at school, and third the meds themseleves. There is a lot of controversary around medicication, in some circles anyway, believe me we've gotten our share of advice from others, and it was an extremely difficult decision for us to make. However, one thing I know is that for Nate it helps him. Helps him focus, be successful, be happy with himself, and frankly helps others see the good in Nate that we know is there.

Oompa-Loompa in the making?

Dan took Kassie & Nate to bath & Abbie was taking a turn for "TV Time". She choose to watch a movie she started earlier (she's still trying to finish it), Charlie & the Chocolate Factory - all my kids love this movie - I think it's the music. Anyway I caught Abbie singing & dancing with the Oompa-Loompas & it was so funny I couldn't resist. I started the music over again & hit record, here are the best 3. I'm really feeling the pressure now to put her into some type of dance class. This is one of the reasons I love being a mom - nothing makes me happier & brings me more true joy (some days anyways) than my kiddos!

Today I am grateful for digital cameras/recorders so I can share this with my family & friends!

Pictures

As some of you might know about 4 months ago I lost the digital copies of all the pictures of my children from Nate's birth until about January of this year. Right now we are waiting to see if the (very expensive) professionals can recover them for us. In the meantime I've been taking lots more pictures & videos of the kiddos so we have something. We've also been looking in every nook & crany collecting any pictures we can find (digging through "sent" email folders for any pictures we've emailed out at any point) - if they aren't able to get us our pictures back more of you may be hearing from us asking for any pictures you may have of our kids. In the meantime here are some of our more recent life experiences in pictures.

We took the kids to Sears for Easter Pictures - here are some of our favorites:
We took a trip to the zoo - Kassie's first - she had a great time - we all did! Mount Rainer even made a nice showing.

Our St. Patrick's Day Green - This was in the week when Nate was sick - hence the green PJs.

Kassie update. She's going to crawl any day now - we are all excited for her to be mobile. She's also getting good at grabbing everything - recently she grabbed Abbie's dinner plate from the table in an attempt to get Abbie's un-eaten hot dog bun, all she got was a swipe of ketchup on her head.

Abbie update - Not much new, still a diva in the making. She loves to be the center of attention, pull out a camera & not only will she smile but pose as well. She working hard at learning her letters & sight words at school - she'll be a kindergartner before we know it!
Nate update - I've written more about Nate lately than the girls, but a funny thing to share a little bit ago Dan took Nate & Abbie to swimming lessons. Long story short, Nate didn't have any PJs to come home in, but Abbie had 2 sets. Good thing Nate isn't above wearing pink- he looks pretty good in it too.
Then when Nate was sick I pulled out some jello molds my mom sent to make something special for him - we made mini jello molds with 3 different kinds of jello (so it looked layered, although you can't tell in the picture). When he dished it up he put whipped cream around the bottom & at the top, added cupcake sprinkles and called it "Grandma's Famous Jello Recipe" (I'm guessing because grandma sent the molds she got credit for the creation). I called my mom to fill her in, not only on what happened but to give her a copy of her now "Famous Jello Recipe" - we both got a kick out of it. Nate's rendition of Grandma's Famous Jello Recipe
We've been working on getting both kids to ride their bikes with no training wheels. Nate is free wheelin' on 2 wheels now. Abbie's almost there - video to come soon (I hope)! Never a dull moment around here - how blessed we truly are!

Today I am grateful for the sun - we had a couple of good weather days in a row. I forget how much I like the sun & fresh air - the doors have been opened as we have been "drinking in" the good weather. After all this is Western Washington who knows how long it will last!

PS - The last 3 weeks have been long - Nate was sick for one whole week, the day he was well enough to go to school - Abbie got whatever bug Nate brought home (thankfully Dan, Kassie & I all escaped it) & missed 3 out of 4 days of preschool that week. This last week has been spring break so come tomorrow I'll be happy to have 2 healthy kids who are going back to school!