April 30

Ok, I admit it.  I have been completely slacking off.  We have been doing stuff for the past two weeks and I haven't written about any of it.  So now I have to try and remember.  

First.  My garden in the front is full of beauty right now.  I could walk up and down my own front walk 30 times a day, but I think my neighbors would find that strange.  Jens did a little photo essay of it, and these are a few of the highlights.  I really had to pare it down because he likes the rapid-fire feature on my camera.

I actually really love this one:

I went out today and took a few pictures of my own:

I just love flowers, what can I say.  I actually need to go out and move a few things around--the mums are crowding everything else, so they need to be relocated.  Maybe tomorrow. 

Last weekend it hit 90 degrees and we took the little people for our first family swim of the summer.  They loved every minute of it. 

Sylvie has been playing teacher a lot.  It is kind of a hard game, because she makes random chalk marks on the board, then asks her students what it is.  Sometimes it is a letter, like "i" but sometimes it is a made up word, or a number.  She is very cute about it, though, and has created a game called "Rolly Polly" that the students play at recess.  I am still not sure what the rules are.  This particular day she had several students, including: Jamen (a clown), Sabbath (a doll), Trotty (a chameleon), Bubbles (a hippo), and Mary (a baby), plus me, Dad, and Jens.  

She continues to dress up in creative outfits, as well.  She definitely loves her new nightengowns from Jill.  She continues to refrain from sucking her finger, which is a joy to Mike and me.  We thought the battle would be much harder.  She says the cutest, funniest thing.  I regularly think "I should write that down." and then I don't and I forget.    Ha.  I just thought of one.  We were out shopping together and she was climbing around the grocery cart and I told her to be careful because I didn't want her to fall and crack her head.  Her reply: "You could just glue me together, Mom."

Jens is one month away from being a second grader!  He is going to be in a Spanish class next year.  He has loved doing spanish this semester and has a very cute accent.  Yesterday a friend asked what his favorite movie was and he replied "Mario."  He likes to watch the "hint" movies on the Wii.  Sigh.

I have a few projects in the works right now.  This is a hint at one of them:

I am still not sure that the above project is going to work, so I'll let you know.  I have also been trenching to redo the sprinklers out back, reconfiguring our garage workspace/work bench, cleaning the garage, chasing bees, spray painting various items, watching various children, and talking Mike into:

a patio set, at long last.  I put the table together today and can't wait to eat dinner on it tonight.  I will end with a scene from one of my regular running trails.  I love living in California!

PS--I am having a little trouble figuring out the formatting on the new blogger.  In time, I suppose.

April 15th

Happy Anniversary, Jessie and Doug! Happy Tax Day, everyone else. This week we have had a few fun things. Our new tv is here, and man, it is humongous. Mike keeps telling me I'll get used to it, but that hasn't happened yet. I am still surprised every time I look at it. It is very nice, though, and the picture looks great.

Monday was the last day of spring break. The kids spent their time making "paint" and having one last Easter egg hunt.

Things are getting back to normal. I painted and fixed some things in the front hall closet and cleaned the garage (it was in desperate need). Sylvie has been dressing up. We did our regular library story time and music makers.

Jens has swim clinic. I managed to make myself swim laps on Thursday while he was swimming. It was very, very cold. But I do like swimming.

Sylvie and I went (finally) for her 3 year pictures at Picture People. She loved getting ready and looked very adorable. She was sweet and well behaved, until we got into the studio with the photographer. Then she was very shy and kept hunching her shoulders up and doing her "princess pose," which, although very cute, is not exactly what I had in mind.

We did get a few darling ones, though.

But the best thing was the advice of the lady who checked us out. Sylvie was sucking her finger and I was telling her not to, and the lady informed me that the thing that worked for her daughter was a library book with some yucky pictures of bad thumb sucker teeth. So when we got home I got on line and found 4 terrible looking teeth pictures. Sylvie sat up and looked at them and I talked to her about why the teeth looked yucky. Later that day she forgot and was sucking her finger, so we came back and looked at the scary teeth. Guess what? She hasn't sucked her finger since. We are over 48 hours of finger sucking free. I haven't put anything on her hand and I haven't had to remind her. I do ask to look at her teeth occasionally, and compliment how good they look. We are crossing our fingers that this is it.

Jens has been testing me this week, as much as possible, I think. We had a rough day today in particular. He went to bed an hour early, which was too bad because he had to leave the park early, where we had a picnic and flew our kite. It was a beautiful day.

Easter

Well, we had a lovely Easter this year. It came at the end of a week of Spring Break, which we all got into the swing of. There was a lot of pajama wearing. On Saturday, Mike rode a 100K ride and while he was gone we colored Easter eggs, which is always fun. The kids really enjoyed it this year.

Also on Saturday Jens made "Jabba Jiggle" from the Star Wars cookbook for Easter dinner the next day. Sunday morning the kids were pleased to wake up and find that the Easter bunny had come, leaving baskets and a few hidden eggs. He thoughtfully left a basket of eggs for us to hide after church. He also knows how much Sylvie loves nightengowns. Smart bunny.

