While Josh is away. . .

So, Josh has now been gone for two weeks. He has one week left, and we all can not wait!! We miss him very much.

In the mean time, I've been trying to keep busy and occupied so the time will fly by. I didn't think it would, but I think I've sufficiently filled my schedule. The first day (only about 6 hours after he left) I hurt my back. . . not fun. That led to Evan helping with the twins A LOT for the next day or two. Focusing on little every day tasks with a hurt back really helped the time fly. . . funny though, that it actually helped in the long run. So, the first week nothing too exciting happened. Well, except a few cute cheesy moments!!

Addison has the same cheese that Brayden had. So cute.

By Saturday I was feeling better, so we went ahead with our weekend plans. The Circus! I took Evan and Brayden to the Circus for a fun surprise on that saturday. Evan got this cool dragon face painting. I wouldn't let him have a full face painting since we were headed to stake conference right after. It turned out good.

Brayden was next in line to get his face done, but intermission was over and the lady had to get back to the show. So as a compromise, Brayden got two balloon animals. He thought that was ok. He's riding his horse in case you can't tell.

My Dad came out to visit us and help the time pass (and ease my burden a little). You would think that i would have taken pictures of that. Well, I mostly worked him really hard on house projects, so there wasn't time. I need to remember next time though. Brayden decided that picking me flowers was a good idea and that they needed to be put in the elephant cup with water. I thought it looked cute. . . almost like the dandelions are the elephants hair, so I took a picture.

Addison LOVES Evan's toy laptop. She sits and looks very studious and serious while she pushes buttons. It's really cute.

Andrew just runs around and plays. Sometimes even quietly by himself. Not many of my kids will do that, especially when they were his age. He's such a good boy!

So, when Josh is away I like to renovate things. Or so it seems. We decided to split the kids' bedroom into two rooms. This way this house becomes a three bedroom one bath house. Worth more money and seems to add space. I really like the progress. Since I'm surprising Josh with it (he knows about it) when he gets home, this is the only picture I'll show. It is turning out so well!! Wish I would have thought about doing it a year or more ago. It's nice giving the babies their own room.

And last but not least. This little guy provided quite the entertainment today.

All the kids followed it around the yard for a good amount of time.

They got some close up looks at it. And even got to feel it when I picked it up and put it back in the middle of the yard so the entertainment would last longer!!

Andrew was a really good spotter. Someone had to watch were it went while Evan wrote down his observations.

Here are Evan's observations. He immediately ran into the house for a sheet of paper so he could make a discovery sheet about the frog. He was very thorough. I have to say, I wouldn't have thought about doing it so though I would like to take the credit (as would his father whose science genes we know Evan has), I think the credit really goes to the magic tree house books he reads. He's a good kid.

So now you all know what the brown toad looked like that they all followed around the yard today.

In the last week that Josh is gone my plans are these: paint the bunk beds, set up the bunk beds, tear out carpet, get the installers here for the new carpet, hope the workers working on the wall finish soon, paint the new wall and redecorate the rooms, finish painting the deck, paint the trim, touch up the house paint, and if I have time, make and paint shutters and possibly get them put up. It would be so WONDERFUL to have that done by the time Josh came home. I like to go all out with my surprises (though, really he knows the plan).

Hopefully it all goes well. Wish me luck!!!

Easter 2011

So, with the weather not the warmest and the clouds hovering and dumping rain, Easter was very much an indoor holiday this year.

I took the kids to the Easter egg hunt for the kids at the church. Too bad we were only using one room. . . it made it WAY too easy for the kids to find eggs. You think these eggs are hidden for the little kids so they need to be easy, well, it was the same for the bigger kids. I did my best to make some of them hard to find, but oh well. The kids were happy because the eggs had candy or other misc. things in them, so they had fun.

Addison wasn't as confident about picking up eggs, but she got the hang of it. She still brings me eggs and wants me to fill it with something yummy. I have tried to get rid of most of the ones that are still in the house.

Brayden was done as I was walking into the room. I was walking in right behind everyone else, he just picked up his allotted amount quickly.

Evan was done before I got in the room. . . no more comment.

Here we are decorating the eggs. This year I was smarter and I colored the eggs the day before we were going to decorate. The kids had lots of fun.

They were concentrating pretty hard.

They made dinosaurs,

and monsters. Overall, they turned out REALLY cute. I should have put more pictures of the eggs in since they were so cute, but since they were just eggs, I decided not too.

Easter morning the kids had to wait until we woke up to find their baskets. That worked well, except Evan found his (must of been hidden to easy) before we got up, so I re-hid it. It took him awhile after that. SO MUCH MORE FUN!!!

Brayden's was in the ottoman.

Addison's was behind the toy bucket.

