"The Best Spring Break"

Victoria told me that this Spring Break was the "best spring break ever!" Want to know what the best spring break looks like?

-Monday: spring cleaning, Austin's last day of gymnastics, the McEwen kids came over (the family that came for Easter dinner), Victoria's dance class

-Tuesday: the zoo with Marigold and her daughter Paige (Marigold is a newly baptized member of our church)

Erik was really friendly with the geese!

-Wednesday: watched the Dallin (4), Daria (3), and Victor (almost 2) Loosli for the whole day! The mom, Melissa, and I are good friends and carpool to dance, piano, and anything else we can. Her older kids babysit mine and obviously she has kids Austin and Erik's age too. She made a trip to Utah with her older girls and her husband had to work a few days last week, so I got to watch them one of the days.

Goofy boys!

Pretty girls

-Thursday: the girls got to go to work with Jason for "take your child to work day". They had so much fun, they made Jason stay at work late! They created their own car designs, made pictures for co-workers, went to lunch, among other things. Meanwhile, the boys and I went to playgroup at the park and then to lunch at IKEA with some playgroup friends. IKEA was serving free food to kids all week in honor of spring break!

-Friday: Jungle Java for Paige's 4th birthday, the kids played at the McEwen's house in the afternoon while I had a two hour break, Victoria had a friend over in the evening, we watched the first Star Wars movie as a family.

We had lunch and cake at my house since we live so close to Jungle Java. 

-Saturday: Rake and Go service project with our church and another one in the Plymouth area, Karissa's last day of dance/gymnastics.

The kids all impressed me with their hard work.

We were on a team with the missionaries. 

One of them broke our rake at the last house, the other broke the rake of the other couple we were with!

 -Sunday: we went to a potluck dinner after church at a brother's house in the ward who was a bachelor for the weekend. He had invited the Losslis and the McEwens, our two good friends of the week!

After no nap on Sunday, playing with friends at dinner, and the week of activities, Erik sat down to eat his snack and said, "I tired". The next thing we knew, he was out!

Easter Weekend

We were blessed with lovely weather for Easter weekend. We were able to spend a lot of needed time outside doing some spring yard work. We went to an Easter egg hunt at a park Saturday morning, but didn't actually stay for the hunt. It said it was from 10:30-11:30, but I guess that was for arrival time. The "hunt" started at noon, which was around the time Karissa's gymnastics class started, so we enjoyed playing on the playground and the complimentary hot chocolate, doughnut holes, and unripe bananas. The kids were actually fine with leaving. It started to get really crowded and it was only an Easter egg "grab" as all the eggs were laid out on the grass.

 The Easter Bunny hid the eggs in the yard this year since our church meeting time starts at 1:00 this year and the weather forecast said it would be nice. The baskets were hid well inside so the kids had to search harder for them than usual. Victoria's was under her big pile of clothes in her room, Karissa's behind the piano music stand, Austin's in a fort on the couch, and Erik's in his push car. Something that had to do with each of them. After they found them, we had breakfast and watched some church-related Easter videos before going out for the hunt. The weather was so nice by 10, it was perfect!

Erik wasted no time digging into his bunny sucker from his basket.

Which one is the grass?

Watching a video about the life of Christ with their new stuffed toys.

We worked hard on the yard the day before.

 After church we took some family pictures and got ready for our holiday buddies, the McEwen family, to come over. We've eaten the past two Thanksgiving dinners with them, so they've become our holiday family. Victoria said she felt like she was at a family reunion since it was so fun. They're in our ward at church, but the kids are all slightly younger, so they're in different classes and go to a different school, which means we don't see them all the time.

Austin can't do many pictures without making a weird face, nowadays.

Not too many blossoms yet, but still beautiful!

The best thing about the dinner? We were able to eat it outside since it was still nice. That's the first time we could eat Easter dinner outside! I love spring!!

I didn't notice that Austin and Erik had fled the scene. 

