This weekend we drove out to Indiana for our niece Whitney's first birthday. She really likes Ben. He loves when babies like him. They usually love him or hate him. We didn't take very many pictures, but you can see some of the fun black and red decorations in the background. Nancy had everything decorated and super cute.

 Whitney loved her cupcake. It was pretty much gone before I even had a chance to see her eating it. For being such a little squirt, she is an amazing eater.

The girls got to meet their cousin Crue. Kiersten especially loved playing with him. he was so sweet to let Kiersten pretend he was her prince. it was nice for them to have a boy to play with. Kara was a little sick to her tummy during the party, but still had a great time. Poor Evie was sick too, and vomited all over me right at the start of the party, so our black and red outfits didn't last too long. It was fun seeing little Whitney open her gifts, and be the center of attention. and of course fun to spend time with family as well.

Cute baby and Kara's strawberry hat

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Evie was so cute today. She wanted to get her picture taken when I was trying to take pictures for my etsy shop. So I set her in front of the camera, and this was her pose. Guess she must be feeling cute today :)

Kara asked me to make her a strawberry hat, and this is what I came up with. I was happy with it, til Ben asked, "What are you going to do to make it not look like a tomato?" So I added the seeds, and now he thinks it looks like a watermelon.

I liked it enough to add one like it to my etsy shop. I am thinking of possibly selling the pattern as well. If I can remember all the stitches, and get it written down soon, that is. Now Kiersten wants a plum hat, so I've gotta go figure that out :)

Easter 2012

We had a super fun Easter egg hunt with the kids on Sunday morning. The Easter bunny hid eggs all over the courtyard area between the 2 buildings in our apartment complex. The girls were very excited to get all dressed up for Easter.

I was worried that Tommy and Evie wouldn't stand a chance against the older girls, but they both picked up lots of eggs.

Kiersten found her basket in the bushes

Evie found hers pretty easy.

then she sat and opened them to find treats inside.

Kara had a harder time finding her Easter basket. 

After the hunt, Kiersten went to church with Nancy and Victor, and we took Kara and Evie to Ted Drew's frozen custard. Then we played a new game until it was time for our visitors to leave for home. Hopefully you all had a great Easter too!

zoo and children's museum

 

we had Vic and Nancy out this weekend for Easter. It was a fun weekend. On friday we took the kids to the zoo.

Saturday, we went to the children's museum. It is so big. We've been there twice now, and still haven't been able to do everything. I don't know if it will ever be possible to do every activity in one visit.

The kids all liked the water room. We spent a good amount of time in there.

I'll post Easter pictures in a different post :)

a few pics of the new house

We had the inspection tonight for our new house. This was the first time the girls have been out to see it. Evie wouldn't hold the "sold" sign right side up, but I still like this picture.

The girls loved sitting under this tree. They each had to take away a blossom when we left.

Ben wanted me to share this picture of the view off the deck. There is a wooded area right behind us, but our yard has a retaining wall and fence, so I feel that it will be a fairly safe yard. We do want to finish the fence around the sides of the yard though.

I included this picture because I am really excited to have storage! we didn't realize when we bought our last house that there was basically no storage. So I've been paying pretty close attention to that in every house we've seen. The garage has 2 upper storage areas like this, plus a wall of built ins.

It was hard to get the girls to realize that the furniture isn't going to be in the house. They kept getting excited about things, such as these chairs, clocks, stuffed animals. We had to keep reminding them that nothing will be there when we move in.

The mounted TV in this room is the one thing that actually does come with the house, which is nice, because it is wired into the wall, and all set up with directv, (which is what we use) and ready to go. So it'll be nice not to have to figure all of that out.

We haven't decide what we'll use this little front room for yet, but we will have to get some sort of furniture to go in there. Definitely not a couch, because that one that is currently in there makes it feel pretty cramped in there. They also have a piano in this room that all 3 girls tried to play. they were sad that we aren't going to have that piano when we move in.

There is a nice, large deck off the main floor, and also this area walking out from the basement. Kara already rolled down the hill several times and picked out where she wants to put a swing set.

the inspection went great, and the inspector could hardly believe that he couldn't find anything wrong. He kept saying how impressed he was that everything was done the right way. The oly thing he could think of was something on the roof that needs to be sealed, which we totally wont care if they don't fix, as it's a 5 minute, $3 job. but the realtor felt that it would be weird not to put anything to be fixed. So the sale should be pretty easy to go through by our closing date of May 2. We signed papers yesterday officially selling our spanaway house to the relo company, so even if the sale were to fall through on the buyer's end, it's off our hands. Now that the girls have seen the house and picked out their rooms, they are more than excited to move in. We have our move in date scheduled for may 4th. Of course we'll have better pictures after we move in/unpack.

Easter decorating projects

The girls were really excited to have "Easter week" this week for their home school. For an art project, they made some Easter decorations to put up in the apartment.

We also made these envelope bunnies to put snacks in. Kiersten made an extra one for Whitney, so Kara made one for Tommy. They are very excited to show their cousins the bunnies when they arrive later this week. Tommy's bunny is to the far right, and has a yellow tooth, because Kara said, "he hates to brush his teeth". so I have no idea where she got that from.

I was getting tired of my boring, unpainted nails, so we bought some Easter colored nail polish at the store today, after we left the zoo. After lunch we all painted our nails. Kiersten is so pleased with her alternating purple and green fingers.

Evie got pink fingers, but it is impossible to get a picture of them, I guess. I took 8 different shots, and in every single one, she curled her fingers in at the last moment. this is the only picture that you can actually see one finger.

Kara used pink as well on her fingers, and copied Kiersten's purple/green combo for her toes, which made Kiersten kinda mad at first, til I explained it was cool that Kara thought her idea was good enough to copy.

All of our Easter toes. You wouldn't believe how hard this picture was to take! Notice Evie's cute little green piggies.

During Evie's nap, the girls made this Easter centerpiece. It was so easy for them. They didn't need any help, so I was free to straighten up while they made it. All I had to do was tie a bow around the flower pot once they had all their peeps skewered and placed.

We hung their suncatchers that they painted a few days ago in the window. Kiersten was sad that she couldn't reach as high as Kara.

We finally got scotch tape, so they were able to hang the decorations they made all over the apartment.

They wanted more decorations to tape up, so I had them trace their hand prints to make butterflies.

I had some peeps left over from their centerpiece, and also this green pot that a leprechaun left here on St. Patricks day full of candy. So I made some royal icing and "glued" the peeps around the edge of the pot. I tied a cute piece of ribbon around the edge with a bow. Kara thought it was hilarious to keep saying, "they're peeping over the edge at us". I didn't want to buy more flowers, and after searching through all the girls' stuff we have here, I decided to crochet a few large flowers. Then I just hot glued them onto skewers and decorated them with beads and easter embellishments, and stuck them down in the pot. It still looked a little bare, so I stuffed in a bit of yellow tulle left over from Kiersten's tutu, and ended up with this cute little easter decoration.

now we are decorated for Easter, and didn't have to spend more than a few dollars to get our sad little apartment looking cheery and fun. Tomorrow I think I'll check out pinterest for some fun easter treat ideas!