In the spirit of catching up:
Here are some Easter pictures from last year. LAST YEAR! (I am NOT pregnant again.) I already mentioned that I'm a year behind.
We hide the Easter candy all over the yard, and the kids hunt for it on Easter morning. It has become our little tradition. We have ways of making sure the kids get equal amounts (or the amount we think they should have).
Easter 2013
Just a few pictures from this year.
Oliver LOVED finding candy, and Milo was adorable! The big brothers were great helpers.
We got back from New York just a few short days before Halloween. I had a plan to have all the Halloween costumes ready
before we left for our trip...or at least have all the materials assembled so that I could quickly make them. But since I have never been very good at juggling a billion things like packing, grocery shopping, cleaning, getting house ready for sitters, AND making costumes...you can guess that the least important thing didn't happen. So I didn't get around to making the little boys' costumes and the adults' costumes (the adults were going to be trees and the little guys were going to be owls...riding on the trees). But the big boys' costumes came together nicely, in a fast and furious kind of way. Finished just about 10 minutes before their school costume carnival! Whew!
But first:
10/25/12 - The day after we got back from NY and saw our precious children again!
the big guys wearing their I ({heart} NY shirts that we got them in Chinatown. Can you guess which boy does NOT like wearing a shirt with a heart on it? Partent FAIL!
And we were not up to the challenge of getting a picture with all the kids holding still, apparently.
Joshua and Toby thoroughly enjoying their Magnolia Bakery cupcakes.
Ollie too!
Mmmmm hmmmm...yum!
And now...on to the Hobbitses:
Here we have Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee with their hot out of the sewing room costumes. Actually, it wasn't too hard. I only had to sew one cloak (the other one was from our jedi costume), and the suspenders. I bought the pins and THE RING off of amazon. And I bought shirts, pants (which I cut off) and wigs at the Goodwill thrift store. I know that Sam wig is a little gran-gran crazy! It took me a few days to get it to relax.
Ollie photo bomb!
pretty Hobbity, right? I made them wear actual shoes outside of the house.
I gave up on the idea of making a costume for Ollie and just decided to go with something we already had. We thought this Leiderhosen grandma sent from Austria was ADORable!
On actual Halloween he wore a cute owl hat with it and looked like the Tootsie Pop owl. I would like to post a picture, but the pictures are on my phone and I'm having a hard time figuring out how to get them on blogger with my new imac. URGH.
Here they are on Halloween, with the Sam wig looking better. :)
Happy way late Halloween!
I haven't blogged in so long...wow! I've been bad! Really, really bad! Just when I was *almost* caught up too...I've let it all slip again. Part of my problem is that Brent and I have an obsession with cameras. We seem to be collecting them. We now have 4 cameras!!! {How did that happen?!?} So downloading the pictures off of all those cameras takes SO much time, that I just don't want to do it. Urgh. One of the cameras is from my new ipod touch that I got for Christmas...the pictures aren't that great, but it's so small that it fits in my pocket, and I take it everywhere. So thus, it captures a lot of daily things that I normally don't capture. So I'm going back through the year to post the {very} best of, hopefully it won't be boring!
12/25/11 - a really great video of Ollie and I on Christmas Day...my kids request this little clip over and over so we've watched it a lot, and we always laugh! Hopefully the grandparents will enjoy it!
1/11/12 - funny pictures of Toby with a bubble beard:
I was washing pans and letting Ollie touch the bubbles and pick up handfuls of bubbles, and Toby came along and joined the fun! He made himself a little beard. Lovely! I really love how these pictures, and especially the last one show Toby's personality. He's a sweet, playful guy with a funny sense of humor...most of the time.
1/21/12 - Wilamette Falls after several weeks of very heavy rain, looking as full as I've ever seen it:
1/23/12 - a stroller ride through the woods with a bear and an owl:
...And later that day, it is revealed that Ollie has truly entered TODDLER-HOOD:
This is what it looks like when you leave your toddler along for 3 minutes with a bag of powdered sugar...haha! Thankfully our powerful Dyson vacuum got that stuff right out of the rug. And I'm really grateful that Ollie doesn't often make messes of this magnitude...he hasn't made one quite like this ever since.
