Is it up or down?

Saturday night our gas light came on as we were coming home from my parent's house. I told Emily we were going to fill up our van. On the way home we got into a discussion that really confused me. She asked, "When we get home is our van going to be up, or down?" I said I didn't understand and she said "Our wheels are they going to be Up, or Down? I was still confused until a moment later I remembered that I had told her we were filling up our car. I asked if that was what she was talking about and she said "Yeah, when is our van going to be up in the sky?" :) It took a little bit of explaining to let her know that filling up a car is just an expression about putting gas in the car.

Our Fun Weekend

This weekend we had family in town from Thursday until this morning. We tried to spend some time with them each day. On Thursday we went to my parent's house and had dinner with my Uncle Don and Aunt Joy and their daughter Cammi. After dinner we went to Settler's park and had a lot of fun playing on the toys. Friday, we went to my cousin Cherice's wedding reception in Fruitland. Saturday, we went to a park in Fruitland with my cousins that we don't get to see much. After the park we went to my parent's house for lunch and then we went to the MK Nature Center and the park there afterwards. It was a lot of fun and made for a very busy weekend. Emily and Madison loved looking at all the animals and fish at the Nature Center. We even saw a mink. He kept fishing for crawdads and eating them right in front of us. I think he was the highlight of the afternoon. Everyone sat and watched him for about 15 minutes. Of course I forgot the camera all three days so there aren't any pictures from me.

Ummm...

The other night Joe was getting the kids ready for bed while I was at enrichment. He had left JJ on the bed with Madison while he took Emily potty. He came back to find this....

Madison had used the jewelry and dressed JJ up like a princess. He was loving it.

Eight Months

Another month has passed and JJ is now eight months old. I can't believe it. He is the same age that I took the binky away from both of the girls so I guess that will be happening soon. He is starting to sit better. He still isn't quite able
to be left alone sitting, but he is getting there. He has been working on this since 5 1/2 months. He is smiling a ton and loves his family members. He has recently started hugging on to me tightly when I have him. It makes me feel so loved. I love getting his squeezes. He loves to laugh and pretty much anything can set him off. We are often seen making the craziest faces and sounds just to get him to give us a laugh. He also loves to eat his food. He recently discovered juice and loves it. One of these days he will work up to crawling and those other wonderful things, but I think he is content with taking his time. I don't mind to much either because it means I'm not chasing him all over.

Speed up your computer giveaway!

One of my favorite blogs A Thrifty Mom is doing a giveaway for a program called iolo's System Mechanic. It looks like an awesome program. Go here to see the details.

Easter

On Easter we went to Church. At church we had great speakers that talked about physical death and spiritual death. They included in their talks the reason we celebrate Easter and spoke about Christ's atonement and his death and resurrection. They were great talks. After church we came home and ate pancakes.. Madison and Emily love pancakes. After pancakes they took naps and the Easter bunny came while they were asleep and hid their baskets. When they woke up Madison got to look for hers first. She wasn't really interested in looking for it and just cried. Finally I just showed her where it was and then she was the happiest person in the world. She ate as much candy as she could in the 10 minutes it took for Emily to find her basket and us to leave for my parent's house. Emily had a hard time finding her basket and we basically gave it away when it came down to it, but she thinks she found it all on her own so that is okay. She was so excited that the Easter bunny knew not to give her any candy with soy in it. (Some of the candy she had gotten on Saturday at my parent's Easter egg hunt had soy in it and she had been bummed that she couldn't eat it. ) After they found their baskets we picked Ben and Sara up(we are so glad they live so close now) and went to our parent's house for dinner and another Easter egg hunt. At my parent's we hid all the eggs we had painted as well as some plastic eggs. There were even big eggs for the adults. All the adults went out to help the kids look for eggs. It was kind of funny watching Emily and Madison because they didn't know which way to turn because so many people were telling them what to do. After the egg hunt we all went in and had ham, scalloped potatoes, deviled eggs (from the egg hunt), cornbread, and corn. It was a very yummy dinner. For dessert we even had homemade ice cream. Overall we had a very fun Easter day and had lots of fun spending time with family.

