At Last!!!

Today was a glorious day! A day a long time coming. A joyous, life-changing day. Okay, maybe not life-changing. However, after several months, I told Joshua that his hair needed to be cut this weekend and he agreed. To my great astonishment, he asked me to cut it Marine style, like his dad's hair. Wow! I was giddy with excitement!

Here is his "Before" shot. He is hamming it up for me with his horrid face. Look how long that hair is! It wouldn't be so bad if it weren't so baby fine and straight. He can't brush it to the side or anything; it just falls straight into his eyes. Ug, I say. I couldn't quite make myself give him a high-and-tight. I like a little bit of hair on top, so I did not buzz the whole thing. Joshua was pleased with the result.

Yes, he was quite pleased with the way it turned out. As was I. I really like short hair. I like to see the ears and the back of the head. I do not like hair in the eyes, or over the ears. I was happy that his fade looked good. Since it is such straight, fine hair, it really shows if I don't get it right.

Somehow, it looked like a lot more hair on the floor before I took this picture. And the dish towel on the floor was what was wrapped around his neck to keep the hair off. Not that it worked very well! Notice that Joshua is still hamming it up! That's my boy. Fortunately, my boy now has short, good-looking hair!

Learning New Things

We have been learning and doing lots of exciting things lately. Mostly Rylee is doing new things, but everyone is growing and learning.

Marian let me try new things with her hair. She was very patient and looked SO cute!

Callie learned a new song at school and practiced her song "This Pretty Planet" 500 times at home. Then I got to go to her preschool and see her sing it. She was adorable. The school does a great program, I must say. It is short, well done and the kids do a great job.

Delaney has learned to turn on the computer, open the Internet and get to Netflix and watch movies. Unfortunately, she does it in the middle of the night sometimes. I do not know how long she was up the night before, but she fell asleep on the couch at 10am.

Joshua has been taking violin lessons at school. He likes it, and has to practice for his Spring Concert next month. I'm so sorry about his hair. We have an agreement and he gets to keep it like this till the end of the month. Thank goodness that's coming up soon! (Oh, and you can see some of his fabulous scars on the underside of his arm there.)

This is one of my favorite pictures. Rylee loves to do whatever the big kids are doing. I love that she and Marian are sitting the same way. Quite cute.

Rylee just turned 8 months. She is pulling herself up onto everything and she is getting around! I think she will be walking well before her first birthday.

The little pickle has also learned to climb the stairs. She is so proud of this accomplishment! And she is fast. She can zoom up them before you even notice she's gone. She's fallen down a few times, so its good that they are carpeted, and that there are only 7 stairs to tumble down.

Rylee has discovered new foods. Her sister left a bag of goldfish on the floor and Rylee dumped them out and started snacking. I think she may be too smart!

And she sure is Trouble! I was loading the dishwasher and left for a minute. This is what I came back to find!

Yes, she is learning to eat all kinds of new things! She was all over this corn on the cob tonight! Okay, so Callie ate most of the corn of the cob, but Rylee thought it was the best thing ever. Ignore Joshua. I swear, the boy hates it if I'm taking HIS picture, but he loves to pop into everyone else's shots.

As for me, I am learning patience. I am learning to try to so small things and I'm learning that we have too much stuff! I'm working on organizing our stuff before we move and its no fun. I have a bunch of things ready to be hauled away and I love that the Thrift Stores will com pick it up! Dan and I are learning where all the streets and communities are in our area and we are learning which ones we think we want to live in. We are excited about a possible house and will be looking at it this weekend. And that then brings up a whole new set of anxiety. If we commit to this house, what if something better comes along?!

Bath Time Baby!

House Hunting

When we moved out here 2 years ago, we thought we'd be here for 2 years. That coincided neatly with the house we rented; the home owners would also be gone for 2 years. Unfortunately, the nice little plan hit a snag. We are not moving away this summer. And our homeowners want their house back.

That really sucks. We really like their house. We really like their neighborhood. We really like their school. Apparently, they agree and they really like all that too. So we have to find a new place to live. I hate moving. I hate it even more when Uncle Sam is not footing the bill or doing the labor. Doing it ourselves has not had good results in the past, and I would absolutely make Dan request orders to move us far far away, just so the military would move us. Too bad that's not a possibility.

We have known for a few months now that we will be needing to find a new home this summer. We have been diligently seeking and it is impossible! Granted, we have pretty narrow parameters right now, but the whole system is dumb. No one really posts a house for rent until it is actually empty. Some will post it a week or 2 in advance, but for the most part, houses are not advertised until they are available to be occupied. Do you see the dilemma? We want to find something ahead of time. I want to have things set up well in advance, and yet, we can't. I have to think that people know ahead of time that their tenants are moving. Don't the people know when the leases expire? Don't they want to rent their house before it is actually empty?

