St. Patrick's Day and a Surprise Shower

The kids woke up this St. Patrick's day to a surprise visitor! We had a leprechaun visit while the kids were sleeping. He left notes around the house leading them on a little hunt of all the places he had been.
He led them to the plastic eggs on the dining room table. He was wondering where all the candy was!
He also enjoyed playing in the play room with all the kid's toys.

He made a mess in the kitchen,and then told the kids to head to the real kitchen for a treat!

They both got green nail polish, chap stick, gum, fruit rollups, and juice boxes.

They also discovered that the leprechaun had left green milk in the fridge and had turned our toilet water green!

What a crazy day!
During spring break we also had a surprise shower for my friend Joanne who is having her third girl in about a month. That's Joanne and her daughter, Jill.

We had all our book club people over for lunch and to play - which I think ended up being 12 kids! The kids moved all the balls from the ball pit into the dog's cage. Crazy!

I didn't get out my camera much so I ended up with a random bunch of pictures.

Here are Elizabeth, Josh, Ben, Janet, Amelia, Diane, and Drew.

Elise and Amelia - waiting for lunch!

Cooper, Elizabeth, Zach, Ben and Jake with his back to us.

Emily waiting patiently for more food.

Can you tell the only time I remembered to get out my camera was during lunch?!
It was a great time and we surprised Joanne, so that was great!

We had a wonderful spring break with lots of trips to the park, playdates with friends, and projects around the house. Next week it's back to normal!

Weekend of Projects

(the ghost face kids are coming back...along with sunscreen season!)

The past 2 weekends we have gotten some projects done around the house. The first one was a sandbox. We had a little plastic one in our old house that works well for our 2 kids. Once you get more than 2 kids it gets a little crowded (if anyone wants our other plastic one you can have it!). So Tom and Elizabeth built this new, big sandbox. We are thinking it will easily fit all the cousins at one time!

(Ignore the mess!) I painted Elizabeth's bedroom yesterday afternoon. I just finished in these pictures. Sometime this week I am going to paint the nook a darker pink color and paint a border of flowers around her room. I'll post a picture when it's done.

I backed the shelves in this fun pattern.

Ben's room is getting more complete. Here is some art I made with the help of my friend Allison when I had a craft night at my house. (thanks Allison!)

Ben also got a new bed (that was Tom's job last weekend...putting this thing together). I was a little nervous letting him sleep in the top but he does great! It comes up to the top of my chest so it's not too high, but he really likes having such a fun bed.

Here he is asleep in his bed for the first time.

Elizabeth had some big news - she lost another tooth. Here are her tooth fairy treats - a pack of gum and some change.

Ben got a train table from G&G B for Christmas but we never went to get it since we had no where to put it. This week my mom and I went to the store and picked it up. Tom and the kids had a great time putting it together - weren't they so helpful?!

Our weekends haven't been so restful, but they have been very productive!

I love that!

My Athletes ;)

Ben and Elizabeth had their last days of gymnastics and dance class this week. We start again in about 2 weeks but this was the last day when the parents were invited into the classrooms to take pictures. My kids have class at the same time so my mom came with to take turns with me so the kids would always have someone with them. (of course Jessica was in Ben's class the entire time because of Cooper so it would have worked out if my mom couldn't come).

I have seen Ben doing his gymnastics many times since they pretty much do the same stuff in class that they did in our mommy and me gymnastics class, but I had never seen Elizabeth's dance class since the glass is frosted, so I was very excited to see what her class did. She always tells me she likes it but it is hard! :)
I don't have a very good zoom lens so my pictures are kind of far away. There are only 4 girls in the class and one wasn't there so it was a little class. Here they are stretching.

I really like this picture of my little ballerina!

They stretched and moved at the beginning to some really cute songs.

Reaching for those toes - she can get pretty far!

Then on to Ben's gymnastics. Here they are stretching.

Doing some forward rolls.

Walking like a bear (Ben's in the blue pants and Cooper's in the red pants).

