April Fun!

Daddy has been home a lot more lately now that he is taking online classes.  The kids and I have taken full advantage of him this.

Daddy playing play dough with the kids.

Kevin always requests a Moto.

 

(Ignore Julia’s hair. As of late, if she is mad at me the first thing she does is rip a pony tail out to see if she can get a rise! It doesn’t work, but must be painful.)

Daddy refuses to smile for the camera.

 

If you look closely, Kevin made a bird with his play-dough.

It wouldn’t be spring if it wasn’t freezing.

We took the kids out to play in their awesome rain boots from Grandma Wi and Grandpa Kevin.

Julia’s finally fit this year. The kids LOVE walking in puddles in their boots!

 

Julia has a CRAZY obsession with volleyballs. THE ENTIRE TIME she is coloring she wants someone to draw her ball-y after ball-y. I’ve tried distracting her with flowers, hearts, suns, stars, Anything… But NO, she wants a BALL-Y!

 

April also wouldn’t be complete with out a little coloring of the eggs.

It seriously took me longer to mix the die then it took each kid to decorate and die a dozen eggs each.

I only allowed Julia to use the yellow and the pink because they were the 2 lightest colors and I knew they wouldn’t ruin anything.

It was a good choice on my part because die was splashing everywhere.

I wish I could have video taped it while keeping the mess under control. But, I had a fussy Aiden and a wild Julia so there was no such luck! I was laughing and running around like a crazy lady though. It was pretty fun.

While we were coloring our Easter eggs we had a couple of guys hanging our gutters.

They look FAB! It was also LOVELY to not have to lift a finger.

It’s only our 2nd hired job (the other was our carpet) in the 1,000s of home projects we’ve done so far. It was well worth it.

After coloring the eggs the kids went to town on eating them! (I was shocked!) My picky children loved the hard boiled eggs. It’s not the first time I’ve given them to them either.

We will probably be coloring eggs a few more times this year.  If it means my kids will eat them, it’s worth it.

After Egg coloring Kevin made sticky cereal all by himself. (He’s getting so big and independent. I love it and hate it all at the same time!)

Julia licked the spatula when he was done. She is also becoming so independent. I fear we’ve hit the terrible twos with her. YIKES STRIPES! She has a set of lungs on her. Luckily, we’ve found a punishment that works wonders, holding our hand over her mouth for an extended period of time making her sit on her bed with the door shut. She comes out a MUCH happier, nicer girl. It’s amazing. She hates it so bad (It only lasts about 1 minute) that if she’s being naughty as soon as we say you want to sit on your bed she shapes up pretty fast. She has the sweetest, “I’m-sorry” on the face of the earth. It melts my heart.

Kevin is our little peace maker. Anytime Julia is a bear he will tell me, “it’s okay Mom, it was an accident.” He does enjoy teasing her every now and then, but if he has something she wants 98% of the time he gives it up and finds something new to play with. We had a family home evening about 3 weeks ago about

–Thumbs Up choices and –Thumbs down choices. He really grasped the lesson. He is our sweet little boy that loves making friends and playing with anyone. When we go to the park anyone that walks up he says, Hi, want to play? My names Kevin. If they play he will come and tell me that it was a THUMBS UP, if they don’t, then he is sad and says the other person made a THUMBS DOWN. We went to an indoor kids place a few weeks ago. There is a room that is filled to the brim with soy beans and has a a bunch of dump trucks, a conveyor belt, and a great big hopper. On this particular day the conveyor belt was broken. Kevin and one of his friends were playing in there and a worker came in and dumped bucket after bucket after bucket of beans into the hopper so that the kids could still use it. Kevin told me later that day that he told the lady that she had made a 'THUMBS UP choice and that was nice. Some people make THUMBS DOWN choices, but we should always make THUMBS UP choices. It was so sweet. It was also a good lesson for him to see how he feels when people make THUMBS UP choices towards him. We had a follow up lesson the next week and talked about all of the THUMBS UP choices he had made. Holy Moly, a little praise went a LONG way. He has been SO easy to handle and we’ve had SO much fun the last 3 weeks. I hope we can all keep it up.

We’ve mastered the art of keeping Kevin out of our bed. If he gets up in the night he now goes and climbs in with Julia, which I totally don’t care. But now we are trying to teach Julia to sleep in her own bed all night long. Amazingly, it is going quite well. We are no longer up for a 2 hour period every single night.  We are down to about a half an hour. Which I find to be awesome and It can only get better, right?  When we put her back in her own bed she always says, “ok, I love you Mommy, sleep good, Good night!” It’s so sweet that I have to control myself, I want to just pick her up and cuddle her in my bed. A few minutes after climbing into my bed you will hear her say, “I love you too Daddy, sleep good!” It seriously pulls at my heart strings. BUT, not bad enough to have her coming in and keeping us awake for 2-3 hours every night.

As far as Lacey goes. We told you her name was Lacey right? Just Lacey, no middle name. On Sunday we had our first bout with contractions. Two hours of horrid contractions. Once they were over, I was one sore Mama. Since then I’ve had a few here and there but nothing crazy. (No fear, I went through this with the other kids and there is NO way in HECKS name I am going into labor and delivery after hours to be checked. I’m not hanging out in that place until it’s go time.)  I did have a doctors appointment today and told Dr. C. what was going on, he gave me the headshake. Two hours of contractions 6 minutes apart is serious and should be monitored. I told him to take a hike. He told me that since I have experience I need to get myself in there if something is not ‘normal!’ You see, that’s where the problem lies, because when it comes to contractions mine are not ‘normal’ compared to anyone else I’ve talked to. BUT, I worry not, with Julia I had a strong prompting from the Spirit that I needed to go to the doctor, I went and a few hours later she was born. Note, I had not had an ounce of pain before this. Listening to the promptings of the Holy Ghost. For right now, that’s our birthing plan.  Since you’re supposed to have one of those right! :)