Workin'

We had a super busy week which means we don't have any pictures!  Mike went up to the school on Monday to be a Watch Dog Dad and help out.  The kids love having their dad in their classrooms and seeing him around school.

We had some really warm weather - it was in the 80's and almost 90 one day.  That is not spring!  I'm holding out for some REAL spring weather sometime in April - I want some 70 degree temperatures!  It has finally stopped dropping below freezing at night so we decided to actually plant something in our garden.  We got all of our plants in and even started on the seeds - but we aren't done yet.  So far so good!

Mom and Dad have been spending lots of time on spring projects, fixing up the house, food storage, getting one of our rentals ready for tenants, working and doing all kinds of things to be ready for our 2 weeks of company this month.  The kids are so ready to be done working and to have some fun!  Hopefully we can get enough done to do some playing soon!  We can't wait!

Our family highlight this week is Lilah.  I think I say the same thing about Lilah everytime - she is such a good helper!  She has been helping me put in our garden - she takes the good garden soil out of the bag and puts it into my bucket so I have access to it, she keeps my watering can full, she fetches things for me and she plays with Celeste when she isn't helping me.  Who could ask for more?  She had a lot of fun with the kids home for spring break, she was sad this week when they went back to school - but she and Celeste seem to be playing better the older Celeste gets.  She is a tough girl.  The kids were talking about a 4th grader at school who punched a kindergardener - this didn't scare my little 4 year old, she replied with "if somebody hits me I'll just punch them back!"  I'm sure she would!  We may need to work on 'being nice' before she goes to school =).

Spring...

We had spring break this week!  It was a week of fun, creativity, work, play, and relaxing (well, I don't know if I relaxed, but the kids did).  We went to Busch Gardens on Monday (we got our 'fun pass'es so we

can go all summer) and had a blast.  It was beautiful weather and despite the crowds we had a great time.  On Tuesday the kids just relaxed and lazed around.  On Wednesday we made tie dye shirts and it went surprisingly well.  Thursday we played.  On Friday we all worked!  We did garden prep and worked outside. 

Spring also brings new birth - as in baby chicks!  Mike has wanted chickens for YEARS!  We keep saying we'll buy some hens when he builds a coop, but the coop never gets priority and has never been built.  Mike was in the farming supply store on Friday and noticed that they had a deal on chicks - if you buy a giant bag of chicken feed you get 6 free chicks (VA law states you have to buy atleast 6 at a time).  So we now have a large bag of food, a feeder, water dish, pine shavings, heat lamp with bulb and a box with 6 chicks!  The kids are ecstatic!  Mike now has a very real deadline for getting a coop built and we will have fresh eggs soon!  I'm excited, but will be even more excited when they aren't living in my house =). 

Spring brings gardens!  Or it soon will.  We are very behind due to cold weather, busy schedules, and a miscommunication with the neighbor that rotatilled our yard.  But - all the prep work is done and we will be putting plants and seed in the ground this week!  I'm SO excited.  I'm excited to have a much bigger space, to be better prepared and to be trying a new method this year.  We'll see what happens! 

Lots and lots of pictures...

 Celeste, Madeline and Lilah on a 'horsey' ride at Busch Gardens

Tie Dying T-shirts

 Celeste was 'napping' while we did our shirts right outside her window...

Calvin free-handed his

Apparently one of my gloves had two holes in it.  Nice.

Chicks!

 Celeste was a little uncertain, but warmed up quickly

 Now she is in love with them!

Here is their first home.  They've already upgraded to a larger box.  All the kids check on them frequently. 

Our garden spot.  You can see the cardboard and then straw on top.  We've got the whole thing covered now.  You can also see the large stumps we dug up earlier this year.  I'm hoping they are gone soon!

Our family highlight this month is Celeste!  She is turning into such a big girl.  She may have been slow learning how to talk, but she has caught up fast.  It's fun to have conversations with her and to listen to her communicate.  She has learned 'high fives' and has picked up on 'too slow' from the kids.  She holds her hand up and says 'up high' and then quickly drops it and says 'too slow'.  Cutest thing ever!  She is finally getting the potty training - she comes and tells me when she needs to go about half the time.  The other half is very predictable so we have only had 1 accident in the last 4 days.  We are to the point where I will say she is potty trained.  Yeah!  She loves to dress up, dance, play Barbies, swing outside, put shoes on, and do puzzles.  She has also developed opinions about her clothes and it takes a lot longer to get her dressed in the

mornings.  She is still a monster! 

