It's Official!!

Well it's officially official. Last Friday night we met with Health & Welfare for our final "orientation". They let us read our home study where we find out what they said about us, how our house did and what other people said about us. If we pass then they go over basic business stuff. We were approved by 2 of the 3 (our application and home study has to be approved by 3 separate people) and they said when the 3rd person has approved we will receive a packet in the mail with our license. We got the said package yesterday so now it's just a matter of waiting for a phone call. I can't believe it's here, a process that started last November and now 6 months later is finished (at least the initial part is finished). So on to waiting, again. Wish us luck!

Monday's Memory

I was watching Luke playing the other day with the girl's dolls and it reminded me of my brother and I when we were little kids. Ben this is in honor of your 30th B-day!! Happy Birthday big brother! Ben and I are 15 months apart and we played endlessly together as little kids. Ben loved my dolls. We would play house together and even fight over who's turn it was to "nurse" the babies. We would build houses or forts together, traipsing all over my dad's farm to find old stuff to build them with. My mom would have to yell for us to come in because we would be up by the canal content for hours building and playing together. We had a great time together. Hope you have a great birthday!

Out of the mouths of babes...

Just some things I didn't want to forget that they kids have said.
Kathryn: "My throat hurts so bad it feels like sharks are eating it."

Seth: "Mom guess what? I am trying out for the mini-midget club today since I am really good at mini-midget wrestling." (this one was accompanied by mom trying desperately not to laugh. He was quite serious. If you don't know, a mini-midget is when you crouch down on your feet and walk around like that. Who knew that his school had a mini-midget club and that is what he is aspiring to!)

The Falls....

This is the best time of year to see "the falls". There is so much water crashing over them that pictures don't do it justice.

The kids looking over the railing. There is so much water that you are constantly being sprayed with water even this faraway.

Mr. Beus and Luke, he loves his daddy!

The falls from the top.

There is also a park and lots of trails at the falls. One of the kids favorites are these stairs.

Yard Sale Anyone?

The other day the girls decided they wanted to sell some of their stuff because they are earning money for Lagoon. They went through 2 boxes of their toys and picked out a few things to sell. They then took our mini picnic table to the front yard and set it up. I tried to get them to wait for Saturday when they would have more people coming by, but they were determined to do it then so...I went and took a picture of them. They had a great time and our nice neighbor (their only customer, but they didn't care) came by and bought a puzzle and they were so excited! Thanks Janelle.

Monday's Memory

On Sunday we were hanging out with some friends when Seth came over wimpering and holding his head. I look at him and can see blood in his hair. We go inside and look at it. It is a cut about 2 in. long, but not too deep. We call our friend who is a nurse and have her come look at it. She said that if we go in they will probably just put stitches in if we want them too or we can just try to close it on our own. Well he hadn't had a hair cut for a month so we had to give him a buzz to try and get the butterfly band-aid to stick. That wouldn't stick so Sam used a razor to get the rest of the hair (as you can see the bald spot), but the band-aid still wouldn't stick. I had been wanting to try super glue so finally Sam held the cut together and I super-glued it shut. It worked awesome, wow the amazing wonders of super glue.

This bald spot reminded of Seth's first bald spot. When he was about 1 1/2 I noticed that he had a very round spot of dry scaly skin on the top of his head. It looked very much like the ring worm we used to get as kids from swimming in the canal. So instead of really finding out what it was I assumed that was what it was and started putting anti-fungal cream on it. Well the it wasn't clearing up, but his hair started falling out. I read the back of the tube and realized that you weren't suppose to put it on your head because it makes hair fall out. Oops! Then I actually looked it up and realized it wasn't ring worm at all, but eczema. Wow, poor kid has had to have 2 bald spots, well atleast it grows back!

Oh how I love Saturdays!!

So last Monday we woke up to this...SNOW and then last Saturday we had beautiful sunshine and lots of playing and watching...

bugs,

Mr. Beus rototill the garden,

planes,

and kids making forts out of all the branches we cut off our trees. We ended the day by the kids playing at friends while Mr. Beus and I went out to dinner with friends and then to Stk. Conference. What a great day!

Happy Easter (okay so like 2 days ago but...)

How was your Easter? Ours was amazing. Probably one of the most memorable Easters I can remember. We decided to do baskets and hunting eggs on Saturday so we could keep Sunday special and focus on the resurrection.
The picture is from the kids finding their baskets. Inside they got some new pajamas from their grandma and grandpa and a tye-dye shirt from their Aunt Jessica. They loved them and I thought they looked so cute.
I have decided next year we are going to change Easter even more. We are going to celebrate the week of Easter and talk, eat or in some way do what Christ did each of those days. It just really hit me that we celebrate Christ's birth more than his resurrection and one of the biggest differences between what we believe and what other churches believes is that HE LIVES! Not just that He was born and died but HE LIVES. That is what is most important and that is what we should focus on, because as the scriptures say, "why seek ye the living among the dead?" Christ lives and this Easter season has really made me understand that and apply it to my own life even more. Our bishop challenged us to start "Jesus the Christ" right after Christmas and finish on Easter. I have never read it before and it had a profound effect on my Easter season and how I view our Saviour. I would encourage all of you to try it. I hope that all of you had a marvelous Easter season and that your know that Christ LIVES for you!