Changing it Up

We've been very busy lately changing things around in our house and freshening up here. Usually, with our tax return, we had been doing big home projects, like painting the outside of our house, getting a new banister, or new carpeting. This year, we bought ourselves a new mattress (ours was 15 years old!) and a new bed to go with it. We bought a new bunk bed in January for the boys (still haven't made their matching bedspreads, so I haven't taken pictures yet) and a bunk bed for Victoria's new room in what used to be the guest room (Walmart has very well-priced bunk beds and they are good quality). I've been doing painting here and there as well, which is always nice around spring cleaning time.

Our room:

It's hard to see the little backboard from this angle with the pillows.

I love the dark wood with the blue!

This is why we wanted this IKEA special, for the drawers!

Victoria decided she really wanted her own room, so she moved all her stuff in the guest room one of the snow days in January. It's taken us this long to finally decide what we wanted to do with the room. We painted it and got this bed so we have more sleeping space if we ever have more guests come at one time.

 Victoria's room:

We used the full-size mattress from the guest room for the bottom and one of the mattresses from the girls' old bunk beds for the top. Karissa has our old queen bed, which will be the guest room when guests come. 

Even though I'm liking having some new furniture, I still can't pass up free-bees. The dark bookshelf was free!

I'm finishing Victoria's jean quilt and Karissa's "princess" bed, so more on this later.

One final note, now that spring is here, we got hit with another small snow storm, passing the record set here in 1880-81 for the most snow in this area. We got 94.8 inches this winter!!

Bye-Bye Buh-ba!

Erik has really enjoyed his bottle, or what he calls it, buh-ba. So much so that he would drink it for nourishment and for comfort. The softy that I was, would give him some, then try to get him to eat other things. It worked sometimes, but not always. Luckily, I was able to get away with not bringing it with us when we would go out, so he would eat other snacks on our outings and errands, but as soon as we would arrive at the light by our house he would excitedly yell out, "Buh-ba!!!" knowing what he could have when we returned home. 

About a month age, I noticed that we were running low on bottle nipples and that the one on his favorite green bottle was starting to get a hole. I decided that when the nipples became unusable, we were done. I wasn't going to buy more. It would be the perfect way to "wean" him off the bottle. A few weeks ago, the green bottle nipple broke. I told him we had to throw it away. He was very upset, but reluctantly decided to go with the blue bottle instead of no buh-ba at all. Last Thursday morning, I knew it was on it's last straw. Their were so many holes in it he couldn't even drink his milk lying down, otherwise milk would pour out all over him. That afternoon he ripped it right off with his teeth! 

He was pretty sad when he realized he couldn't drink milk from his buh-ba anymore. 

Notice the blue rim, this was after the green bottle was gone. (This picture was to capture his morning hair.)

This was about a week before the favorite green one was finished. Someone gave him milk in two, which he was very happy about!

Just before the last drink.

No more nipple!

 Erik has come to terms with it, though even today asked for his buh-ba when we got to the stop light before coming home. He's starting to eat more food, but we still have a long way to go! He mostly drinks yogurt drinks mixed with milk in the Danimals containers. He won't drink milk from a sippy cup or any other form of cup or water bottle. He drinks water from water bottles, just not milk. I guess he thinks milk is the best from a bottle.

A Good Crop

We started our seeds really early this year, like the very first day of March, because we are ready to get outside! Plus, this year we have our little greenhouse that we purchased last year around mid-April, which was a little late to start actual seeds.

The boys really enjoyed playing in the dirt in the house!

It was a little weird planting seeds with all that snow in the yard, but we were ready!

Now we have some good-looking plants coming up!

Various tomatoes, various onion, garlic, broccoli, spinach, various peppers, some flowers, cat grass, and the kids each planted their own sunflower. We'll plant more variety into the ground when planting season comes, if it ever does!

Most of the snow piles are finally gone, but we still have our Christmas lights up, and a lot of other people do too, since we've had only a few opportunities the past couple of weeks to take them down! We'll it's almost Easter, maybe we'll just "red-neck" it this year!