Happy Birthday Michaela!

Michaela turned 11 on Jan. 29th, 2009. I can't get over how old she is getting! Closer to a teenager day by day, and so much fun to be around. She has a great sense of humor and loves to hang out with her family. She is super responsible; she can't wait to babysit! We love you Michaela!

Grandpa sent her flowers, and I took her some balloons when I took her out to lunch yesterday.

Tonight we took her and three of her friends out to dinner at Craigos, then they came home to watch a movie. They are such a great group of girls; Michaela has some wonderful friends. As we were leaving the video store, a man held the door open for us. Each of the girls thanked him; I was so proud and impressed. I love that Michaela has friends that are kind, caring and share our values.

I just realized that I should explain why they are in a bed! We have a big room downstairs that has my craft things, sewing desk, exercise stuff, a tv, and a bed we put guests in. That is where they are. Its great to have someplace like that, so Jason and I aren't relegated to upstairs on nights like this!

Cute Kitties

W is for Worms

It was my week for preschool and I had the letter W and worms. I did a worm filled lesson; we sang a worm song, made bead worms, learned what worms do for our gardens, and painted with real worms! The kids loved it.
When I was planning this, I didn't have any idea that I would have a problem with the worms. I went fishing as a kid, and have a garden. When I got the worms, however, I discovered I have an aversion to worms! Jason brought in the cup of worms, and I took the lid off. There was a huge fat one wriggleing around on top, and I had to quickly close the lid.
Uh oh, how am I going to do this lesson if I can't handle even seeing the worms, let alone touch them?
In comes Jason, who said he would come home to help.
On the day of the lesson, I sat down with the worms, and Jason wasn't home yet. I thought I could let the kids look at the worms, but when I opened the cup, there was about 5 or 6 of them squirming around all tangled up on top, and nope, couldn't do it! How funny!Jason came and helped, and all was well. Interestingly enough, when the worms were out of the cup, I was ok with them. Who knew?

Claire shared my distaste. She didn't want to touch them. She held one for one brief moment; it was too quick to catch on camera!


Carter had no problem holding them, though he got a funny look on his face when he did!

Riley was the one who said she didn't like worms, but was brave enough to hold one.

Ava was fearless. She was the first to take one, really enjoyed holding them.

I put paint on the paper, and we let the worms crawl around in the paint. It made some neat designs.


And then of course, we had to have worms and dirt for snack.

This is the girls in the preschool. So cute!

It won't be long now!

Corrine is sitting up and rolling over and pushing up; it won't be long until she is mobile! I just hope all of our tile isn't too hard on her little knees. At least it is winter, she will be wearing long pants. Maybe she will be walking by summer and I won't have to worry about that. As I look around my house, I realize I have a lot of work to do to make it baby safe. Ava was almost 2 when we moved here, so we have never had a baby in this house, and I decorated accordingly.

She still can't sit up for long, but she can do it!

Look out world; here I come!

I have learned....

to do an intervention with a sick cat. We have soft, white, fluffy carpet in our bedroom, and I have trained myself to wake at the first sound of near cat puking. If you don't have a cat, it is a very distinctive sound. I just sat here wondering how I could type it, and it simply isn't possible. So at the very first sound of sick cat (if its in our bedroom; if its not, I leave it until morning!), I fly out of bed and launch the cat into the hallway, tile is much easier to clean than white carpet. This has worked; we have lived her for almost 3 years and have no ugly spots on our carpet. This happened last night, when conviently Payden was also up not feeling well (her acid reflux) and the baby wasn't sleeping well. I was literally up from 2am to 4:30 am straight, with a few times before and after that. It seems it wasn't in the stars for me to sleep well last night, and the puking gods wanted to make sure I cleaned up puke from someone, human or feline.

Oh, Cats...

Many of you know that we have two cats. We love these kitties; they are a part of our family. And just like any other member of the family, they have their own personalities and quirks. Nutmeg, our younger cat, has an affinity for yarn. I know, most cats do, but I don't know if many of them carry it as far as Nutmeg does. I mean, literally, carry it. Far.

