Baby #4

We have a new baby coming to our family in January. The kids are really excited. Sarah wants a sister really, really bad. I have to admit I would like an other little girl too. Joshua doesn't care boy or girl, he is just thrilled, he loves babies. Ethan doesn't believe us when we talk about it. I told the kids they could come to the ultrasound to find out what we are having and they are looking forward to that. I'll post it when we know it! PS Shaun is excited too.

Joshua's Robot

The kids did a summer camp for three weeks. Joshua took soccer and Robotics. Sarah did soccer and Creative writing. This is Josh showing off his robot and his first two missing teeth on the bottom.

Kids Marathon

The kids got to run in a marathon back in May. I'm finally getting around to blogging the pictures. It was held just outside a race car museum and they got free admission inside after the race was over. Vroom-Vroom!

They each got a medal.

Finished the race.

Getting ready to race, they are in there somewhere?

Kids playing on the race car.

Joshua coming to the finish line. He finished 11th. Sarah was close behind. But the camera froze up as she ran past me.

0 Pets

I have no idea what happened. On Sunday I decided it had been one week with our pets and they needed fresh clean water. We carefully scooped out the tadpoles, still had 13 good swimmers. Changed out the water and put them all back in. I pre-treated the water with the special drops just like last time. The only thing we did different is added a Lilly bulb and not line the bottom with sand. This morning they were fine when we checked and by 2:00 pm all dead. I can't figure it out. The kids were not as sad as thought, they just said "Can we go get more?"

13 Pets

The kids now have a pet, 13 to be exact. A friend of ours has a pond and they have thousands of tadpoles in it. She let me take a scoop home. We ended up with 13. We made a little "pond" in the backyard with a bucket and some rocks. The kids are thrilled and check on them many times a day. It will be fun to watch them develop into frogs or toads. I did a little research on caring for tadpoles so I didn't kill them. We've had them a week and they seem to be doing just fine. Ethan checks on them everyday and reports back to me, "No frogs today!"

Update on Pictures

The kids after finding all the Easter eggs.

Joshua's birthday. He wanted chocolate cake, with chocolate frosting, and rainbow sprinkels. Sounds like a perfect cake to me.

They love to play dress up. Ethan is Darth Vader in the middle. He thinks he is very scary when he has the mask on and we have to pretend to be very scared. He pronounces it "Darf Adder"

What were you thinking?

The other day Joshua was attacking his ear with a q-tip. I asked him what was wrong and he said something was in his ear making it tickel. I looked inside and saw a little pebbel. I got it out but he said he could still feel something in there. We took him down to the clinic the next day so Shaun could look inside with an otoscope and there were many little pebbels in his ear. We had to make an appotiment to have them flushed out with an ear syrienge. There were a total of 7 rocks in one ear. I keep asking him why would you do that and the best answer I could get was his friend was doing it and it looked like fun. He promised he would never stick anything, anywhere, ever again.

Stop The Madness

The kids were off school this week for Spring break. I thought it would be a good time to end the experiment. We had a quick family home evening about it and all went shopping. The amazing thing is we didn't go crazy and buy up the whole store. We focused on fresh fruit, bread, and dairy products (I missed my yogurt). I told the kids they could pick one box of cereal and one junk food treat each. I'm glad we tried the experiment though because it saved us a lot of money, helped us see our food storage flaws, and gave me a chance to empty out and defrost the chest freezer. Now I'm determined to make menus two weeks at a time, plan ahead, buy in bulk more and keep using the food storage I have on a regular base.
One of my favorite things was experimenting with different bread reciepes. I have to give the credit to Pioneer Women cooks - dinner rolls. What a great and easy (and egg free) reciepe. I even did it with powered milk and could not tell the difference.
I plan on going to the Sams club next week and restocking the chest freezer with practical things and not just eggo waffels.