Mr. Rooter to the Rescue

Sigh.  The plumbing saga continues:  Apparently our plumbing problem wasn't fixed and everything backed up again on Tuesday.  We already had a plumber coming on Thursday to re-plumb our utility room (to fix the many leaking/backing up problems we had with our washer when it rained a lot).  We were hopeful he could also assist with our upstairs plumbing clog.  Unfortunately not only could he not help with the clog, he tied our new washer drain into the clogged line so I was now without an upstairs bathroom and had no washer (with a sort-of potty trained almost 2 year old, that is not a good thing).  On Friday afternoon we FINALLY got the clogged line cleared and we got all of our plumbing problems fixed!  Hurray!  Unfortunately we still had a lot of work to do in our utility room to move our washer and dryer and rearrange the whole room.  Since I had to carry out all of our food storage and everything else we store in there - I decided to do some cleaning, painting, and sprucing up so it looked less like a crumbling jail cell and more like a usable space.  We are almost done with the room - I was able to start doing laundry on Saturday but I still have most of my food storage in my dinning room.  When it's all said and done I'll have more storage space and a cleaner room, not to mention no more water in there - so I guess it's worth it, right?

In other news the kids had a ballet recital in the playroom one night  - it was very entertaining.  We managed to fit dying Easter eggs and an Easter egg hunt in on Saturday in the midst of our utility room re-do and had a nice Easter Sunday. The kids are excitedly looking forward to their spring break this coming week.

Ballet  pictures:

For all those die hard Russell fans there are videos of the ballet dancing on You Tube.  To see Calvin dance with Lilah go here, to see Calvin dance with Anna Elise go here, and to see Celeste high-jack Madeline's dance with Calvin go here.

Easter Morning:

Our family spotlight this week is Mike.  He has been working, a lot.  The good news is that although he is still extremely busy the spring round of Home Shows is over and he won't be working (as much) on the weekends.  When he isn't working - he's working around the house - moving washers and dryers and shelves.  What an exciting life he leads ;).

Crazy Weekend

We had a fairly normal week and I was looking forward to a nice weekend at home with Mike - relaxing and getting started on a long honey-do list.  Then our lives got a bit too exciting - you'd think that by now I'd know better and start expecting these things to happen!  On Friday morning our toilet/shower backed up while Mike was showering and when that happens it rains from the ceiling fan in my kitchen.  Yes, nice!  Mike had to go get tools from his shop, but we eventually got the clog out and everything seemed to be working.  I was still in my pajamas and cleaning up shower/toilet water from my bathroom and kitchen
when the first  guests for playgroup showed up!  I got everything clean enough and changed my clothes in time for our next guests to come.  Then Mike called to say that one of our rentals was vacant.  The tenant was unfortunately in the hospital and her sister had moved her out and hadn't told us.  Not only were we not getting our rent that weekend, we weren't ever getting it.  So while the rest of our playgroup guests showed up I tried to get our rental on craigslist, find the pictures for it (my hard drive crashed 2 months ago and although I had backups, nothing is where it's suppose to be), and try to rearrange some of our automatic payments to account for the lack of rent.  FUN morning!  I spent the afternoon cleaning up more thoroughly, putting a sign in the ground, walking through the rental (the back door was wide open!), and recovering.  On Saturday morning Mike tried to take another shower and it all backed up again!  Seriously!  We got it temporarily under control and then Mike left for a work appointment, then a church meeting and then a lunch date with Anna Elise.  I got to clean everything up AGAIN!  We think it's finally fixed now.  But you never know with an old house!  The only thing we got done was to move our internet cord out of my kitchen.  For the past 18 months it's been in my way in the kitchen.  Mike drilled a hole and we sent Calvin crawling through our attic space and we relocated the wire.  I'm so glad to have it done, but the frustrating thing is that it wasn't even on my list!  We spend what was left of our late afternoon playing outside in the beautiful weather.  There was a snow storm coming on Sunday and we wanted to enjoy the sunshine.  Calvin played with his new baseball and mitt (his bribe to crawl through the attic) and the girls drew with sidewalk chalk.

 Calvin with his flashlight, coming back through the attic after pulling the cord through one hole and pushing it through another.  He was a good sport.

Sidewalk chalk!

I love this picture of Lilah.  She was busily coloring a 'rainbow' on my handrail.  She used two pieces of chalk and kept one under her chin while coloring with the other and then switched them.  Can you see the pink chalk under chin, up against her neck?  Can you see the chalk all over her face, neck and front of her shirt?  Madeline decided to use the chalk as make-up, she didn't want her picture taken but had blush, eye shadow and lipstick on!

