Waiting For Summer

We are all so anxious to get to summer!  We made a countdown to summer chain and posted a page full of exciting summer happenings that are just around the corner.  But we still have 31 days to get us to the end of the school year and the beginning of summer fun!  I know we'll make it somehow, and I can't wait!  In the meantime, though, there has been plenty to keep us busy.

 Emma was saying, "Smell my stinky feet!"

 Adam wrote This book belongs to "The Morali".  Ha!

 Just taking a reading break.

This wall full of preschool crafts makes me so, so happy.  He never brought crafts home at his old preschool, and we are both still so glad we made the switch.

 Ah, the life of a child.  Exhausted, dirty face, balloon in hand.  Life is simple, life is good.

 Leah saw a furry critter scurry into the rock wall last week and tried to lure it out with celery.  She swears it was a wild ferret, but all we've seen down there so far is the cutest little bunny ever.

And we're being hit with sun, wind, thunderstorms and lots of rain.  Jason is planting his corn and we're literally counting down the days until summer is here!

A Day in the Life of a Happy Boy

He wakes up full of smiles- 

 He's a flying baby!

 No hands!

 He gets his hands on chocolate-

 He hitches a ride so happily-

 He naps so peacefully-  

 He takes a rest on my knee- 

He practices sitting up- 

 He holds my thumb with two dimpled fists while he nurses- 

 He samples new foods daily- 

He is growing up so fast. 

Easter

I love Easter because it just a holy day.  Despite the small bits of fun that we add in with eggs and chocolate, the holiday remains sacred in our home because we focus on the resurrection of our Savior.  And the knowledge that we can all be resurrected again because of his sacrifice for us.

 Easter Sunday was a happy day for our family.

We had friends over for dinner, and for some reason I got a picture of the table but not of the people.  It was a delightful afternoon.

 We always miss being with family for holidays, but we still make our own fun.

 Chocolate dirt with a frosting carrot!

And the Easter baskets and egg dying and finding were all wonderful, too.  Easter is just a wonderful holiday- very low expectations and lots of fun.

The day before Easter we organized a little egg hunt and breakfast at the park with friends- if you plan it, they will come.  This activity was a tradition we were introduced to- and loved- in Indiana.  It made me very happy to keep the tradition going this year.

Send It Soaring

One of the (only) benefits to living in such a windy city is the ability to step out the front door and fly a kite just about any time we want to.  

Which is awesome to watch from Noah's bedroom window... until the kite goes so high that it lifts you "off the ground so your feet aren't even touching!"- something Leah's been telling us about all week.  

Because He Napped

Noah got his six-month immunizations yesterday and they have really wiped him out.  He slept for nearly 4 hours this morning. And while he slept...

I got dinner started early.  We will have a home-cooked/not Easter dinner leftovers meal tonight. 

I sewed up the sleeves in Leah's new dress.

I jumped on the trampoline with Emma and Adam.

I sorted and washed the next size of baby clothes for Noah (yay for my growing baby).

I washed and put away two other loads of laundry.

I cleaned up the kitchen from breakfast and made, served and cleaned up from lunch.

I played dolls with Emma and Legos with Adam.

I sat down and did puzzles with them. 

I read books with them.

I worked on my pantry organizing labels project.

I vacuumed. 

Now!  I didn't shower, or run, or cross off a hundred other things on my to-do list.! But I did something!  And it felt great.

I've started telling the kids my old line about being an octopus- if I had 8 arms I could do just about anything they need me to, and all at the same time!  But I only have two arms, so it they all need me at the same time, the best I can offer them is half an arm.  We have to exercise patience all around.

This is tricky with Emma especially, as she has started insisting on having "my mom" do everything that she needs, from helping her brush her teeth to carrying her down the stairs to pouring cereal into her dog bowl for a snack (a favor from a puppy-themed birthday party).  And I try to do as much as I can.  I'm the mom!  And that's what I do.  

It's Not All Fluff

A sweet friend of mine asked me the other day if I have ever regretted something I've posted on my blog.  Last night I went to bed regretting something I said in my last post about my family being the most important thing in my life and the rest being all fluff.

