Playing in the candy

I made these pink pom poms our Young Women's new beginnings program and was going to save them to use some other time until...

...luckily I let the Young Women who wanted to take some home, so they did not all get destroyed.

Bug

William was out one day and came in to show me the bug he found sitting on his shirt. A grey ladybug.
He wanted to make him a house so we found a jar with holes in the lid and he ran outside to get him some leaves and grass. After he put those in he looked at the house and said, "he needs a picture in his house." Then he quickle went to my craft room and found a mini "frame" that I have been meaning to make a necklace out of. Russ just laughed and said he is like me, and it is true. William does appreciate the beautiful things.

When I was uploading pictures from the camera I found this picture William took of the bug.

Gacie sure loves it, she gives the jar kisses several times a day.

Cherished for years

We were supposed to have some friends come over and watch a movie on Friday night but they couldn't come so we called Russ' parents to see if we could bring them dinner. They came over instead and we had a nice meal, but the best part was them playing games and reading stories with the kids (these are things they are very good at). I know that I will cherish these pictures for years to come and the kids will too.

Gracie trying to get in on the game.

Finding her belly buttonReading a very exciting story with her PapaHugging the book (she is going through a phase where she hugs and kisses EVERYTHING)

Rag-a-muffin

it is the end of the day and the cloths are off...her pony tails pulled out... And she is ready to go in her new necklace she made in nursery. We have been letting the kids stay up a little later because Russ' schedule has him coming home later. After seven o'clock the both get really crazy and rambunctious. It is loads of fun to watch.

Planting Seeds

William got some seeds at church to plant. He is so excited about them. I think he is going to like doing a garden. I have decided to help a friend down the street with her garden before I invest in everything I need to get one going here. I need to learn a little bit more.

Freckle Face

Dear William,

Sorry about the title of this post, but I figure it is only a matter of time before you are called this and I thought I should be the first. I was called freckle face growing up and it never bothered me. Mostly because it is true, I have freckles on my face. And now so do you.

I showed them to you and you said you liked them. I am glad. People are always telling you how much they love your hair and your response is, "I know". You used to say thank you but I think since so many people tell you, you really feel like you already know. Your hair is getting pretty long. I trimmed it a little in the back before church but your dad and I are holding out for warmer weather and then going to do the annual buzz.

Maybe you will be okay with it because that is like Buzz Lightyear. That is one thing about you William, you are loyal to your movies and characters. Here you are in your Buzz jammies with your Woody toy.

This was a very sweet way to find you sleeping. Usually we find you in some pretty strange positions like this -

or this. And yes, I think that is pen on your arm.
You love being a brother and for the most part have lots of fun with Gracie although I do have to admit that you seem to enjoy terrorizing her and making her scream. Hopefully that will get better.

You love sweets, luckily they are not in the house all that often or that is all you would ask for. This picture was taken right before you told me the cookies I made were perfect. You are always giving such good compliments. You are always telling me and Gracie how pretty we look, especially if we are in a skirt or a dress. You LOVE it when I wear a skirt. Because it is cold out I wear pants now and you usually tell me I need to put a skirt on or ask me if I am wearing a skirt.

You love to ride your bike and are getting better and better at it all the time.

There is a path you take that circles the house and you just keep going around and around.

You have become fascinated with letters and numbers and are pretty good at writing them. One of your videos starts with the letters D-V-D popping up individually. When this happened you named each one correctly and I told you what a good job you did. Then you said, “Am I such a good letter-man?” And of course I said, “Yes.” You love writing your name and even wrote it on our dinning room chair. It was written with your favorite color (orange) and it is hard to see except the parts where you tried to "erase" it (that means you scribbled harder in the attempt to get it off because you knew you should not do it).

Daddy found a pair of little nail scissors in the drawer where we keep them, but they were all black on the end and kind of bent. He asked if I knew what happened to them.

I told him to check all the outlets in the bathroom to see if any had black on them and sure enough there was a little bit of black coming out of one of the holes. We had just had a lot of kids over at our house so we figured one of them must have done it. I called you into the bathroom and showed you the black and our conversation went like this, “did someone put something in there?” and you said, “yeah, I did.” “What did you put in there?” “The little scissors” “did you get an owie, did it hurt?” “No, orange and yellow stuff was coming out of there, but I watched out.” “When did you do this?” “When Elleigh was here, she was going potty.” That means it was over a few weeks ago.

We call you our little monkey. And for good reason.

You ask me to sing your special song every night lately and I love it. I want you to know, "I will".

Love,

Your Mom

Happy Heart Day

I hope everyone had a happy valentines day. We are still celebrating - at least I am. Russ and I are giving each other the gift of health because we signed up for the YMCA. I think that is a great
gift.
When William woke up and I told him Happy Valentines Day he said, "yeah Candy!" It was a good thing our sweet neighbor Michelle brought us some treats and a plant. They loved both.

later that afternoon we went to a

Valentines Dinner

Gracie loved the balloons, the candy, and the dancing
William took his shoes off and ran around until his feet were black.

He thought that was pretty funny until he found out we had to go home because he wouldn't stop running around long enough to use the bathroom.
Ahh, such is life. Happy Valentines!

Thanks Mom

On Sunday we went out to my mom and dads for Sunday dinner and she made my favorite meal - casserole steak. Which was nice because I don't like to cook meat much anymore. And then when I went to sit down at the table I saw this:
Yep, that's right a big Little Debbie cake. YUM! William was of coarse there to help me.
Here is Connie and Gracie singing happy birthday to me. I am not sure if Gracie sang with everyone else, but after everyone was done she sang her little version of Happy birthday mommy. It was really cute. And so is that little hand made dress I found at a thrift store. Russ loves it too, it looks so Austrian. We were able to blow out all 25 candles rather quickly.

But what I really want to thank my mom for is all the help she gives me. Especially coming to help me with the diapers. They work great!

I decided to make all in one cloth diapers for Gracie. I wanted to for several reasons.

1. To save LOTS of money.

2. Because of my mother and grandmother - I HATE to waste. It is hard for me to throw ANYTHING away, but when there are things that are constantly being thrown in the garbage I try and think of ways that I can do without those things. This is me consuming less.

3. The thought of being self-reliant brings me peace, and this is one step closer. Next step -gardening.

4. I love this earth.

They needed to be all-in-one diapers (meaning the plastic and the cloth come all together) or else I probably wouldn't stick with it. I used a free pattern that I found here.

It works great I only added some wing-cover-things to go over the Velcro when washing.

And to make them I used flannel sheets found at goodwill and a plastic mattress cover found at DI and an old towel. Then I bought my elastic and Velcro at my favorite fabric by the pound store. They were cheap to make, but took a lot of time. That is why I am so grateful to my mom for coming to help me.

I have made a lot of things, but is feels really good to have made something REALLY useful and that I really need.

A camping they will go

Back in January, William and I went camping with my friend Scott and a bunch of his family members. We loved it and I'm so glad we went. This is William in the cave where we saw some bats. He was too scared to go inside at night when we saw the bats but was fine to go in the next day.

This was fun. We saw (and also heard at like 1 am at night) a very slow moving train on these tracks. This was the gang preparing to launch model rockets. Turns out William really likes that.
No parachute. It's a good thing it was a ghost town lest someone be impaled by a malfunctioning model rocket.

Thanks to Scott and the rest of his family who all helped me and William feel very welcome. We had a great time.