Hall Bathroom

This may be the smallest room in the house. It's the kids/guest bathroom in the upstairs hall.

Here's the view looking in the doorway. It's hard to tell, but the walls are a light blue except for the one to the right of the door which is a light green color. It's a fun froggy bathroom for the kids. They really like it, and I really like that it's a kid thing without princesses everywhere.




The actual toilet/shower part of the bathroom. In a few years it will be very helpful to have separate shower and sink areas, but for now it's not that big of a deal. You can see the frogs better as well as the blue paint.





Joe is always interested in what he can see from various locations... so here's a picture from the shower looking out. It's hard to tell, but the toothbrush holder and soap dispenser on the sink are all frogs. The toothbrush one is actually like a bobble head; when they put their toothbrushes away they wiggle. Thanks to grandma Howes for that; they get a kick out of it. The soap frog used to croak when you got soap out, but the kids enjoyed that a bit too much. After about 2 or 3 weeks it 'croaked'. :)


Not pictured (very well) in these are the frog cross-stitches that I made a couple years ago, the frog rugs, the frogs on the wooden stool in front of the sink, or the frog towel holders. It's a very green and blue room. All it needs is a picture of a pond framed on the green wall and it'll be just about as froggy as they come! Hopefully it'll be sunny at some point today so I can take pictures of the outside of the house for tomorrow. It's been raining almost nonstop for about 2 or 3 days now. It's great since I don't have to water the sod as much, but it does make it harder to get good outside pictures!

Master Bath

Sorry it's been a while since the last post. In the past week or so we've been all over the midwest- literally. From Omaha to Akron, Ohio and back again, it was a great trip but we're so done with driving now! And so I'm back to blogging and painting and cleaning. Also, our sod was put down on Friday, so I can take outside pictures now! Hopefully it'll only be a couple of days and they'll be on here...

Here's what you see when you walk into our bathroom. To the left are the sinks and to the right is the shower and tub. In the little room with the closed door is the toilet, and straight through is the closet.





Here are the double sinks w/ vanity. They are amazingly spacious after years of sharing a sink. Joe got to choose the cabinets and handles in the bathroom (but he didn't take good pictures of them); they're oak cabinets with dark finished handles. The paint is a grey-ish aqua color. I really like it, but it's a little dark for the space. I need to bring some more light (white?) in, but I'm not exactly sure what to do with it. Any suggestions?





Here we have the split. I LOVE having both a shower and a nice bathtub. The shower is nice (except when I have to clean the water spots off the doors), and I'm just beginning to enjoy the tub. It's really deep but doesn't have the fancy jets or any of that. I like the tile too (it just came that way, I didn't pick it)




And last (but certainly not least!) is the master closet. It is HUGE! It is definitely bigger than some of the bedrooms we've had over the years. The picture only shows about half of it (or a little more). We've got so much space in there we're not exactly sure what to do with it! We've joked about a baby's room, or a dance studio, etc, but for now it's just mostly empty. Anyone have a million bucks I can spend on clothes? :)


Well, that's the post of the day. As you can probably tell, it's one heck of a nice bathroom. We spent more money upgrading this room than any other space except the kitchen (and basement...). I love having a nice space to 'chill' in after a long day of painting, but I'm also learning that it's a pain in the butt to clean! That's one thing I was really trying NOT to think about when we were picking out all the stuff for the house; now I'm kinda regretting it. Oh well, it's fun for sure. I'll have something else to show and tell tomorrow!

Laundry Room

Hello all! Sorry if things don't make the most sense today; I didn't get a lot of sleep (mixture of caffeine and allergies...) and am less coherent today because of it. However, I did get a few more pictures of rooms for your viewing pleasure!


Here is the laundry room looking in from the door (duh). The color is called 'intuitive'. All of the paint is from Home Depot, and it's Behr brand, no primer, satin finish. I decided that since I'll be spending most of one day a week (at least) in this room I would make it fun for me. I must say, the color is a little more overpowering than I thought it would be but I still LOVE it!


