Kitchen Mess

This was a mess!

Movie night in Chaos!

Making progress!

Makeshift table!

We actually put Gav in his pack-n-play with toys to keep him off the mess!

Crazy Chaos

Right after I took this first picture with Dave on his hands and knees on the living room floor and Alexis dancing in plastic wrap, Dave looked up at me and said something like this, "My goal is to have the living room done and the den before we go to bed." He got about another five feet and it was midnight! Like I said this took a lot longer than we thought it would.

Bye bye red!

We painted the kitchen red the first week we moved into the house. I have loved it, but am so glad for a change. I have been wanting to paint the kitched a sage green now for two years, but haven't had the energy or motivation to do so. So now the base boards are up and its the perfect time to paint! Here were go! Bye bye red.

Spencer found a sleeping cave inbetween the couches and slept for two hours.

Ok, bikes in the house. Sure, whatever!

Exploiting Child Labor

Dave put these kids right to work and they were so good about it. They really liked helping us. It was a fun family project for the first week and then we got really tired.

Before

Here are a few pics of the "before" new floors. We pulled up our carpet in all the mainliving areas. It has been a wild ride...a lot more work than we anticipated, but worth it. Neither one of us really like carpet!

after midnight

so i haven't written on my blog for a month. i have been so busy, life just seems to be cruising on by. dave and i are like ships that pass in the night. i have been writing in my journal instead of blogging, there is something therapuric about the pen on paper.

gavin has grown a lot this month, he is walking with a walker and all around the furniture. he wants to badly to crawl across the pavement outside while the kids are riding their bikes. he's my little Marley, biting and gnawing on everything. he pulls down all the kitchen towells, especiall the new pretty one i carefully hang on the oven door. i love him so much and can't image life without him, i look at him all the time and can't believe he is our forth, i can't believe we have four kids.

the girls are thriving in school. arden's teacher says she is excelent with the other students, i can't tell you how proud i am of her. she was kind of a bully in kindergarten and first grade, she has come so far, she is really a strong willed, strong headed girl. go, fight, win. arden will be 8 in four weeks, and is so excited about her baptism and birthday. she will be baptized on her birthday!

i just went to a student led parent teacher conference with alexis, she loves school, her teachers and all the things she is learning. mrs. folkers and mrs. meran have made kindergarten a magical experience for her, if i could just blog the excitement, sorry i don't have any pics tonight.

spencer is still my super hero. he is really into friends right now and wants to play with all of them. he likes curly fries from arby's and blue gogurts. he gets really excited when he talks to dave and he talks out of the side of his mouth like a redneck. he didn't get dressed today and wore his pajamas everywhere, and i didn't care because he was nice to be around all day and even held the door open for me and my golf cart of a stroller at the library.

goodnight! its 12:25 am i should be sleeping!

Ice Skating by Di

Spencer has been waiting a week to do this and here he is loving it. I really thought he would be the one on the floor crying, but that was Alexis for most of her lesson. Spencer just kept smiling and getting up everytime he fell, I was really impressed. Maybe someday he will play hockey!


So when Alexis was up it was usually with a death grip to the side of the rink. She did manage to stand up for a few minutes, although I don't really think she moved, until she fell. Poor girl. Here she is after her lesson with gloves from the lost and found since I left hers and only hers in the dryer at home. She hates using other people stuff, she is a germaphobic and I don't blame her, the lost and found is a really gross place to borrow from. She did spend quite a bit of time on her booty and crawling around the ice crying. One of the guys who works there, the only one I have ever talked to said that sometimes he lets the parent go out on the ice with their kid to help, but then he looked at Gavin and said, "But you have him!" I think he thought I was nuts with all four of my kids at an ice skating rink. I guess sometimes us moms would rather be crazy somewhere else besides our own homes so thats why we do it!

Ok, this is as bad as it looks. Arden I think, has been waiting her entire lifetime to go ice skating. She was actually doing really well at her first lesson, when I look over from Spencer's lesson and see that Arden's class had migrated to the other side of the rink. Arden was out of the rink, barfing in the closest garbage can. Poor girl spent some time hovering over an auto-flush toilet in the women's restroom (so gross). I just happened to have the camera around my neck, she was like, "Mom, why are you taking my picture?" Because this is kinda funny I told her. She did not get that of course. When she returned to her lesson it was over, although she still got to skate for 20 minutes until she found her next garbage can and... What a trooper, Arden will do anything (even sick), except be alone!

100th day of School

Alexis's class and everyother class celebrated the 100th day of school. She made a neckless with 100 fruitloops on it, posted a paper foot with her name on it 100 steps from her classroom and showed me all the "100" things she has been doing in her class. She loves having me come to her class.

I stopped by Arden's classroom to see what they were doing. They were finding 100 suffixes in a newspaper article! I was like, "What's a suffix?" I just don't think about stuff like that anymore. Needless to say I helped her find 100 suffixes, she was really proud.

"Dad, can I chew on that bone?"

Last night at dinner we dished out beautiful plates of cut up roast, potatoes and green beans from out garden. After the prayer, before Arden even took a bite of her food, she looked at what was left of the deboned roast sitting in the middle of the dinner table and said, "Dad, can I chew on that bone?"

I thought I was raising children not wild animals. Guess I was wrong. I wasn't surprised too much by Arden's question since she is also my child who proudly ate crispy fish heads. The boys are going to love her, she is half wild by nature!

curious one

never a dull moment with arden, she loves sharks, squid, and anything creapy.

gorgeous child

she is so much fun

gav and me

i so love this baby

alexis's birthday faces

alpha female

arden is such the alpha female, a true born leader and great finagler

more birhtday

pinota pic

spencer lov'in the gavinator

more birthday pics for alexis

i love it when they are in love

after bath

i love wrapping my kids up in their towels all clean and smelling good.

there is nothing i love more than clean kids

gavin is getting so much fun, spencer can play with him more and more and gavin loves it. i love watching them together, i always wonder what that baby is thinking, if only he could talk. i know everything spencer thinks because he doesn't stop talking!

gavin reminds me of a dog with a chew toy, he alway has to have something to naw on.