But it's not all fluff.

My relationship with God and my relationship with Jason are the most important things in my life.  They are not fluff.  But those feelings are hard to turn into words that can be illustrated with a few snapshots and published for the world to read about.  So I don't blog about them much.  Maybe I should.

Taking care of our house and making it our home is important, but it's a fine line between interesting and fluff.  And while homemaking certainly takes up a good chunk of my life, it's not what I want to remember in 50 years, not so much as I want to remember these sweet days with my babies.  So I don't blog about it much.  Maybe I should.

So!  Here is a bit of fluff that is going on in our home lately.

As the weather warms up we're talking landscaping daily, debating between purchasing a soccer net or a bike trailer first, and trying to add color to our gray and white interior.  We're trying to figure out how to landscape this rock pile-

After creating this awesome laundry hole in our master closet wall-

with the help of Adam- 

Jason masterfully added these shelves in our half bath-

I love them.  And I love that we have genius friends and family that we can "borrow" awesome house ideas from.  And I love that Jason is so handy and can do anything I ask him to.  He is always up for a challenge.

I want to find a perfect clock to put above our pantry door-

And I'm trying to make sense of the mess inside the pantry-

We hung these picture frames in Adam and Emma's room with no idea what to actually put inside the frames.  Kind of silly.

And I have a bunch of frames that I want to hang up above our table, but again, we have nothing to put in them.  A family photo shoot is in our near future.

So there you have it.  A bit of house fluff for the blog.

Family Field Trip

Sometimes I think I should have more exciting things to blog about- not just the everyday moments that make up our lives, but my crafts (ha! I haven't made one of those in quite a while), or my organizing or decorating skills or my thoughts on marriage, education, money, religion... I don't know, just... more.  Even though I fully realize that blogging is becoming a dying art (at least compared to what it used to be), I still love it.  But at the end of the day and any time I might have spent on any of those other things, my life and my thoughts always come back to the most important things- my family.  Everything else is just fluff.

So!  First things first.  Jason was measuring our yard for his grand sprinkler system plans and bonked his head on the external vent to the fireplace.  Hence the big red circle in the middle of his forehead.  Poor guy.

This week I took the kids out of school and we drove up to Ames for a youth matinee presentation of Five Little Monkeys.  Since Jason works just outside of Ames he was able to join us, and it was so fun to see him in the middle of the day.  Especially for me.  An adult!  Who can hold my babies!  And asks me questions, and even listens to the answers!  So nice.  When he had headed back to work and the rest of us back home, I sent him this picture with a note-

A Wednesday worth remembering.  

And it was true for all of us.  The days come and go and we put our heads down and do our duties- whether they be at home, at school, or at work- 99% of the time.  And the work has to be done.  But these days are the ones that we remember.

Some of the details worth remembering from this day-
-How excited the kids were to pack up their own lunches to eat at the theater before the performance started.  The two littlest fell asleep on the ride up, so we enjoyed our sack lunches in the car.
-The way Emma and I bounded up and down the theater stairs in search of a bathroom.  We are still in the "check out every potty in every place we ever go" phase of potty training.  But she's never had an accident in a public place, so that is just fine by me.

-Listening to the Beatles and other great oldies while we waited for the show to start.  Emma grabbed Noah's hand and shouted, "Two, three, four!" while we were rocking out to The Monkees I'm a Believer.
-the way all three of the big kids huddled on and around Jason during the more intense moments of the play.  Who knew that crocodile could be so scary?
-Smiling to myself as I related all too well with the "Mama" character- dashing from place to place, constantly interrupted, apologetically asking people to please help her out while she tried to wrangle her little monkeys, exhausted... I get it!
-The wind!  It was super strong when we left the theater and we all had to hunch over as we trudged to the car.  Emma walked with her hand across her eyes, shielding the wind "like Kristoff".
-Taking note of how good it felt to be out and about, exposing my kids to fun things and bucking the everyday school/home/work routine.  I have a list of things that I do that help me feel like "a good mom", and outings like this is definitely on the list.