Hello, is anybody out there?

If you are and are interested in the goings on of the family then I apologize! It has been a very busy couple of months with the odds and ends of girl scouts, and school stuff. No earth shattering mothering moments or anything to report so we are just plugging along. I have been busy doing some cakes for pay the last couple of weeks and Leslie has been a big help with tinting fondant and even made me a mothers day cake all by herself!

The boys are busy learning to get along these days and are working on it constantly! We are working on using the English language, instead of screaming and fist throwing (just to phrase things in a positive manner). LOL. It is amazing how many times I can say "use your words instead of yelling" in a single day! Of course the moments of them laughing and playing together so well can melt away all of that in an instant.

Leslie has been reading like crazy the last few months and it is amazing how many books she has read. I should ask her to keep a list of all of them, it would be neat to look back at all she has read, and helpful when meeting with the teachers at the school! She has been very independent with her school work this year and I am really proud of how she can be self motivated to get the work done. I feel like this has been one of her most productive school years yet!

We are now looking forward to some really fun stuff coming up in the next few weeks and I will try and get back to share all the fun soon!

T.V. Bye Bye

Today was the second day of a greatly reduced TV schedule that I am trying to work on with the kids. We have been noticing that all Luke really wants to do these days is to watch TV, so it is really time to act. It really wasn't noticed that much and the kids have been playing really well. I am sure that the bunk bed with the slide being put up help out alot! All three kids are now sleeping in the same room so they could use the beds together. I don't think Leslie will want to for the long term but for now I think she enjoys the company! So I hope that less TV is going to continue to go as smoothly over the next few weeks while we adjust. After that I hope it is routine and will not be as tempting to go and turn it on, for all of us!

Playing in the mud

We had a great time today playing in our little creek, that gets formed by the water over flowing the pond, going under the drive way, down our water fall and then out of the 2 tiers of the waterfall. We went down to look at it but ended up in it because it was such a warm day and we didn't really get cold at all. Liam ended up waist deep at one point because were the water spills out of the water fall it has worn it down really deep and I didn't know this until I told Liam he could go play in it. Well it was quiet a shock for him at first but then he had a blast getting all muddy. Luke and Leslie stayed and played longer than Liam and I, which I love when Leslie and Luke have fun together, because it can be hard for them to enjoy each others company, to put it nicely!

I am really happy to be in this new stage of toddlers and up, no babies, because I feel I can really get into things with the kids that if I had a new little one would be difficult to do. Not impossible of course, but it would have been much more difficult to be walking in mud up to my knees and carrying ( or more likely nursing) a baby! I hope to have a lot of fun with all of them in the next few months with this great weather we will be having and hopefully lots of time at home to be together as a family.

Decluttering

Not much to report around here. I have been itching to do some decluttering, so I have been working on that. It is dangerous for me to start things like this, because I really could keep going and going, but I have the little people around that still need to be fed and stuff! So, I just do small little spots at a time and that usually allows me to come back to the world of lunch making and diaper changing often enough that no one is being to neglected! I think sometimes that I should get a job cleaning other peoples houses cause I could really get into it if I was being paid to do it :oD

Anyhow, Leslie had a busy weekend with girl scout cookie booths and got to spend a couple of nights at a friends. I think she had mostly fun, but with a little preteen drama thrown in for good measure. I do know that she took about a million pictures with her new camera that she got from her grandma and grandpa. She is loving having her very own digital camera.

Luke has been into casting his fishing pole into the pond over the last few days and is really good at it! He can get it all the way across the pond. There will be no fish catching because 1) there is no hook on the end and 2) the pond has no fish! These things, however, do not take the fun out of it for him though!

Liam is starting to put sentences together now and is in to everything!! I have now resorted to taking all the movies that we do not watch often and putting them in our closet and the ones we do watch are in a travel case that I now hang on my key hook. We have tried everything to keep them away form him but he is relentless!! LOL So now unless he can drag a chair half way across the house or scale the wall, they should be safe! I thought that by the time you have your 3rd child you would have been through most stuff before, but Liam really likes the shiny movies so for now I hope to remove them until he is old enough not to drool on them and make them unusable. He is also a blast to be around so I am really enjoying the stage!

Birthdays!

I can hardly believe that Liam is 2! It was a busy day because we had a friends birthday to go to in the morning. It was a bowling party and all of the kids really had fun. Then in the afternoon Leslie helped me get Liam's cake made. We did Yo Gabba Gabba cause he just loves the show. It was really hard for me to let Leslie help, I really do not do well with help in the kitchen, but I think it was good for us to try this together. I would love to take some cake classes with her, maybe in the summer when we don't have other stuff.
Liam really likes his cake!


Yo Gabba Gabba! I think it turned out well for just a couple of hours, and lots of help from the kids Liam eating Brobee, YUM!



After eating the yummy cake Liam opened the gifts we had gotten him. He really loves the guitar and is playing with it all the time, now Leslie can keep hers safe! He also really enjoys playing with duplos so the wagon is a big hit as well.

It was also my birthday on Monday and we spent it skiing/snowboarding with families from the school. Leslie was the only one of our family that did any snowboarding because I didn't know if Kenny could come with us and I was unsure if I could help Luke and keep an eye on Liam by myself. As it turned out Kenny got the day off from work and we spent the day playing in the snow with the boys, while giving Leslie encouragement to keep trying! Luke fell asleep in the sled and Liam ran all over the place like he has always been in the snow, must be the Canadian in him! It was a long, fun way to spend my 33rd birthday!

A Crafty Day

Today we did a Valentines Day craft, a woven heart shaped place mat out of construction paper. It was a little over Luke's skills at this point but he enjoyed cutting paper with scissors. Liam colored on some paper with markers and made a huge mess by shoving the markers down his sleeve! Leslie did the mat all on her own and did a necklace with some of her beads as well. After they were done I covered them with contact paper to keep them safe for a while. I really enjoyed having all the kids working on stuff at the same time, and just being with them.

Chaos: Mom is down!

My back is feeling awful today so I was not able to do much of anything which means the kids tore the house apart! I didn't think it was that bad until Daddy came home and started cleaning up (which he normally doesn't do cause it never bugs him to have stuff all over)! Leslie was a big help and baked Valentines day cookies and Luke and Liam enjoyed eating them. I hope to do lots heart shaped food for them over the next couple of days, and maybe a craft! It is fun to make the everyday stuff special!