We happen to be looking in the one area that probably has very little empty time. There are very few rentals because it is a great area. I know more things will pop up as June comes along, but I want to know NOW! It is frustrating. On the plus side, there are 3 houses right now that we would be happy with, if they stay unrented long enough to meet our timeline. And if there are 3 now, hopefully there will be more (and maybe even better!) ones as summer hits and more people move. Send good house Karma our way!

My next Project

Before I get to the main point, I wanted to share a rare picture with you! Yes, we had Joshua take a picture of us on Sunday.

I don't know when we last had a picture of us together, so I had to put it in here. Doesn't he look so handsome in his suit?!

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And on to what I sat down to blog about. I like Blurb.com. You may already know that! I love them. LOVE them! And with some prompting from my mom, I got started on a new Blurb book project. I am making an ABC book using pictures of the kids. It is coming along quite nicely and I am having so much fun! That is why I must blog about it now!

This is for the front cover. I found it was really easy to get pictures of some of my children, yet very hard to get other ones. And Joshua now has an opinion on what he thinks is stupid. I find it quite amusing that he thinks he looks dumb in a picture (where he doesn't!), yet he will make the most horrid faces in another picture and he thinks it is great. Anyway, here is a sampling of what I'm putting in the book:

A is for APPLE

E is for EYES

S is for SNOWMAN

H is for HALLOWEEN

X is for eXHAUSTION

(Yeah, its cheating, I know!)

Y is for YARN

What the hail?!

30 minutes after Dan and Joshua left for a camp out, we got some thunder and we got some lightning, and then we got some rain and suddenly, we got hail! Lots of big hail. Okay, not HUGE hail, but pretty big hail for people like me who don't see much of it! Of course, the kids had to run out and play in it and they had a marvelous time!

You can kind of see it falling here. Callie said they hurt when they hit, so she did not stand out in it very long. Check out how saturated she is already!

The girls are showing off the hail they have managed to capture.

Look how big those are!

And check out that face. Could she BE any cuter?!

And this kid! Oooh, she is such a sweetie and so hard to get a good picture of. Look at that pile of hail. Not quite golf ball sized, but big enough to hurt!

The girls ran around collecting as much hail as they could. Here they are, with their pile of ice. They crack me up. They got buckets and ran all over the yard collecting more.

Delaney makes the funniest faces for pictures. She was so proud of her piece of hail.

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And Marian finally let me do something fun with her hair just for school. It was really fast and simple and looked really cute!

I know, and look at the bow, it is orange to match her shirt! Who thought I would ever do girl hair and use matching accessories?!

Check that out! Isn't it cool?!

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Our latest adventure is searching for buried treasure. Joshua has gotten pretty adept at making maps. However, I decided it took longer for them to hunt it down if I wrote out directions. You know, "10 steps straight ahead, then turn left..." So Joshua had his friend over and I gave them the written directions and sent them out. Very funny! They got so turned around and just could not follow the directions! I gave them a little interpretive help and they were able to locate the appropriate spot. (Don't worry Kirsten, I made sure it was in the garden, so no lawn is missing. And we have buried some for your kids when you get back as well!)

Here they are at the correct digging site.

The joy of opening the can to discover what delights awaited! I will say that the mini fun shaped squirt guns were the biggest hit.

If you feel the need to bury treasure as well, I just picked up some old tins at the thrift store and filled them with fun things and buried them. Then we made clues on how to find them. The kids like the hunt more than the actual treasure, so I don't go overboard on that. Just some cheap trinkets and toys.

Marital Bliss

Dan and I were invited to take the Marriage and Family Relations class at church a few months ago. They were only going to go through the first 8 lessons, and not the whole book though. I thought it would be fun to do something different and to be proactive about making our marriage better. Dan really likes out Sunday School teachers here and he was not enthusiastic about missing that for a class he didn't think we needed. I said I wanted to go. So we went. I really enjoyed it. I liked the teachers and I loved that they emphasized that our goal was merely to try to improve enough to step up one rung on the ladder to perfection. We were suppose to work on one new thing each week.

I liked the class a lot. I am definitely at a point where I want to be a better person, and this really gave me a focus for that. So I was working hard on being better and improving me and being more appreciative of Dan. I mostly felt like I was succeeding. Well, I mean, overall, I felt like I was doing better and being a better wife. To put it into context, this means that there were actually times where I kept my mouth shut and didn't say something snippy. That is huge for me sometimes! And the number of times I was able to not say something became more frequent. And occasionally, there were things that normally would have sent me to the brink, and they didn't bother me! Yay for that!

So, I was all excited about the class. I felt like it was helping our marriage. Just the fact that we were looking at our relationship and mutually trying to be better was great. And the class was fun. The teachers did a good job and it was interesting. Then, in class, the wife of the couple teaching commented on how much she felt that teaching the class had helped her and her marriage. She looked at her husband and asked if he felt like it had improved their marriage, and he said, "No."

