Easter

We had lunch at Tim and Anna's after church and they did an egg hunt for the kids. Lainey covered her face in chocolate, as usual. =P Hehe!! I don't know how she manages to get it all over her face every time. =)

Random Pics

Harp took these pics of Jen, Bonnie, Diedre, Lainey Joy, and me at our parachute party. =)

These pics are from our trip to Montana to pick up the laser. The night before, I cut up one of Harper's old undershirts and tied the big girls' hair in rag rollers. It came out SOOO curly! It was adorable. On Em's hair I learned that if you wet it, it is ridiculously curly and stays curly all day. If you don't wet it, it's kinda curly (pretty though) and mostly falls out by the afternoon. How do I know? I only wet one side of her hair. lol What was I thinking? I just got a little lazy and decided it was just as easy to roll it dry. Ha! And Lainey looks a bit silly in these pictures because she is shivering cold. =P We hopped back in the car right afterward. Oh, and our trailer said Wichita, KS on the side. Fun, huh?! Annnnd I don't know if I blogged Lainey's funny comment from that trip... When we got to Missoula (this is 3-4 hours away), Lainey looked out the back window and said "Hey! There's a Uhaul truck behind us!!" Haha! Yes, Lainey, that would be the trailer we picked up this morning, that's attached to our van. =P She is too cute.

My silly Laina and her organic sucker. Yeah, we are freaks. We ordered a HUGE bin of organic suckers on Amazon. =P We've been doing a good job rationing them and the kids have been doing a good job not asking for them all the time. =) They are the BEST suckers I have ever tasted. Hmm, maybe 'cause the flavors are real. =P Chemical suckers just aren't as yummy!

Resurrection Day Prettiness

This Is Important, Too =)

Well, we have been gradually moving things over to the new house. I looked back at my blog ('cause I can never remember what I've blogged and what I haven't - I'll blame Mommy Brain =D) and noticed that I never really mentioned the other place, except that we had to go sign papers. Unless I just didn't read back far enough. In which case, oh well, 'cause I am being too lazy to look. =)

Anyway... We are SO EXCITED because our new house in on Tim and Anna's street. It is a huge row of duplexes, on both sides of our street and one row on the street behind, which connects, so it's kind of a loop. There is an apartment complex off of the end of the loop, but it is a VERY low-traffic area 'cause that's all that's there. Which is awesome. AND we share a back yard (a very long back yard) with Tim and Anna!! The girls and Titus are SO excited, too. =P It is so much fun. And there are some other people that we kind of know that live over there, that I'm sure we will be getting to know better now! Yay! =) And the Bouchers are actually talking about moving over there, too, which would be way cool! It just depends on whether they will allow the dog and 5 cats. =P lol

So I know I have lots of pics to update you with. It is slooooow to upload because they are pretty big files, but I kind of like keeping them big because then it's like extra backup for me. Soooo there will be pics to come tonight.

What else is up? Tomorrow we're watching Titus and Lily. I am so excited! They are fun kids. =) Today we had lunch with the Bouchers and the Krals. I talk to Rachel (Kral) at church, but they live(d) an hour away, so it was hard to get together. But they moved over here last week, so I am really excited! They have two little girls. One is 3 months older than Bekah and the other is 7 months and they are so adorable!

Oh this is cute and I forgot to blog it... The other day Bekah fell in the driveway and skinned her knees. It was her first real owwie. Emily ran and got her Littlest Pet Shop Band-Aids (which she picked out and are all hers - Lainey picked Cars, hehe) and she wanted to be the one to put them on Bekah's knees. I let her do it and it was so cute! =P

Bekah says "wawa" for water and I am SO glad she has a word for it now! She is saying everything. She will repeat whatever you ask her to, but she is starting to say a lot more stuff on her own. Very cute! Ha. And if she gets in trouble, she smacks you a kiss. Totally adorable! lol

Moving over to the new house, Emily said she has a really good idea. I asked what her idea was. She said she thought we should take the biggest bedroom and make it a family bedroom, so ALL FIVE of us would sleep in there and then we could make the other rooms the craft room and the toy/school room. =P I told her it was a really good idea, but Daddy would like to have a room just with Mommy. =) Clever, though. =P

Okay, time to get started on the pics... =)

Cuteness, Sadness, Excitement

It was sort of an eventful day. Not so much eventful I guess as news-filled... We found out today that we need to go sign stuff to rent the place we want to get into tomorrow. Which means we start paying for it tomorrow, too, so we will start moving stuff, so we can get out of here and at least turn the utilities off. This weekend is so busy already that we aren't going to get a ton done - we will wait for next weekend to have friends help us move (quite a few people with trucks have offered - yay!). But we will take smaller stuff over throughout the week.

