Easter Eggs

We had a lot of fun this year, we had a primary Easter egg hunt, then on Saturday we died eggs, it took almost 3 dozen this year! We will have more next year too, wow! The kids all got new shoes and electric toothbrushes in their baskets along with tons of candy. Easter Sunday was great. Barlow and Andrea came over for dinner, then we watched Enchanted, then had a game of Settlers with brownies and Italian Sodas. What more could you ask for? (Other than more family and a Settlers tournament!

My Kids Favorite Things

I thought it would be fun to ask my kids what their favorites were so that you could all get to know them a little better. But I put them in the wrong order so if I were you I would scroll down and start with Trevor's then read Kaylee's then Nathan's and then Ashton's. It will work better that way. Anyway.....enjoy!

Ashton's Favorite Things

Color: Flesh tones

Movie: Saturday night movies with Barlow and Andrea (this came as quite a shock because every time we have Barlow and Andrea over to watch a movie it turns out to be a REALLY dumb movie!)

Dinner: Breast milk

Lunch: Breast milk (I keep trying to give him baby cereal or baby food, and he keeps gagging on it then screaming at me)

Breakfast: Breast milk

Day of the Week: Sunday (he gets held the most)

Treat: Sour Patch Kids (Bryan let him suck on one, and he loved it!)

Book: Sad to say but I don't read much to Ashton, but I didn't read that much to Trevor either so there is still hope

Activity: Play Gym (he has played under his little gym for 1 1/2 hours before, he really likes it)

TV Show: Jeopardy (He just looks at the screen the whole show, loves the bright blue color)

Web Address: Ashton hates the Internet, because he tends to get neglected

Saturday Activity: Blowing out the back

Thing about school: Fewer people around to pick on him!

Nathan's Favorite Things

Color: Cereal (it didn't matter how much I said "no, Nathan, color, color!" he responded with cereal then said, why Mom, don't you like cereal?"

Movie: Nick Picks 2 (a combination of TV shows from Nickelodeon)

Dinner: Chickens - any kind

Lunch: Cananas (by this he means Bananas and he only said that because he saw some on the counter)

Breakfast: Can't you guess....cereal!

Day of the Week: Park day (he only gets about one every six months so he needs to enjoy them when they come)

Treat: Teddy bears (gummy bears) and a blue sucker (a blue sucker huh, interesting color, and to think I thought his favorite color was cereal!)

Book: Magic Tree House

Activity: Cry (I put this because that is what he is doing now because I would not let him play with the bag of apples I just bought)

TV Show: Mickey Mouse (he did not want to answer this one because he is still mad at me, but when I threatened to throw away the apples...idle threat....he came up with Mickey Mouse which is strange because we don't have cable and there are no Mickey Mouse shows on PBS)

Web Address: Nick Jr (yes Nathan has been able to navigate the web ever sense he was 18 months old)

Saturday Activity: Watch a movie on Sunday (who knows)

Thing about School: Movies (Nathan talks about his "teacher" all the time, it is kind of freaky)

Kaylee's Favorite Things

Color: Purple (at first she thought I asked her what her favorite Brother was...she looked at me really confused and said favorite brother?)

Movie: Barbie Mariposa

Dinner: Hot Dogs and Macaroni (we NEVER have this for dinner, we have it for lunch sometimes but not for dinner so I don't know where she got this answer from)

Lunch: Dino Chickens (smothered in Ranch dressing, if you don't believe they really smother them, ask Andrea, I think she was shocked when she first saw them do it)

Breakfast: Cereal-chocolate marshmallow mateys (if you don't know what marshmallow mateys are you really need to tighten your budget and start getting malt-o-meal cereals!)

Day of the Week: Sunday (wow, didn't expect that one)

Treat: Toaster Strudels (my kids don't think to far from the here and now, we had these for breakfast today)

Book: Ariel

Activity: Going to the store (not really, she complains every time we do it, but that is what she said)

TV Show: Dragon Tales

Web Address: Nick Jr

Favorite Saturday Activity: Play out side or go around the block (much better than Trevor's answer)

Thing about school: Snack (we are working on this, she will like more about school soon I hope!)

Trevor's Favorite Things

Color: Red (I think he is trying to get on Grandma Red's good side)

Movie: The Spiderwick Chronicles (why did he have to pick one with a word I'm not sure I can spell?)

Dinner: White Noodles (noodles with Alfredo sauce)

Lunch: Chips, PB&J, and applesauce (no lie he has had this in his lunch almost everyday this year)

Breakfast: Toaster Strudels (we are having these today, before that it has been almost a year)

Day of the Week: Wednesday (he gets out of school early)

Treat: Chips & Granola bars (I am glad about the granola bars because we got some on such a good deal at Albertson's that we bought about 60 boxes!)