It was funny, and it was doubly funny because I had just had that exact same conversation with Dan the day before! I thought I was doing so great, and I thought WE were stronger together, and I told Dan how much I liked the class and how much I thought we were improving. I asked him if he was enjoying the class too, and did he feel like it had made a difference. He said, "Not really." He's always thought we had a great marriage and he didn't feel like it was any better now. Sigh. Men.

I did realize that the men do not actually need to change. Well, they do not need to if the women do. As we feel better about our marriage and partners, we feel like they have changed for the better, even if they have not. We notice the good stuff more and appreciate them more, and so to us, it feels like the husband has improved, even if he hasn't changed at all. Thus, the men can skate along and enjoy the benefits of a happier wife without any work at all!

My Mother's Day

The scouts in our ward used Mother's Day as their fund raiser for Scout Camp. They sold little cakes (mostly to the husbands) for Mother's Day. Dan somehow ended up spearheading and being in charge of this grand project. I think they sold close to 45 cakes. Dan divvied up the labor and I helped by baking 20+ cakes. Saturday morning, I helped Dan frost most of ours.

Its a 4 1/2" 3 layered chocolate cake with chocolate shavings on top. Dan really wanted them to be nice and worth the $10 charge. He did good work. There were some Tower of Pisa issues, but all in all, they looked pretty good.
This was the lemon version. Lemon cake with a lemony frosting. Also nicely done. Dan really wanted something artistic on the top, but this was the best we could come up with. I think there were some variations, and I think they all looked cute. Dan did all the top decorating.

Here are the cakes done at our house. I had wanted a picture of all the cakes we did, but some were already picked up. Still, not bad for a good deal of hard work. (And only one casualty!)

This was the adorable Rylee face I saw this morning. This is her alert face. She has to see everything and be involved in everything. She is such a busy baby. She won't snuggle, because she has to see what's going on. Just look at those eyes!

I did super-cute things with the girls' hair this morning and got all the kids together after church for a picture. Out of the 10 or so shots, this one was the best. Sigh. On the plus side, they are all looking at me, and I think it is in focus!

Since it is Mother's Day, I thought I maybe needed a picture of me with the children. That was fun too. This was the best one. I think it is a little blurry, and Joshua is..... well, I can't actually explain that. I guess its the best one because I look excited to be there!

This is Delaney's hair. She also had 4 tiny ponytails at the nape of her neck, which really made this cute and complicated looking.

This is Marian's hair. 2 tuck-under knots to a tuck-under ponytail. She was pleased with it and she looked so cute!

And Callie;s hair. Just 5 rows of little ponytails and I collected them into one half-ponytail in the back. She was happy with it, but wanted more bows. I guess I may actually have to start buying bows, since we have none! I never expected to actually do fun hair! But I have discovered that I like it, and Callie loves it, and it improves my Mom status, so I guess we'll keep doing it.

Happy Mother's Day!

Stitches, Cool hair, and the park

Here is a shot of Joshua's arm in all its gory glory. You can see how widely spaced the stitches are, but still doing their job. He has a good deal of bruising around them too.

Check out how close that cut is to his tendon there. How blessed is he?!!

He got the 2 stitches in his ear out today and the rest come out next week. He still likes to keep a bandage over everything, which is interesting, since it includes his elbow and knee.

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I have been having fun with Callie's hair. She has been cooperative and excited to have neat things done to it. I am not very good at a lot of stuff, but I am getting better!

This one was really easy, although I didn't split some of the ponies like I was suppose to. It came out cute and held her hair very nicely.

She asked for the back to be in a big ponytail and it was adorable! Callie is just adorable!

This was the nifty one I did for Friday. I had a lot of trouble with the big ponytails, but the clips hid a lot of the imperfection. I wanted to curl the ponies, but Callie said no. Maybe next time! This style was not as good. I do not have girls who sit quietly. I have girls who run and jump and do headstands and roughhouse. So the back here did not stand up to all that and was pulling loose by nighttime. Maybe smaller little ponies would work.....

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I had been promising Callie that we could go to the park after preschool someday. I finally thought about it enough in advance that I got a snack together and was prepared to do it. The girls were thrilled. It was a gorgeous sunny day and we played at the park and it was fun!

Rylee crawled up to the sand and thought the texture was interesting.

Callie was a hoot on the slide.

Rylee LOVED the swing!

She was almost too little for it, but she hung on like a little monkey and had a great time.

Part of her face is messy from the chocolate donuts she licked the frosting off of (donuts she was NOT suppose to be eating!), and part of it is residual scab from her tumble a week ago. (She can't stop picking off the scab and making it bleed, so it is still healing.... over and over.)

Callie made me a "cheesecake" and an "ice cream cone" in the sandbox. She's so thoughtful! And adorable. I amy have mentioned that before, but this kid is adorable!