We also found out today that a friend from Texas has cancer. =( She is 27 weeks pregnant with their 4th baby. She's in Dallas for tests right now. She has a malignant growth in her lung and a suspicious spot on her liver. Biopsies tomorrow, and right now they are saying they will try to wait 3 weeks to do a c-section. Wow.

Good news came today, too. =) A friend in Kansas is courting someone. Yay! =) I am so excited for her to get married, lol! =) Now it's in sight. =) =) =)

Oh and the cuteness is kind of sad too, but this morning Emily stepped on a tack and it went INTO her foot. I can't even imagine. I am really glad I didn't see this - Harper got it out and I only saw her foot with a Band-Aid on it. Ooooh it's hard to even type this - makes me cringe just thinking about it. But Em came and said "Mommy, I stepped on a tack and it went into my foot! I'm SO GLAD it was me and not Bekah that stepped on it! And I'm so glad it wasn't Lainey or you or Daddy, either, but I am SO glad it wasn't Bekah!" Doesn't that melt your heart? I know I have said that before when I stepped on a needle and I'm sure if I had stepped on the tack I would have felt that way too, but since I wasn't the one in the situation, I thought MAN I'm glad it wasn't me!! lol Not that I'm glad it was her, but OWWWW! Okay it's making me feel sick thinking about it. I am positive that I would rather give birth than step on a tack. Poor Em.

Guitar Hero

So much to blog, so little that I actually remember when I sit down here to type... =P

Tonight was Ephraim's birthday party. He is four. =) The girls were each super excited to pick out a car for him, and we got him a nifty camping glow stick/flashlight/whistle. What every boy needs, right? =P Anyway after dinner, all the parents turned on Guitar Hero. lol I had never played before. FUN. =) We have no idea what all the kids did for the rest of the night while we all played Guitar Hero, but nobody was injured and, as far as we know, everyone got along. =P So yay!

Bekah had a checkup today. 32" long and 21.5lb. The nurse told me how she was too skinny and needed to eat butter and cheese and drink cow's milk because my milk doesn't have enough calories. Then the doctor came in and said she's doing great and it's good that I'm nursing her. I told her what the nurse had said and she totally contradicted the nurse. Ridiculously frustrating. But I'll go with the doctor. =P

Lainey also got some ridiculous concoction of vaccinations and Bekah got a tetanus shot - her first shot. Eek! I hate giving them shots. I would honestly feel worse if they died from getting a vaccination than if they died from a disease they weren't vaccinated for. But either way I feel like I'm putting them at risk and I'm a bad mom either way. I hate it. Blah.

Bekah is saying soooooo much and I love it!! =) Today she was pointing at all the pictures of babies at the doctor's office and saying "baby!!" =) Makes me smile! I love that she loves babies. She also says "Emily" and "Emmy" now and she said "Lainey" once today. She says "Essie" and "Lily," her two baby friends. =) Ha - the other day Harper smelled her and said "Bekah, go tell Mommy what present you made her." She ran over to me and said "Poop!" LOL!! She knew what he was talkin' about, alright!

That reminds me that this morning, I was surprised to find that Bekah had a dry diaper. I asked Harp if he had already changed her and he said no. So I stuck her on the pot. Nothing. Then I asked Em if *she* had changed Bekah's diaper and she said "Yeah, it was just peepee, so I wiped her and put a clean diaper on her." lol! Do I have a weird 5-year-old? She did a good job!

And THAT reminds me... Yesterday I was putting off making lunch. It was so nice outside and I was out there drawing some things for our business, thinking I really should go in and make lunch. And right then Emily came running up to me with a big smile and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. =) She made our whole family PBJs before she made her own - and nobody even asked her to make lunch. What a sweet girl! She was very proud of herself, too. =)

Em and Laine have been wanting to ride bikes 24/7. It has been soooo nice out the last few days. Lainey has been riding the LikeABike and she's gotten so good at it. She said today that triking isn't really that fun anymore. She can go much faster on the LikeABike. =) She is probably ready for a real bike now.

