be fruitful

I love the progression of these pictures. I took these a couple weeks ago when we were playing outside, somehow Faron snuck away from the kids and went down to the pond alone...but very quickly Alexander found him...
Soon Isabella noticed that they were missing and she went to find them also...
Then Sophia joined too.
Arianna would have been there too, but I wouldn't put her down and let her go. It took all my will power to let the other kids go down to the evil pond, but I bit my tongue. Faron thinks it's an irrational fear anyway...

And this picture I just love.

Easter Activities

Here are the obligatory egg dying pictures, lots of fun and messes.

Ari is quick as lightning, as all the other kids have been, and she kept snatching eggs, see the blue by her mouth?
Grandma and Grandpa came over for Easter dinner.
here is Isabella reading a book to Grandma. It was unprompted, she just went and got the book (a library book) and sat down to read it to her.
We did get some little plastic eggs to "hunt" this year. We've never done that before, but the kids love to hide stuff and seek it out, so naturally it was a big hit.
This is also the closest I came to getting a picture of all 3 girls in their matching dresses. Oh well, it'll happen again. I didn't actually buy the dresses to be for easter anyway, so it will all work out.
After the kids found all the eggs (and took all the chocolate out) they rehid them for Papa and Grandma and Grandpa to find. Here they are giving a little help.
I think they found something here...
a quick wardrobe change and the girls were putting on a dance performance.
Then it was time to brush and cut (with plastic play do scissors) Grandma's hair


Everybody had lots of fun, Papa, Alexander and Ari all fell asleep within 15 minutes of the Grandparents leaving.

More of the baby

Here are some more Kaleb pictures.
Alexander finally got to see Kaleb eat. He had already told us many times, "he hungy, give him french fries?" Cute little profile. The day we were leaving we finally got to see his open eyes. Isabella really wanted to see what color they were. Alexander wanted me to wake him up "you open him eyes?"

Arianna and Nehemiah were having a grand time playing. Ari discovered a new game, if she stood up, Nehemiah would stand, and if she sat down, Nehemiah would sit. So over and over she stood, he stood, she sat, he sat.
She also had fun the day before kissing his forehead, he was brave and let her, which did take some bravery on his part since her kisses are similar to the ones you would get from a dog!
Nehemiah riding on Isabella's back. Everybody had a great time playing together, we even tried to fly a kite outside and played in the yard for an hour or so. I didn't take any pictures out there because keeping an eye on all those kids was a full time job for all of us, but rest assured, they had a lot of fun.

Freshly baked Baby

There are many more pictures to come, but here are a few for tonight. We just got home from a few days visiting Gabe and Angie, and the boys, and the newest boy is Kaleb. He is a teeny tiny little doll.

The boys were very fascinated by baby Kaleb
all right there together, minus baby Kaleb

Signs of Spring

and then it snowed this morning...

Whole lot of Painting Going On

Faron is now a painter full time :)
Since he has been home he has been painting all the rooms that need to be painted, the rooms that we planed to paint as soon as we moved in, and a couple extras too.
Our bedroom was first, as it was a hideous shade of ragrolled teal. Now he is working on the hallways and the living room, they should be done tomorrow, then he moves on to the basement.

He gets a lot of extra help, but most of the time he does his painting while we are all doing school, or during nap time.

Father Daughter Dance

We had our Father Daughter Dance at Church Sunday night. It had been rescheduled because of bad weather, so the girls were VERY ready for it to be here.
They slept in curlers the night before, and then sat through a curling iron touch up before the dance that evening, then they got to put on the dresses and be all princessie.


I was the "photographer" for this years dance, so I practiced first on our girls, then took everyone else's pictures too. There were over a hundred people there so I stayed pretty busy taking pictures and didn't get to see too much of the dance. However I hear it was wonderful. Some ladies at the church transform the sanctuary into a pretty pink dance hall with lights strung around the walls and balloons everywhere, not to mention a disco ball and strobe lights.
Faron dancing with both the girls for the last dance, "Butterfly Kisses".

I think everybody had a great time and, like last year, Isabella and Sophia will be talking about it and looking forward to it until next year!

Spring???

Well, I know we are all sick of winter around here, so when it was 50 yesterday and in the 60's today, we got to play outside!
We took the kids to the park Friday and oh man were they excited. They have wanted to play outside for sooooo long, but it's just not worth it when it takes 25 minutes to get bundled up and you can only stay out for 3 minutes before you're frozen. So, they were thrilled to get to play at the park, without freezing.
This was Arianna's first trip to the park as a "big girl" and she had a lot of fun too. She swung, and climbed and went down the slide, but mostly she had fun walking and walking and walking wherever she wanted.

Then today it was so nice out that we took our first walk of the season. This picture is for Aunt Lora, they all have on the "reindeer boots" (rain boots according to Alexander) that you got them!

Isabella is an outside girl and she has been begging for weeks to go down in "the field" and she said that she just wanted to go down there and lay on her back in the grass and look at the sky. So today she got to. This is her walking away after the laying on her back, I didn't get a picture of that because she couldn't stay on her back long, it was very muddy!
There was still some ice and snow in some spots, but it's melting fast, come on spring!