Fire Station

Preschool had a lot of field trips at the end.  This time the kids went to the fire station.

The Fruits of My Labors

Yum.

School Talent Show

Emma and her best friend Kaylee decided they wanted to try out for their elementary school talent show.  They went through a lot of ideas before hitting on a duet of, "Let It Go" of Frozen fame.  Considering that they choreographed this number themselves and mostly just practiced at school, I thought they did a fabulous job.  Rick and Kim even came down for the evening.  Ryan was a little late arriving, but since theirs was the finale, he was still in time.

This is cell phone video.  Be warned.

 The Marimba club also performed.

Emma and Kaylee.  Aww.

PS Emma is borrowing my shoes.  Can you believe it?

Chicken Tractor

Ryan had big plans over spring break.  He was going to design and build a chicken tractor for our new pasture, so the chickens can be out of the current chicken coop, but not tear up our yard.  Well, it's no longer spring break, but the coop is done-ish.  Ryan got it moved out to the pasture (and out of our driveway!!!!).

We are just waiting on the electric chicken fence to arrive via mail so the current inhabitants (baby turkeys) can be let out.  Ryan still needs to finish the laying boxes, and then the chickens can be moved.

School Caledar

Last week I got the twins signed up for kindergarten.  It is going to be a very hard transition for me.  (My babies....  Sniff.)

I got a call back from the school saying that they would love to have Annie and Maddie come and be part of the kindergarten school picture for the school district calendar.

Maybe it's because we know the vice principal, or maybe it's because Annie and Maddie are darn cute identical twins, but we were pretty excited to be chosen.

He's still got it

Ryan was asked to shear some sheep for a friend.  Sean Q wanted to come watch (and maybe learn to shear himself).  So Ryan, Sean, Jared (friend with the sheep), and Michael (Jared's son) all went out in the field to catch the sheep.  

Ryan caught two.

And the others didn't catch any.  Ryan felt pretty proud of himself.

Eventually they got all the sheep penned up, and Ryan gave those sheep their spring hair cut.

Dinosaur Park

It was another preschool field trip day.  We were off to the Dinosaur park.  I offered to take Simon with me to Blair could nap while Charlotte napped.  I have had better success with Simon than Charlotte.  Charlotte likes to cry when anyone other than her mom holds her.  So, we played in the rocks and looked at the dinosaurs.

 Here's Tiffany and her little class of preschool students.

Hello Warm Weather

The weather was warm enough, it was time to get out the slip and slide last night.  Ryan has a week off from his college courses (before the last painfully hard and busy last 10 weeks of his Masters), so we are able to enjoy his company.

Blair, Simon, and Charlotte are spending the week with us.  Michael is off doing a 6 week training in Arizona, so we invited Blair to stay as long as she needed.  Simon loves his uncle Ryan, and enjoys his cousins, who are a good age for him.  Two-year-olds are notoriously difficult to reason with about sharing. You can make some progress with 5-year-olds, thankfully.  At least, most of the time. :)

Hanging Out With Simon

On A Whim

A while back, the Young Women at church had a wedding dress "fashion show" for one of their Wednesday night activities.  I was asked if they could borrow my wedding dress for the occasion.  Since I had yet to take the dress in to be dry cleaned again, I decided I would try on the dress myself.  If I remember correctly, I am decently close in weight to where I was then.

Talk about a humbling experience.  Oh boy.  My hips, rib cage, waist, and shoulders are all proportioned differently.  (I'm blaming the kids.)  Due to my restricted movement in the dress, I had to ask for Ryan's help getting the zipper up.  I would have heaved a sigh of relief when the zipper made it to its final destination, but I couldn't take any deep breaths.

But I did it.  I can claim that I could fit into my wedding dress from 13 years before.

Mother's Day

Today seemed to be the day for celebrating Mother's Day.  This morning, I was invited to a Mother's Day performance and tea party.  The preschool kids worked hard on their songs.

 And then they served their moms and grandmas a nice lunch.

Then this evening was the Activity Days Mother and Daughter dinner.  They decided to go a slightly different route this year and did more "fun" things, like making balloon powered cars.

(I am not particularly good at designing cardstock cars, in case anyone wants to know.)  Kim was able to come down and be Emma's "Mom" date, which was really nice of her.  So that meant I got to be Elizabeth's date.

Livestock Show

Emma and Elizabeth did well at the Jr. Livestock Show.  Emma got reserve champion in her pig's weight class, and both girls got blue ribbons.

Wednesday it was time to say goodbye to Jack and George.  This is a particularly rough day.  Even though we know from the day we bring the piglets home that they are going to be someone else's dinner at the end of the livestock show, it's hard to say goodbye.

 The girls in line to sell their pigs.

After the pigs are run through (or pushed through, in Elizabeth's case) the show ring, the pigs are separated into "destination" pens, and that's it, as far as the pigs go.  All we had left was to help take down our 4-H chapter's display.

The air in the pig barn was awful.  Every one's allergies were acting up, but Elizabeth had the worst of it.  We had to make sure she was using her nebulizer regularly, and I would take her home early when I could.

Maddie's Snowman Drawings

Pig Herdsmen

This was Elizabeth's first year in 4-H, and Emma's third.  They both took pigs to the Jr. Livestock show this year.

 Meet Jack (Elizabeth's pig), and George (Emma's pig).  And no, I don't think I can tell them apart.  What I do know is Jack weighs 270 lbs and George weighs 280 lbs.