This morning, I left Em home with Harper while I took the littles to the doctor, so when I got home, I put the littles down for a nap and Em and I rode bikes to the park. There is a big loop (and some smaller loops, so lots of variation) at the park and we rode around there and stopped to swing for a bit and then came home to make lunch. It was fun going fast with her. =)

This week is Awana Fun Fest. Em is SO excited about it. =) I think it will be fun, too. Next week is the awards night and our neighbor Miss Judy is going to come to it. Very cool! =) The girls love to take her pictures and food and show her their bike tricks. =)

Hmm. I don't know what else to blog. I have lots of pics to post and I really do want them on here, even if it's just for my own backup... It's so much faster to put them on Facebook but then they are low quality. =\ Guess I just have to do it. =)

Circle Strap, Lettuce Bottom Dress

I'll have to take her out in it for some GOOD pics, but this will do for now. =) She wore this to the musical and loved it. I think it is so Lainey. Maybe 'cause she designed it, lol. =)

Kids =)

Bekah is so, SO proud of herself when she helps clear the table after dinner. =) Her smile is HUGE and pretty! =) I love it. =)

Emily was telling me the other day how if I sent her to school, she would ask to go to the bathroom and then just leave. Then she told me this whole long story about how she would hide in the bushes, make this fake Emily and put it at the front door and then ring the doorbell and say "I'm home!!" but then go hide... Well I told Harper all this and he said it's straight from a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon. lol!! I don't like how naughty Calvin is, but Harper thinks it's funny and Emily thinks it's funny... =P I wonder how many devious things Emily's gotten from Calvin and Hobbes. Hmmmmm, does anyone put bubbles in a dog's water bowl in Calvin and Hobbes? lol!

The other night, we were at the Bous (Lainey calls the Bouchers "the Bous") and Jen was dishing up dinner with Lainey and Ephraim sitting next to her. We hear Lainey say "Ephraim, do you want to lick my tongue?!" LOL Jen put her hand in between their faces, as they're sticking their tongues out and heading for each other - like 3 inches apart. Eeeeew! I'm glad Jen was there, lol!

Tonight some people came over and we made parachutes for VOM to drop in Colombia. Diedre, Bonnie, and Jen came. Emily was super helpful, going to get scissors and markers when we needed them. I didn't even ask - she was on top of it!

Have I said that Bekah is in a toddler bed? We took the side off of her crib, so now she feels like such a big girl. =) She has fallen out a few times. When we move in a few weeks, we will leave the crib in the garage and she can sleep on the trundle bed. The big girls have been looking forward to when they will all three sleep in the bunk bed! =)

Today we had a picnic with the Tumultys at the park before swim lessons. Em did 6 laps for the second time. Yay! And after the jumped in the pool, she swam back with a kickboard without help two times.

Tomorrow we have eye doctor appointments and then we're going to look at another unit over by Tim and Anna. We could move in across the street or down the street, but on the same side, where we'd share a back yard. Either way would be cool. We're looking at the down-the-street house tomorrow. Hoping it's brighter than the across-the-street house (which has a wooded area in the back, where all the windows are) and hoping it has a lazy susan in the corner cabinet (some do, some don't, but across-the-street house doesn't)! =)

We've been playing with the laser... Harp etched our laptop for fun. =) We made some chipboard letters and an owl tonight and tried etching a photograph onto glass, but didn't get the contrast we wanted. Harper searched the forum though and found a little plugin thingie that will make it good. So we'll try again tomorrow.

Bekah likes pigtails and asks for them. =) I think she is teething again. She has 12 teeth right now. =)

We were waiting for something the other day and I had a pen and notepad so I gave Lainey some words to read. She read CAT, BUG, somethin' else, and then JOY, TOY, SOY, and BOY. Well then Emily asked for some words to read. Funny joke. So we gave her some words to read. I gave her flabbergasted. LOL!! And she read it! So I told her what it meant. Then Harper thought he could stump her with unbeknownst, but she read that too. Tee hee! I was cracking up. =P

There is a spider crawling along the top of the wall. And I'm gonna go to sleep. =) Night!

FUN Weekend!

Hey! So yesterday we took care of the Bouchers' cats, took the dog back to their house, and hit the road for Spokane. We went to the childrens' museum yesterday, to a little coffee shop, and then to check into the hotel. We went to a Thai place for dinner and then played at the hotel a bit before I took Emily and Lainey to the musical (Little House on the Prairie). It was SO much fun! The girls wore princess dresses (I'll put up pics of Lainey's - they are on Facebook though) and they had so much fun. Lainey was tired because it started at 8 and didn't end until about 11. She got nice and snuggly. =) Emily said after a few minutes, it was just like watching a movie. =P

The play itself was awesome. It wasn't exactly like the books, but there were a lot of lines straight from the book. It was neat how Laura the Laura was. =P Reminds me so much of Lainey... And Mary reminds me of Emily. Maybe it's the birth order thing. =) And the Nellie Oleson in the play was just hilarious. =P The horrid girl! lol

Anyway after the play, we went into the Doubletree. It was between the theatre and where we parked. We asked for cookies at the front desk and they said sure. =P Yay! So we ate our cookies on the way back to the hotel (maybe a 10-min drive).