Andrew's was just between the wall and the couch. He got a big ball, so it was fairly obvious.

Evan finally found his in the drawer of the oven. We had to give him hints, but he did well.

Here is Andrew with his ball.

Addison got a travel aqua doodle. The girl LOVES to draw and doodle.

Here is Addison in her cute Easter dress.

Here is what we ate (not that anyone cares, but it helps me remember).

Here is the desert. It's a chocolate cheesecake. I like regular cheesecake, wondered if I would like this even more. The recipe called for the chocolate to be 60 - 70% cocoa. . . pretty dark in my regular opinion. Turned out, that was still my opinion when I tasted it when it was all done. No one really liked it in the family, too rich and too much dark chocolate, however, the babies ate it like it was the best thing they had eaten. So funny. It's still in our fridge. I don't have the heart to throw it out, yet.

Overall, it was a good holiday. We are grateful for the Resurrection of our Savior Jesus Christ, and for his sacrifice. It was wonderful to talk about it so much with the kids. Evan was able to even help his teacher out by answering her questions during primary. She said he did a good job. He told us about it at dinner time and did a great job!

Happy Easter 2011!!

Vet school

So, I finally got around to putting these pictures up. I took so many with the intent of finally updating this blog. . . then about 2.5 weeks went by. Now, I have easter to post also (those will come tomorrow, hopefully). Anyway, we had fun a couple of weeks ago at the Vet school open house. Cornell's vet school is top notch, and it was fun to go and see some of the fun things they had.

This is actually a picture of the kids in front of the green houses where Josh plants his rice. We parked in that parking lot since the Vet school is next door.

Cute babies, ready to go!

We saw pigs. . .

and chickens. . .

and cows. . .

and more pigs. . .

and more chickens. They were some of the cutest animals I've ever seen!!

The kids got to be Teddy Bear Doctors.

and they were great at it!!

The babies had to ride around the whole day. Though they did get to pet animals at the petting zoo area. They like just going. Stopping wasn't fun for them, but as long as the stroller was moving they were loving it!

Evan and Brayden also got their faces painted. Evan is a bunny rabbit.

Brayden got a frog. . .

and a heart.

I had to throw this cheesy picture in. She is so cute and funny. People who babysit her always say, "she is such a character!" I always agree. She sure is!!

St. Patty's Day 2011

So, for March 17th I had planned the most green meal I could think of!! We all wore green, we didn't want Evan to pinch us, and we all got in the green spirit. Ok, we had good intentions. It actually turned out that Thursday turned into one of those crazy busy days that you have no control over. . . so, although we all wore green, I didn't get a picture, and we had to eat our green dinner the next day. The kids didn't care. They were happy to just have another holiday to celebrate. Here is our green dinner.



First, must have green jello jigglers.


Green salad.


Green pistachio pudding.


Table all set in green. With my actual St. Patty's day flower Josh gave me.


Chicken Enchilada's. . . It's hard to see the green sauce, but it's there!


And of course desert. We had chip and mint ice cream pie in an oreo crust with hot fudge.


Overall it was fun. The kids enjoyed yet another fun holiday!!

Good luck everyone!

A few new stories

So, about two weeks ago I got fed up with our snow blower. It's sheering pins kept breaking, not to mention it was a compact (why did I buy something with the word compact in it?), so I took it back. Then we had a snow storm two days later. . . about 12 inches. It melted over the next week or so and wasn't a problem. Josh came to me yesterday morning and said "I don't think we should be getting anymore large snow storms". He spoke too soon. That same day it began to snow. It snowed, and snowed, and snowed. . . 15 inches!! The silly wind started blowing and what do you know, we got snowed in! Josh got a path dug out, but without a snow blower it's a difficult dig. So, needless to say, we are grateful for the coming warmer weather and rain that we are suppose to get this week. Hopefully by Thursday or Friday we can say "what snow?"



Another quick story. . . we decided we wanted GIANT blueberry muffins. I found a great recipe online and tada! we got wonderful completely delicious GIANT blueberry muffins. Thanks internet!


In case you need a closer look!


Here Addison is cooking dinner. She REALLY LIKES TO HELP ME! Ever since I let her stir these vegetables she's addicted. She begs and begs to be picked up while I am cooking and then holds her hand out to say "I do it". She's SO CUTE!!! One day she'll really be able to help! For now she just enjoys stirring.


Andrew likes to help with the dishes. That's harder to do, though, as he really just wants to take one out and carry it around for awhile. But while I am cooking, he stands on this step and tries to reach whatever it is he can. He's so cute too. We call him handsome.



Evan and Brayden were pretend playing. Evan made this "playground" for Brayden to play in.


So that's what he did. . . he played in it. Silly boys.



Well, that's it for now. Soon I might have more fun new stories. We'll see what the kids do next!