Friday night

We added egg dying and bike riding to our usual Friday/pizza/movie family night.  

We had to take advantage of the sunny evening and get some bike riding in. Look who's on a bike! Three-year-old Aubrey jumped right on and took off. Her reckless, no-fear riding resulted in a couple wipe-outs, but she hopped right back on.   

The three "big" kids riding together. It was pretty cute.

Greg dug out Kari's old knee pads, elbow pads, and gloves after wipe-out #2.

Yes, she got away from us once but came back. We were yelling for her to slow down, but she managed to make it back without wiping it. Crazy girl.

Jello eggs with Grandma

The kids were very excited to continue this tradition with Grandma. Joel did an excellent job pouring carefully.
Kari, the pro, doing it all on her own, spilling just enough to lick her fingers and get a few tastes.
Aubrey fell asleep on the short afternoon drive to Grandma's house and was a bit of a bear when I woke her up (at 4pm) to join in the fun, but she didn't want to miss out and cheered up enough to participate.
Yes, they are drinking the warm Jello. :)

Grant crawled all over, played on the floor, and tried to get in the way during the jello egg making. He liked Tostie's ball quite a bit.

So proud of himself

Our life has changed drastically in the last two weeks because of this little guy's new-found mobility. He is now a full-fledged crawler. He thinks he's pretty hot stuff pulling himself up on all our furniture, too. He's not all that stable on his feet yet, so I am on constant alert both with the pulling up on things and with the crawling. I have a few helpers who keep me pretty well informed on his whereabouts, though, especially when he's getting into their things. :)

Big Sister, Little Brother

The big kids were both at school, so I just had the two littles at home on Thurs and Friday morning. Almost everyone is healthy again! Hooray! Grant has an ear infection (yes, another dr visit for us this week) but is on the mend. I *think* we just might all get to go to church together this weekend!  

8 months

Grant turned eight months last week. It was a busy week, so I didn't get around to posting or taking pictures then. These were all from this last Saturday. He had a fever and a snotty nose, but he was pretty happy that afternoon.  It was a big day for him (big day for us, too, with our house selling and all!). His first tooth came in, specifically the front bottom left tooth (the baby book is packed away, so the blog is my only record for now). He also learned how to crawl forward on Saturday evening. I told you it was a big day!

He is better at going backwards and gets stuck often. It sure is cute to see him crawling, though! I got him to go forward by putting my cell phone out in front of him. He REALLY likes the cell phone (most babies seem to prefer the real deal), and it was big enough motivation to figure it out, I guess. He's our earliest crawler. Way to go, Grant! He pulled himself up on our coffee table yesterday, but he is not stable at all, so that could be a problem. Here come the bumps and bruises.

It wasn't super warm outside, but the sun was out, so he got to experience grass for the first time. He didn't care for it much.

That index finger is his finger of choice for teething, and it has a nice red mark to show for it. Can a finger develop a callous on the middle knuckle?

Before he got sick again, he was finally down to only getting up once or twice at night, but now he's back to multiple times. Sigh! I have hope, though, that once he's all well, we can get back to the once a night routine.


In a lot of ways Grant hasn't followed in his siblings' footsteps--kind of doing his own thing in the sleep department and moving around earlier than the others. However, there is one area in which he has decided to follow their trend, and that is in the nursery at church. He is inconsolable until they come and get us. He gets that hiccupy cry as he's calming down, coming out of his panic. He likes his mama. What can I say? He's my last baby, so I'll enjoy the extra cuddles and snuggles as long as he'll give 'em to me.

One out of four

Look who finally got well! Unfortunately, he passed his sickness on to his sisters (Kari missed all five days of school last week) who then in turn passed it on to their baby brother. I *think* they are all finally starting to get better after being down a solid week. I am hoping Kari can go back to school tomorrow. It's time! I took these this weekend. Joel was lonely without his usual playmates who were only up for lying on the couch watching some more Rugrats (don't even ask which season they're on--we've been utilizing that Netflix subscription!), so Greg went out on the trampoline with him. 

Our happy, healthy Beaver fan following Daddy and "helping" with yardwork on Saturday morning.   So thankful to have our cheerful Joel back.

It's off

Our house is sold!
And the kind buyers are allowing us to rent from them until we find a new house!

It's up

Our house is officially on the market! RMLS #11308357 if you want to see it. Also on our terrific real estate agent's page (Inverness Ave). :) The house is clean; the sign is up, and we're ready for all those potential buyers. Spread the word!

An update

Our family is finally all well... ...April Fools! Joel has been sick for the last week with a virus yet again. His fever was 105.5 last Saturday night, so I spent some time on the phone with the advice nurse at 2am, and we were in the doctor's office the next day. And then this morning at 5am he woke up crying and said his ear was hurting. So, back to the doctor we went. It's another ear infection. It's never good when the doctor takes one little peek and says, "Wow, I wish I had a med student with me today." Poor Joel. We sure have been saying that a lot. I quit keeping track of co pays lately, but the computer hasn't (neither has our bank account), and I was curious, so I took a look. I found that our family has been to the doctor 18 times in the last two months. Eighteen times in two months!! Can you believe that?! Two vists were "well child" appointments (ha!), but the rest were sickness, and a couple of those visits, we had more than one sick kid checked out. Absolutely ridiculous. The winter of 2010/2011 will be memorable, that's for sure. Hurry up, Spring!

In the midst of all this, we are trying to get our house ready to put on the market. We've outgrown our 1100 sq ft home, and while it's very scary to me to think of selling and not knowing the future and where we'll live, we've prayed about it a lot and feel that it's time to try to sell. We have A LOT of stuff in this little house, and we have a lot of packing/purging/organizing to do in order to get it "show-ready." Hopefully, in the next week or so our house will be tidy and sparkly. And then I have to try to keep it that way!

We have been doing some other things lately, but I haven't had the camera out. Kari has been taking gymnastics classes (she loves it!), and we started swimming lessons this last week, too. Joel had to miss both lessons this week, but maybe he can go next week. We decided to wait to enroll Aubrey. She does NOT want to do it, so we'll just hold off on that one for now. Maybe she'll change her mind after watching for a month or so and want to do the next session, or maybe not. :)

Kari has always liked to help with things, and lately her desire to help has surged. Her favorite thing to help with right now is dinner. She wants to do all the prepping and cooking but isn't fond of the cleaning (not my favorite either). I am trying to let her do as much as possible, but as you can see here (notice stove top), sometimes that makes more work for me. It takes longer, too, but I know it's important to let her try and to teach her along the way, so I'm choosing to put my perfectionism and preferences aside to let her "help" me. It's not often that she actually asks to do things with me, so it could be a bonding time for us as well. That is, if I can keep from getting frustrated during one of the most difficult hours of the day. :) Ok, my time to sit at the computer is over. Off to pack some more!