fits of laughter

So I haven't laughed this hard in a while, and it was for such a dumb reason, but...

The other night we were going to bed, Eric was super tired, and we had our window open because it was nice outside.  So we were just settled in, about to nod off, and a loud aircraft of some kind flew over.  Weird.  Once again almost asleep, and a train starts blasting loudly- the tracks are a mile away but for some reason the trains always whistle about 50 times while going through our town.  Eric's getting annoyed, but finally it goes away, only to be replaced by the sounds of dogs barking.  I swear everyone here owns at least one dog.  Finally Eric stomps up and closes the window, muttering "morons and their moron dogs!"  And for some reason that struck me as SO FUNNY.  I really could not stop laughing, it just kept bursting out of me, and I was trying SO hard not to because I knew Eric wanted to sleep.  But seriously my stomach muscles kept contracting, I was shaking and trying not to laugh, he just called those dogs morons??  Wow.  It really should not have been that funny, but I'm laughing right now just remembering it!  Finally I managed to get my mind off it and go to sleep, but I almost had to leave the room and laugh for a while because I knew Eric was bugged at me now too.  So funny.

Anyone had a moment like that lately?

more home improvement

boring maybe, but I wanted our families to see- this was our old chandelier in the dining area.  I thought it was fine, but Eric totally hated it.  

and so last weekend we went out and bought and installed...
a ceiling fan!  Woo-hoo!  It definitely helps keep the kitchen cooler, in the afternoon in the summer it will be great!

in love with my flowers

Aren't they beautiful?  I know I posted about these last year, but I can't get enough of them.  I look out my front window a hundred times a day to see them.  

And the last two days I've made my girls endure photo shoots by them.  Here are a few of my favorite pictures.

what a cutie.
Whitney hated the grass on her legs and kept trying to eat the flowers, so I took pictures of her elsewhere. :)  She and Katelyn both LOVE our sandbox.
In her baby swing.  I love her cute little hands!
And I love these three shots of her on our front steps.



Anyway, we're loving spring!!!!

Whitney's newest tricks

pushing cars around

spending long periods of time looking out the low windows in our dining area and living room

pushing her little walker!  She loves it!

Easter fun

Easter bunny day was so fun, Kate's a great egg hunter.  Here's the ones we dyed after she found them all.

Whitney in the adorable jumper my sister Katrina bought for Katelyn.  She loved shaking the eggs with treats inside.
The easter bunny brought mostly candy this year, I was too lazy to but them other stuff because I"m already working on their birthdays which are coming up.  They got the Old Testament and New Testament story books, since we finished the Book of Mormon one and Katelyn liked it.  
Actual Easter was really nice, we had Eric's sister Elizabeth over for dinner, the girls love her!   And we did an activity my friend Melanie gave me that goes over the whole crucifixion and resurrection story, very cool.  Then we watched the end of The Testaments, my favorite movie ever.  Katelyn seemed to really enjoy talking about the resurrection.  I love teaching my children the gospel.  

And the ten Commandments was only on TV Saturday night, not Sunday, I couldn't believe it!  Very disappointing.  

in love with the alphabet

Just wanted to pass along my ideas for teaching Katelyn the lower-case alphabet, they've worked great!  

First, foam bathtub letters.  My friend Crystal has these in upper-case and that's all I've found at the store, so I bought the thickest craft foam I could find at JoAnn's (limited color selection!) and cut these out with my kitchen shears.  She LOVES them and half of them are missing because she's carried them all over the house playing with them.

This one was actually Katelyn's idea- stuffed letters.  I made her a couple, then decided I wouldn't do it for free--she could get one every time she used the potty.  She gets to pick out the scrap fabric and what letter to make next.  Well little did I know she was about to figure out the whole potty thing and soon I was making 5+ a day and getting behind.  So now we have almost the whole alphabet and she only gets them for going #2, our current challenge.  Anyway she sleeps with them and loves them and pretends to spell words and sound them out ("mom, what does suh, tuh, luh, muh, ah spell?") they're so fun.

baby doll

Whitney has decided already to be more girly than Katelyn and actually like dolls!  This is her hugging her favorite one, my old doll from when I was a little girl.  Apparently I named her Tay-eye when I was 18 months old.  Anyway It's so cute she loves to hug and kiss that doll!

potty successes

Last week before we left for California Katelyn finally finished her potty sticker chart that we'd been working on for months!  So she got this sweet Lightning McQueen that we got on clearance after Christmas.  Woo-hoo!  And the BEST part is, last Wednesday for the FIRST time she told me she had to go and then went... and has been doing that ever since!!! It's like she finally got it, something clicked and she realized that she didn't need me to tell her to go every hour, she could just go when she needed to, so wonderful...  

She's not perfect but she's doing great, FINALLY.  6 months ago I never thought this would happen!  

