Spring What? Yes... Spring Break!

This is what we woke up to this morning. The last day of school before Spring Break! 4 inches of snow. It looks beautiful, but we are pretty sick of it. If it stayed on the trees and off the roads it would be wonderful but it does trap you and derail any plans you try to make when you can not get out of your drive way. I am hoping this is the last of it, but as I look out the window, the snow just does not seem to be stopping anytime soon.

Brad's Birthday

Today is my hubby's birthday. 38 years young! We all know he is a teenager at heart. This year his birthday was pretty anticlimactic since we celebrated early and Easter is so close, but I still hope he feels special. We are all grateful for the day he was born and blessed by the man, husband and father he is to us all. Happy Birthday Honey, I love you!

Easter Eggs

This was the first year we have ever decorated Easter eggs. Yes, Jack is almost 9. My rationale has always been, why?! Easter eggs have little to do with the real meaning of Easter. Until recently no one in our family would eat more than 1 boiled egg (now Jack will eat about 20 deviled eggs with out a break if I let him). And it seemed like a mess for wasting food. We did Easter cookies and Easter egg hunt and Easter string hunt instead. But this year Brad really wanted to do eggs, just for the fun of it. And it was fun. Apparently, not everything needs to be practical. Jack and Kadie are so artistic and they love to do art when we are all doing it as a family. It was a fun afternoon. And now we have 18 colorful eggs in our fridge and we will add deviled eggs to our Easter menu.

Jack taking this task seriously, as he was in charge of making sure everyone had one with their name on it.

All of Kadie's were purple and pink except for the one she made for me which

was green, my favorite color.

Jack was having fun, even though he is giving the serious look here.

Me and my honey, it is nice to have him home in the day so we can do these things together.

Happy Easter, Issie. She slept through the whole event.

I am sure next year she will have her little hands in everything.

Eating Feet!

This is one of my favorite little stages. Isabella is almost 5 months and she just found her feet. They are her favorite toy, she loves to pull her socks off and play with her toes and occasionally take a nibble or even suck on them for a while. It is so cute. The third time around I realize how short of a time this is. Soon she will be too busy crawling around to take so much time to explore her toes. It is a precious thing to watch these little guys meet the world.

KIDS CAN COOK

Jack's school had a cooking event today where the kids submitted healthy snack recipes and then the finalists made the recipe to be judged in a little competition. At first Jack was excited, he decided to make a Berry Yogurt Smoothie, but when he got there and it was mostly girls I thought he might back out. But he stuck to it and had a great time. He really had a lot of fun. His smoothie was by far the best one there. It is so fun to see him enjoying doing things for himself. He is growing up so fast.

Chef Jack

The finished product: Berry Yogurt Smoothie

Recipe: 3 ice cubes

1 cup vanilla yogurt

1/2 cup orange juice

1/2 cup frozen mixed berries

1 banana

Blend in the blender until smooth and enjoy.
Kadie seemed to love it. She had 7 sample cups!

Brad and Issie enjoying the samples too.

Passing on the love of cooking from mother to son. Way to go Jack!

Isabella's Nursery

So I know my mom and Trudy are eager to see what I finally did with Issie's room. I still have the rocking chair to cover but I have lost my motivation so I thought I would post what I have done. Here is the crib, I loved the pink and brown pasley fabric but I wanted the super soft pink minky dots to be on the inside for Issie to snuggle up to. It seemed to balance it out since the print is a bit busy. Isabella and the pictures hung above were ideas I stole from a pottery barn magazine.

It is hard to see but the ruffle is a chocolate brown satin.

On the opposite wall I framed several of the pregnancy belly pictures and some "baby body parts" pictures that my friend Michelle did for us. They turned out so well and I love seeing how little she was when she was first born.

I had a little fabric left so I covered the lamp shade on her dresser.

Here is her bible verse. I know the writing is not perfect but it was more important for me to have it there than to stress over the way it looked. I love this verse, I feel like God specifically gave me this verse for her when I was pregnant. Since her room is small and the closet has many uses, I liked the pink shelves and the cute boxes and baskets help me store extra diapers, wipes, medicine, bath supplies, towels and I have one to put little memories in. I had fun labeling them so Brad new where everything was.

These are my favorite pictures that Michelle did for us. I love looking at them when I put Issie to bed. We just feel so blessed to have her and it was fun to put together this room for her. So that is it. I did work for some time on some curtains but they turned out to make the room look like a circus plus they were so heavy that they pulled the rod out of the wall, an all around frustrating day for me. In the end, I found some simple and pretty chocolate satin curtains that match her bed skirt and block the morning sun. Much easier then what I was trying to create. Let me know what you think.

Old Beach Pictures

These are old pictures that Brad came across that we love. It was the summer of 2005 when we went camping right off the beach. The kids played all day in the sand. One of our friends that went with us is a little photographer so we were blessed with all kinds of wonderful pictures of the kids. Jack was 6 and Kadie was 18 mos. It is hard to remember how little Kadie was at that time. Fun pictures to look back on.

Playing puppy in the sand.

Kadie girl- little beach baby.