Eggscellent!

I know you'll find this hard to believe.

Two four year olds. Twenty raw eggs. Five colors.

On some of them we even applied eye and mouth stickers.

Not a single breakage.

Another Easter miracle.

Walking on Water

I love to overhear the deep philosophical discussions the boys have while building their tracks. This morning's topic:

Grant: "Miracles are what Jesus can do."
Cole: "Yes, but we can't walk on the water until we're 8 years old."
Grant: "Yeah - and we can go on a mission when we're 16."

Essence of Bryn

A bunny on one hand, dirt clod in the other, hair somewhat askew, pink Crocs.

That's my girl!

Choir Boys

Guess who sang in front of everyone at church today?

It was a miracle that they were persuaded to join the other kids at the front and another miracle that they actually sang along.

Here's an excerpt:

A Lovely Bouquet of ...

... Amphibians.

Any takers?

Here's Mud in Your Eye

We hit the creek early one Saturday morning - everyone still in jammies. Hey, they offer high comfort, warmth, and flexibility (as shown by Brynnie - scaling up the hill).
This girl will soon be calling the boys wimps, and leaving them in the dust (or mud, I guess?) "Outta my way, slowpokes!"
She knows no fear, fears no cold, and seriously loves dirt.
She's got to be in the middle of everything, especially when water is involved.
But she still doesn't appreciate the occasional (inevitable) face plant.

Finally Four!

The Crunchers finally have 4 adventure filled years behind them! Congrats, boys! We love you!! Still no broken bones - amazing. Wish we could say the same about stitches.
Their little boy gang came to celebrate, and we all ate too much of that delicious Costco cake. Why do they have to make it so yummy?! It's completely robbed me of any desire to make a homemade birthday cake - now that's sad. Costco is ruining family traditions! (with it's vanilla cream cheese filling!)
And Bryn - she's a shameless show stealer. She started off just eating cake all sweet and innocent, then digressed....
into applying it like make-up and hair gel, and.....
TA - DA! The finished product.
Real sweet.

Caped Crusaders

The boys received an early birthday present from Grandma in NE Arizona.

SuperCapes^®!

Here SuperCole and SuperGrant demonstrate how to fly.

Naturally, they're monogrammed on the front.

With arm bands for that billowing effect all the superheroes are into this year.

And when you land it doesn't hurt a bit.

Now they're off in a flash to thwart (or become) perpetrators.

And what does our resident damsel in distress think of all this?

"Please save me from the superheroes."

Hoppy Days

No home is complete without a silly bunny hopping around,
or two.
We're trying not to love Pebbles and BamBam to death...really. But they are sort of irresistible.
We waited 2 1/2 months to get these little Holland Mini Lops, since they hadn't even been born when I contacted the breeder. She kept us updated with pictures along the way. They house train well, tons of personality, and they're extra snuggly.
Grant, always the ridiculously cautious one, saw the bunnies out this morning and said, "oh, I better go get my socks on!" It would be so terrible to lose a toe to a bunny - you can never be too careful.
So far, 100% of the men within earshot of me mentioning that we got bunnies have made some comment like "them's good eatin", or "I love rabbits...fried" or... you get the idea. I never realized there was a "kill the wabbit" gene, but there is. It's on the Y chromosome.

Cupid Bath

Give her wings and a bow and she'd be the perfect Cupid.

She certainly enjoys her pink Valentine's Day bubble bath.

She's always got a lot to say, and sometimes you can almost understand what she's saying.

"Will you be my Valentine?"

The Big One That Got Away

This week Sue has had a booth at the Pacific Northwest Sportsmen's Show in Portland. We took the family down on Friday. The hit of the evening was the kids trout pond. They give kids a short bamboo pole and ten minutes with a two fish limit.

Grant got us going with this one.

Bryn was interested but wary.

Grant caught a second one and then Cole hooked "The Big One". Actually there were a number of larger fish among the numerous small ones and he got lucky.

Unfortunately, he broke the rather low weight line and got away. At least we got photographic evidence of it. As for the two Grant landed, we chose the "catch & release" option. Maybe in the summer we'll do it for real.

Just Desserts

Cole loves to use tools.

It's only natural that he would find unconventional ways to use them.

If ice cream is good when eaten with a spoon, why not when eaten with tongs, which are really just two spoons connected together.

Of course, getting that last little bit out of the bowl is a little harder.

Not to mention the drips on the table, shirt, pants, chair and floor.

The Littlest Virtuoso

Bryn always wants to do what she sees her brothers doing.

Unfortunately, she thinks it's a percussion (concussion?) instrument.

Emergency Holidays

Some of you know my sister Laura and might have even read about our Thanksgiving head bonking incident involving her youngest child. Cole decided to take it to the next level on Groundhog Day. He tripped while running towards the car and hit his forehead on the trailer hitch receptacle.

We tried to take him to our primary care physician and they told us that he was better off with a trip to the ER. After all, it's been over two years since his last serious head injury. Here he looks like a pirate cyclops.

After the wound was numbed, they laid him down, wrapped him up and squirted saline into his skull. At least, I'm pretty sure the hole was that deep. He looks like he's screaming but he was actually smiling with his mouth open.

All clean!

Now a few hypodermic jabs to make sure certain he's completely numb, and it's time to start sewing.

Two internal and six external stitches.

Grant got a front row view of the whole procedure.

Meanwhile, our hero has fallen asleep on the table.

I felt bad about waking him up. But he came home, had a good dinner and went to bed without any complaints. Now he's all set to be Harry Potter for Halloween.