And a funny story from California.  When Katelyn uses the bathroom she calls out "something happened!!"  real loudly and then I go in and help her. (she learned it from a potty book, that's what the little girl in the book said the first time she went on the potty)  Obviously my family was very entertained by this while we were there, several times a day they'd hear her yelling in excitement from the bathroom and all crack up.  So one night we were playing a game and from the bathroom we hear Derek yelling "something happened!!!"  We were just dying, so funny.  And then my mom hurried and found a sticker to give him when he came out, it said "way to go".  Good times.  

while we were away

Eric gave me probably the BEST surprise ever and finished a big project while we were away!  

This little hallway area in our downstairs has 4 doors, one to the toyroom, one to the family room, one to the basement, and one to the laundry room.  None of them used to have doorframes and they looked totally ghetto, but now they're beautiful!

This is my favorite, our laundry room used to have no door or frame, just an empty hole in the wall.  Now I can close this beautiful door and no one needs to see my laundry piles!
And best of all, this door to the basement used to be just a door in an unfinished wall, and Eric put up sheetrock on this and the wall to the right, finishing them and putting up the doorframe, so beautiful...    so now the basemnt is sealed off and we won't have a draft coming up anymore!  
I love not being able to see our laundry room...
He also put new baseboards on a couple of corners in the house where they were missing since the previous owners.   

To some amazing rennovating people and basement-finishers this might not seem like much, but Eric had never done any of this stuff before.  I am SO proud of him and SO  SURPRISED!!  I thought he just hung out all weekend and did nothing.  How cute that he was busily working on our house to surprise me.   I love him.

home

I LOVE this picture.  We got home yesterday afternoon after a 6 day absence, and when Eric came home from work we were all SO excited!  Whitney was the most though, she just laid her head on Eric's shoulder, smiling, for several minutes- it was the cutest thing I've ever seen so I took this picture!  Then we ate dinner and Whitney kept just staring at Eric and smiling so big and waving her arms and kicking her feet, she was just so happy to see him!!  We all loved it.  Obviously Kate was happy too but she had talked to him on the phone every day and she understood when we were going home.  But cute little Whitney just did did not want to take her head off his shoulder, so precious.

Cousins

I guess I should say "cousin", singular, because my girls only have one!  And we love her!  Fortunately she is about 15 months younger than Katelyn and 8 months older than Whitney, perfect.  Obviously the girls had a lot of fun playing together!  ANd the good news is that she is moving from Boston to California in a couple of months, so we'll be seeing her more often.  Yay! 

Whitney and Natalie becoming friends

Whitney, Katelyn, and Natalie!

Natalie and Katelyn in their matching dresses made by their great-grandmom, unfortunately Whitney had just thrown up on hers and we never got a picture of all three.
everyone was amazed at how much pasta my girls can shove down.  It is pretty amazing!  THis is Kate with her 3rd empty plate and Whitney chowing.
We had great times on the trampoline, and the weather was just beautiful.  Spring is the BEST time to be in Madera!
Natalie loves to "hop"
Kate and Natalie trying out my dad's tractor.

Jonathan kept doing this and Whitney LOVED looking at him through the tramp.  
in our matching pj's
Derek and Jonathan both read to Katelyn several times, and everyone else did too.  She just loves books.
Jenae and Katelyn, best buddies.  Picture taken by Melissa, official awesome photographer.  She took all the pictures, that's why I don't have one of her with the girls, sorry!

Also Katelyn had a blast with all her aunts and uncles and Grammy and Grandpa Jamie!  Whitney is still pretty afraid of people, and she also got sick which made her more clingy.  She really liked Allison and Natalie though, and everyone made her smile a ton.  As long as they didn't touch her and I was close by. :)  

The Play

Here's the reason why we went to California:
(Derek as a Crow, he was also an ensemble member)
(Melissa as a singing tree, a great part for a freshman.  She was also an ensemble member)
(Jonathan as a flying monkey jumping into the audience!  He was in the ensemble too.)
(Jenae, who's in 6th grade, was a munchkin!)

1. All 4 of my siblings who still live at home were in the High School Play, The Wizard of Oz.

2. Derek and Jonathan are seniors and have been in several musicals and I hadn't seen any of them.

3. When I was thinking about going, Allison decided to fly with Natalie from BOSTON and surprise everyone and just show up at home!  So then we had to go!

4. When I talked to Eric about going a couple of months ago, he wasn't thrilled about the idea, since we had just driven at Christmas and we're going again in the summer.  (He has nothing against my family :), he just does NOT enjoy making that drive.  Understandably.)  So I started thinking that maybe I could do it myself, and then it became sort of a challenge for me.  I figured I could do it if I stopped overnight and only drove 6 hours each day.  So I kept telling myself I could do it, and Eric was very supportive, and it worked!  We made it!

More pictures to come.

I Did It

Well, I did it.  I drove to California and back with my girls all by myself.  I made it!!  Woo-hoo!!  We did stay a night in Primm (halfway) both ways ( I got the hotel rooms for $13 a night at hotels.com) and we stopped a couple of times and found some great parks to play at.  But I did something I thought I'd never be able to do.  Yay!  

More details and pictures later.