Isaac is 10!!

Last week we celebrated Isaac's 10th birthday!


First we had just a family party - one thing we got is this nifty art set. I'm only mentioning that particularly because it's one of the best pics I got of him. ;)
All he asked for was video games. We got him one. But we hope to expand his interests and spark some excitement for some of his other talents, as well.

After dinner, Isaac had 9 of his friends over for a movie night.

First they sat around and all watched him play his new video game for awhile. It cracked me up that these boys can find someone else playing a game sooo interesting.

haha.

Fun party time:

Then here is most of the group watching the movie:

Then later some of the boys got bored with the movie and moved into the living room for a balloon fight. I also ended up with Elisabeth and 3 of the kids playing a preschool color-matching board game (Duck Duck Goose) for awhile. I kept waiting for the boys to get sick of how silly and immature the game was - but they played at least 3 rounds, which made me laugh.

And the 3 stalwarts who stuck it out til the end of the movie (including Isaac):

Soo, I'm not sure if the movie night was the best idea in the world for a group of very active 9-10 yr old boys - but I think they had fun. And they ate lots of candy. And Isaac was happy, so I think that's all that matters. :)

some bunny love to tide you over

Our dear bunny Leia is 2 yrs old now!

And . . . I have at least 4 other blog posts in the process right now - I've just got to get unstuck on them. Soo, lots more soon.

Please be patient with me as I dig myself out of this muck-pit. Thanks.

let's just get this straight

ok, these are crescent rolls:

dinner rolls in a handy crescent shape.

And this is a croissant: flaky, buttery french pastry goodness.

They're both shaped alike. They are both pretty tasty.

But they are not the same thing.

Let's not confuse them, alrighty?

ok, that's it for today. Goodnight. ;)

spring sunset

love story

A couple weeks ago Zac and I got to go on a real "date" (which I'll write about sometime) and while we were out and about, I picked up my ring from the jeweler. I finally got it sized so I can actually wear it!

The original size of the bands haven't fit me since sometime during my pregnancy with Abigail when I retained a ton of water and swelled up like a beachball. Yeah, she is almost 12. And I never did ever get back to my pre-pregnancy size in anything (not even my feet). Then I re sized the diamond ring sometime, ohh I don't know, it was either before or after my pregnancy with Samuel. But it's been somewhere around 6 years or so since I could wear that either.

I just hated this rather expensive and very tangible reminder of how much weight I've gained since being the petite little thing I was when I got engaged at 22. I didn't want to have to know how much bigger my fingers really were. And I didn't want to admit that I will most likely never be that skinny again. It felt like failure. Ugh. So I just didn't do anything about it.

But, you know. Being a married woman and all, and carrying around this gaggle of wee ones, sometimes it's nice to clearly signal to all the world that I am indeed married. And I've missed my pretty ring.

Zac picked it out all by himself. Well, with the help of 2 of his roommates who had known me since our freshman days and also knew me pretty well. And they all 3 agreed on this ring for me. I thought it was sweet, thinking of Zac talking it over with these other 2 guys, deliberating, deciding if they thought I would like it, if it "fit" me, if this was The Kristen Ring. I loved being completely surprised by it.

Anyway, so I've occasionally worn an old simple band of Zac's mother's (then I outgrew it). And I bought a $20 band from Walmart one day in desperation to have something on my finger when we went on a trip or something. And my mom gave me another little band she found once on a beach or something. But . . . nothing ever replaced my real ring (quite obviously).

So, coming home from the jeweler's the other day, I felt like I was a newlywed again, or newly engaged. I just couldn't stop looking at this pretty shiny thing on my finger. It felt new all over again.

And so, even though as I posed and tried to take a picture of the ring on my finger I was shocked by how much older my hands look than I ever realized (when did that happen?!), in some ways I feel young again. I feel a little like waving my hand around and hoping someone will notice this "new" addition on my finger, it feels like announcing again that, Look! I have a ring! Look, I'm married! Look, everyone, look! I am loved. :)

Elisabeth is Five!!

It is really incredible to me that my "baby" is 5 yrs old. I'm not sure how this happened (?). But here she is, the cutie. My youngest child is not so little anymore!She had a really great birthday. She kept asking me beforehand how "big" she was going to be once she was 5. She'd reach up as high as she could and ask, "will I be this big?" And she really wants to be a "big kid." It's tricky for her because in our household, it's just easy to divide the kids into "the big kids" and "the little kids" (2 of each, easy peasy). So the big kids take care of the little kids, or we split up and the big kids will do one thing while the little kids do another, etc. But she and Samuel are frankly getting tired of being the "little" kids; they want to be BIG. I guess we'll have to work on that.

And she was sooo excited and ready to go, she tried to blow out the candles right after Zac lit them (before we'd even had a chance to sing Happy Birthday to her). He had to light most of them again and start over. Silly girl. :)

But she got some really great gifts and was very very happy, which of course makes me happy.

Her "big" gift was a new girly scooter just for her. We've usually gotten the kids a little bike for their 5th birthday - but since she is getting Abigail's old bike, we went with a scooter instead.

So yay for Elisabeth!! She is such a spirited, strong-willed little thing. Fearless. Determined. Fiercely affectionate. It's quite an adventure learning how to be her parents but we love her to death.

