Water Baby

Grandma documented Aubrey's first pool experience last night. She tolerated it and eventually enjoyed kicking her legs. We'll have some more pool pics soon after today's 96 degree day.

Oh, and Aubrey rolled over from her stomach to her back yesterday, too--four times. Big day for the Aubrey Ann.

More of our pink baby

Aubrey has reached the "fun" baby stage. (We actually really enjoyed her sweet newborn stage, too, but it's just so much more exciting when they start interacting with you.) She'll be 4 months old this week. I'm looking forward to these next few months of smiley, happy baby times.
I want them to go nice and s-l-o-w. She'll be grown up before we know it.

This nice, warm, mild weather that is making my allergies go CRAZY...

...is also allowing for fun times outside in our backyard.


Kari wanted to take her training wheels off like her friend Kenneth, so we gave it a try last night. We practiced in the backyard and then took her to the track at Gordon Russell Middle School. She was done after a few tries. The fear factor is a little too high at this present time. Training wheels are going back on.

Baby Bath Time

This is her new face--sucking in the bottom lip. It's her favorite move right now.

A girl after my own heart

A couple weeks ago I was putting away laundry after nap/rest time, and this is what I saw. Kari "organized" during her rest time.

Then today Kari handed me my pin cushion and said, "Here, Mom, I organized it for you!" And so she did.

Slave Labor (aka Re-Roofing)

The weather this weekend was great for our latest home project, re-roofing our house. The materials were delivered the week before, but it rained that weekend, so we had to delay it. The kids thought the roofing material delivery truck and ramp looked like a fire truck, so they had to get theirs out while they watched.

Greg and a BIG crew of family and friends worked hard Thursday night tearing off the two layers. Greg's Grandpa Moffat was even in on the action--doing the grunt work on the ground picking up debris and nails. Greg worked on the roof all day Friday, finishing the tear-off and pulling nails and staples. Brian, Emily, and Eric slaved in the sun Friday, too. Yes, Emily was up on our roof. Turns out she's a champion nail puller. That night Greg and his dad repaired the bad spots in the plywood (Brian went rolling down our roof after his foot went through one bad spot but was able to stop before he rolled off--pretty exciting times.)

By Saturday morning they were ready to put the new roof on.

Saturday was a marathon day of hard, hard work with lots of help. Our neighbor across the street said to me, "You must have great friends, 'cause you have had a lot of people at your house!" Yes, we do have great friends and family, and we are so thankful for you and your willingness to sacrifice your time and energy to help us with this big project. A big thanks also to the wives/moms who allowed their husbands to spend their weekend here with us. We had some crazy fun times in the backyard with big bunches of kids running wild. My job in all of this was to watch kids and keep the food and beverages coming for our crew. I had lots of help, too. Thanks, everyone!

working on the front of the house

I forgot to take a "before" photo, but you can at least see the color of the roof in this photo from last summer after we tore out some bushes. The previous owners of this house did not know what they were doing in most of their home projects and did a lot of things wrong, including the roof. It was very poorly done, and while it didn't leak (yet), we knew we'd have to do it before we sold someday, so we decided to do it now and enjoy looking at our nice, new roof.

Doesn't that look so much better? (we still have some leftover materials up there that we need to take down, but you get the idea)

We have some clean-up and finish work to do, and then they'll take away the dumpster tomorrow, and we'll be done!

1st Bowling Experience

We went to the end-of-the-year pizza and bowling Sunday school party after church this last weekend. The kids had never been bowling before, so it was quite exciting. They caught on quickly. Kari insisted on bringing the blue socks and made quite the fashion statement in her dress and bowling shoes. Also notice the father/son coordinating outfits (top row, far right is my favorite). Joel loves to look "just like Daddy" on Sundays and both happen to have white polos with green stripes.
The others we shared a lane with, the Glovers, were very patient, as each time one of our kids bowled, the ball took FOREVER to make it down the lane, especially Joel's ball. You can see he had time to squat, sit, and play as he waited for the ball to knock down some pins. (We were very thankful for the gutter guards.) The kids can't wait to go bowling again. They had a blast.

(double-click for a closer look)

It sure does soak up that water!

I reached in to transfer the wet laundry from the washer into the dryer and felt something strange and slimy. Apparently a Huggies Pull-up snuck into my washing machine and "exploded," leaving the white absorbent gel-like material all over the clothes. Various non-washable items have been appearing in my washing machine lately, but I think this time it was an accident. What a mess!

Wildwood

We spent some time with our friends, the Wilsons, this morning. The dads and older kids went up to Wildwood, a very cool recreation site up near Welches, OR with walkways through the forest. The moms stayed behind with the baby girls and had a peaceful morning together. The little hikers had a GREAT time and burst through the door all excited about their adventure in the woods.

Phew!

Never fear! Superman is here! No more dresses for our little man (*see previous post*). We have a superhero in the house now, thanks to Party City and birthday money from Great Grandpa and Grandma Arnold (yes, I know it's been 4 months since his birthday...I've been waiting until I saw a "need") . He doesn't want to take it off, so that's a good sign. :)

What's new with the kids?

Well, Aubrey is 3 months old now, and smiles a lot now. Poor little thing has some baby acne/rash going on, so we've got ugly skin, but she's still adorable. She just started laughing, too. So far it's only when I change her clothes--ticklish, I think. That little giggle is so cute! She also just started chewing on her hands. She's sleeping around 10 hours a night on a regular basis now. She even slept well this last weekend when we went on our annual all-church retreat [which was great, by the way. It wasn't relaxing at all with three little kids (is anything?), but it was a really good time and totally worth it]. Now I'm working on getting her to sleep better in her crib during the day. The fact that I'm "working" on something instead of just surviving (as we did with Kari) tells you we're doing just fine.


I think it's finally time to make more of an effort to find some boy "dress up" clothes. Joel wants to do everything like Kari, so we'd better provide the means to do so in a more masculine manner. (I remember doing this to my younger brother, too. Sorry, Blake!)