1/24 - This is what it looks like when your toddler starts eating food from his own plate with a fork, and doing a good job of it:
1/26 & 1/30 - Some pictures from our backyard swings:
Gotta love Instagram.
1/27/12 - a free night at the Oregon Symphony and the band Arrival (a completely authentic and absolutely fantastic Abba cover band from Sweden), gratis of my sister Lara and her groupies (she always knows someone in the music industry...this time it's actually her in-laws who do sound/lights and sing backup for the band):
backstage with the band
2/4/12 - our first really nice day of the year...signs that spring are on the way:
1. Joshy finds a little garden snake sunning itself on the rocks in our front yard.
2. A trip to the park (it's finally dry enough) reveals the first daisies of the year...so pretty!
3. The first time all three boys ride the tire swing together...it didn't last long! Ollie was slipping through the hole.
2/5/12 - Ollie's first day in nursery:
anyone in our LDS (Mormon) faith knows that 18 months is a big deal because your baby grows up and goes into the nursery, and you finally get to sit through your Sunday classes and enjoy them! Ollie really enjoyed playing with the toys and eating snacks. He's having a hard time staying there without me though...but it's getting better. He's my first kid to have a tough time staying...my other kids didn't even look back to say "bye mama".
3/1/12 - Ollie has his first major owie. :( Sad! Sad! I was pulling a big, heavy homemade pizza on a pizza stone out of the oven and he ran up and grabbed the wire rack I was taking the pizza from. I was shocked because he has shown in the past that he knows "hot" and doesn't touch it. I'm guessing that he forgot because he was so hungry! Poor boy!
I called his pediatrician and she told us to bandage it once a day and watch for signs of infection. So we did a sterile gauze pad with triple antibiotic ointment, followed by sterile gauze wrap and a self-adhesive coban wrap every night before bed. It never got infected. The doctor said it would look worse than it really is for a lot of days and then suddenly the skin underneath would be ready and the burn would be better. I googled burns and learned everything additionally that I needed to know (or re-learn)...that it was a second degree burn, which takes 2-3 weeks to heal, how to treat it, bandage it, watch for infection, etc. It is time like these that I am really glad I took a semester long first aid class in college and worked in the OR (operating rooms) for a year, because I know all about bandaging and sterile fields...and I'm not at all squeamish (although it is much harder to see your baby's wounds than it is to see someone you don't know under a sterile drape). Anyway...Ollie did fine with it. It was sensitive for him and he treated his hand with care. He would point to it when I said 'owie'. He would not touch ANYTHING when his bandage was off. And he really only needed a dose of ibuprofen at night to take the edge off for a week. Sure enough, right at 2 weeks and 5 days the skin looked better! It was quite the transformation. And now there is barely even a scar to remind us of the ordeal. I'm so glad we got through that in one piece!
Boy wonder draws realistic portraits of everyone in the family:
Joshua drew these of Brent on 1/14 and Kate on 3/3
Are you laughing?? Cause I am!! Toby is crying...he's so scared.
Wow! No really, I think that Joshua has some potential and if he keeps showing interest in drawing we'll look into drawing classes.
3/4/12 - a spring time, evening walk through the wildlife preserve in our neighborhood:
niiiice and glowy!
3/13/12 - Where did spring go? We had our first snow day:
...and actually what that really means is that we had our FIRST SNOW of the entire season. That would explain why everyone was so excited.
3/14/12 - Ollie LOVES apples (well any food, really). I was shocked the first time he ate the whole thing...core and all, and handed me back the stem. It's a pretty regular occurrence now.
sitting in my sewing chair in the laundry room
3/18/12 - Mr. Potato Head? No, Mr. Ollie Head:
Well, I think that about does it for now. I have much more to catch up on, but this is a good stopping point.