Here's the view from the other corner. In case it's hard to read, the vinyl lettering on the wall says "Wash Dry Fold Repeat". It was a gift from my sister, and it totally sums up the purpose of the room. I've had a couple people suggest that another word needs to be added: 'Forever', and I suppose that would fit well too. But I'll take it as it is.



That's about it for this room. Eventually we'd like to build some shelves or a folding table or something in the empty space, but it's not a huge priority. I might paint them pink or yellow (leftover from the girls' rooms) when they're done... but that's it for now. I've got a couple pictures of some more rooms that I can put up... maybe after I've finished more of my to-do list for the day I'll do another post.

The Basement

After my post yesterday I got a lot of comments from people saying I was so mean to give a teaser on the house but no real pictures. So, here's a better taste. Although I'm sure some of you won't be satisfied until you see the whole thing (mom, Calista, Tabitha....) it's going to go a little bit at a time.

The biggest single upgrade we did when building our house was finishing the downstairs. We figured that, being right near a major highway in the middle of the country we would probably have a lot of friends and family traveling through that might want to stop over for the night. And this would be a good place where they could stay (even though it's pretty empty right now). It's a good thing we did too, because we had our first friends traveling through stop just this morning. It was great to see them and have the kids all play together for an hour before they kept driving. They should have stayed here last night, but were unsure just how much space we have. They know better for next time!


Here's the approach as you leave the living/dining room to go down the stairs. Yeah, not much to see yet, I know...










And here are the rest of the stairs going down... As a side note, all the walls that are white are the color that came with the house. Any walls with a non-white color I painted myself (Joe helped with tape-ing, kid watching, etc). Nothing in the basement has been painted yet.








Here's the view around the corner at the bottom of the stairs. Not too much to see. In that closet is the Sump pump. For those from Ut or other dry places, I've learned that that's what pumps the water out when it rains so it doesn't flood your house. There's actually a pit down there (which is covered) and the pump gets the water out of there when it rains so it stays dry. The banana chairs are down there for their own safety. Karen and Rachel have a good time jumping all over them.

On the far left in this picture you can see the corner of a banana chair. That's trying to show that this is one big open room downstairs with a queen size bed in the corner with a dresser to be our 'guest room'. It's more of a guest corner right now, but the same idea applies.





Closer view of the 'guest corner'. The bed frame is the one my parents gave us for our wedding. The mattresses came from the Rennells in NC. The dresser is from IKEA Charlotte, the little table from Walmart (as is the comforter).




The only part not pictured is the storage/utility room and the fixtures that are roughed in for the eventual downstairs bathroom. It'll be a couple of years at least before this gets done, but we'll eventually have a real bedroom and a bathroom down here for an older kid or visitors.

Hopefully we'll get at least one more post done this week, because I know next week there's not going to be any time for it. I'll have pictures of the master bath and laundry room for sure by tomorrow; let's see if I have time to blog them for you. I hope this is less un-fulfilling for you (if that's even a word...) than the last post was.

My House

Sorry about the long break again. I wasn't planning on that, but having the computer in the same room as the baby didn't work so well once she learned that the typing sound she heard while asleep meant that someone was in her room. She kept waking up at the most inopportune times, so I lost a lot of my computer (and blogging) time. However, we are now in our house (YAY!!!!) and the computer is in the office, not sharing a room with a now 1-year-old. I've been REALLY busy the last few weeks getting everything settled, painted, etc. but now we're starting to calm down a bit. My next few blogs will be about our house, since that's been the big focus for a long time. I thought I'd start by putting in a few things generally about the house in this blog, then put up pictures as we get rooms 'finished'. Not that any of them are perfect yet, but when I get to the point where it's 'good enough for now' I'll show it off.

