Stuff

Spring break was awesome.  I hate that the kids had to go back to school yesterday.  As much as I hate that it snowed again today.  But I am grateful it was warm last week and that there are less than 8wks left of school!

I am grateful for the treadmill today.  I got 5mi of resistance training in the National Weather Service warning freak winds yesterday, so I was totally ok making it happen inside today.  No desire left to run in snow and bitterly cold wind at this point.

I am grateful that my calf that was quite cranky at the end of last week felt decent yesterday and better today.  I should have known when I was all excited about feeling superfantastic I was jinxing myself by actually talking about it.

I am also grateful for fabulous moments where the kids take care of each other.
Taylor dropped his canister of air soft pellets.  Thousands of pellets.  Out in the fields.  He scooped up shovels full of dirt and filled a bucket and brought it home, totally upset that he either had to sift through and sort them out or lose a lot of ammo.  These fabulous people jumped in to help.

Made my heart happy.

This also makes my heart happy:

These two on the left clash a lot.  The moments when they get along are wonderful.  Often those moments come at dinner where somehow sitting next to each other doesn't cause problems.  Dinner time is magic.  I am so glad that we have dinner together as a family almost every single night.

Jacob turned 10 last weekend.  TEN.

Where the heck does the time go?

Houdini didn't feel like napping yesterday.  So she tried to take off her clothes instead.

What 10 month old does that? This one.

The one that has decided she wants to be Charlotte's sidekick.

They are adorable.
And typically when they are holding hands Emily is not bonking her head as often.  She has decided that walking as fast as possible is a must.  Which is creating a lot of missteps and a lot of falls, which means lots of head bumps.  Like the scabbing over carpet scrub you see in the pics of her above.  Nice.

Taylor left the house the other day looking like this:

He was just at the park flying a remote control plane, but still.  Really?  Boys.
Upon his return when I said "did you actually leave the house looking like that?!" Aaron's follow up was "you didn't even comb your hair!" That was the biggest problem with this picture?

I love finding pictures like this from Sam on my phone.

I was being sarcastic, I don't really.  Ok, maybe I kind of do a teeny tiny bit.  Because in the back of my  mind there is a thought that always lurks; "he wasn't supposed to be here to take pictures like this" or "he wasn't supposed to be able to do things like take pictures" and so I smile and download them to the computer because there is still a part of me that is terrified that one day he won't wake up.

I had this fabulous conversation with Malia the other day.

My favorite part was her concern over the fact that I might be trying to watch Netflix at night.  But let's face it, she was right.  I should have been going to sleep.

I have perfected the art of filling a grocery cart.  I am also an uptight dishwasher loader.  I blame Tetris.  But back to the grocery cart.  I took advantage of the opportunity to do my Costco trip for the month without kids.  Much easier to stack the cart without having to accommodate little bodies.  The lady at Costco obviously does not have my Tetris skills.

Before going through checkout I had everything in the cart.  And I could easily see over it.  Getting this sucker out to the car was fun.  Although once I got to the van I was able to restack it nicely so that it was neat and secure for the ride home.  Then all was right with the world again.
Hey, I have so little order in my life, you can't blame me for clinging to stacking groceries neatly in the van.

Has anyone tried Kona Kase yet?  I came upon it last week, LOVE the idea.  So many nutritional/fueling/healthier snacky things I would love to try but rarely do, this way they can surprise me with some and I can find some new loves.  And check out this fabulousness-if you want to give it a shot you can do so with this code for 50% off! (through April 15th)

And last but not least, I *finally* changed the header.  Actually that would be I finally took the picture so Aaron could make me a new header.  Photoshop is not my friend, even if it is only a couple of layers to do some lettering.   It only took me until Emily was 10 months old to change it from 8 kids.  Whoops. My friend joked the other day that 9 kids really did make me busier.  She was right.  But it's a good busy.