Book: Magic Tree House books (he reads about 5 of them at a time, chapter one in each book, then chapter 2 in each book and so on)

Activity: Don't Eat Pete (no, not uncle Pete, it is a pretty fun game where you eat m&m's until you get to the spot designated as "Pete" by the rest of the crowd, who then yells out "don't eat Pete!")

TV Show: Krypto the Super dog (I tried to talk him out of saying this one because he has only seen it once on the computer, but he would not budge)

Web Address: Cartoon Network

Favorite Saturday Activity: Nintendo (I was so hoping it would be riding his bike, or playing outside, oh well)

Thing about School: Recess, reading, and writing, oh yeah and math (thats my boy!)

What a Day

Well, I have been pretty busy this last week. Everyone in my family has been sick. It started with Ashton last week, then Trevor got it, then Bryan, myself, Nathan and last but not least Kaylee. Ashton is almost over it, and the rest of us suffer mostly at night and early morning. Things are starting to get back to normal, but we did have an interesting night and day today. Kaylee was up ALL night complaining that her tooth hurt. So first thing this morning I took her in to the dentist. It turns out that she does have a tooth that needs to be pulled out, however, that is not the tooth that was causing her trouble. The trouble tooth is her 6 year old molars that are just coming in. The dentist said to give her Tylenol and ibuprofen, and Benadryl to sleep if needed. On the way home she started complaining that her ear hurt so when we got home I went to give her some ibuprofen, only to find that our new bottle of it was missing. I asked Nathan if he had seen it and he informed me that it was all gone. This was not good news because Nathan has a history of drinking entire bottles of medicine (last time it cost us $400 for the ER to call poison control and tell us he was OK) After he showed me the empty bottle and admitted to drinking the whole thing 2-3 days ago, I wised up and called poison control myself (OK, OK, first I called Peter and he told me to call poison control) Luckily Nathan is a very ...solid kid weighing in at almost 40 lbs so they told me that he would have had to drink 1 and 1/2 bottles before it would cause him trouble. (See what you have to look forward to Kim...not to say that you have a .....solid kid or anything) What a relief. The only problem now was that I had to take 4 sick kids with me to the store to buy more medicine. Oh boy, what a day!

Caught on Tape!!

We were just messing around watching the videos of Barlow and Bryan playing tether ball and we decided to play it backwards and low and behold, we found something amazing. No wonder Barlow keeps winning!

Tetherball Anyone?

For Christmas this year one of our presents was a tether ball poll. Which Bryan promptly installed right in the middle of our back yard. So far Barlow and I are the champions. I say this because we are both undefeated (of course we have not played against each other yet) Barlow has only played Bryan and I have only played my kids, but I thoroughly beat all of them! It has been a lot of fun to play and to watch Barlow and Bryan play, and I didn't think it was fair that Andrea and I should be the only ones to enjoy watching, so I thought I would share! Hope you enjoy as much as we do!

You might think that they are wearing the gloves because it is still kind of cold and it hurts to hit the cold ball, but they actually really like they way the gloves look and it makes them feel like real tether ball players!

The Car Experience

So, where to start. We have been the proud owners of a Kia Sephia for nearly 9 years now, but we knew the ride had to end and last Friday it did. When Bryan got dropped off at the Walmart parking lot (which is where his carpool meets) the clutch in the car was not working at all. Now this was not a major fix, but we figured it probably totaled the car (it was only worth a couple hundred dollars) We had planned to save up this year and buy a new car, but had not been able to start saving yet and we were reluctant to finance another car so Bryan decided to try out his handyman skills and fix the car himself. So after buying the part he needed we spent his next day off at Walmart's parking lot trying to fix the car. Here is what Bryan did:

Here is what the kids did (Trevor was at school already): After a couple of hours and 3 trips back to the house (once because we left the car keys at home, once to take Kaylee to school, and once again because Bryan locked the keys in the car and we had to go get the other set) Bryan realized that without proper air tools he could not even access the part that needed replaced so we called around to see how much it would be to tow the car then have it fixed. We found someone that would fix it for $30 and our friend was going to help us tow it there.

In the middle of the tow, this happened:

If you can't tell the tow rope is tied together. That is because it broke in the middle of the trip. We did not pull the car with that rope the rest of the way though because our friend was able to force the car into gear and drove it the rest of the way. We were feeling great about fixing the car until the mechanic called and told us that the part Bryan had ordered was not the right part and that the actual part we needed would be $100. Well that did it. We told him not to worry about fixing it, we would sell it to the junk yard for $200 and go buy a new car. So that is what we did today and here it is:

By the way if it looks familiar there are a couple of reasons 1) it is another Kia....yes that means we have now bought 3 Kias what can we say they are a great car and you can't beat the price and 2)it is the exact same Make Model and Year that Barlow and Andrea just bought! (but a different color)