I thought I'd start by addressing some of the comments we've gotten over the past 6 months or so as we've built the house (they broke ground exactly 4 months ago today, by the way). The biggest question/comment we've gotten (or noticed people trying really hard NOT to ask) is "How can you afford to build" given our 'large' family size, only one person working, and so forth. Well, after looking carefully at our finances and the housing market in the area, we realized that to get the house we wanted and be able to afford it, we'd have to build. With the incentives from the builder and lender, we were able to get more of the things we 'wanted' along with the floor plan that we (I) loved best by building instead of buying. There are/have been 2 houses on the market with the same floor plan as ours in the past few months, but we couldn't have afforded to buy them.

The second question is "why would you build instead of just buying something else?" And the reason we decided to build is allergies. Joe has terrible allergies to almost all plants and animals. In several of our apartments (including the last one), he would get awful rashes on his legs just from walking around without shoes on. We wanted a place where he could come without having to worry what had been in there and may be lingering in walls, floors, and air ducts. So far he's been able to get through the worst of the allergy season without extra trips to the dr. Hopefully it will continue... (fingers crossed here)

Those are really the biggest questions. And the only other answer we would give to them is that we want a space that is only ours. We've been living in apartments for 8 years now, and are just fed up with dealing with other people's left-over problems. Granted, that's part of renting; you don't know who or what was there before you, and you (sometimes) feel really bad for the people you know are coming after you are gone. We just wanted a place of our own that didn't have anyone else's messes left in forgotten corners. That isn't to say that I can't appreciate your historical house or anything, it's just not for us right now. I respect your choice, now please respect mine.

Now, on to the fun part. Here are a few pictures of the house, with explanations.
Here's the picture of my front door from the outside. It's got the vented screen door on the outside and the windows on the side.









Here's the door when it's open. That way you can see the cool glass details a little better. It's kind of hard to tell with the lighting, but it's a navy blue color of paint on the outside.











This is what the interior doors look like. They're all white with white frames and all that jazz. They look really good, and are a nice change from the basic 6-panel door you usually see.








Here's the doorknob closer up. They aren't the ones that came with the house. The builder wanted a crazy amount for the 'upgraded' knobs when we were making all the final choices back in January. So we bought all of these at Home Depot for less than the ones we were thinking about getting. And I like them better. Joe spent a whole day switching them for me, isn't he just great? And if anyone needs a bunch of silver door hardware, I've got about 20 doorknobs in a box in the basement! :)






Well that's longer than I thought this post should be, but there it is. I've got more pictures and things I'll try and do later. But for now it's back to laundry, lunch and crazy munchkins!

Keeping busy

Here are some things I've been working on lately (since we moved here for some of them):



Cross-stitch for my sister Calista's new baby Tessa (she's a real cutie, look at these pictures!) It's 11x14 finished size. This is what I do when I watch TV, to feel like I"m still doing something 'productive'. That way I feel less guilty watching things like football, American Idol, 4 seasons of Big Bang Theory... and so on.


Here's Rachel's Birthday cake (sorry it's not rotated... my bad!) She told me she wanted the castle pink, the roofs yellow, and the windows and doors blue. So that's what she got... more or less.

I included this picture because I took it while I was talking to my mom and grandma on the phone while I was doing it. I said it looked funny only partially done and they said to take a picture for them to see, so I did. I think the finished product is more fun (and more busy so you don't notice the individual crazy parts of my frosting. Someday I will take those Wilton classes... just not yet.)
And here's the cake I did for Valentine's Day. Not too fancy, but very chocolatey and delicious! Now I just need to get my hiney moving to work off all that TV time and cake!

Joe's Graduation

So, I know I'm way behind on my blogging. But at least I acknowledge the fact, right? Anyway, today I will become slightly less behind.

