Finally a little better

This week has been a rough one. The 2 girls have ear infections and it wasn't until Thursday that Princess went back to school. The house has taken the toll. It started out bad because I was gone for the weekend, and it just seemed to get worse. I would work on cleaning, but it didn't seem like it made any difference. Thankfully I have a wonderful husband. He came home last night and after dinner we tacked the laundry and picked up the house. Today is a much better day. I have gotten a lot done and don't feel completely overwhelmed. I even put away the extra coffee pot that has been out without use for several months.
It is currently 70 degrees and sunny outside. I even rearranged the car seats in the van. Plus the neighbor's dog climbed in the van and cleaned up all the goldfish and other food scraps in the van. (I have newfound appreciation for a dog) I just hope everyone stays healthy this weekend.

Happy Birthday

I think I can officially qualify for worst daughter this week. This week was my mom's birthday and she even called me on her birthday. I completely forgot, I didn't even wish her a happy birthday. SORRY MOM...
Well, here is something for you.

Hope you had a great day... even if your daughter forgot.

Appreciated

I was away on a women's retreat with our church this weekend. I had a wonderful time with some wonderful women.

I came home Sunday afternoon and after observing the disaster it was nice to hear my husband say, "It is a lot harder to do this than I expected." It was nice to hear. But it would have been nicer to come home to a slightly cleaner house. I will grant him some leniency. Both girls are sick with high fevers and a glass pan broke inside the kitchen cabinet, so he had to clean all the pans in the cabinet. I have a wonderful husband and I can stand the disaster to get away for a few days without any kids. All the kids were happy and had a great weekend with Daddy.

I have been spending most of the morning vaccuuming, cleaning dried smeared toothpaste off the side of the bathroom vanity and otherwise returning the house to a little more order.

SUPERBOY!!

Buddy got a wonderful present in the mail from Grandma!! THANK YOU GRANDMA! Superboy in action!

Not so good

Some have said that I only talk about the cool and fun stuff my kids do, well this week we had a day that was not so fun....

It was my day to stay home and have a quiet working around the house. I was changing the sheets on the crib, then Munchkin fell out of the chair and got a HUGE bruise on her forehead, of course I was not looking at her when she fell, but by the V shape of the bruise, I think she hit the inside corner of the bookshelf. I finally got her calmed down and moved on to other normal household chores... These chores were compounded by a little girl who liked to do this to ALL of the kitchen cabinets. It was a good day to organize the kitchen cabinets. It never ended all day.

Oh yeah, Princess fell in PE today at school and actually has a bigger bruise on her forehead, and a hole in the knee of her pants. Now the 2 girls match.

Exercise

Someone loves to do exercises with Grandpa's weights

Baptism

We went to the baptism of our niece, she is absolutely beautiful, and it was a beautiful ceremony for the family. Getting ready with both Grandma's.She was happy in the beginning, but then there was that COLD water out of a marble basin, of course then there was the cool candle to watch. All four Grandchildren had a great time playing with each other. I also love this picture of the 2 brothers with their little girls.

Finally walking

Munchkin finally decided to start walking. We went to Grandma and Grandpa's house for our niece's baptism, so Grandma and Grandpa got to see it. I think I need to put her in long dresses more often, she can't crawl as well. She took a few steps before this, but I wasn't fast enough with the camera... some day I will figure out how to rotate the video, but I don't want to take the time to figure it out now.

So soon....

Only a few more hours and Daddy will be home. We have survived the entire week without him. We only had a few minor things go wrong. Daddy is due back in town tomorrow morning and I am very excited to have some help around here. I am also proud of myself that I didn't break down and eat out until tonight's dinner. The house is mostly clean, the laundry is mostly done and the kids are very excited to see Daddy.

Now we will find out in a few weeks if he can survive 2 nights without mommy! I don't have high expectations, I don't expect the house to be mostly clean or any laundry to be done. I do expect the kids to be very excited to see me.

Zoo

Since we had a warm weekend, we also went to the zoo for a while. The kids had a great time. They loved playing peek-a-boo with the groundhogs.

We tried to get a good picture with all 3 kids on the turtle, but this is the best we could do.

At least we got a decent picture of Munchkin on the turtle.

Early Spring

I love days in winter when it warms up for just a few days. We had a great warm weekend and then today was 70 again. We went out and played for a while today, so all the kids got to practice their new skills. Princess is getting better at climbing the tree in the front yard and hanging from it. Buddy is trying out skateboarding. Munchkin is still working on walking. She has taken 3 steps, but still won't do any more. However, if I put her behind her little cart she can move across the lawn FAST. She is also becoming quite adept at climbing up on chairs and MANY other things.

The Taxi car driver

Buddy was hilarious today, he has days when he uses his amazing imagination and tells me great stories. Today the couch was his taxi car and he was a cowboy taxi-car driver. The couch was his taxi-car and he had lots of stuff in the back of his taxi-car that he was driving around. he was even wearing Munchkin's toy keys on his belt, with a toy measuring tape. Then he wore the cowboy hat and vest.

We even got to play the taxi-car game, which involves kicking 3 balls across the floor and have mom kick them back. It is a better game when Munchkin doesn't get the ball. I don't have any idea why it is a taxi-car game, but he tells me that is the game.

I love this crazy little boy.

What do you want to learn about?

The kids are always surprising me. We have a book from the library about a dress up box. It basically shows kids dressed up as all different people. After breakfast yesterday I was doing dishes and all I hear from the other room is "What do you want to learn about?" They were taking turns looking up different things in the book and telling each other what a Fairy wears, what a firefighter wears, what a doctor wears etc....

After getting over the shock that they were actually taking turns and sharing nicely together I thought about what they were saying. Instead of an adults question of "What do you want to be when you grow up?" It was just about what they wanted to learn about. It made me think, What do I want to learn about today? I usually have a goal for learning about something. But have somehow lost the simple joy of learning something new just for fun.

So now I have to think, What do I want to learn about today?

Laundry girl

Munchkin isn't walking yet, but it does not slow her down, she can climb up the ladder to the kids bunk beds and she is a climber. Her favorite thing to climb on, clean laundry and laundry baskets. This is the clean laundry pile that is normally next to the couch in the play room.
She has learned if there is enough laundry there, she can get up on the couch and then get into more trouble.

Dirt

Princess loves to dress up and wear nice clothes. She hates being told to go inside and change. However, she gets anything she is wearing very dirty. I usually don't have her change out of her uniform because then I would have to wash 2 sets of clothes for each day. Today I should have told her to change out of her skirt and tights before we played outside. By the time we came inside her tights were brown and her skirt had black marks from riding her bike.

GREW?

My daughter has a desire to climb things, she has always loved climbing. Now she can climb the fence.

1st of February?

There are some nice things about living in a place without snow. On the 1st of February it was 60 degrees a sunny. We took Munchkin on her first bike ride and had fun playing outside. We have a bike carrier, but it is not attached, so we borrowed the neighbor's bike. I was riding it, but ran in to grab the camera and had to take this picture... I love you Daddy!! :)