Sylvie has been looking forward to wearing this dress for weeks. She put it on as soon as she got out of bed and insisted on wearing it all day long.

We somehow still managed to be ready for church with enough time for a couple of pictures. You know how some people have these beautiful, artistic photos of their children looking beautiful? The one on the left is the best one I got. The other one is pretty typical of the rest of the pictures. And I took a lot of them. Oh well. I guess this is what you get when your kids have eaten peeps, jelly beans, and chocolate eggs for breakfast.

After church, and lunch, which I insisted contained no candy, we had a big egg hunt in the yard. In fact, we had two. The kids re-stuffed the eggs so we could hide them again. Then Sylvie had a nap and Jens hid the eggs 4 times so Mike and I could have a racing Easter egg hunt. I think I won three out of the four. Jens loved hiding them and coming up with sneaky, clever places to hide the eggs. (notice the beautiful new fence in the back ground!)

We ended the day with a lovely and delicious dinner with friends. We took the infamous bunny cake and Jens's delicious Jabba Jiggle, as well as a fruit platter for those who aren't so refined as to enjoy Jabba Jiggle. (another real winner of a picture of the kids together)

The jiggle was a huge hit with the kids. At one point during the evening I looked into the kitchen to see at least 5 kids crowded around it eating it, with one using their hands to shovel it into their mouth.

We spent Monday coming down from a tremendously huge sugar rush. We all wore our pajamas all day. Seriously. Even me. It was the last day of spring break, after all.

April 4th

Let's see. We've had a crazy week. Last Thursday, while I was out prepping the yard for the new fence and Sylvie was supposed to be napping, she flooded the upstairs bathroom. I went into the garage to get a tool I needed and heard water pouring onto the tile in the front hall. I opened the door to see water cascading from the ceiling. I raced upstairs to find Sylvie, in her nightengown, standing in the hall with her finger in her mouth. The bathroom door was firmly closed. She informed me: "I went potty." Then put her finger back in her mouth. She was definitely worried! I opened the door to a bathroom full of water. She had apparently flushed half a roll of tp, then left the handle down on the toilet, which meant it was continuously filling. Aside from a brief freak out (Ah! What do I do!) I actually cleaned everything up really fast, thanks to the carpet cleaner, which sucked up all the water. It kept pouring through the ceiling, though, so Mike and I decided to pull down a section of drywall to make sure it got all dry. We were planning on taking down some ceiling anyway to try and fix some knocking pipes, so this incident just bumped up our time frame.

So Friday we were running a big fan during play group, which the girls liked.

Sylvie and the girls all tried on multiple pairs of pjs. Sylvie liked the off-the-shoulder mermaid look. Silly!

I managed to capture a picture of Sylvie's people drawings this week!

Now we are in spring break mode at our house, which means the kids are currently laying around in their pajamas. We have been busy with the previously mentioned house projects, and they have been big helpers. Spring Break started with conference. On Saturday we watched and while Mike was at Priesthood Session, we had a pizza movie night.

Sylvie let me experiment with her hair a little on Sunday, and I tried again on Monday. She feels fancy with this hairdo, but cries while I do it because she says I am pulling her hair, no matter how careful I try to be. It looked really cute though, and she got lots of compliments at the gym and Sams.

The kids have had 2 "sleepovers" this week, one in Jens's room and one in Sylvie's room. That might explain why they are so tired, too. This day Sylvie napped in Jens's room because there was a bug in her room. Doesn't she look squeazy and peaceful? To bad she woke up super cranky.

We are going to spend the rest of the week jumping on the tramp and being outside if it gets warm again. Also finishing the fence, maybe, and coloring Easter eggs.

Around the House

We've had a few things going on around here! Spring is one of them. I don't know if any of you remember when I first hacked back the Japanese Maple. It looked like a really sad Dr. Seuss tree for a long time. I was afraid it might die. (This picture is actually from a while after--I couldn't find one of right after).

You will all be happy to know that it has not died, and actually looks tree-like this year! I will also include a few garden pictures just because everything is starting to bloom and I think it is so pretty.

This is the area my Christmas helpers transformed. The azaleas are all loaded with buds for the first time ever! Putting them into pots was definitely the solution. Yay!

Also at our house:

We have added a trampoline to the back yard. It is a very popular addition, logging at least 10 hours of use in the 36 hours since it was assembled. Jens was on it for probably 7 hours yesterday. I do notice that he is very, very tired today and bedtime has been a snap the past 2 nights.

And the biggest, most strenuous project:

A new fence along one side of our yard. We actually really need new fencing along both sides, but we are taking things one step at a time. Mike and Rick, our neighbor, worked for about 9 hours just digging the holes for the posts. They had a jack hammer which helped a lot, but between our cyprus trees and their huge hedge, the roots were terrible. The worst part is done now, though, and the fence assemblage is currently underway. Hopefully I'll have a picture of our completed fence to share next week. It is going to look really nice.

Jens took this one :)