Just before Christmas we took a nice (read: LONG) drive back to Charlotte, NC for Joe's graduation. We stayed with some of our totally awesome friends and then went to Indiana for Christmas with Joe's family. Here are some pictures from graduation. If I can find the ones Kitara took for me I'll put them up too, since they're a lot better than these. (I've been leaving the CD out for months so I could do this post, but today I can't find them anywhere!


Me and Rachel trying to be happy together

Thank goodness for Grandma and Grandpa Allen, or we would NEVER have made it through the ceremony! (the large bag of gummy bears helped too of course...)



Joe walking to get his hood and diploma. The guy behind him is Dr. Rogelberg, his adviser who did the 'hooding' (and made him write over 20 drafts of his dissertation...).

Rachel pictures

Since yesterday was Rachel's third birthday, I thought I'd put some pictures of her (and her sisters) up. She's such a cute goofy girl!Rachel and Alice. It was in the 'Thanksgiving' folder, so sometime in November. Note that she's not looking at the camera; this is a normal thing for her. She can't stay still long enough to actually take the picture. She also LOVES her baby sister! (sometimes too much...)
This was from Thanksgiving in Utah. We had so much fun visiting with all the Zillner family that day!!!!
Despite the football shirts, this is actually us at the BYU v. Creighton basketball game on Dec 1. The girls all LOVED it, even if we were in the nosebleed section!

This is Rachel's 'house' that she built with daddy out of legos. If you don't recognize the cute blond in the corner it's Haylie Tufts. Yep, this is when we were in Charlotte for Joe's graduation in December. Rachel wants us to be in a house so badly. When she built this she was convinced it was going to be big enough for our family to live in and we wouldn't have to go back to our apartment. She had a really hard time when we had to put it away (read: total and complete meltdown).

That's a small taste of what we've been doing the past couple of months! (but more is still coming, I'm just working on it...)

Our House

For 7 1/2 years we've been looking forward to the day that we would buy our first house. In that time we've lived in 9 apartments/small houses. We've lived in 3 places in Provo, Ut; 2 different times in Indiana; 3 apartments in Charlotte, NC; and one in Papillion, NE. However, we are now pleased (more like ecstatic!!) to announce that we are buying our first house!!!! We won't be moving until sometime in May, but the paperwork for our purchase agreement was done yesterday. This is what our house looks like right now:
Yes, it looks like a muddy, grassy hill, but now it's under 6 inches of snow, which is much more pretty. We're builiding in this subdivision! Our house will look something like this, but an elevation 2 and the garage on the other side.

The upside to our new house: it's in a great location with great schools in a big LDS ward. The downside: it's farther from Joe's work and in a different ward than we're currently living in. We're just hoping that our new friends will forgive us and still be friends even if we live on the 'other side' of the line.

I know this post doesn't even cover all the things I've missed in the past couple of months, but I've got a list to work from and have resolved this year to do better with my blog. Hopefully I'll make it past January with the goal still intact, but for now I'm out of time!

the moving post

okay, so this post is probably not going to 'move' you in any way. It's about our move from Charlotte to Omaha and all the craziness that went with it.

A month ago (how can it be that long already?) the movers came to pack our things into boxes. It was really kind of fun to sit there with baby Alice and watch them put all my stuff into boxes, although there was one of the guys that really made me nervous. He wasn't very careful about anything, and the only stuff that actually ended up broken was in his boxes. They came on Thursday morning and the three of them were done in about 3 or 4 hours. I spent a couple more hours cleaning things out before a friend brought the girls back (Thanks again!!) and we ended up watching golf for a few hours. What else is there to do in the middle of the afternoon in Charlotte in the middle of August? Everything was packed, including toys and EVERYTHING. Just before 5pm the movers call and ask if they can come on Saturday morning instead of Friday morning. Joe tells them no, they have to come on Friday. They said okay, but it wouldn't be until after 5pm on Friday evening! Oh, and by the way, our stuff is going to sit in a warehouse in Charlotte for at least a week until they can have someone available to drive it to NE for us. Our stuff is already packed.

