Musical Number

Last Sunday in church Victoria and Karissa got to sing in sacrament meeting with three other girls, Flora (6), Avery (5), and Kaitlyn (3). They sang a song from Primary called My Heavenly Father Loves Me and Avery and Kaitlyn's mom played the flute while Victoria's piano teacher accompanied them on the piano. They did a great job and were so precious! We got a lot of compliments, especially from the Primary music teacher. Since we don't video tape during sacrament meeting at church, we don't have a video of it, but luckily the same person who asked them to sing in church asked them to sing at the assisted living home that night, so we recorded it there. Since Flora couldn't be there that night and we need some extra volume, as there was no microphone, we had some of the older girls who were there sing with our little ones. My girls were a little more distracted, especially Karissa, and you can't hear too well in the video, but here is the link if you want to see them. Enjoy!
http://youtu.be/C5KXvnfbJs4

Mid-Winter Break

Have you ever heard of mid-winter break? I hadn't, 'til I came here. We have winter break and spring break and also a mid-winter break in between. I used to wonder why, but now I just think it's because everyone gets sick this time of year here and they may as well cancel school. Last year Victoria was sick for over a week with a fever and Karissa for a few days. The two years before we had some major stomach bugs. Luckily this year only Karissa, Austin, and I are sick with just a cold. Unfortunately, mine is in the form of an ear infection at the moment and I can't hear a thing with my "good" ear besides the constant ringing! No matter, we're glad we can still go places instead of be cooped up all day.

Tomorrow is Erik's 3 month b-day. We'll celebrate by going to the preschool skate at the skating rink. The kids will get a snack, Austin will get to ride his little car, and Erik will get to ride in the stroller. (The girls get to skate of course!)

Here's some stats on the big 3-month-old.

-he loves to kick in the bathtub
-he loves to smile, especially when his siblings act goofy in front of him
-he enjoyed looking at the sparkling lights at the church where Mommy and Daddy went for the adult dance
-he laughs when his clothes are being taken off
-and yes, he has gained some weight since last month! I weighed him at home, so not quite as accurate, but he's now 15 1/2 lbs.!

Here's some pics of my butterball. This one reminds me of Karissa a little. It must be those cute chubby cheeks!

This is his favorite position. Though I always give him tummy time, he prefers his back.

Coin Jar

Toward the end of my pregnancy with Erik the kids were fighting a ton with each other. Since I was tired, I probably didn't react the best in all the situations. When the new year came, I decided to pull out some incentives to help us all restore some peace into our home.

We had a bunch of left-over coins from Victoria's pirate party. I told the kids if we could fill up a mason jar with coins to the first line, we could all go out to eat. The next line we would do a fun activity together, like bowling. When it gets filled to the top they get to choose to go wherever they want, as long as it's within reason.

Each time any one of them fights with another (excessive teasing is included) they get an eye on the white board. The next fight gets another eye, and the third fight gets a frown. If there is no frown at the end of the day, even if there are eyes, then they earn a coin. Last weekend they earned it up to the first line, so we went to Golden Corral for dinner. They really enjoyed getting to choose the foods they wanted and Victoria did great trying different foods. Karissa and Austin stuck with the pizza, rolls, and fruit. Of course dessert was a big hit! Austin finally got the hang of it and ran off to get in line again as we were leaving. I grabbed him a corn muffin to appease him.

The coin jar is working and they hardly ever get even an eye. That's not to say that nothing little starts brewing, but they are quickly dissolved when I ask if they want an "eye". Hopefully we can still keep the peace around here when the coin jar is finished!

Here's my cutie Erik.

He was trying to suck on the zipper of his hoodie.

Little Duckling

About a month ago, Jason pointed out something odd about Erik's toes. It was very hard to take a clear picture of it, as he kept moving his feet and curling up his toes. Oh well! If you look at the second and third toes, they are connected about half way up. They are like that on both sides and on both feet, though not quite as bad on the left foot.

I asked the doctor about it last week at his 2 month appointment and she said it's not uncommon. She'll just keep an eye on it, but he's most likely going to always have a couple of webbed toes. At first I was disturbed, but since it won't affect his running and walking, I've come to terms with it. He might just be a really good swimmer! He also won't have my distinctive E.T.-looking toes; spindly and wide-spread.