Monday's Memory

So today I was talking with a friend and it made me think about what I wanted to be when I grew up. Ever since I was a little kid up until the end of my freshman year I wanted to be a heart surgeon. I don't remember when that dream started just that that's what I was going to be. During my freshman year at college I took chem 105 and got a B+, so I decided that was enough for that goal especially because I just couldn't see myself being a stay at home mom and a heart surgeon. I haven't been sorry since and I love being able to stay home with my kids.

Books?

Found this on a friend's blog:
The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?

I highlighted the ones I have read. I know I can't beat you Erin, but I have read 29. How about everyone else?

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare m
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime-Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno - Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole )
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Ode to the Pine Tree

Well we finally did it. Ever since we bought our house I have wanted to cut down this pine tree that is in the picture above (you can't really tell how big it is, abt 30 ft tall) because it looks ridiculous in the front yard (I swear I will always think of how big a tree will get before I plant it because too many forget that trees keep growing), it is killing the grass, scrapes our van every time we back out of the garage and is pushing up the cement and making it crack. So we set a date and took the plunge. Our city will take all the branches for free on the first Saturday of the month, so last Saturday Sam and I and a friend (thanks Wade) cut all the branches off and hauled them to the wood recyclers, is that a word? We then took a little break while we tried to figure out how we were going to get the trunk down. We ended up digging out around the tree, cutting the main roots and then another friend, who has a massive truck (thanks James) hooked up to it with some tow ropes and pulled it over. The kids thought that was awesome, okay I admit, I did too.

This is what was left in our yard, a nice big hole. The kids thought it was great to jump into, atleast until we filled it in. You can also see the end of the trunk in the back of the picture. I think our house looks so much better, it must because we have had way more flyers taken in the past 5 days, and I love it. Our friends took the trunk for firewood (thanks Josh) so now all we have to do is plant some grass :)!

Easter Egg Hunt

Every year we do an Easter Egg in our backyard. Yesterday we invited our ward and some extra friends to share in the festivities. We had the backyard covered with eggs, not to mention it was an absolutely beautiful day, perfect for an Easter egg hunt.

Sarah with the eggs she found

The sun was shining bright, can you tell? (:

Kathryn with her basket

Luke could hardly stand himself, chocolate and candy everywhere. What more could a boy want!

Luke and his friend Gage. They are bestest pals and are two peas in a pod. Here they are waiting for the hunt to begin.

Entertaining some of the kids in the front yard.

Luke and Gage being silly.

Kathryn's Party

Oh my heck it worked, YEAH!!! Anyway, here are some pictures of her party. She wanted to have stroganoff and broccoli for dinner and yellow cupcakes with chocolate frosting and mint chocolate chip ice cream for dessert.







Kathryn has been counting down for months. She was so excited to finally have her birthday. This year we did a family party, so way easy for mom. She is still our polar opposite, thumb-sucking little girl (by that I mean when she is good, she is very, very good and when she is bad she is very, very bad--most of the time she is good and we try to keep it that way). We have tried every way we can think of to get her to stop her thumb-sucking (except the retainer in her mouth), but she doesn't care so I am learning not to care either. She still wants to be a cowgirl when she grows up and can play horses for hours with Sarah. She loves to give kisses and hugs and (this is really funny) she loves to touch little kids ears. If she is sitting by Luke she will automatically start rubbing his ear, I guess it's like my younger sister who would always rub the fat part of older people's arms :). Kathryn also loves to wear skirts, but NO tights! She has a very interesting sense of fashion, one that I hardly notice anymore because that is one battle I have chosen not to fight for many years now. Like today, too bad you can't tell from the pictures but she has this nice bright pink flowered shirt and soft, pastel pink pants on with flowers also. Totally clashes to me, but matched to her because "it has flowers on it". She has learned to write her entire name and the alphabet and is very excited about that. We love Kathryn and are so proud of her. Happy 5th Birthday!!

Happy Birthday Kathryn

Here are just a few pictures from her birthday photo shoot.

Monday's Memory

I was thinking about Sarah's first Easter (I would post a picture but I still can't get it to work) and the dress that I made her. I was so excited to make her her first Easter dress. I searched for cute fabric and a cute pattern and off I went. I couldn't wait to sew it! But man was it a disaster!!! I of course picked a pattern that had tiny little tucks all along the front and a lining and cute little puff sleeves, which was all way too advanced for me, but I thought of course I can do it, my mom always made dresses like these why can't I. Wow never again, okay maybe never but to this day I haven't tried to make my girls another dress. I always think back to that first dress and I head right to the store and buy one. I actually finished the dress and had her wear it to church but it went straight to DI after that. So good luck to all you women out there that are making your girls dresses and hope it goes better than mine :)

What weve been doing lately...

Well I got one picture to work, let's see if we can get the rest! This year I wanted to try something new so I am starting a lot of my seeds indoors. The grass on the left is just my wheat grass we grew for decoration for Easter, but the other container is cabbages and sunflowers (the kids are growing that this year). I also started peppers, daisies, parsley and basil. I can't wait for spring to come :)

Man this ticks me off!!!! I can't post any pictures, hence the rest of spring break info missing. Any ideas? It just tells me it is loading and loading and loading, no matter how long I do it, it times out. I have tried it during different hours of the day and only 1 picture instead of 5, and on and on and it still doesn't work!!!