Sunday, April 01, 2012

Childish but oh so fun!!

Kind of funny that I finally blogged on April Fool's Day. So I have to take a minute to report how childish I am and how I got Randy this April Fool's Day. It started when I was up really late since I took a late evening nap. I tossed and turned and couldn't sleep. When I looked at the clock it was April Fool's Day so I got to work. I painted Randy's toe nails hot pink. This still makes me laugh since I had to expose his feet, hold my cell phone in my mouth for light and try to paint his toe nails so he wouldn't wake up and wouldn't smear nail polish all over our sheets. Mission accomplished! Onto the next fool...I decided Harrison needed matching hot pink toe nails. He actually woke up and asked me to cuddle with him. I was happy to do so but after he was conked back out I painted his pretty little toe nails. I kept my pranks for Lily pretty simple and put her huge, stuffed animal on the potty. She got a kick out of it when she went to use the toilet. But I'm not done yet! The grand finale was when I cut up confetti and put on our ceiling fan to our bedroom. I put the fan on high speed and constantly reminded myself NOT to go into our bedroom and turn on the light. Poor Randy. He actually got a kick out this one! I was in the next room so I knew when he came looking for me. I was happily impressed with how well the confetti coated our bedroom. :) Randy said he couldn't wait for tomorrow. Not to get me back but so April Fool's Day would be over. :)

HELLO!!!

Hello! Wow, that's been 1 long absence!!! I guarantee the many, MANY month absence does not mean we haven't been doing anything fun to write about. Quite the opposite!! Too much crazy stuff going on and well, the blog is the last to get any attention. Blame the kids. :)

Speaking of the kids...they are all doing fabulous! Henry had his first birthday on Feb 22. He is still so little so it's hard to believe he can really be a year old. But he's doing what 1 year old kiddos should be...talking, loving his brother and sister, eating big kid food and getting all over the place. He's been cruising furniture since he was 7 months old but he is taking his time to independently walk. He's getting close and this week he's standing frequently, takes 2-4 steps and drives to whatever he was trying to get. I'm trying to savor the last days of him hanging out in his stroller, unaware he can get out and explore his environment. My friend Kerry reminded me of this as she chased her 3 year old and 1.5 year old around the playground as I causally sat by Henry and watched Lily play. My days are numbered!
Harrison is 4 and a HALF. Do not dare says he's 4. His happiness is simple. Play army guys with him (with ourselves as the army guys, not the plastic ones) or hang with him as he plays Angry Birds on the ipad. In school he is becoming more interested in learning letter sounds and has been writing his whole name. That's not easy when he has 8 letters! He's not overly thrilled to practice writing his name but when I dangle the ipad in front of him he will practice it. :) I can't forget to mention he likes pancakes. Again, his happiness is simple. You should see the smile 1 pancake can produce. :)
Lily is 6 years old. She is close to 6.5 years but I want to savor every part of 6 I can. When she talks about her 7th birthday I plugged my ears. This girl loves kindergarten. She loves her teacher and I means LOVES her. Her teacher probably gets 10 Lily hugs every day. When she's not in school she draws pictures for her teacher. Speaking of drawing, this girl can draw. She impresses us all the time with a new detailed picture. She even had her artwork celebrated at a local bank. Our house has buckets of markers all over it cuz she will color anytime, anyplace. Right now she fell asleep with a marker on her headboard. Lily is still a sweet little girl and loves all girlie things but won't pass up a mud puddle or hunting worms. She recently set up a worm house to shelter all those misdirected worms we find. She started taking piano lessons recently. It's a group lesson with some other girls from her kindergarten class. Practicing at home isn't her top priority but last week I provided an incentive...if she practiced piano and wrote her last name 3 times she could get a prize from the grab bag. She repeated this the next day and again the next day. Of course I had to up the stakes but she did what she needed to get more prizes. :) Lily also chose to take French lessons offered at her school. Hopefully one day she'll be our translator during a trip to France!

Randy is doing really great about now. If I blogged a few weeks ago then no since he was in the midst of proposal writing. That means he works day and night, night and day for weeks. All that hard work to write his proposals is paying off and he's been awarded some impressive grants recently! On the playful side, he just took up golfing on a more serious level and tries to play frisbee golf as much as I'd let him. :)

I'm still working full time from home. I love the at home gig but it's getting more tricky with Henry at home. I actually started blogging tonight as a way to avoid further work (who wants to work on a Sunday night anyway?). My work is flexible so I can work at night after the kiddos are fast asleep. Our big house news is that we sold our "dream house" and plan to simply our lives. The "dream house" was bigger than we needed (I know, that seems really silly to say), hard to keep up with cleaning that big house and that big, ginormous wooded yard?? Well, we are happy NOT to mow it anymore or spend hours picking up sticks after a windy day. I will miss that house but mostly because it's where we bought Henry home from the hospital. I'm a bit sentimental like that. Since we sold at Thanksgiving time and need to move RIGHT after Christmas (yay for us! not!)we had to rent since we didn't find anything to buy. Since we were renting for 6 months we decided to look into building. We really didn't expect to do this since we have a tight budget but guess what?? We're building!! Well, not us but some fabulous builders are doing a very impressive job. We should be in by early summer and I.CAN'T.WAIT!!!!

Hopefully I'll have blogging back in my blood now!!!!