This morning, we had breakfast at the hotel and then went to the play place at the mall. Also went into Gymboree to use some Gymbucks on sunglasses for the kids. How do we always lose and break sunglasses? I dunno. Anyway I got home and somehow I still have my Gymbuck. I don't even remember handing it to her, but she took it off on my receipt. Confused. But we are two hours away now so I'm just not going to worry about it.

Then we tried to go to a Mexican restaurant, but that didn't work out, so we went to Sonic. We haven't had Sonic since Kansas. It's not as good as it was when I was 6-16 weeks pregnant with Bekah, lol! I craved it so much! Eew. =P

Then we went to Coeur D'Alene, to City Park. Very cool park with a very cool playground. Lainey loved going fast and crazy on the tire swing. Emily screamed to get off. =P Bekah loved going down the baby slide. She would slide down and then run for the steps, while signing more. =P Too cute!

Oh I have a funny Emily story... While we had Dillon...
H: I just filled Dillon's water and it kind of bubbled up a little. Did you wash it with soap or something?
Me: No.
H: Huh.. The other day I was pouring some of his water out and it was kind of slimy, like slobber pouring out of it. You think it's just his slobber?
Me: I don't know. I haven't seen that!
Em (coming around the corner, lookin' a little guilty): I think I might know what it could be: bubbles.
H: Bubbles?!
Em: Yeah... I put bubbles in his water... Twice.
H: Why?!
Em: Because I don't like him.

Whoa. I guess at least she confessed and was honest about it. She did NOT like his wet nose and she always thought he was chasing her, even though he wasn't. Don't think we'll be getting a dog anytime soon. =P And not just 'cause of Em, lol. He didn't eat enough of the food off the floor under the table. =P

Bek and Lainey did love having Dillon here. Bekah says "Dillon-dog" and it's sooo cute. She gave him SO many sweet hugs and she would just go sit down on him sometimes like she was going for a dog ride. =P She giggled about his nose and his big wet kisses on her face. =)

Okay Harper is playing with the laser without me so I'm gonna go. Later!

Much News

Hey! So there is lots of news. =) I'll start with Bek.

For a while now, she's been saying "ow!" instead of crying when she gets hurt. Not cute to get hurt, but awfully cute to hear her say "ow!" =)

She also says "poop," which is very convenient. When she decides she's gonna tell us she has to go, at least she has a word for it and we understand it. =) Right now, she uses it to tell us after the fact. =P

Bekah's newest adorable word is "pompoms" (the girls got some from Grandma A).

No, I'm not pregnant. =)

The other news is that Harper got laid off at Quest. It's technically a furlough, and they are going to reevaluate in August and maybe hire some people back. So they told him there is a chance he'll have a job in August, but not to count on it. We're not counting on it. =P He would totally go back to Quest, but he's not going to look for another aircraft job right now.

We don't know yet if we are going to stay here or what. Well, we can pretty much guarantee we will move at least across town. Maybe on Tim and Anna's street. =) That would be pretty cool!

Anyway so the other news is that we bought a laser machine. Woo hoo! It's something we talked about when Harper got laid off at McCauley. And actually maybe even before that, when we were thinking about a side business. Well we started talking about business opportunities, so we could do something together and Harper could stay home. We seriously thought about everything. Even an organic chicken farm (hey, don't laugh 'cause people come from over an hour away to pick up organic chickens that are trucked into Sandpoint from Montana!). =P But we found this laser machine, used, and got it for about 21% of the cost of a comparable new one. And it's in Montana, so we can go pick it up. We will be heading out there tomorrow, we think. We have a list of I think seven different things we might want to do with it. I think we're going to try out a few at a time and just see what we can do. =) I'll keep you posted.

I've been sewing on Lainey Joy's princess dress. I have had some really pretty fabric sitting in the stash for way too long and I wanted her to get a new dress to wear to the play on Friday, since Daddy said Em could wear her princess dress. =) We're going to Little House on the Prairie, the musical, in Spokane on Friday. Anyway Lainey wanted the top like Em's but with "circles" on the straps (I finally figured out that what she meant was sort of Cinderella-ish - I made a sample and she said yep that was what she meant) and she wanted the bottom to be like lettuce. I don't know how to describe that, lol! =) But it will be gathered up in random places, like so many wedding dresses we've seen. Laine saw that style on the David's Bridal site and picked it. Kinda like this. =) Okay, gonna sew more.