This is Madison and Emily getting ready to go outside. Madison was crying again because she was upset we were making her stand there to take a silly picture.

Emily finding eggs.

Madison was actually really good at finding eggs and would try to reach all the ones that she could.

Here is my parent's helping the kids find eggs.

JJ even got an egg.

Rachel has her big egg and a special egg we made for her that says Rachel loves Tim.

This is how I did Emily's hair. It is weaved like a basket. She loved it. It is actually really easy to do. I found how to do it here.

Saturday

Saturday we went to my parent's ward for an Easter brunch. We had yummy pancakes and eggs made by my Dad and Jared. He even made some wheat pancakes for Emily separately since the Krusteaz ones have soy in them. Emily was so happy that he did that and she didn't have to eat the Kix cereal I brought for "just in case" After the breakfast the kids got to go on a little Easter egg hunt. Emily and Madison loved it. Emily wasn't ready to be done when all the eggs were gone. Saturday night we went over to Ben and Sara's new house and colored Easter eggs. We colored 3 1/2 dozen. It was so much fun. We used crayons to make pictures on the eggs and then we dipped them in the dye. Madison wanted to use her hands to pull the eggs out of the cups of dye. They were both sad again when we ran out of eggs.

Strawberries

Last year I had this brilliant idea to thin out our strawberries and fertilize the ground while we were at it. We (I) ended up putting to much chicken manure in the soil and all our strawberries died. :( This year we decided to order more strawberries from Gurneys Nurseries. It was about $10 for 50 plants. We just got them in the mail today and planted them right away. I am so excited! I hope that they work, and that we will get lots of strawberries from them. It says to pinch off the flowers through July for the 1st year so we will only get a small crop this year (they are everybearing), but next year I hope to have lots of strawberries. About a half hour after we planted them Emily asked me "Mom, are they ready now?" She thought we could plant them and they would be ready today. :) That would be awesome if they grew that fast.

Emily & Madison's first Fishing trip

While we were in Ohio my parents took Madison and Emily on their first fishing trip. Emily told me that she got to go fishing with Grandma and Grandpa and that they put their poles in the water. I asked if she caught a fish and she said, "No, I caught a worm!" She was so excited. I asked if Madison fished too and she said, "No, she couldn't catch a worm so she didn't get to fish." I don't know what that means, but I don't think Madison actually did much fishing. My dad said that Emily only lasted about 1/2 hour and then she was ready to go home. She told me that she had a lot of fun.

We're Home

We got back from Ohio on Tuesday night. We were there for an entire week. It was good to spend time with family. I even met Joe's aunts and uncles that I had never met before.

The funeral was good and everything went well. I missed the girls while we were gone. I think they missed us too because when we got back Madison started squealing. It was so cute. It was kind of nice to have a little bit of a break though because JJ is very easy to take care of. I think he liked all the attention to himself too. We went through Joe's mom's old house while we were there. It is the house she had before she married Kurt. The kids all took the things they wanted and the rest is going to Goodwill or the trash. It was kind of fun reading some of the letters she had saved as well as a diary we found from when she was 13. It was written like a typical 13 year old which was so funny to read. We also found out from the diary that she was on the basketball team as well as a cheerleader. Joe had asked her a long time ago if she did sports and she said no. I guess that she just didn't want to talk about it because they lost most of their games. We also were able to go visit Dean and Amanda and kids. We went bowling with them on Monday night before we came home on Tuesday. It was a good trip, but it is nice to be home.

Here is a picture of JJ with his 2nd cousin Kayden. They are a week apart and JJ is older. They had a lot of fun smiling at each other. This is a picture of Joe's family taken at the luncheon after the funeral. From the back it is Joe, Brian, Austin, and Ryan. In the front is Me, JJ, Kurt, and Julie.