Life

Life is speeding along....

• Kaleb's first year in school is coming to an end and I can't believe how fast it has gone. And I can't believe how much he's learned in one year. He's awesome at reading and loves learning how to spell.
• Matt's home today with food poisoning, nasty stuff! Another benefit to liking my steak well-done.
• But, he only has one class left until he graduates! After 8 years of school he's ready to be done. It will be weird not worrying about him doing homework each week.
• Ashton had his first trip to the dentist, no cavities! He was nervous and cried but overall did pretty good for having a stranger look in his mouth.
• Soccer finishes up next week and I have to say I'm kind of excited. I love soccer and watching Kaleb play but I have so many boys on my team that have the attention span of a 2 year old. During a game they'll run off to the playground, or just off the field together to play. And grass, who knew grass fights could be so much fun. It's like they just discovered grass for the first time.
• The basement needs a little more wiring and then it's on to drywall. We've spent the last couple of weekends working on projects in the yard. But we have 3 grow-boxes built for a garden (the plants are still in the kitchen since it's been too cold to plant them) and we planted 2 more fruit trees. We've also been digging up some of the stumps from all the bushes we took out last fall.
• We're getting really excited for Disneyland! Kaleb's been counting down the days since around day 65.
  
• I saw this article on another blog and loved it. Here's the link. This is my favorite part, "Life is not a race. The only person you are competing against is yourself." It's important to enjoy right now!
  

Lill-lill-a

I love how Ashton tries to say Vanilla.

Easter

I feel like the weeks and months are going by so quickly! We're keeping busy and as the warmer weather gets here I'm sure things will be even more crazy.

We saw How to Train Your Dragon on Monday and it was awesome! Kaleb and Ashton loved it and Ashton loves making dragon sounds.

We're so close to being done with the framing in our basement and Matt started wiring and insulating that half of the basement last night. Hopefully this weekend we can get some yard work done and build some boxes for a garden if the weather is nice.

Kaleb starts soccer in about a week and I'm coaching again. This time it's not coed and so wish me luck getting a team of 5-6 year old boys to listen to me. I'm excited to start being outdoors more and to start enjoying the sunshine.

We had a great Easter and the boys have more candy than they could ever eat.

Here's the Easter grass we planted 3 weeks before with the snow and tulips in the background. Every morning the boys would check to see how much the grass had grown.

As the boys found the eggs they lined them up so that they could count how many they had.

That afternoon we went to my aunt and uncles house for dinner and another Easter egg hunt. This time with 300 eggs and about 6 to kids to look for them. They're spoiled which is why we have so much candy!

Ashton has a LOVE for food and cooking. Not so much to eat the food (we kid he has an eating disorder because he spits most of his food in the garbage can) but he loves cooking and watching food be prepared. A couple of weeks ago I was gathering ingredients for dinner and when I went downstairs to grab something else Ashton had added the flour to the pot, unwrapped the butter and put it in and grabbed a whisk out of the drawer and was stirring everything together. When I came back up he looked at me and said "I cooking!" He then tried to turn on the stove which luckily he can't do and pulled the salt shaker out in case I needed it.

If ever anything is in the oven he grabs a hot pad out of the drawer and waits for the timer to go off. This was Easter morning and he sat there with his hot pad just waiting for me to take the casserole out of the oven.

Also, the 2 pictures above show my dilemma with Ashton's hair. You can see the horrible rats nest on his head in the first picture and that's usually what it looks like and it's a pain to brush out. But then when I do get it brushed out like in the second picture I see the curls and can't get myself to actually cut them off. But when straight it reaches his mid-back and even curled up it's starting to get a mullet effect. I know I just have to do it but I can't. I know it won't be curly like that and I can't picture him with any other haircut. I know it sounds silly but I can't convince myself to actually do it!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

The boys were happy to see a leprechaun left them treat bags this morning. Can't you tell by their faces!

(And yes, I know Ashton's "bangs" are too short, poor kid goes from not being able to see to this new style. I'm still not quite sure what to do.)

Kaleb saw me posting these pictures and wanted to take more silly face pictures. So here are the tongue-out pictures he loves so much.

Matt and I found the boys sneaking more strawberries right before bed the other night. They devour strawberries, although who wouldn't with a bowl of sugar to dip them into.

The basement is coming along...slowly. Saturday Matt and I (mostly Matt) replaced the main water lines in the house. The old galvanized stuff looked pretty gross inside. This weekend we'll finish the plumbing by changing out all of the drains. The main reason we decided to change the plumbing was because the shower drain isn't sloped at all. So because the pipe is probably all rough and gunked up inside it collects hair and clogs every couple of months and the last time it took us 3 days to unclog it. Plus, everything is exposed so now would be the time to do it and I'll feel alot better covering up new plumbing than 50 year old plumbing. Matt's been awesome at learning how to do everything. I think the library is out of any plumbing and home improvement books right now because we've had all of them for the last couple of months. He's also had good advice from contractors and plumbers to help.

This is what the boys and I did at Lowes a couple of weeks ago while Matt picked out all the plumbing supplies. After I took this Ashton wouldn't put it on his head anymore.

(And see, he really needed his bangs cut, just not as short as I cut them.)

How awesome is this open-the-window weather even if it won't last for long. I'm ready for spring!

Last weekend we took a quick trip to Colorado for our niece's blessing. Saturday we went swimming at the Greeley Rec. Center and they have the coolest indoor swimming place ever. I didn't take any pictures but this picture from their website shows half of it.

It's called Adventure Island and they have an area just for little kids with slides and all sorts of water features. Ashton loved the freedom he had to run around in that area. They even had 2 tube slides for bigger kids and one of them looped outside of the building. And it was cheaper than any pool we've ever been to. I hope someone builds something like this out here. The only time I actually took my camera out was at the playground. Here's Kaleb and Ashton having fun.

After the demolition of the other 1/2 of our basement which took all weekend we were burned out so we haven't done much the last 2 weeks. I'm glad I have access to our apartment dumpsters because we filled 5 dumpsters with drywall, wood, carpet, etc. These pictures are horrible and it's a mess but this is what's done so far. The one picture (bottom) shows the family room end with everything ready for drywall and we had to put some furniture in there that wouldn't fit in our storage room while we work on the other half. The other side (top) is down to the concrete and the glued linoleum which was a surprise to us. We will start framing this weekend and there will be 2 bedrooms on this end and a bathroom that we won't be finishing right now. I uncovered one of the stairs and I love the white with the wood stained tops but they're so steep that I'm going to have to cover them with carpet again.

Our friends had their baby this week, Parker Ogden Quinney and he looks just like his sister, adorable. Here are some bibs and things I made for him. I had a struggle with my machine on one of the blankets but it was probably my lack of knowledge that attributed to most of it.