That night Joe's dad flew in from Indy to help us drive our little car, since I have to nurse and can't drive that much. He left early the next morning with the car, and we waited. We did some shopping and went to the park. We watched more golf; Tiger was doing okay, but not good enough. The movers come at 6pm, and take 2 1/2 hours to load it all on the truck. We finally leave at 9pm, almost 12 hours later than we'd originally been hoping to leave.

Saturday morning at 1am we stopped in Knoxville to sleep for a few hours, then drove the rest of the way to Indiana. We visited with Grandma and Grandpa, the girls ran around in the yard, and Joe's brother and his family came down to visit too. It was good to see them, since it'd been a year or so. The cousins had a great time playing. All of them but Karen have blond hair and ALL of them have the same blue eyes; they could be siblings, not just cousins. It was fun to visit with everyone we know up there at church on Sunday and just relax for a bit.

Monday we were up bright and early (actually, it was still dark...) and in the car on the way to Nebraska. We haven't driven this far since we had kids, and they did surprisingly well. Having Grandpa following behind us made it more fun for the girls; they kept turning around to see if he was still back there. We saw soooo much corn and soybeans that Karen got tired of it; she kept complaining that there was nothing to see but corn. I told her she should get used to it, we were living in corn country now. Her favorite part of the drive was probably when we went through the flooded parts of Iowa, seeing all the buildings/fields/cars/etc. under water; she's too young to see it all as the disaster that it really is. I was once again reminded about how much I hate going through or over water; big bridges and things scare me to death for some reason. It's probably because I grew up in Utah with nothing even close to that around, but crossing big rivers (like the Ohio, Mississippi, and Missouri on this trip) makes me freak out. Joe thinks it's funny and like to make me have to drive those parts. Anyway, back to the story...

Tuesday morning we checked into our new apartment. I knew I was spoiled with my apartment in Charlotte, but I didn't think it would be this bad. When we came in, there was no stove/oven. It was an empty hole. The fridge didn't work. There are no overhead lights in the bedrooms and the windows are tiny. The master bedroom/bath smelled like cats. The dishwasher sounds like a jet taking off. After a month's worth of work orders we have a new fridge, an oven that works but cooks 25degrees hotter than it says it does, and the cat smell is gone (unless you turn on the fan in the bathroom...). While I was cleaning the walls in my bedroom the blinds literally fell down on me.

A week and a half ago, Joe and I were watching TV after the girls were asleep and we heard a funny noise from the utility closet. We opened the door and saw flames coming out of the water heater. Luckily turning off the breaker solved that problem, but we had no hot water the next morning. At 4:30 pm the next afternoon we finally got the maintenance guy over to fix it. He changed out the heating coils, turned on the electricity and left. 15 minutes later it was on fire again. The next day (a saturday) the guy came back with the plumber to change out the water heater, but they had to take the trim off the inside of the door to get the old one out. After the new one was installed the guys left, saying they would come back after the Labor day weekend to fix the trim. It's still sitting next to my front door, nails poking out and all.

On the other side, we're doing quite well. It took an extra week for us to get our stuff and it barely all fit inside (thanks again to everyone who took our 'extra' furniture and things!!) but it only took us a day and a half to get it all unpacked. We have groceries, diapers, and a few extras with money still in the bank. We went to the eye doctor and I finally got contacts again!!!!! Joe and Rachel are getting new glasses that should be in next week sometime. We get to go to the dentist next week, and after that I can finally get the crown for the root canal I had last winter. Joe's (other) brother and family live in Laramie, WY, and came to visit for Labor Day; it was great, and would have been even better with hot water. Joe loves his job, teaching, the students, the research, everything. We already have some friends from way back when (Joe knew them in Indy before his mission), as well as some new friends in our ward. Maybe best of all though is that Joe's dissertation is now almost done! The defense is scheduled for next week, and after that (and the revisions) we can hopefully buy plane tickets to go to graduation!!!