Calvin playing catch with his dad.

Our family spotlight this week is Anna Elise.  Anna Elise had her artwork choosen to hang in the library and received a $5 gift card for Chick-Fil-A.  I haven't seen it yet.  She didn't tell me it was in the library until they took it down, now it's hanging up in the school.  Her dad took her to lunch to use her gift card - she was so excited to get a milk shake with her chicken!  She has recently started reading Harry Potter.  She is on book 2 and has decided it's not a good book to read right before going to bed!  She really wants to watch the movies now, but I'm not so sure...

Who?

This week I haven't really seen Mike.  We've just met in passing.  With him working late, doing the Home Show and me having church functions/meetings we've just handed the kids off.  It was just one of those weeks.  I'm glad it's over, the kids miss their dad!

In other news we are prepping our yard for our garden.  The yard work is killing me, I'm very out of shape!  If it would stop raining for more then a day or two and dry out we could finish doing the prep work... On Saturday, in between rain bursts, I took the kids to the park and we had a blast!  Here is a picture of Celeste.  The pictures of the kids on the tire swing (all 5) didn't turn out.  

She did have shoes, but she wouldn't keep them on...

 Celeste decided to put on her own pants and shoes on - she got frustrated  because her pants wouldn't stay up....I wonder why? =)

Our family highlight this week is Calvin.  He is such a clever rascal!  His grades and reading have been improving.  The mud and the rain that is keeping him indoors is driving everyone crazy!  He can't wait to get outside and play.  On days when he does get outside he loves to play with Lilah, she is the only one willing to jump in and really compete with him (she just needs more skill).  He was doing 'magic tricks' with his legos for us today - I don't see that being a career choice in his future, but he was having a good time with it.

Isn't It Spring Yet?

Here in Virginia (and in my head) March is spring.  So a rain storm that floods my utility room and then turns into a huge snow storm and cancels school is not ok in March!  We had a very cold week, with cold windy weather and a snow day on Wednesday and a delay on Thursday.  I'm so ready for winter to be over.  Today we finally had some warm weather - it was almost 70!  I'm hoping spring is here, but we'll see, you never know about the crazy weather in Virginia!

In other news we have started working on our 'garden' (it's just a muddy/weedy patch of dirt) and we've been working on our food storage (the cannery here in Richmond is going to change in April and I'm anxious to get as much done as I can before then), drove mom crazy on the snow day because the ground was too wet to go play outside, and got blizzards at DQ (buy one get one for .99).

Our family spotlight this week is Madeline.  Madeline is still loving school, she LOVES sharing a room with Anna Elise and she has started playing the wii a little more (she wasn't a big fan when we first got it and we don't play it more then 1 or 2 times a week).  She is starting to read and despite a very slow start in kindergarten is doing very well and wants to read books by herself - and she probably could with just a little bit of work.  She is still uniquely Madeline - today she kept saying Massachusetts.  Finally Anna Elise looked at her and asked "why do you keep saying Massachusetts?"   Madeline replied, very simply "I like to say it, it's fun".

Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures this week.  I'll try to do better.

Switch-A-Roo

This weekend I got a little crazy and decided to mix things up a little bit around the house.  Mike was gone for most of the weekend doing a home show so he couldn't object.  On Friday I switched our bedroom with the playroom.  It was a lot of hard pushing and shoving and carrying, but worth it.  Our bedroom is now tiny but the kids LOVE all the space they have to actually play in the playroom.  Then on Saturday we switched the girls' around.  Celeste won't stay in her crib so we put her in a bed.  It seemed to be the right time to move her into Lilah's room and have Madeline move into Anna Elise's room.  Hopefully having the two school girls and the two little girls together will help everyone get more sleep!

We also had fun watching the third Ice Age movie, Calvin was finally the 'Star Student of the Week' in his class and I had lunch with him one day, and Mike is still working 2 jobs.

Calvin made an 'airplane/submarine'.  The kids played in/on it all afternoon.  It was fun to watch and listen to them.

Our family spotlight this week is Lilah Bean.  Lilah has been really enjoying church and going to playgroup.  She is very social.  She has also been a big help lately, she tries to help me with potty training, she likes to help Celeste and has been so good about sharing her room with Celeste.  We went to check on them before going to bed on their first night together.  Celeste had climbed up the ladder and fallen asleep next to Lilah.  Lilah later told us that she covered her up with her blanket and told her stories until she fell asleep.  So sweet
(but a little scary that our 22 month old climbs up to the top bunk).