This is Nutmeg. Notice the white yarn next to her. I tried to catch her with it in her mouth, but I wasn't quick enough. She will carry around balls and skeins of yarn, meowing a funny "I've got one" meow. We all know when she's "got one". The problem isn't that she carries them around, its that somehow, she ends up unraveling it throughout the house.



It went around the couch,

Down the upstairs hall,



down the stairs,

down the downstairs hall,

the LONG downstairs hall,

into the spare room,

and you can see that it origionated from the closet in the spare room.

She does this alot. I mean, I hate yarn, she does it that much. I try to tell the girls to put the yarn away and CLOSE the closet door, but they consitently forget to do so, and the yarn calls Nutmegs name. She strings it all over the house. She did it in our old house too. Once, when it was one the market, we left for a showing. The house was spotless, all ready to show. When we came back, there was yarn all OVER the house. It was crisscrossed in so many places and in so many rooms, it looked like we were characters in a Bond movie and had a priceless painting to protect with laser lights. I was mortified. Did it look like that when the people came to look? What must they have thought? That we were some crazy jokesters that didn't really want to sell our house? That it was some misguided attempt to partition some areas off so they couldn't go there? I had a visual of those poor people lifting legs and ducking heads to meander through our yarn carnival. Oh well. They probably had a good laugh.

Our cats have a history with string of any kind, come to think of it. When my old cat, Blackie, was alive, he liked to eat curling ribbon. Ok, no big deal, except he always puked it up, so I was cleaning up piles of puke that looked like they had been wrapped up nice for me. On the off chance that he didn't puke them up, you guessed it, it came out the other side. Fortuneatly, he was a good cat and I didn't see that side of it much. Except for one very memorable time. I remember watching Blackie walk past me, with something interesting trailing behind him. He had passed the string, and it was attached to a piece of poo. The piece of poo was at the end, and the other end of the ribbon was still where the sun don't shine, people. There was about three feet of ribbon in between. I grabbed a paper towel, grabbed hold of the poo, and held still while he walked away. Another two feet came out, and he was very embarrased about it. You should have seen his face!

Nutmeg will eat string as well, although she seems to prefer the minty taste of dental floss. Payden had been playing with hers, and unwound the whole spool. She threw it in the garbage in the bathroom, and there Nutmeg found it. Michaela and I were upstairs, when Nutmeg came running up the stairs, with Poof chasing her. The reason Poof was chasing her was because Nutmeg was trailing about 9 feet of dental floss. It was coming out of her mouth! She had started chewing it down without realizing how long it was. Since they don't have thumbs, there wasn't anything she could do but keep going. To relieve her of her misery, I started pulling it out of her mouth. Keep in mind, the length I pulled out of her was in her stomach. GROSS! It just kept coming and coming. I never knew there was that much floss in one container. I pulled out another 10 feet of slimy floss before Nutmeg was completely purged. Michaela was laughing so hard she was on the floor. I am sure that is something we will never forget.

Cats are sweet and loveable and very good entertainment.

First Haircut!

This weekend we took all the girls to get their hair cut, and Ava was included this time. I have been putting off getting her hair cut because she still has her sweet baby curls, and I didn't want to cut them off. It was time, however, so on the spur of the moment I said we should cut her hair too. Ava was all for it, and since I hadn't had days to think about it, it was easier to do. Really, she only cut off about 1/2 inch or so, but I was still worried about those baby curls. She still has them, yeah! But now her hair is actually even on the bottom, which is nice.

Ava sat completely still the whole time. She is a total girl, and loves any sort of thing to do with pampering or making oneself beautiful.

All done! It took only about 10 minutes, but she was so proud of her new hair cut. She kept telling everybody "I got my hair cut!"

I loved seeing her under the dryer. So cute!



Here is Ava, under the dryer with all the old ladies!