This may have been the most stressful month of my life... or at least in the top 10 for sure... but it has also been really great for us. We're finally getting settled and starting to feel like we really are out of school. It feels weird, to be honest. We've been students literally forever and now we're suddenly...not.

Well, time to go. Cinderella is officially over and that means my girls are done being entertained. Hopefully I'll get some pictures up soon; I know there are some people (mostly Grandma) that really want to see them. But, it's only been a couple weeks since my last post so hopefully I'm starting a new trend?!

100 things (or so) since my last blog posting...

Since it has been over a year since my last blog, I thought I'd do a 'quick' catch up of what's been happening. I don't know if it'll take 100 items or not, but we'll see how it goes...

1. Calista and Brandon did come for a visit; it was nice, I remember spending quite a bit of time at the pool.
2. Joseph also came to visit for a day or so.
3. Rachel started Nursery! WAHOO!!
   
4. We went to Indiana and visited our Allen family in August; did some swimming and hiking and playing.
5. On the same trip we stayed in Chicago with the Brimms (who are now Grandma and Grandpa to my girls as well...) while Joe was at a conference.
6. We went to the zoo and aquarium and ate lots of yummy Chicago food.
7. We moved from our 2 bedroom apartment to a nice and huge 3 bedroom in the next building over.
8. Joe started his final year of grad school.
9. Joe got offered a job in Lincoln, NE with a 6-figure salary; we stayed in school.
   
10. We sent out several hundred job applications (at least it felt like that many) but got no interviews until November/December.
11. For Halloween Karen was Snow White and Rachel was Cinderella; it rained on trunk-or-treat.
12. Watched an entire season of BYU football with the Beasleys and Cooks
13. Celebrated Koryn Beasley's first birthday!
14. My cousin Catherine and a friend came to visit from SVU for Thanksgiving
15. I drove them back with the girls by myself while Joe worked on his dissertation
16. Joe finished his last fall semester as a student!
17. We went to Oregon for 3 weeks for Christmas
18. Had family pictures with everyone in BYU shirts :)
19. Met Rosie, my cute new sister in law, for the first time
20. Had a great Christmas with all my family squished into my parents house
21. Spent $100 sending all our presents home
22. could barely stay awake for New Years; went to bed by 12:30
23. Resolved to quit farming on Facebook
24. Resolved to blog weekly
    
25. actually quit farming on Facebook (in June)
26. Karen started Sunbeams! She LOVES Primary!!
    
27. went to LOTS of prenatal appointments
28. played in the snow once or twice
29. Rachel turned 2! She's such a big girl!
30. Joe interviewed for jobs in Omaha, NE and Asheville, NC; he took the Omaha job.
    
31. found out baby #3 was a girl (February)
32. bought a baby name book because I wouldn't agree to Elvira...
33. Decided to name her Alice Erika
34. Courtney got accepted to BYU-I
35. I turned 26
36. We went to Atlanta for a conference with Joe on my birthday
37. I took the girls to the Aquarium; they had fun, I got really tired
38. I found out they had changed my due date from 5-28 to 6-20. I told them they were wrong; they didn't believe me.
    
39. Joseph and Rosie were married on 4-30 in Timpanogos; I was in Charlotte
40. I gained 20 lbs the first 37 weeks of pregnancy; I gained 20 lbs my last 3 weeks of pregnancy
41. had a fun and quick baby shower (thanks to Sarah Rennells and Kitara Beasley!!)
    
