Can you stand this much cuteness??

I woke up the other day to Abe Lincoln hangin on my fridge. He's been kind of a friendly face the last couple days.

daddy love

More birthday

We finally celebrated Ed's birthday with my family.

Ice cream sundaes!

Jack's showing Hudson how to hunt the chickens.

Playin' with fire.
I said, "Be careful or you'll burn your boots!" Jack said, "Don't worry about us--we're brave and we're tough!"

Trying out his birthday gun.

Jack rarely looks at the target--he just gets a crazy face, grits his teeth, and pulls the trigger like crazy.

Jack's saving his pennies for one of these:

He LOVED it!

A reminder...

to not go to bed with wet hair!

Hitchin' a ride

We love this truck!

March 2010

January 2007

October 2007

(Mmmm, love that pudge!)

It's my blog

so I'm gonna brag just a bit....

This sweet monkey just got all excels on her report card for behavior (cheerful, obedient, respectful, punctual) and for grades (math, grammar, reading, penmanship, science, etc., except PE) and here's just a sample from the comments:

"It is a pleasure to teach Ava. She is a kind, cheerful, and obedient student. Ava is a good reader and has discovered the joy of reading just for fun. I often hear her giggling to herself as she reads...."

Workin'.

This is technically Ed's less-busy season but I still catch him at all hours typing, texting, and talking on the phone. The good news is that he's got more than enough willing helpers and he's definitely learned to multi-task!

Cousins.

A couple shots from the Casebolt stay last weekend:

Jack and Sara helped make some blueberry muffins.

Cuties at the park!

I loved this! I rarely see this two hang out but they were the first ones done with lunch and they were just chatting away!

Ava's been taking pictures lately and I have found more than one of me doing something like this:

It's safe to say I am sick and tired of being sick and tired. If time flies when you're having fun, it barely crawls when you're pregnant. The last couple days (weeks?!) have been especially miserable which is generally a good sign for me--there's always a nice peak before it goes away for good. I've never kept a good pregnancy record (and I think I have maybe five preg pics total) but I'm going to try this time so as soon as I can get someone to take an upright picture of me I'll do a little update.

Second trimester....here we come!

She cracks us up!

Jemma is getting awfully close to my very favorite age and she is hilarious! She makes all kinds of funny faces and noises and she just loves to get Jack laughing. She's still hollers for me ("Ma-eee" and "My Mama!") but she is just as happy with her daddy. She is (sadly!) pretty close to being done with her morning nap but I'm stretching it out as long as possible. She eats like crazy and I recently found out that she eats Kix one at a time so a bowl can take a good half hour which is always a nice trick to know. Just like the other two did, she comes a runnin' when she hears something going on in the kitchen. She still sneaks into Ava's room whenever she can and she absolutely loves her "Bubba" Jack. If she comes across anything she's not supposed to play with she brings it right to me and then claps for herself. She loves to push the dolly stroller around the house and she likes it even better when she can squeeze into it and Jack pushes her around the house. She is a sweet funny girl and we love her!

We see a lot of this lately...

This girl loves to talk on the phone! The other day she was in her room with her music on loud and jabbering away on the phone...a preview of things to come?

Found!

Thanks to Lauren, Ava is now cruising through the Molly books!

Happy Birthday to my favorite person in the whole world!

It was a good day. We started with breakfast and presents with the kids. Here's Jack surprising Ed with a rifle (that he is hoping will be passed on to him one day soon!):

Then we left the kids with Ed's mom and headed to Spokane where I dropped Ed off for a round of golf and I got to shop (all.by.myself.) for hours. It was a little like a birthday for me too!

This is the only shot Ed would let me take at the golf course. It ended up raining pretty good but he didn't care a bit! We hit P.F. Changs for dinner (I couldn't talk him in to Red Robin, although he did offer to go there first and let me have a basket of fries before our real dinner!).

We have learned to take full advantage of a long car ride with no kids--we stock up on treats, coffees, and music and just enjoy the time alone, together. And yesterday our favorite song from high school came on and brought us right back to 17 (17!) years ago when we met. Ed says he knew when we met that he was going to marry me. I'm a lucky lucky girl.
Happy birthday babe!