(and that brings us halfway through this season of birth days - yippee!) :)

Spring Break 2011: #5

Zac took the last weekday of Spring Break off work and he picked up the 10 baby poplar trees that we had ordered. And he planted them with Samuel and Elisabeth. We're sort of determined to pretend we live somewhere where there are trees. So, although these trees are only 3 ft tall right now, someday they will be a forest in our backyard!

It was sort of a bummer of a day for me, can't say why for certain. But.

There! And that's all for spring break. (phew!) ;)

Spring Break 2011: #4

Thursday: welll, I tried to make these baked apple cinnamon doughnut things (and I took some really awful photos of some of the process. My bowls are pretty though, aren't they?). They turned out very crumbly and it didn't make very many, but they were tasty. The consensus was that they were kind of more like a muffin - so the kids were disappointed that they didn't get "real" doughnuts. Whatever. And Elisabeth hovered around me and tried to help but that was the only real "fun" involvement involved - but at least we all had a treat to eat, and that's something out of the ordinary at least. Then Isaac and Abigail slept downstairs in the little tent.

For the record though: remind me not to ever commit myself to trying to be fun everyday again. haha. It's too much pressure, I've decided. And it's rather counterproductive to start feeling like you're a failure at being "fun." ;)

see ya

[note: I've been trying to publish this all day but we updated to IE 9 which apparently has a nice little glitch with blogger which prevents being able to publish posts. It's taken me all day to figure this out and have now taken off IE 9, so now hopefully I can be back to blogging happily. Just thought you might want to know.]

Spring Break 2011: #3

Sleepover! Abigail had a friend sleepover Tues night (for the first time ever actually) and they had a great time playing video games, making home videos, jumping on the trampoline (and whatever else they did when I wasn't watching). ;) They also generously played with all the younger siblings which made them very happy, and made me very happy. So that was most of Wed! In the home stretch now, Spring Break is almost over! The weather got sort of chilly so I'm tempted to stay home today and maybe make homemade pretzels. Or cookies. Or doughnuts. We'll see. I had sort of vague plans to do some spring cleaning/organizing/rearranging this week, but that hasn't happened. Someday Zac and I also need to paint the other half of our bedroom. Hm. Ohh, the best laid plans . . . Never enough time (or energy) to do everything I'd like to. I think energy is the main culprit. I don't have any. Ever. Oh well. Ok. Time to get my exercise done and do something fun today! Ready, set . . . GO!

Spring Break 2011: #2

Roller Skating!!! A friend of mine was celebrating her birthday by taking her kids roller-skating and invited a bunch of friends to come along. Of course you all know I love roller-skating and I am beyond thrilled to pass on this love to my kids. Yay! Then what made it even better was first off, they only charged us $2 a person rather than $5 a person which was a pleasant surprise, to say the least, and then, as a result of all the "shows" and skating they've been doing downstairs in the unfinished basement, we reached another fantastic family milestone: all 4 kids on the rink and roller-skating all by themselves!! I was so impressed and proud of them! Samuel would speed up and try to race ahead of me every time I approached him and Elisabeth only fell down (and stayed sitting on the rink until I got her) a couple times. But I got to skate around by myself! wohoo! And Elisabeth picked me to skate with her for the "couple skate" which I admit warmed my mommy heart (although Isaac refused to skate with Abigail. oh well.) Anyway, it was a lot of fun so I count that as success #2. yay. :)

Spring Break 2011: #1

In my attempts to actually be a good mommy and take my kids to do fun things over Spring Break, I'm going to blog about it again and tell you how I did - because that keeps me accountable for my ambitions. Aren't you so excited? Today the weather was somewhat nice (sunny and in the 50's - which is an improvement over the 2 days of snow we got over the weekend) so I took the kids and went for a walk/bike ride. The big kids rode bikes, Samuel rode his scooter for most of the time (then sat in the stroller for the rest), and Elisabeth tried to run along and keep up with them or sat in the stroller and cried when she couldn't keep up. Fun times. First we stopped at the playground and they rolled down the hill for awhile (and pretended to be dizzy zombies walking back up).

Then we walked out to where there are some horse properties.

There was one horse that came over to say hi.

It was kind of funny to watch them react to the horse. They're not very used to being around animals. Especially big animals. ;)

And I had some fun messing around with editing in Picnik. :)

Oh and I finished reading 2 books (Unbroken and The Lover's Dictionary).

Not a bad start to the week, I'd say.

What are you doing, or have you done, or plan on doing, for Spring Break? Do share.

ummm

Not long ago, I found this cute little idea on Pinterest. It looked like a tasty grab-and-go breakfast. A typical egg/bacon/biscuit breakfast with a unique presentation. Looks yummy, eh?Yeah and mine: didn't turn out looking quite as yummy. Huh. It was sort of a drippy egg explosion mess all over my oven (I thought my kids would like the eggs better scrambled. I'm not sure if that alone was my mistake, or if some other things went wrong as well). But oh well. A+ for effort, right?

Today:

- I glanced over as I was pulling out of the driveway this morning and saw these "decorations" in our tree (courtesy of Samuel): - and Elisabeth put on some of her own makeup (plus some blueberries on her chin from breakfast):

(Just thought I'd check in and say Hello. It seems we've been busy with just a lot of stuff lately and my dear little personal demons have snuck out to taunt me, too. They like to keep me busy. So my head has been full, but with nothing that feels like bursting out into bloggy loveliness . . . quite yet. see you again soon)