42. Joe finished his last semester as a grad student!!!!
43. fun pool party with friends
    
44. Joe (FINALLY!!!) got his proposal defended
45. 6 weeks later he had a draft of his dissertation finished
46. Mom and Dad Howes came to visit
47. we all went to Joseph and Rosie's wedding reception in Knoxville
48. had fun, but my feet were so swollen I couldn't walk
49. Karen turned 4! My baby is huge!!! Grandma Howes made her cake since I was too swollen to do anything.
50. 5-28 went to the hospital in labor (day 3 of contractions);
    
51. was told I wasn't far enough along to deliver and sent home after having terrible drugs to make the contractions stop
52. 5-31 back to the hospital with a headache that wouldn't go away; while there regular contractions started again
53. 6-1 Alice Erika Allen born at 10:05 am!!! The nurse asked if I was really 3 weeks early w/ a 7lb 7oz baby; I said NO!
    
54. Lots of visitors and helpers with the other girls; they loved going to play with friends all the time!
55. Mom and Dad Allen came to visit and help out. I stayed at home and Joe and the girls went out a lot.
56. Joe went to Omaha to find our new place of dwelling, leaving me with 3 little girls
57. 2- 4th of July bbq's; one with fireworks the other with swimming
58. Celebrated 7 years of marriage with a date to R&R BBQ and Toy Story 3
    
59. fun Pioneer day ward party; our last in Charlotte!
60. Alice's blessing; lots of ward family, no blood family
    
61. getting ready to move again; lots of trips to Goodwill
    
62. movers come and pack all our stuff, then tell us they'll be extra late getting it to us
63. drive to Indiana and visit Allen family
    
64. drive to Omaha, get new apartment
65. live for almost 2 weeks without our furniture
66. start making new friends and settling into life as non-students (a work in progress)
67. get our stuff and unpack.

okay, so I didn't get to number 100, but I'm sure some of those things could be split up some. If you made it to the bottom... congratulations! I'd give you a prize but I don't really have anything to give right now. Hopefully it won't be another 60+ weeks until my next post!?

To-Do list

I realize that it's been a LONG time since I've done a real post, but we're getting there now. I've been really busy, that's my only excuse, but I don't really remember exactly what I've been doing. It seems like my life is full of busyness but nothing ever gets done. (especially yesterday, nothing got done. I couldn't find my broom and so gave up on all cleaning and just read 300+ pages in Harry Potter #5.) However, this trend simply can't continue. I've decided I need more accountability, so I'm going to work on putting up my to do list and maybe then it will actually get done. The main thing is that my sister and brother-1n-law are coming to visit next week (and my brother too for a couple of days), and my apartment is a total and complete disaster! (not kidding or exaggerating too much either.) The only problem is that Joe's birthday is tomorrow (happy 28 honey!!) and Father's day is Sunday (he gets a bum deal; his two holidays are right next to each other. It's like having a birthday on Christmas, like my cousin Danielle.) So, here's the list. I'll start with the most necessary things first and go from there. It might get a little crazy, and for the 2 or 3 of you who actually read this, I'm sorry and you are not really obligated to read it all.

THE LIST
Clean Bathrooms
Buy new broom
clean floors
vacuum
all trash out
clean out closet
find a new home for maternity clothes (their old home was taken by our camping gear last week)
move crib out of girls room and into closet
move girls furniture and toys
wash dishes
date night today
finish Harry Potter 5
make birthday cake
Birthday activities for Joe
Father's day activities for Joe
laundry
dusting
clean off dresser
list of activities for vacation days
child locks on cabinets
post blog update and pics
organize music for girls

Well, that's all I have time for right now. The girls' morning shows are over, so it's time for me to be done. I don't think those things are all in the right order but that's all I can do right now. I think to start my list I'll go to the new Walmart (opened Wednesday) and see if I can find a broom and a couple other things. As you can see, a true update is in fact on the list. Let's just see how quickly the more urgent things can get done...

"Pardon our mess, but rennovations taking place"

Thanks to Calista for the new look! A real post will be coming soon, but I think that an hour or two a night is all I've got. Hope you're all doing great. BTW, my blog links got trashed in the update and I'm working on finding them, but if you want me to put yours back up and I haven't already leave the site in a comment and I'll be on it in the next day or so!

