It's raining. More accurately, it's still raining. It has been raining steadily since mid-September. And today it is really coming down. In fact, I think it would be appropriate to call this particular downpour a verifiable deluge. (I don't often get to write the word 'deluge'...Fun.) There was a time a couple of weeks ago where there were two consecutive days of mostly sunshine. It almost hit 70 degrees on one of those days. More importantly, it didn't rain once. Around these parts, it is fondly referred to as 'those two days.' If you walked up to any stranger within 50 miles and said to them, "hey, remember those two days?" their face would soften to a lovely glow and they would respond, "Yes. Those where two great days." Then, you and the stranger would squint at each other through the rainy haze between you. And this is how you would remain, bonded together in a common sense of nostalgia before one of you would softly repeat, "Yeah. Those were two great days."

Here is a mish-mash of extra April pictures that I never got around posting. Just fun, random moments in our ever exciting lives. :)

Here is a rainy, cold weather outfit if I ever saw one. ("Mom! I've got a sweatshirt!") I love it when Alaina dresses herself. And of course, I let her go to school, 'as is.'


Here we are dressed up for Hula Night at church. (outside it was stormin' but inside we were doing the Limbo.)

Alaina wanted to show off her mad hula skillz. The girl is obsessed with Hawaii!


During opening ceremonies for baseball. As the crowd was leaving, the twins' coach had the little ones hold on to each other so they didn't get lost. It was pretty adorable.


At the end of the season, Alaina's cast finally came off and she was able to go up for two days and join the ranks for the Jones family skiers. She was very excited and did very well for a first timer.

Happy Easter!

The decorating the night before.







In the middle of the night, Robert shakes me away and asks me what I got the kids for Easter. I actually had gone shopping the day before, however it was a 3 hour Super-Walmart run with three very, how should we put this? Energetic. Assertive. Strong-willed children. Let's just say that by the time we got to the candy aisle, I was exhausted and not in the mood to pile on bags of Easter goodies. Not completely heartless, I bought each kid one big chocolate egg and a bunch of peeps.

Apparently this was not sufficient for the Easter bunny in the middle of the night, Easter -eve. "That's ALL you got them?! You didn't ever get them Jelly Beans!" he shook his head in pure amazement. (What a stingy woman!) Well, I tried for the next hour to get back to sleep. It took Robert a little longer because after tossing and turning for a while, he decided that he needed to run to Walgreens more than sleeping the night away.

Here are the kiddies with their desperate, late-night baskets of booty. Were the extra chocolate eggs and jelly-beans worth it? Well. I guess. As long as it wasn't me going back to the store.


Here are the angels before going to church. Cute, sugar-filled babies.


Who are we kidding...even the weird picture couldn't hide their cuteness.
After church Rob hid the eggs around the house. Ethan ( ***Spoiler Alert*** who now knows there isn't any Easter bunny) smiled knowingly when he got his basket this morning. But it is well known around here that the Easter Bunny doesn't have time to mess around with hiding the eggs that we color. Shoot. He's a busy bunny. So the twins are okay with Dad doing the job.

Here they are searching the house. (As you can see...Robert doesn't take his job lightly. It takes some serious detective work and the aid of many 'hot' and 'cold' clues to find all the eggs before they become the 'smelly' part of the house.





Here they are after we found them all (you can't tell but most of them have been cracked by this point.
And here they are at dinner. don't they look lovely? (Look mom, I used that plate thingy you made us.)


And the final product. This was the very first time that we used fancy crystal stemmed glasses and Grandma Scribner's china with the kids. I'm happy to announce that nothing got broke and the kids were proud to have eaten dinner in such a fancy way.


And that wraps up another successful Easter. HOPe all of yours was just as fun.

Ethan's hair is gorgeous. The longer you grow it out, the more red you can see. It's thick. It's soft and smooth. I want it. I don't mind when it gets unruly. There does, however, come a point where even I want to cut it off. When his giant mop of red craziness had grown long enough that I could braid it, I started up the negotiations. Yes. Negotiations. Because Ethan HATES to get his hair cut. This time he took a slightly different approach by giving me a reason he refused to have his hair cut. "I'm going to be a rock star and rock stars don't get their hair cut." Logical? Sure. True? Sometimes. Did I cave? Not a chance. (as long as I'm in charge of his hair...like another 5 years...he'll be a clean-shaven rock star.) Dad finally convinced him by promising a rock-star hair cut.

Shaggy.

Rock Star

And Austin didn't want to be left out, so he got to be a rock star too.
Ethan completed this project for school a while back. I thought I'd document it before it got trashed. Trash it? What about the memories? How could I? I can. I do. It was pretty darn cool though. He got to choose a type of penguin to write on and he chose Macaroni penguins 'cause they look cool and have a rockin' name. (they also are found on the Sandwich Islands and McDonald Island....though you'd like to know.) We decided to do the poster with colored macaroni. I helped him color the pasta and I drew a very rough outline of the penguin and he did the rest. He was so proud of it and his teacher raved about it. I was pretty proud of him too.


It's Spring Break here right now. It's wet. Gloomy. Rainy. We decided against traveling around this week because everywhere that is relatively close is in the rain and gloom too. Instead we are being home-bodies. I did decide, however, that it would be a good time to teach Laina some more sewing. I invited our neighbor over for the mini-lesson too. I cut out some springy material in to blocks. The girls picked twenty blocks and worked really hard in finding a combination that they liked. Then, we went and sewed them together. I did absolutely no sewing for these tops. I did stand over them to help straighten the material when they got too crazy. After that, I talked them through the pressing of the seams. I stood about an inch over them at all times. (hover hover hover) Trusting kids with hot irons and sharp needles isn't in my nature. They did an excellent job. I was proud of both of them.

Autumn sewing.

And the table runner.

Alaina sewing.

And her final runner. (I did sew the backs on myself and rounded the corners. Teaching little kids to use a rotary cutter will require me to have a shot of valium first. Yikes.) As it was I very proud of the great work both girls did. Alaina tells me that she is ready for her next project. Maybe next Spring Break?