Spring Break

 My girls are on Spring Break this week.  Hurray!  I love having my kids home, and no alarm clocks.  We are living it to the fullest.

Just a cute photo of my babe:

We went to enjoy lunch and General Conference with my family on Sunday.  I went on a quest to get a good photo of their peacock, Pretty Boy:

 This beautiful bird just showed up one day in their big pine tree and has stuck around for at least a year now.  I think Pretty Boy needs a (Not so) Pretty Girl.

We enjoyed Conference, pie, and family.  The kids disappeared with their cousins.  The girls begged to stay the night with their cousins, so Monday was a pretty quiet day for me (although the littles did get a trip to the park), and my girls were spoiled rotten by my sister, going ice skating, on a pony ride, and to McDonalds!  That night we got to keep an extra kid:

 Tuesday started with a trip to the "Castle Park":

Then a picnic in the backyard.  My sister and neice joined us in the afternoon.  We did Grandma's Easter shopping and then stuffed eggs for the coming egg hunt:

 Daisy was a big help too:

And then, we went to the pond to take K's boat for a spin:

 And eat sand:

And make sand creations:

 And enjoy the warm Spring sun:

 And get wet:

And eat a picnic dinner: 

And play on the equipment too:

 (Doing the monkey bars must be painful when you are 40 :) or really fun.  What does that facial expression say to you?)

A cheesy, happy grin:

 I'm pretty sure you can tell the depth of our fun by the state of our hair by the end of the day.  That hairdo tells me we had a lot of fun.

I love that darling girl poking in the corner there.

What a fun couple days!  And we aren't through yet!  More fun to come!

Deep Thought

 I don't have anything deep or profound to share today.  You're disappointed, aren't you?

I could come up with something...

Man alive.  She is just as sweet as she looks.

 She is also sweet.  Most of the time.  :)

 The biggest eyes I think I've ever seen:

 Girls, being girls:

 Take notice of Lu's awesome outfit.  She picks her own clothes, just in case you couldn't tell (my fashion sense is a bit better, but only by a bit).  Yep, you need to see a closer picture of that makeup job:

And here's my deep thought, I told you I'd come up with something:   I was reading through my journal the other day.  At the time Ellie was two, and Maren was chillin' in utero.  How simple things were, and I just didn't know it.  My oh my, how things have changed since then, and how unimportant some things were that I truly thought were the world when I was in the moment.  I'm sure in ten years I'll look at what I'm writing now in my journal and smile at how simple things used to be.  It just goes to show that most things really aren't as important as we think they are.  I need to remind myself of that more often.

*As an aside, I've kept a journal faithfully since I was in my teen years thanks to the example of my oldest sister, Penny.  I watched you then and I watch you now.  To all my siblings - thanks for setting the bar high.

Happy

 Right now Daisy is happily singing at my feet, patting her hands on my leg.  Lainey is napping.  Maren and Everett are playing nicely together in the freshly cleaned basement, yep, won't be clean for long.  Ellie will be coming home from school in about 20 minutes.  And now, Daisy is on the move, scavenging for bits of food under the table.  She'll succeed on her quest, guaranteed.  My life is beautiful chaos.  These last few days I've been grouchy.  It happens.  I've tried to focus on the good and the beautiful, and I sure don't have to look hard.  

 We broke out the fire pit for FHE on Monday.  We figure we need to use it now before our city puts restrictions on open fire.  Look at our big girl, all proud of herself:

 My boy.  He loves letters and numbers, and has taught himself how to write quite a few, including lower-case letters.  He has learned to write his name with a capitol E and then the rest lower-case, all on his own!  What a smart boy!  He's always asking what two numbers make together and begging mom to print him random letters, numbers, or shapes for him to color.  He loves to do "school" in his workbook and participate while watching Super Why.  We are happy he loves to learn.  You can't see it, but he's writing his name at the bottom of this page:

 Miss Daisy.  What a sweetheart.  She loves to explore and is all over the place, happily chatting as she goes.  She's learned to clap her hands and will sometimes open and close her tiny hand to say "hi" or "bye".  She claps her hand over her mouth too and makes funny noises.  She has finally moved into her 6-9 month clothes.  She is a happy, fun baby.

 Lainey has a thing with hair.  She used to be obsessed with doing her own, and would insist mom do her hair.  Now, she doesn't appreciate mom brushing it out, but loves to be the hairstylist for others.  She plays with it for awhile, twisting it and such and then proclaims it "pretty" and then does it again.

Here's some happy:

 Apricots are in bloom.  Please don't freeze...please don't freeze...

And, I've got the sewing bug:

It is fun to sew for girls.  Now three more to go.

On a Roll

 I seem to be on a roll lately with blog posts, eh?  Kind of like this:

Get it?  The girls are rolling cookies.  Ha!  I'm punny!  :)

This was St. Patrick's Day, and Ellie was in charge of the treat for Family Home Evening and wanted something green, so she made green 'oreo' cookies.

Daisy making a silly/cute face:

 For dinner we had a corned beef hash with steamed cabbage (which my girls loved, who knew?), Irish soda bread and this:

 I've heard some discussion about moms overdoing the little holidays, and one article even begged for us all to step it down a notch.  I can see that point of view.  However, I'm kind of also bugged by that because this is one of the things about motherhood that I enjoy.  It was fun to create little baggies of gold coins for my kids and then watch them discover them in the morning.  They had Lucky Charms for breakfast, another fun tradition.  They really didn't expect it or talk about it much, it was all me. I'm sure they would've loved some leprechaun mischief.  I refuse to go there.  Anyway, I love the views of this article much better.  No judgement.  We all need each other to be who we are.  This was an answer to my prayers, and makes me feel so much better about life.  We need to celebrate the differences in others (and ourselves) more often.

And yesterday I fully embraced who I am and stayed the entire day in my pjs.  It was awesome.  I wasn't completely unproductive, though.  I sewed together this nightgown for Ellie:

 It turned out cute!

 My little girl is not so little anymore.  Still as beautiful as ever, though.

 Cyn, recognize the material?

The kids left the refrigerator door open and little D took advantage of the moment:

He He.  Cute little bum. 

And another moment I had to capture (sorry for the fuzz):

These are the moments that warm my heart, make me smile, give me strength, fill my cup.  You get the idea.

8 Months

 It's true.  Isn't she stinkin' adorable?

Her scrunched smile face (anyone who has spent any amount of time with her knows the one) reminds me so much of this photo:

That's me!!  Apparently I resemble Yoda too!  Now we have proof that scrunched-face smiles are genetic.  :)

And here's a beautiful shot of my snot-face girl:

 She's living the terrible twos with gusto, but we sure love our girl.  And yup, she's wearing a swimsuit.

Fun Day

 Well, smartie pants, you all guessed the babies correctly and properly humiliated Nick, who apparently is the only one who can't keep our babies straight.  :)

Yesterday our kids had school off, and we were in great need of a fun day together as a family, so Nick took the day off and we took a little trip to the Dino Park.

The weather was perfect.  Snow this morning, of course.

 Everett was so stinkin' cute (I mean, scary?), pacing the park like a ferocious dinosaur:

He looks exactly like this guy:

 Don't you think?

 I'm not convinced...

Much more believable:

 These two pictures are significant because Maren was scared and frustrated trying to climb that thing in the beginning, but we are so proud she tried again and mastered it!  Way to conquer your fears and do something hard, girl!

It was a wonderful day, and we were all exhausted but happy at the end of it.