Spending while we Wait

I walk into the kitchen and find another puddle of water and I realize I can no longer ignore it and assume it is one of the kids being clumsy with their drinking glass.  Brian ends up babysitting the dishwasher until late hours of the night and discovers the leak.  How long has this been leaking into our floors and gone unnoticed? Good question, we do not know. So we replace floorboards and buy a new dishwasher.

It was Sunday morning and we are heading to church.  We find that the garage door is not opening correctly/at all.  Our car is stuck in the garage. Brian eventually gets the door open long enough to rescue the vehicle and we head to church late.  I wonder how much a new garage door costs?  Probably shouldn't have googled that and found out because now I am a bit depressed.  A new garage door could fly our family of five round trip to see grandparents or aunts and uncles.  It could easily get us to Hawaii and visit Uncle Shawn and Aunti Kelli :)

 My attitude immediately turns and I am discouraged and angry and I find myself thinking nasty thoughts about this house that we have loved and hated all at the same time.  We wanted to sell this house last year, not buy new expesive appliances/garage doors for it this year.  AH!  Whats the lesson, I don't know. Thankfulness, contentment, figuring out what to do with the longings that are in my heart.   Yes, I am ranting and complaining via this blog. 

And then I went and read THIS and felt encouraged.  What a gift to be able to explain your heart and thoughts so beautifully with words. My sister does it perfectly!

Sunny Snowday

It snowed the entire day yesterday, so when we woke up this morning and saw the sun we were excited to know we'd be outside playing today.  I was out shoveling the the snow last night and I dreamed about when we get to be outside in shorts and t-shirts and stay up late because it will not get dark until at least 9 or 10pm.  Then I read my sisters blog found here (great read and beautiful pictures!) and was again reminded we all go through the changing of seasons even though it looks different for each of us.  It is still hard for me to think that there are places where spring has arrived and things are in bloom (florida!).

Gracie girl can not seem to stop eating snow off her gloves ...ever ever ever

So with this perfect fluffy snow we of course had to make snow icecream 

(ps I put my cup of morning coffee that turned cold at some point into my cup of snow - wow - it was seriously one of the best Frappacinos I'v had and way cheaper too!)

then we got brain freezes

And the kids are really into making silly faces for the camera these days

Happy February All!

Happy 33rd

A week ago we were celebrating Brian's birthday.  It was definitely the kids' most favorite gift we have given daddy.  An overnighter to Silver Mountain Resort to play at the indoor water park!

There was something for everyone!

My personal favorite was all of us on a double tube just floating around and around on the lazy river. 

And because I had a case of pink eye in both eyes, the lazy river was the best place to keep my glasses from getting speckled with water drops - ah! Talk about an annoying time to have to wear glasses!

And this baby was the cutest one toddling around. Thankfully she had just recently learned to enjoy water (her bath), so she too loved the water park.  She wasn't a fan of the family raft ride we went on.  In fact none of the children were fans of that ride.  We got to the bottom and all three were in tears. oops, Brian and I felt a little bad as we really thought it would be great fun for all! :)

Happy Birthday Brian! We love you so much.

Happy Valentine's Day

 I have written in the past about some mothers here that I am privileged to know and hang out with weekly.  We have been meeting together for three years now.  Reading mostly good books.  Our group started with six kids and quickly grew to 13 soon to be 15 among us (it can get a little wild at times to say the least...)

We had a Valentine's Party yesterday with cookie decorating and candy eating and then some more.

Thank you Lord for the people in Spokane who have become family to us.  I am blessed beyond words.

Her First Real Steps

Hannah may be a late walker, but she's sure a cute one!  We have been watching our friends' 18 month old boy for a few days and I think he may have helped really motivate her to get this walking thing figured out.  Here are a few of the cute walker girl

Seriously, there's nothing like laughter from children

It's Cold

Woke up to more inches of snow on the ground. It's beautiful and I am thankful that I have the option to simply sit and enjoy watching the snow from indoors. Our temperatures lately have been bitter cold.  We have woken up to negative numbers while the wind chill stays in the negatives all day.  Soooo cold. So we just stay inside and make messes with crafts (thanks again Aunti Kelli the kids loved those sun catchers!)

Then we see just how high Hannah's hair can get with the Static Electricity and laugh and laugh and laugh some more.  We may even put on a Despicable Me Mini Movie and continue to laugh and laugh at how funny those weird little Minions are...

We often have a fire going and so why not roast some marshmallows while we're sitting around finding ways to keep busy?  Who isn't excited about eating roasted marshmallows?  

 The fun quickly turned sour when Josiah was blowing on a very HOT marshmallow that he ended up getting on his face and it stuck and was burning him :(  So scary! He spent the remainder of the day holding an ice cube to his lip.  Oh I felt so bad for him as we all know how painful burns can be.  Now he has a lovely burn going up his lip.  

So I think we'll take a break from roasting and stick with lukewarm hot cocoa and marshmallows on top...

Here's to healing, I wonder if it will scar??

At least he got to enjoy one before the incident

It was a Fun Day

Our day started with learning all about magnets.  Magnets are sooo cool no matter what age you are!

 We then moved our play outdoors (despite the warnings that it's too cold for children to be outside this week!) and that was equally as fun.  The parents of these two children may never let their child play over here again after they see the following videos...but again it was soooo fun! :-)  (and quite creative of the boys if I do say so)