Thursday, April 22, 2010

Day at the Museum

A couple weeks ago I decided to be brave and take all three children to the Children's Museum. Jonah had a two week long spring break and so toward the end, when we were all a little squirrely, we took a field trip!


We packed our lunches and headed to St. Paul for a day of fun! I was really happy with how the day went- I really was not sure how they would all do, but it was great! We left our house just as Isaiah would normally nap and he slept the whole way there making for a pleasant arrival!

We made our first stop to play in the water exhibits, blowing bubbles and playing with the Lock and Dam.

After the water, we headed over to the Dinosaur exhibit- definitely a favorite! I think of Mrs. Teranadon (from the show Dinosaur Train) singing, "I think I'll name you Shiny, Tiny and Don," when I look at this next picture of the kids sitting in a dinosaur egg nest.



They got to dig for fossils amongst cut up, old, rubber tires!



And here's Jones and Phi, sitting on the Trodon.

We ended the day with some face painting. It took ALL day to convince my type A boy to paint his face. And this is all I got from him!


Aphia was more adventurous with picking out colors, but still wanted me to paint it on her.

There were a few other exhibits that ranked in the top, but I don't have great pictures from them. Jonah was NOT a fan of the huge Queen Ant in the life size ant farm and Aphia did not want to crawl through the hollowed tree that was a tunnel. They LOVED the "town" that had a bus, grocery store, doctor's office, post office, home, and tv station!

A special hat tip goes to Ann for letting me borrow her stroller :)
You'd think that with three kids, I'd have one conducive to doing something like this. Well I don't. I sold my old regular stroller last summer because Jeremiah wanted a jogging one so he could rollerblade behind it. So I have that and an umbrella type, but the umbrella doesn't lay back and the jogger is not good for manuevering around smaller spaces. Thus my hunt begins for another stroller.

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Easter

Easter Fun!

We had a marvelous Easter Sunday! The kids woke up and wanted to immediately look for their Easter baskets. Jonah said to me the day before, "Mom, don't hide it behind the couch, that's too easy!" So I was trickier this year and we had to play the "hot & cold game" for him to find it. It was in the oven. Now this produced a new dilemma for The Sheriff. He knows he is not allowed to touch or go in the oven, so when he realized it was in there, it took a good minute before he worked up the gumption to actually put his hand on the handle and pull it open to reveal his basket! I thought it was quite comical! He is my rules boy 'til the end!

We had carmel rolls and cinnamon rolls for breakfast and went to late church. They both wanted to be in the sanctuary, so we let them. Aphia actually sat better than Jonah did! She ate graham crackers and drew in her new notebook for the entire sermon. Jonah was a bit more squirrely but caught the part where, "That guy [pointing to our pastor] said he doesn't think we're all going to die! [making a point about how he believes that the rapture will happen soon and very soon!]" Then he pointed to him again and waved his finger in the "No, no." way because he uses a lot of "sign language" in church so he is quiet. I told him I'd explain to him later, which I did.

We came home and had Grandma Judy, Auntie Becca and Addi over for late lunch/early dinner. They brought all the food and it was SCRUMPTIOUS! MMMM HMMM! We had an Easter egg hunt in the back yard, which lasted a full 2.3 minutes before they were bored with it. After that round of company left, Grandma Lollie called to see if they could pop over, so her and Grandpa Jeff and Auntie Gina came over for a bit. The kids decided that Easter is a great day to eat too much candy, resulting in a 2:00 a.m. vomiting episode by Jonah. Super fun. And we had an awesome time chatting with the kids about why we have Good Friday and Easter and what it means for us. I love their hearts and their questions and their conversations about Jesus. It's awesome!

I hope you had a wonderful Easter weekend as well!






The shot below is the "monthly" picture. Although I might not be great at posting them, I am good about taking them at the right time each month!

Thursday, April 1, 2010

They Call Me the Wanderer

I'm sorry that there have been no pictures on here lately. My internet is sometimes ok and sometimes totally bogus. Lately I've been able to watch "Chuck" on hulu (which I could almost never do before), but I can't upload any pictures to here or Facebook. It gets all the way to the end and then aborts the upload. SO FRUSTRATING!

But that is not the point of this post.
This is. I wander. I am lost. I do not know where to start. I am not mad or sad or frustrated about this (most of the time), it is just the way it is. If you looked into our home, there would be ample amounts of time during the day that you would see me aimlessly walking around. Let me explain.

The other night I had finished up bathing, diapering, and jammying Isaiah. He was playing happily on his bedroom floor and I started to walk out of the room. As I was walking out, I looked back at 2 baskets full of clean clothes and said to myself, "Walk right back in there and PUT THOSE AWAY!" Then thought, "What was I going to do otherwise? I don't know. I was going to go wander around the house because I do not even know where to start with everything." Sometimes I get so overwhelmed with all that there is to do with our house, three kids, a husband, a dog, a yard that I just zone out and wander. I become totally ineffiecient and waste time doing piddly little things instead of focusing, honing in, and tackling big things that need to be done. I spend time lost in the haze. I need to regroup. That is what I have been focusing on today. One thing at a time. Tackle it for 5-10 minutes and walk away. Find another thing, tackle it for 5-10 minutes and walk away.

It has been a good day! I have gotten a lot of stuff done. Today the kitchen and living room don't make me want to hide in a hole. I brought out the children's spring/summer clothes and went through them to bring upstairs and put in drawers. I worked on another fun project that I cannot disclose at this time :) And I wrapped up the laundry... which I started on Monday.

And look at me now, I have had the past 10 minutes to blog. Fun.

It must be spring! This energy and renewed sense of wanting to clean and organize is a sure-tale sign! I even asked my sister-in-law, Becca, if I could borrow her label maker when she comes over on Sunday.

I'm going to go meander on over to flylady.com and then check out some other organizational websites. What does spring do for your mood? Do you get in the cleaning, rearranging, organizing mode? What have you done so far this spring?