Speaking of his 2 month check-up; I shouldn't say "little duckling", I should say "big duckling"! This boy is 14 pounds and 25.4 in. long! That puts him in the 90th and 95th percentiles! He's a pound and an inch bigger than Austin was at this time. It brings me to two conclusions: he will either be a giant like the Lund side of my family, or gradually go down in percentiles, like the rest of them did, until he's in the 25th or lower. It will be interesting to find out!

Did You Know?

Did you know that we had the outside of our house painted in August? That was almost 6 months ago and we never posted pictures! The main reason for that is we needed a new garage door. Ours was cracked in the middle and instead of painting over the old one that made horrible noises when we opened it, we decided to get it fixed, or replaced. Our painter said he thought he knew someone who could fix it, but that didn't work out. Then he said he knew someone who could replace it for a good deal. So we went with that. Supposedly, that particular garage door repairman was too busy, so he referred us to another. Well, I guess garage door repairmen are busy around here because about 1 1/2 months later, or more (I can't even remember now!), our garage door was replaced. We were supposed to get it painted the same color as the shutters (navy blue), which our painter said he would do at no extra cost. We called him about 2 1/2 months later when we decided we still wanted to go that route instead of leaving it white, but it never happened.

Here's our new house color, 3 months after being painted, right before I had Erik. I love the colors we chose and even like the white garage door, now that the leaves are gone and we can really see the blue and navy blue shutters. When the leaves come come back, though, we'll mostly see our big, white garage, so we might have to get on that painter again. Here's the back. They also painted the deck, no extra charge.

Here it was before. See how much the tree covers? I'm afraid we'll just have a big white garage showing and no beautiful navy blue. We'll see...

Here's the back before. The summer flowers look nice!

Ice, Ice Baby!

Every year Plymouth, MI. has an ice festival. We went a couple of years ago and enjoyed it, so we decided to go again. We had actually gotten about 3 inches of snow the night before, about 2 1/2 inches more than we've gotten all winter, to make the experience. (Now, two days later, it's all totally melted because of the rain we received last night! We're on the national "no snow" trend here too.) The kids enjoyed the ice sculptures they could be a part of.

Eskimo Austin

Dinosaur ride.

If you notice, Karissa did not have the best of times. She wanted some of the over-priced carnival-type food, which we would not buy since we had just eaten lunch. She was also coming down with a cold.
A bench.
Polar Bear chair.

She started having more fun at the end.
Check out the giddiness! He got lots of smiles over the pink shades too. I guess we'll get him his own, since he's the only kid who actually keeps sunglasses on for more than 10 minutes.
Erik slept the whole time all cozy warm, but here he is today, on his two-month birthday! He is finally awake more, now that he's gotten over two colds, but he's caught cold number 3. Poor boy! He still slept well last night and has been pretty perky today. Overall, he's more responsive: cooing, smiling, moving his limbs more, now that he's actually awake between daytime feedings.

His favorite thing is to be playfully blotted on the mouth with his burp cloth. That what I just did here and got this huge grin!

Pony Party

Karissa has wanted a pony party since Victoria's pirate party. Knowing that I would have a new baby around for the prep and the party itself, I wanted to make it simple. The kids helped color in these My Little Pony pictures that we attached to a streamer and hung on the stairs. I made this pony cake, which was very easy. It's just two 9-in cake pans and I used a pattern to cut it.

For games, Victoria drew a pony on a poster for "pin the tail on the pony" (not pictured) and the tails to go with it. We also played a horse shoe toss game using headbands to throw over a 7-up bottle. It actually worked very well and the kids did better than I did when I experimented with it! You can kind of see the 7-up bottle here.
We played musical chairs and freeze dance, but the most favorite of all was just dancing to songs that told them what moves to do -like stretch up high, twirl around, etc.

Another hit at the party was our "craft". I couldn't find an actual pony craft, so I just got some play-dough from the dollar store and they made their own ponies and then we put the play-dough in their goodie bags.
I love Austin's face here, he looks so happy to see the candles lit. And Victoria's face, well, that's a normal expression for her.


Austin is trying to help Karissa blow out the candles from across the table.

The party pals.

It was one of the most calm and easy parties I've ever done! Four out of the five invited guests were able to attend, but it was perfect with my three kids there as well. Of course Victoria was the craziest one there, though Austin held his own for craziness. We had one 7-year-old (Victoria), two 5-year-olds, two 4-year-olds, one 3-year-old, and a 2-year-old (Austin). An hour after the party everything was pretty much cleaned up and back to normal and the kids spent the next three hours playing with Karissa's presents. Not bad!