Saturday, March 28, 2009

Update

It looks like the sick bug that we've managed to avoid has finally hit. We took Cole to the doctor
today and he has bronchitis. Jacob and Malia have coughs, I have some sort of mild flu bug (luckily no throwing up) just chills and aches. Claire's rash seems to be going away finally. The doctor didn't think it was from the cat. He said she would have it on other places besides her face if she was allergic to the cat. So we have no idea why she broke out in the rash...but luckily it's going away.
So it looks like we'll get to keep the cat. What's funny is that we named her Ruby...Claire pronounces it "poopy." So the other kids get a good laugh from that. Other than that...it was a pretty slow week. Lots of rain and lots of indoor activities. Hopefully there will be more to report later.

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Good new and bad news

The good news is Claire turned two on Monday. We love this little girl so much. She's been so much fun lately. She starting to talk a lot and says the funniest things. Claire:
-Is obsessed with animals
-Loves "doodles" and string cheese. Her favorite treat is ice cream
-Claire is always quick to say please, thank you and i'm sorry
-She is loved by her siblings, Malia is practically a second mom to her. This morning
I woke up and Malia had already changed Claire's diaper and got her dressed. (Nice! I should
sleep in more often.)
-When Claire gets nervous or shy she stuffs her hands in her mouth and won't talk
-We love this girl and can't imagine our house without her!
It's spring break for the kids, so we all went to McDonalds for lunch. Claire watched her favorite "move it, move it" movie (madagascar) and then we had our awesome party.

Okay, it wasn't so awesome, but she's only two and she didn't really know what was going on. I made her kitty cupcakes and she opened a few presents. Grandma and Grandpa came up to celebrate with Claire. The best thing about Claire's birthday is she (we) got a new cat! (yes a real one)

The kids named the cat Ruby. Her previous owners had named her Isolde and since i'm not even sure how to pronounce that, we decided to give her a new name. She's a sweet cat, but still very skiddish around the kids. She spent the first few days hiding behind our bed. She would come out at night after the kids were in bed. The kids are in love with her.

If you look at the picture closer you can see that Ruby has one blue eye and one green eye.

Now...The bad news is that Claire may be allergic to Ruby. This is what her face looked like
this morning. Not the best picture, but you get the idea. So what do we do now?? I'm assuming it's the cat since this has never happened before. But the kids will be devastated if we have to get rid of her....So we'll keep an eye on Claire for a few days and take it from there.




Wednesday, March 18, 2009

I need some good book ideas. I just finished "a tree grows in Brooklyn" I really enjoyed it, and i'm headed to the library tommorrow. Usually I have some books in mind that i'd like to read, but i'm drawing a blank. Anyone read any great books lately that they can recommend??

Tagged...8 things list....

This tag comes from my SIL Julia, who manages to make her tag posts witty and fun to read. I do not possess her talent for writing, so you'll have to take my boring version.


8 Favorite TV Shows:
1. The biggest loser (i'm hoping someday i'll be really inspired!)
2. American Idol
3. Lost
4. So you think you can dance...notice a reality tv trend yet?
5. The office
6. The city, The hills (basically really dumb MTV reality shows, lame I know)
7. How it's made on discovery channel
8. And before we downgraded our dish...what not to wear.

8 Things I Did Yesterday:
1. Went to the gym
2. spent too much time on the computer
3. Went to the kids' school to eat lunch with them
4. picked up a babysitter
5. Searched the internet for Claire's birthday gift.
6. Went out to eat with some friends at Olive garden
7. Went to the temple. (Side note: Brent had to speak at the chapel session. In his talk he told a story about a couple who had served a mission in Ghana and some things they accomplished while they were there. The temple pres. wife get's up next and says that they served a mission in Ghana also and were friends with this couple. crazy coincidence.)
7. Stayed up to watch American idol and The biggest loser. DVR'd of course so I could speed through!

8 Things I'm Looking Forward To:
1. A warm, sunny day
2. Claire being potty trained (not even close folks)
3. Annual vacation to Sunriver
4. Marathon in May
5. The day when my kids can babysit
6. September when I send 3! kids to school.
7. My bed, every single night!

8 Favorite Restaurants:
1. The portland city grill
2. Chevy's
3. John's chinese place on River rd.
4. Olive Garden
5. subway
6. Ruby Tuesdays
7. stanfords
8. McDonalds (yes i'm one of those sick people that actually likes their wimpy cheeseburgers)

8 Things on My Wish List:
1. To be as funny as julia
2. For someone else to make dinner each night for a week
3. To sleep until 9:00 in the morning
4. To sit and read for hours without feeling guilty that I should be doing something else
5. To be able to eat brownies and ice cream EVERY day without gaining a lb.
6. To never yell at my kids
7. For my kids to really learn how to swim!
8. For Claire to potty train herself. I realize this is a totally selfish wish list, but it is a WISH list after all...

Saturday, March 7, 2009

Kitchen redo- part 2

Well, the plan was to live with my painted black tile for awhile, but it was driving me crazy. So I did a little research online trying to find another option for the backsplash. I found a picture that I loved. They had used wainscoting as a backsplash. Once again it took a little convincing to get Brent on board with the idea. He wasn't thrilled with the idea, but being the smart husband that he is, he went along with it. So here's me painting the kitchen....BACK to red.

Here's a close up of the wainscoting. I LOVE how it turned out. Brent also installed "motion activated" (he wanted to make sure I included that part) under cabinet task lighting.
So here's the almost final picture. (I should have waited until it was light outside to take the picture, but i was too impatient) I want to recover the bar stools with some fun fabric, but haven't found anything that i'm in love with yet. And i'm still searching for some red canisters, but other than that we are done. I love it!


On a completely separate note: Claire turns two this month! We took her crib down last week and she has been happy sleeping on a mattress on her floor. We'll get her toddler bed down soon. Out of all of our kids, she has made this adjustment the easiest. She stays on her mattress when it's nap time and bedtime. It's been great! Also today she kept saying "poopy, poopy." She's done this several times before and i've sat her on the potty but nothing has happened. Today Brent sat her on the potty and left her there even after she repeatedly yelled that she was done. Soon enough she yells "i did it!" And sure enough she did. We were pretty proud of our little 2 year old. I'm not feeling ready to potty train, but it looks like I might not have a choice. She's talking up a storm and says the cutest things. She can also throw a pretty decent tantrum...but we love her!

Sunday, March 1, 2009

How to get your foot in the neighbors door

Last night Brent went over to a friends house to help them with something. The boys tagged along. They thought it was the coolest house ever (they had the coolest toys ever). So tonight at dinner, Cole was whining that he wanted to go to Donovan's house. I told him it's not polite to invite yourself to someone's house, but maybe we could have Donovan over to our house (and then hope he reciprocates the offer :) Malia jumped in and said. "I know how you can go over to Donovan's house. Just have mom make a big batch of cookies to drop by and then the mommies will talk for a loooonnnggg time and then you'll get to play!" What a clever girl! She gave us a good laugh.