 The livestock show, although I did not stay there as long as Ryan did, does seem to last forever.  Annie and Maddie have a busy social life with preschool, but we made sure we were there for the important stuff.

After a while, even a mud puddle looks interesting.

The first judging round was for the pig itself, and Elizabeth and her pig are put in the show ring with pigs of comparable weights, but of all ages for kids.  The second day of judging is how well kids of her experience do against each other.

 Emma is getting a lot better with showing her pig.

 I just had to show this one, even though it's of her backside.  Good pig showmanship form!

The air in the pig barn was horrendous, but more on that later.

Random

Occasionally I post things to Facebook instead of to the blog.  Since I am so far behind blogging, here are a few of those posts to help catch us all up.

Being assured when we bought our cat from a local veterinarian that our cat was a boy last November, we named him Merlin. So imagine our surprise when Merlin got fat and started developing other pregnancy symptoms in the last couple of weeks.


I am suffering some music whiplash. 3 songs from Frozen, Frosty the Snowman stopped after the first chorus, 1 minute of Call Me Maybe, now onto some Barbie soundtrack. I might need to put the iPod and speakers somewhere out of the reach of 5 year old fingers.


As I was leaving the restroom stall at McDonald's today, there was a lady trying (and failing) to coax her grandson into the other stall. When faced with automatic flushing toilets, kids' emotions seem to range from wariness to screaming refusal to enter the stall with the Awful Monster of a Toilet. When I caught the lady's eye, I suggested to cover the sensor with toilet paper. Later, as I was leaving the Play Place with kids in tow, the lady pulled me aside and told me I was brilliant. I need to be told I am brilliant every once in a while. It's really nice.


You know it's a good spill when you get milkshake on the table, chairs, floor, walls, and ceiling.


Now that my father-in-law and a new neighbor have both randomly dropped by this morning, it might be time to change out of my sweat pants.


In case anyone was wondering, it's even more amazing to be interrupted in the bathroom by a child not your own.


Me: You girls can watch your movie until Dad is done with his homework and then it is bedtime. Twins: Take your time, Dad! Elizabeth: We just want you to do your best! Me: {unladylike snort} Riiiiiiight.


You might be desperate to hang out with your husband if you will go to a school board meeting he has to attend just so you can sit by him for a while.


If the child being seen by the doctor and her two younger siblings get a small treat or sticker for "being so good" at the office, how come the mom isn't given chocolate for having managed 3 children in a small space for the last half hour?


Thanks to Lemony Snicket, when Ryan starts talking about "in loco parentis" in his college courses, I actually know what that means!


There are mornings that having a cattle prod would be advantageous.


Annie and Maddie aren't completely over their destructive stage. After my shower, I came down to a game of Squish The Dixie Cup. Every paper cup we own was spread all over the family room, and the girls were hopping around smashing the cups.


Comparing your wife to a Wookie, however favorably, is never a good idea.

Let's Go Fly A Kite

One of our preschool Friday field trips took us to a park to fly kites.  The only problem was the wind was so strong, it broke our little dollar store kites to pieces in a matter of seconds.  Luckily Sean's Jake and the Neverland Pirates kite held up better, so the kids took turns flying it.

Tears

Yesterday at lunch, Maddie had an eyelash fall in her eye.  It was bothering her quite a bit, but there wasn't a lot I could do to fix it.  Maddie's eyes were tearing a bit, so I told her to just keep doing that.  Her tears would help clean that eyelash out of her eye.

About a minute later, I turned back around from making my own lunch to see Annie punching her sister in the leg.  I was a astonished to hear Annie say, "I'll give you more tears!"  And Maddie was surprisingly pleased with Annie's problem solving attitude.

Catching Up

I can't believe it has been so long since I've updated my blog.  There have been a number of reasons for this, mainly being that:

Ryan is working and going to school full time.
Ryan has been called to be the Young Men's president.
I'm watching extra kids again a couple of days a week.
Our computer is getting old and is a pain to work with.

Anyway, I've just felt so overwhelmed by our life right now that blogging just hasn't made it on my to do list.

I am still alive, though.  And to prove it, here are some pictures from my phone.  Maybe I'll get around to getting the pictures off the camera and really catch up one of these days.

Ryan got a free razor in the mail from Gillette, which ordinarily wouldn't be anything super special.  But the fact that they were wishing him a happy 18th birthday made me laugh.  I guess I married a super mature looking 6 year old back in 2001.

 This is what we had for dinner on St. Patrick's Day.  We had Irish soda bread, Colcannon, boiled cabbage and carrots, and corned beef.  I even made some Apple Amber for dessert, which was interesting.  The tricky leprechauns came by our house and did some tricky things, like turning the milk and toilet water green, and making our pictures and couch cushions topsy turvey.

 On one of the teacher in-service days, Froggy was a guest at the library.  I brought all 4 girls with me, and Emma refused to get her picture taken with Froggy as she is much, much too big for that sort of thing.

 During Dr. Seuss reading/spirit week, the kids had some dress up days.  This was Favorite Book Character day, so Elizabeth is Annabeth Chase from the Percy Jackson series, and Emma (of course) was Hermione Granger.

This was stripes and spots day.

On the afternoon just at the end of the school day on the last day of school before Spring Break, Ryan had about 3000 plant starts delivered to the school.  So we spent a morning helping Ryan and some of his FFA students transplant those starts into 6 packs.