Cousins in the Kitchen

It's so cute to see Robby and William playing. Here they are in the kitchen playing with Tom's thermos. William is a little too rough with Robby sometimes. Here he's trying to take the thermos cup from Robby. Notice the unhappy look on Robby's face.

Cousins on the trampoline

William and Robby are trying out the trampoline. This is Robby's first time on the trampoline. He's 4 months younger than William. They weigh about the same, but William is a few inches taller.

Cousin Robby is Coming!!

We're so excited!! Uncle Johnny, Aunt Jenette and cousin Robby are on their way!! Alan and Sarah are excited to talk to Uncle Johnny in Spanish with all the spanish they've learned in school. Kaitlyn asks every day, "Is Robby coming today?" We're all happy they're coming.

One last post about the snow

So, here's a tribute to the snow that is now gone. We haven't had snow on the ground in 7 years here. We'll probably be moved away from here before it snows like this again. Some people at church said they've never seen this much snow. That's just sad.

More snow pictures...

Well, these aren't the best pictures, because I had to use my cell phone camera. Tom was making the treacherous trek from Arkansas to here with our camera yesterday. (He finally got home at 6:30 pm having traveled 12 hours through snow and ice on a trip that should've taken him only 8 hrs.) All added up, it snowed from 8:00am until 4:30pm. We got 5 inches. We would've had more, but it was in the mid 30's by the afternoon, and the snow was melting as it was falling.
Here's our front walkway with snow falling.
Here's the backyard view from our play room window.
Here's the road just turning off of our street. It was so pretty, I had to take this picture as we were on our way to church. Yes, we went to church, but we only had Sacrament meeting because it was still snowing so hard.

Here's the view looking out from our front door over our bushes toward the neighbor's house.

This is our deck and little fire pit thingy.

Beautiful trees and bushes from our Family Room window.

Snow in the South...

Ok, I'm serious, the high yesterday was 72 degrees here. You can check weather.com. But today, it has now been snowing/sleeting for an hour and we have an inch of snow on the ground. This is the first time my kids have ever seen snow accumulate on the ground here. Well, except for 7 years ago when Alan and Sarah were babies, so they don't remember that. We're so excited.

It's Sunday morning, and we're just watching to see if it will get so deep that they'll call off church in two hours. I hope not because I'm excited about the primary sharing time lesson I'm teaching today. Even if they don't call off church, I don't think anyone will come. That would be sad, because I want to teach my lesson. :(

So, here's a picture of a miniature snowman Alan made on our deck, and the snow on our bushes in the front yard.... And it's still snowing really hard.

Modesty...

Hopefully this image won't be offensive to any of you :) Lately Kaitlyn has taken notice that her Teddy bears don't have any clothes on!! I didn't know she thought this was a problem until I started noticing William's diapers strapped onto some of the stuffed animals in her bedroom. And then, this week, she put a pair of panties on one of them. Now that they are presentable to her, she wants to take them everywhere. We let them go as far as the inside of the van, but no farther. So, they ride with us everywhere, but they must wait in the van for us until we come back. After all, they are still only in their unerwear.

Kaitlyn loves to write

Last night Sarah and Kaitlyn were playing school. Sarah wrote some letters on a peice of paper, and Kaitlyn wanted to copy them. She had so much fun that she wanted to do it on the chalkboard again today. So I wrote her name and let her copy it. She loved it. William also loved scribbling on the giant chalk board too.

Ugh

That's how I feel. Ugh. We've got this nasty virus going around our house right now. I usually have "mom immunity" and don't get the sicknesses our kids get. But I didn't escape it this time. High fever, headache, runny noise, sore throat, persistant cough. And it lasts a long time. Alan had a fever for a week. I know it's a virus because I took him to the Dr. two days after he got sick, and they put him on antibiotics because they weren't sure what it was. The antibiotics did nothing for him, because 5 days later he still had a fever. After the virus had run it's course, his symptoms disappeared completely. So, now he's all better, but the rest of us are suffering. Myself included. Ugh.

Our new Piano

You can't tell, but the piano is playing by itself while Sarah pretends she's playing. Alan is showing off the cool headphones feature. That way I can play at any time and not disturb the house.

This is the Roloand Digital Grand model RG7. I can plug my laptop into it, and play on the piano, and it will notate what I play. It also is a player piano that has many different fun songs. We can plug a microphone into it and sing along with it too. It has alot of other features that I haven't discovered yet, but am excited to soon.
We got an awesome deal on it because a retailer/distributor bought 5 of them and then couldn't afford the payments on them, and so our music store bought them up for super cheap. We also an EXTRA $1,000 off of it for trading in our piano. I honestly never thought I'd have something like this.
And for those of you who are freaking out because it's white, and I have four kids, this was the only color there was. I wasn't going to pass up this deal just because of the color. It looks amazing anyway. I think it might look even better with finger prints. :)

Valentine's Day Suprises...

Tom suprised me with a fabulous breakfast in bed yesterday. He got up early to get it ready, took care of the kids so that I could sleep in. I didn't even realize he had done it, until he came in with a beautiful breakfast on a bamboo tray. He made pancakes with sliced strawberries and whipped cream on top, bacon cooked perfectly, eggs, and a cinnamon roll. He also got my favorite orange juice, and put a single red rose on the tray. It was delicious. I wanted to take a picture, but it looked so good that I ate it before I could. :)
Later that morning, I got out the balloon boquet and chocolates I got for him. I also got some balloons and choclates for the kids. They were so happy with their balloons that they did a balloon parade around the family room while still in their pajamas.

The biggest suprise of all was when Tom told me to go to the music store which was having a huge sale, and look around at the digital pianos to see if their were any of them within our price range. Yes, I already have a piano, but I need a digital piano that I can compose with, and so, he told me to see if I could trade our piano for one. Welll.... I found an awesome Digital Baby Grand piano that was 65% off.... and we bought it!! Woo hoo!! Happy Valentine's Day for me. It's being delivered tomorrow, so I'll take pictures of it for you all to see.

The Spaghetti Bandit

While I was putting Kaitlyn down for her afternoon nap, William saw that his sister's spaghetti lunch was still on the table. I came out of the bedroom and saw that William the Conquerer had struck again. He does a pretty good job of weilding that fork doesn't he?

Getting ready for Valentine's Day...

We spent the afternoon making some Valentine's Day crafts using felt. It was alot of fun, and Alan and Sarah got their first lesson in basic sewing. They both decided to make something for their teachers at school. Alan made a teddy bear, and Sarah made a heart. Kaitlyn had fun cutting snips of fabric.

This is not a picture of the hearts we made. Tom took the camera with him to the Netherlands. (Like there would be something interesting in the Netherlands to see. :) I'll put a picture up of the ones we made later.

Funny faces on a Sunday afternoon..

Giant Felt blocks

We have alot of capri sun boxes from school lunches, and they are made of really strong cardboard. Looking at them one day, I decided that they would make great building blocks. So I taped up the open ends and covered them in felt using spary adhesive. Then I trimmed the excess felt around the edges. It was pretty simple, and they made really big sturdy blocks that stack well.