Ben's showing me his favorite part - the stamp!

We really liked the classes this session and are excited to do them again in a couple of weeks!

7 hours

So I spent 7 hours yesterday painting Ben's room. I caused my family to sleep like this (Tom is on the floor) while I was up painting away.

and I hate it! :(
I feel like it looks like a day care center or something! Maybe it reminds me too much of Ben's "baby" room in the other house. The road and some of that wall are magnetic (I put layers of magnetic paint under the wall color) and I made people and vehicles from Joanne's cricut (thanks Joanne!) that I laminated and I'll put magnets on.

But I'm ready to paint over the whole thing. I don't know what it is, it just isn't how I pictured it.

Ignore the mess! I guess I'm going to put all the furniture back, put his bedding on his bed and see what it looks like.

And then I'll probably paint the room yellow or something :)

Our Second Field Trip

Elizabeth and her class had her second field trip at Double Dave's pizza. Here is Elizabeth with her friend Isabella.

Can you tell she had been crying? It was very strange. She was totally fine and then our class and the other 4 year old class that was there with us all went into the back room to watch how they make pizza dough. I guess she got a little overwhelmed and started crying, not wanting to leave my side. It was funny because one of the other moms thought she was crying because she couldn't see so they were all trying to move kids out of the way so she could get up close...I had to say, nope, she wants to stay right by my side. We had to have a little talk about Elizabeth participating at field trips or else mom couldn't go with at the next one! :) She was much better after that.

Elizabeth's teacher was very smart and brought an activity to keep the kids occupied while they had to wait their turn to make pizza.

Now it's Elizabeth's turn to make pizza. They got to spread their own sauce

and add cheese.

It was so good! ( I should know because I ate a few pieces of it!)

Trying to get 12 four and five year olds to look all at the same time.

They all look when it's time to be silly!

We're In! (and we finally have internet!!)

I realized I have been really bad about taking pictures these past 2 weeks while we have been moving. I've just been trying to move as quickly as possible because I really don't like living out of boxes. This is our house the day after we closed. When we closed we still had all that snow on the ground so we were glad the movers weren't coming until the next weekend.

Here's Tom the night we closed, looking ecstatic - don't you think? Jessica was nice enough to babysit our kids overnight so we had the whole night to ourselves. We didn't spend the night though - no beds or anything - so we just went back to the apartment for the night.

Skip ahead a week and the movers had come and we were all over at our house with my mom frantically working in the kitchen for me. She LOVES to organize so she had fun cleaning and organizing "her" kitchen. She already gave me all the rules when I opened a new box and put things away without her being around. She didn't want me to mess up the kitchen! ;)
Hanging out one day during the week before we got our furniture.

Here's all the work my mom had to do. She washed every dish before it was put away so she was pretty busy! I'll have to post some after pictures but I want to paint some things first! (which will probably not be for a few months, but we'll see!)

Here's the playroom the day after we closed. Tom and I brought some toys over to occupy the kids while we worked. It's pretty bare in this picture.


Here's the after! Crammed full of toys. My sister in law Nancy, niece Maria, and my mother in law all helped me organize and put away all the toys and furniture.


Here's one side of the room.
Here's Cooper and Ben taking advantage of all the toys that have been packed away for 6 months!
My mom and Elizabeth in another corner of the room.
Here's the kitchen area (one of my favorites!)

Jackson can now sit up like such a big boy!
That's the first draft of the playroom. I'm still trying to figure out how to paint it and decorate it. That won't be for a while I imagine!
I just thought this picture is funny. It's Ben in his tiny bed in his new bedroom. Cooper, Elizabeth, and Ben are all trying to sleep and I thought they just looked so cute and little in this room! The room's not that big, but it's pretty empty so they look so little.

As I said, I haven't taken too many pictures. As rooms get a little more completed I'll try to post more. Thank you so much to all of our family for babysitting and helping us move. We also had lots of friends offer to help so thank you so much to all of you! We couldn't have done it without you!