Good Stuff This Week

Daddy had a birthday and agreed to wear the silly hat we made him.

The kids and I had such a fun time setting up his party and spoiling him!

Anna's gift: dressing up for dad.

We made our first batch of Beet Kvass with salt, water, whey and beets (of course.)

I'm pretty sure we'll have to acquire a taste for it, but know it is dang good for us.

 Devon has a new found love of self feeding alternating hands.

He takes his eating seriously! 

It snowed on the first day of spring! We saw this out the window the next morning.

It was 35 degrees one day then 65 the next. How fun!

I am still in denial, but my baby turned 8 on Friday and has decided to be baptised by his father on April 21. 

We are so happy for him.

 

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(Can you tell that he is just a teensy bit excited to start scouts this next week!?!?)

For his birthday justin picked his friend Zoey to join us for some serious jumping.

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 Thanks to a certain 1 year old whom learned to open cabinets, the floor will never be the same. I have to remind myself, that discovery and mess making is good clean fun for him. Phew.

 

 On a prettier note, I have been picking flowers from the yard for the table.

 It makes me happy.

 Life is good.

Green

On Saturday morning , I woke up in a silly mood! 

 Maybe it is because I FINALLY got enough sleep after having a rough time adjusting to the time change. 

Maybe it is because it was St. Patrick's Day. 

I don't know about you, but the longer I live, the more that I soooo do not understand.

I'm over it, so I was bent on creating some fun!

After I went around pinching everyone (I wonder why we do that?!?), by decree, I informed my family that I would be serving green breakfast to all those wearing green!!!

Eventually, they all came up with something GREEN to wear. 

Justin, put on the only green shirt he had, which he happened to have dug out of a hamper, and he thought me ridiculous for instituting the green rule but he wanted to eat his yogurt by-golly, so he complied. 

Anna helped Dallin find SOMETHING (a receiving blanket) which we fashioned into a cape.

I'm sure he was thinking, "what is mom being so goofy for!?"

 Anna searched in vain for something green to wear, but then had a stroke of genius and came down wearing this:

 

I told her to get her green on...and she did. 

It was a good day all day, especially every time I looked over at Anna. ;)

animals

There's no question about it.
My life is full of misplaced pee.

I'm sure I am not alone in this misfortune,
but I am pretty sure I have more than my fair share!

Dallin is my current top offender.
I can't complain tooo much, seeing how he potty trained himself at 19 months, but I am not sure why a three year old would just throw in the towel after almost 2 years of using a TOILET and instead, opt for going right in his pants!?!?!?

I'm baffled, but I just don't make a big deal about it.

I tried that with Justin.

IT DID NO GOOD!

I just have Dallin help clean it up and have him get new pants on.

Since I don't want to make a fuss, but am getting tired of dealing with the mess, I found the greatest book EVER about all things potty.

Potty Animals, What to know when you gotta go.

When I took it off of the shelf where a pillar of light had shone upon it,
 I felt like it had been written ESPECIALLY FOR MY KIDS!

I enjoyed it's antics to much that I even put it in my cart on Amazon as
 a must have for our already maxed out collection of kids literature.

I read it to my kids several times and they thoroughly enjoyed it without knowing my ploy.

Then, one morning while we were reading together, I noticed that Dallin was perusing the book once again, on his own.

Oh, what a proud mother I was for being so sly in my attempt to tame him.

Then, he got up from his reading and this is what I saw when I looked up from by book:








I don't know if you can tell, but right next to where he had sat reading, was a huge puddle of the yellow, stinky stuff.

I just shook my head in disbelief, and grabbed my camera,
but for some reason, I just can't convince myself to buy a copy of the book after all....

And they were happy.

At times, having four kids is pure chaos.

That's why I am sooooo thankful for those days  that things are so perfect, that it is almost magical.

The day I actually let the kids paint was one of those days.

As I watched them all intently creating something of beauty, in harmony, I couldn't help but be overcome with  joy. 

Life is good.....when I make the effort!

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