I Swear! Other Stuff Happened, Too!

I've been a bit absent, the last couple months.  The late stages of pregnancy will do that.  Things happened, though, I promise.

I planted bulbs, and though only the paperwhites came up they were my favorites anyway.   One of then even bloomed!

We had the usual Easter party at my Mom's.  I missed having Dad there, especially with it being a new house and all.  So much change, but having family together will always be the same.

We colored and hunted our own eggs, at home.

The kids decided to film their own movie, a thrilling adaptation of Little Miss Muffet.  This would be one of the stills from the set.

The Aztex are back!  And we got tickets!  We've been to a couple games and it's always a good time.

We got a car, too.  It is a Mazda5, but not the one from the other post.  For $5k less we got 2 years newer, 50k less miles, leather seats and tinted windows.  Yeah.

A sunflower sprouted up in our back yard, fell over, then produced blossoms all up the length of the stem.  There's probably 100 or more flowers on it.

Joseph turned 6!  He asked for a square cake that was chocolate with chocolate and M&Ms.  He wore his Super Cape to the soccer game, too.

Yes, Lucy came two days later.  Several people asked me when I was due, at church.  I told them "Technically, a week and a half.  In all practicality, any day, now."  I was at that very moment having contractions that never actually went away.  Here she is at home, getting all settled in.

She makes the big kids (all 3 of them!) look enormous.

And finally, today, at about noon, Joseph lost his first tooth.  He's so excited!

Flashback

Our old computer died right before Conference and the new one came with Windows. We decided to try it out, having been using Linux for the last 8? 9? years, and while it is useful for many things (mostly watching Netflix) it's a pain to use because I can't find anything. I'm also not too sure I want to put my pictures on here and because of that all the pictures I've taken in the last month and a half are still firmly on the camera card. I've decided to bypass Windows, though, and just stick them straight on here because I'm tired of not being able to post stuff.

~Easter~

We pulled out the colors and dippers and aprons for egg dying, but this year we got to try out a cool kit for putting metallic foil on your eggs. It was super sticky but the kids had a great time. The eggs turned out really pretty, too. (As a note of warning, when peeling the eggs, afterward, you have to be sure to rinse everything, including your hands, or you'll end up eating foil.)

James did a great job finding eggs, he just didn't want any. We managed to convince him to put the first one in his bucket, but he'd get upset if you tried to give him any more.


The bigger kids were expert egg hunters, though, and had a great time looking around for new additions to their growing hoards.


As a side-note, I am amazed by how small my tomato plants are in this picture. They've reached jungle proportions, by now.

~Playing with Doorknobs~

I tried to get one with his hand on the knob, but he was being too sneaky to get caught with photographic evidence.

~The End of Kindergarten~

(round one)

The school year is winding down. Elena has made a ton of friends, discovered that boys can be really weird, become one of the librarian's best customers, fallen in love with Magic Treehouse books, rocked the Read-a-Thon with 1204 pages in just 12 days, become a Marathon Kids finisher, studied the anatomy and life cycles of ladybugs and butterflies, learned some basic Spanish, and figured out multiplication. She's getting ready for next week's field day(s), right now, so be on the lookout for more on that.

~Look, Ma! No Fingers!~

There's no picture here because, well, there's nothing to see. And that makes me very happy, indeed. About a month ago, we realized that we hadn't seen Joseph sucking his fingers in a while. He wasn't nodding off with fingers in his mouth, he wasn't sucking them at random moments in the day, and he wasn't using them to feel better after some injury or disappointment. Even better, the skin had dried up and wasn't peeling off, anymore. Hooray!

Easter Fun

The day before Easter was the annual egg hunt, feast, and general merriment-that-comes-with-getting-family-together at my parents' house. It was a little rainy, but we all had a good time.





Both the kids had won egg dying kits during Bunny Bingo, the day before, so we paused on Sunday afternoon to enjoy some arts & eggs.

Name That Movie

There we were, driving home from church, Jonathan and I are chatting, and I hear something about funny pants coming from the back seat. "What's that about funny pants?"

"There were funny walking pants in the movie."

"Which movie?"

"The one with the yellow funny thing that we got from the big, big library."

Utter confusion, so we try something. "What else was in the movie?"

"Ummm... There was triangle cheese." Still nothing. Prompt some more. "There was a dog and a penguin with a glove."

At this point Jonathan's lightbulb turns on. Mine is still having trouble connecting. He turns to me and whispers "Wallace & Gromit." Ah ha! There's a pair of robotic pants and a penguin wearing a glove on its head in The Wrong Trousers. Eventually, we decided that the yellow funny thing was the robot they found on the moon in A Grand Day Out. The dog, Gromit, and triangle cheese are, of course, in all of their films.

Easter

My parents love having the kids come out for a big Easter Satuday party, each year, and we love getting to see so much family at one time. We started with a yummy lunch and some Bunny Bingo. Elena won some Easter stamps and a "Playground Mickey Mouse" book.


We all looked for eggs outside. There were some in the vegetable patch, some in the flowers, and even some in the trees. Joseph ran to all the eggs he could find, so excited that he could pick them up. At one point he had five in his hands before I could catch up with the basket. Elena liked to pause and check each of her eggs to see what was inside.



After all the eggs were found, everyone looked to see what they'd gotten.


Jonathan got off work in the mid-afternoon, and Elena told me that while I was off to get him she "played balloons with [her] boy cousins." The kids had pizza and root beer with all the cousins and a sitter, while the adults went out for a very nice quiet dinner. The whole day was fantastic.

This is Easter morning, thus the change of clothes. The strange lighting is because it's 8am and the sun was just barely shining through the lattice that's up against the back door.


We hope your Easter has been wonderful, and that you've felt the blessings of the Savior in your life!

At Last!

Elena asked for a "puckle" for Christmas a year ago and has, since then, insisted on scooting along with feet firmly on the ground... until today!



We went outside while Joseph napped, hoping to enjoy the sunshine and let Elena burn off some energy. We brought the tricycle out with us and she hopped right on and started peddling down the sidewalk. She got really good by the time we decided to go back in. Here's another run:




P.S. The chipmunk cheeks are because she has grapes stuffed in there.

Easter

My parents have a great Easter party, each year, with eggs, a ton of food, a big Family Home Evening, and lots of chatting and catching up while the kids run each other ragged. It was shockingly cold and wet, this year, but we had fun anyway. Most of my pictures are from the egg hunt (it's Joseph's first Easter, so you've got to take lots of pictures) and these are a few of the better shots.

All the kids waited in the computer room with me and Gwamma while the rest of the adults hid eggs all over the house.


Joseph and I looked around for eggs together. I would find one that was his height then set him down and point to it. Joseph would then crawl over and grab the egg.


After the first round of "Hunt, Then Count" I helped Elena find a few of the more cleverly hidden eggs. She only found 8 or 9, total, because she would stop after each find, open the egg, and unwrap the chocolate inside.


I took this one because she reminded me of Little Red Riding Hood, at Grandma's house with a couple baskets of goodies.


Back at our house, this beautiful (though still chilly and damp) Easter Morning, Elena (who was still wearing the dress from yesterday because I was not about to try sneaking jammies onto a sleeping child the night before) and Joseph found their baskets had been filled with toys. We only hid a few eggs, but they had fun hunting them down.


Joseph was facinated by Elena's Potato Head doll (Thank you, Jeri). If you look closely, you'll see he's standing all by himself, here.


We also watched The Prince of Egypt. I know, that's Passover, not Easter, but it's nice to remember the many ways the Lord has delivered all of His people. May God bless you all, and I hope you had a Happy and Blessed Easter Sabbath.