What's in YOUR kitchen drawer?

I bet it's not something like this!:) (Who knew that cookie cutters made great teething rings??? At least the top, rubbery part!)

Spring is Here!!!

And along with spring comes wet, muddy feet & pants & hands! But it didn't seem to bother the older kids today.

Nathan was out building a dam where the melting snow was running along the curb. He also panned for "gold" (which he is displaying in this picture). He had some success--he did find a piece of gold (a gold cap to a Budweiser bottle) and a dime. Here he is with his treasures!


Megan has always loved jumping in puddles. She had a blast riding her bike through the puddles on the street, jumping in the water streaming along the curb, and finding plenty of mud. That's my girl!;)

School Days

Everyone seems to be hard at work these days...even Katie!:) (Although on this particular day, Josh must've taken a "vacation" day!)

Sir Nathan

Showing off his new grown-up teeth...

A cute face as my little scholar studies a map of the world:

Miss Megan

Megan is looking so grown up!!!


Here she is wearing my robe...it's just a little big on her!:)

Prince Joshua

Princess Kate

Here she is playing peek-a-boo:

Temper Tantrum caught on Camera!!!

This is what happens when I take away a piece of paper that she wanted to chew on. Princess Katie has a fit! Gotta love her expression in the first picture...if looks could kill!;)

My practice subject from last night

Good old Abby, who was trying to snooze, was my test subject last night as all the kids were in bed. Bryn was in the shower...I didn't think he'd appreciate my photographing him, so the dog it was!:)

And here I got all artsy-fartsy (sorry to use that word mom, but it is part of the phrase!). You know those photos people take of their babies' feet? Well, I did a similar thing with the tops of Abby's paws. Hmmm, not nearly as cute as the baby concept, but oh well!

Tomorrow!!!!

Tomorrow my new camera is due to arrive...between the hours of 8:00am & 7:00pm. I need to be home in order to sign for the package when it arrives. Nothing like an 11-hour window to make it difficult to plan out the day. Here's a picture of what my camera will look like:

A Picture is Worth 1,000 Words...

But unfortunately my camera died yesterday! That's o.k., I will just try to use words (around 1,000 or so) to explain our wonderful day today...

This morning, while I was busy for 2 or 3 minutes, Joshua took the opportunity to climb onto a chair & take almost every single book off our 7-foot bookshelf in the basement & dump them into a pile on the floor. What's worse is that he also chucked a glass bottle with a boat in it on top of them & it shattered, spreading glass EVERYWHERE on the books & on the basement floor. Not cool. He was in big trouble for that one.

Fast forward an hour or so to lunchtime when I was feeding the kids some pepperoni tortilla pizzas I had made. I cut Katie's up into little pieces & placed them in front of her. She chose to shovel a bunch of them into her mouth and ended up choking. Thank goodness I looked over at her when I did. She had a strange expression on her face & she was turning red. I unbuckled her from her chair & flipped her over & did the baby heimlich on her. At first it didn't work; she just turned redder. I continued to do the back blows & she finally gagged & threw up the food that had been caught in her throat. What a relief.

This mom has been emotionally drained since a little before noon. A nap sounds pretty good to me; too bad I can't seem to convince my children of the same thing. Heaven knows what would happen were I to actually sneak a nap in with as quickly as Josh can get into trouble. I hope you were able to get a good mental picture of what happened today as I managed to describe it in 111 words rather than 1,000!

"Carons"

Today we melted down the stubs of old crayons we had & made some new, "fancy" crayons. The kids loved them & it was a very quick process. Joshua refers to crayons as "carons," and is very excited to color with these new ones!

Read Alouds

Nathan CAN read...he just doesn't seem to have the desire to pick up a book and actually read for fun just yet, even though he sees us reading books frequently. So tonight I managed to get him to read a stack of books. What card did I play, you might be asking? I suggested he read to his caterpillars...the ones that arrived on Monday for our butterfly kit. That seemed to be just the right motivation for him. He read away to those caterpillars, showing them the pictures & everything. It was very cute!