March Madness

P & J got tickets to the games. We got their kids.

Doesn't seem quite right, does it?

Wanted: American Girl books

Ava is spending much of her break doing this:

She is crazy for these American Girl books. She had already finished the Kit series, then we gave her the Felicity series for her birthday which she plowed through, she's reading the Kirsten books at school, and she's in the last book of the Samantha set right now. I am loving it! She's totally been a capable and proficient reader but she never really loved it before now. Now she's got her nose in book all the time and I am so excited for her!

Jemma loves to carry stuff around the house and she's learned that if something is too big or awkward to carry normally, she can just throw it over her shoulders and toddle on.

Sisters.

I caught these two playing together with the doll house.

This kid LOVES his puzzles!

Spring Break!

We kicked off Ava's Spring Break with a little movie night and sleepover in her room with her best bud Jack. He woke her up mid-night to see if she wanted to come with him to give me a kiss (which he does almost every night about 3:00 am) and she woke him up at the crack of dawn to see if he wanted to read "Samantha" with her. Ava actually got last Friday as a bonus day off and since I was busy with a wedding this weekend she was super excited to help. First on our massive Costco trip she pushed one off the loaded carts for me (how did I do this without her??) and then when we got home she got to help with some of the projects, like sticking the flowers on the programs:

She wanted to paint the Just Married sign but she settled for sprinkling the glitter after I painted it. She's a fun helper and I forgot how much she misses when she's at school!

Looking for a house?

P & J are selling their's: see it here

Jack wants to know if they will tell us where they move or perhaps they are hoping to hide?

My magician

Jack spent the morning doing magic tricks for me which went a little something like this:

Jack (dressed in a cape with one of Ava's sparkley wands): Mom, look at this toy, now look away for a minute (while he throws it under the couch), now abbra-caddabra, whoppity-do, look again! It disappeared!

He kept this up for quite awhile and then he came up to me and said, "I have to tell you something...my cape and my wand don't really work. I'm not actually a magician. I was just hiding that stuff from you.....but that's okay right? I mean I was just pretendin' with you, right?"

Mmm, we love him!

Jemma Jane

Jemma's growing up but she's still a mama's girl and lately she has started calling me "my mama"--usually with a possessive pat on my leg or arm. Even if I'm not in the room I'll hear her holler "My mama! My mama!" and then her little pitter patter as she comes looking for me.
I finally gave her her first haircut this morning--it's hard to tell but I did!

Not quite

but she will sit like this for a long time.

Some Jack

It's been awhile since I've posted some Jack and I've already forgotten some serious funnies but here's a few that have stuck around:

Faithful blog readers know we are serious Olympic watchers and we let the kids stay up a bit late to watch some too. The first couple nights were great Jack events like aerial ski jumping and downhill skiing (which he loved and said, "I'm going to dream about this tonight!"). And then there was men's ice skating. Jack was all settled in to watch a big event and when it came on he said, "What is THIS? This is not the Olympics!"

And I was dusting Jemma's room the other day and reminded him that he wasn't supposed to play with her piggy bank and he said, "Maybe you should just put it up where I can't reach it." And I said "Maybe you should just not touch it." And he gave his best smile and said again, "Maybe you should just put it up where I can't reach it!" and last night he said, "someone needs to put these chips away so I can't eat anymore!"

Jack's been teaching Jem how to wrestle. He of course loves it and she tolerates it (and actually usually starts it) until he starts tickling her and then she giggles hysterically.

Spring has sprung!

I won't say the snow is gone for good--I've lived here long enough to know better--but I will say it's gone for now and we are a happy house. Jack's been doing tractor work and comes in to holler every time he sees a tulip sprout. And my dad came by at lunch today and stayed to eat with the kids so I could go for a run outside and it was actually hot. And sunny. And the breeze was warm. Yay!

My baby is growing up

And if she happens to see one of Ava's babies unprotected she will run over

and pick her up
and give her some love

and show her off.