She is now an adult

Today, April 28, is my dog's, Baby, 18th birthday. Joe said that she is now an adult!
18 years old! wow, she is old. She can barely hear, not sure she can see a thing and she sleeps all day. I'm sure this is her last birthday. However, I say that all the time... this is her last Thanksgiving, last Christmas, etc... but she's still kicking. You can tell she is one very old dog though! And you know what, she used to be completely black back in her prime.

Happy 18th birthday to Baby!

swings...

we finally got our swings pretty much done for the kids

We put 2 swings in. We are still looking for the perfect connector for the swing to chain. The ones we want we can't seem to find that are big enough for the swing but small enough for the chain link. What we have right now works but we just want to find a replacement for them. Then we also will cut off the extra chain. We left extra chain until we knew that the length was all good.
With the swings being SO high, you can really get some height...
We have one more spot for something. Another swing, climbing rope/wall or if Ike gets his wish a fireman pole!!

Now if the weather in Kansas would warm up just a tad bit we could enjoy them a little more.

kids will be kids

The kids thought it would be fun to stamp their feet and hand prints on paper and display them on the wall....

My hallway looks like that. The entire wall is filled with their masterpieces (well, as high as they can reach!). They slowly get ripped down. Don't worry they will all be replaced with new masterpieces.



Kids are messy, we all know that. My kids, I believe, are some the messiest around. At least 3 of them, Max is rather tidy. Except for one thing....

I wonder if they ever get that toothpaste ON their toothbrushes. They get it everywhere! And I actually wonder why I am buying toothpaste for the kids all the time!

I found Max had claimed this pile for himself awhile back...

The kids laptop, their netbook/mini laptop and a DSi XL. Max is all into electronic things. If he could play with all things electronic at one time he would! He will often times play DS while watching TV or the computer. We tell him one thing at a time.

Back in November I won an Ipod touch from Saving Lera. I received it about a month ago. My kids LOVE it. So Max has added that to his pile he claims as his. It is fun to play with. We did not have an Itouch before (or even an Iphone, I know, :gasp:). I have an Ipod from about 3 1/2 years ago that Pete got me for Christmas. It is an ipod video and has 32 GB. It still works perfectly (knock on wood) and I use every time I am in the car, when I run (jog, really), and just whenever. It has had lots and lots of use. Pete had bought the 3 year warranty for it but we never needed it. I am hoping the Itouch is made just as well.


Hope everyone has a fun-filled Easter weekend.

sole puke picker upper

edited to add-- yes, I really do know how to spell puke! (I had the title wrong)

Apparently that is what I am in this household. BTW, this post is about puke. Just letting you know!

Last night I got to sleep around 1:30. I went to sleep in Max's bed. Many reasons but the main reason... I pick the bed with fewest bodies! All 3 boys tend to find me during the night. If Sam and Pete are sleeping in our bed and I join in, that is 3. However, Ike usually goes to bed with the last person awake so last night that was me. He would have made 4. Then sometime during the night Max comes up....up to 5. Although I love my kids, I also love my sleep!

A little after an hour of sleep, Pete wakes me up and says Sam is puking all over the place upstairs. You do know dads are clueless when it comes to puke, right? I get up and grab some towels. Pete said, "you need more than that. It's on the carpet. You'll need carpet cleaner too." So I grab the spray bottle of carpet cleaner. Pete said, "no, the big carpet cleaner..... you'll see." I just look at him like, yeah, I'm not cleaning carpets at 3 am. I make it upstairs. My side of the bed has got puke on it. Sam also just hung her head off the bed to avoid puking on the bed. Thanks Sam! There was lots of puke on the floor there as well. I'm guessing at that time Pete was yelling at her to run to the bathroom. Unfortunately, my side of the bed is the furtherest from the bathroom. So at about the 1/2 way mark all the way to the toilet there is a nice trail of puke. The bathroom floor is sprayed with puke as well as the whole toilet.

Sam was laying in the floor on a rug, with a towel nearby. OK, so Pete was right. Wait, what did I just say?! I needed the big guns, even at 3am. I drag out the carpet cleaner and start cleaning. It came up without any problems. I guess fresh puke makes a difference!

Back to bed and so far so good. No more puke yet. I am letting her sleep in this morning and hoping nobody else gets it!

school projects

Before spring break Max and Joe both had a project due at school. Max a solar system and Joe a leprechaun trap.

For Max his solar system could be just about anything. I stuck with a simple poster type display.

I had Max fill in the blanks for length of day and year and how many moons each planet had. He glued everything on (with help). You can't see it in the photo but we do have an asteroid belt on there. We made it out of pea gravel and clear beads that looked like ice. The background is covered with (lots of) glitter. All the kids had to help with that, of course! He was proud of it and got an A.


Joe had to make a leprechaun trap. Could be anything. Apparently leprechauns like gold. When I mentioned to Pete Joe needed to make a leprechaun trap he suggested a plant like a Venus fly trap. Joe liked it so we went with it. Joe and I had green hands for a few days. We used paper mache that I dyed green (in hopes to skip painting it). However, we still had to paint the thing. It was messy but turned out better than I was expecting.
Here is Joe with his Venus Leprechaun trap!Joe hid one piece of gold behind a spike to really lure the leprechaun in....

His teacher said it looked just like the plant off of Little Shops of Horrors.

Style... Ike has it!

This is Ike all decked out... wearing snow boots, shorts, long sleeve tee carrying a flag and a balloon. What else could a boy need?

We were actually leaving at the time but I told him he had to changed shoes. The flag and balloon had to come though.

He is SO into dress up. I have a post I need to get ready for that (so watch out). Yesterday he was a pirate. Mean old mom told him he wasn't going to wal-mart all decked out. So he put clothes on top of his outfit and kept the hook with him. Many people in wal-mart said, "argh" to him!

really, it's been almost a month?

OK, So it's been awhile since I posted. I'm not that good at keeping up I guess.

The weather is getting nicer and nicer. I love spring! I'm outside just as much as I can be. I have planted several veggie plants so far and more berry bushes. Fingers cross they all spread like crazy! The rabbits were enjoying my blueberry bushes way too much so I had to make a 'rabbit fence' around all my berry plants in that area (blueberry, blackberry and raspberry). Now, I noticed my strawberry plants are slowly but surely getting eaten up. SO I need to make another trip to the hardware store. I feed the birds along with the rabbits and squirrels in hopes they would leave my other stuff alone. no such luck. However, they have not found my cabbage or parsley yet. Apparently they do not like rosemary or mint (or maybe haven't noticed it yet?).
Today though I felt sorry for the poor little rabbits.

As I walked out on the deck this morning I heard this awful, loud squeaky noise. This huge black bird had a baby rabbit in his beak sitting on the fence. Poor baby was yelling for his momma! 2 rabbits were in the yard that he pulled it from. I could see the rabbits nest was torn apart. fur everywhere. I think the rabbits moved the rest of the babies as the hole was empty a short while later (I checked). Either that or I figured the bird had eaten them all up. However, a couple hours later, I again step out on the deck and a big black bird is flying over our deck with a mouth full of baby rabbit, kicking and screaming. Poor bunnies.

Last fall I re-did a flower bed by our mailbox. I only put tulips and lilies in it. Plus one mum, which I was kinda hoping would die over winter (it didn't) plus the 'fancy' grass in one corner. Happy to say the tulips all looked great this spring!
I have tons to blog about and hoping I can play catch up for awhile but we'll see how that goes...