Anger Management

So, Karen's anger problems have gotten really bad, especially this morning. She's been really jealous of Rachel's glasses, no matter what I try to do to help. The last couple days she's just been really angry at everything. I know part of that's just being an almost-3-year-old, but it seems like more than that right now. Already in the last 2 hours she's hit Rachel at least 3 times, me once, and she was so angry she broke her crayons into little pieces. I don't really know what to do with her. Anyone have any suggestions for 3 year old anger management?

Easter and Glasses and Haircut

Happy Easter everyone! (Well, yesterday anyway). I hope y'all had a great day, as we did. Saturday we colored eggs, and Joe made it home to help us finish up. Karen loved it; we're going to have to up our egg count next year, 2 dozen wasn't enough for her. Rachel just wanted to eat the eggs and drink the 'juice'. It was nice to only have to be at church by 8:15, and Joe didn't even have meetings after church, so it was acutally a 'family' day.

The Easter bunny brought candy (a little less than last year, I'm trying to keep my sweet tooth under control) and some Little People in the baskets. They wore their new dresses that I made. Rachel picked the fabric and Karen picked the pattern, and they both loved the end product. Rachel would find them last week and start carrying them around with her 'showing off' walk. We had a somewhat-traditional dinner with ham, funeral potatoes, and deviled eggs. Doren and Steve also joined us and brought a yummy 'fish soup' that was really good. Rachel ate so much more candy than she was used to she got really 'hi' and then 'crashed', which was sad and funny at the same time. Karen ate more candy than Rachel, but thankfully tolerated it a bit better.

Today was supposed to be the first of several 'calmer' days this week. Ha! This morning the eye doctor called and said that Rachel's glasses were in. It was too late to go in the morning, so we had to go this afternoon. Thanks to Kitara for taking Karen this afternoon, because it was crazy. After dropping off Karen we drove and drove and drove (it is SO far down there). Rachel was getting more and more fussy, but there wasn't anything I could do at the moment so I tried to help her calm down. That effort totally failed and she instead gave back all of her lunch-in disgustingly recognizable pieces, we need to work on chewing our food better-all over her clothes and car seat!

If I was really a good mother I would have extra clothes for all my children packed away in the car for just such an eventuality, but alas I am not that mother. I used all my travel pack of wipes cleaning off her face, hands, and carseat enough that it would be 'okay' to take her home, and had to go into the doctor's office wearing only a diaper and socks. Needless to say, I received more glares in that 25 minutes of my life than practically any other time. How could I take my child out in public in only his (everyone assumed she was a boy) diaper? Well, we got the glasses and got out of there as fast as we possibly could. This was by far our shortest eye doctor trip on record. We left our apartment at 2:45, and even stopping at Kitara's to drop off and pick up Karen, we were still home by 5:30. Now all we have to do is keep Rachel from destroying her eye patches and glasses, and keep Karen from being insanely jealous and left out since she's the only one in the family without glasses. (I'm considering taking the lenses out of her sunglasses so she can wear them all the time, but haven't decided yet.)

Last item for the evening: Karen's first haircut. She had been bugging me for a couple of weeks to get her hair cut because her friend Hailey had recently gotten her's done. It was looking pretty gross at the ends, so I agreed. I bought a $10 pair of hair cutting scissors on Saturday morning, and that was it. I think it turned out okay for my first time ever, not perfect but not horrible either. It actually makes her hair look more full than it did before, and she likes it so I guess we're good on that count.

Well, that's it for us right now. If this post doesn't seem as upbeat as I'd like it to, I apologize. We really did have a great Easter this year, and we are glad that Rachel has her glasses. It's just that tonight at the end of it all I'm really tired, but I wanted to put this up now before I make more excuses not to do it and get farther behind... so here are the pics!

More Pictures!

In addition to these fun photos, I just put up a ton on Facebook. Also, a video from our ward party got put on You-Tube so, and Joe did a great job in it. Here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ttj5JuQho0