Here and there...

The weather has been beautiful! It's not the warmest but we've had snow on the ground still before on Ethan's birthday in April so I'm happy. Also if you look close our bushes are budding! :) I'm hoping this weekend we can start cleaning out our flowerbeds by at least raking the leaves. It's still been a little cool to really do a lot of yard work.

My flag deals. Somehow we got lucky and hit a store that was closing and found our last name initial still available on these flags! We literally paid dollars for them and I really like the way the look! I guess the initial "A" isn't that popular.

We also found these neat canes that the kids thought were cool. One is a rooster head and we have a family debate on the other! Not sure!

Ethan is really starting to look more and more grown up! Elise thinks her big brother is pretty special!:)

I know I haven't posted a pic of Ethan and Emma in a while so this is for the grandparents! We are painting our basement this weekend. We are trying to make it a place that we can use but our basement isn't the prettiest, we're hoping with a little elbow grease and A LOT of hard work it will be nice. Did I mention a lot of work! I'll take a pic and post soon. It's amazing what a little scrubbing with bleach and fresh paint will do!

Relaxing during a nice bath or nap!

Elise LOVES her bath time, she has learned to look forward to it. She splashes like a fish. She is in awe of her hands! She has had good control of them for sometime now. She pulls hair, earrings, books I'm reading to the kids, food, anything in her reach now. And everything goes straight for her mouth. I can't believe she will be 5 months soon.

Her eyes still get very red like this when she gets very tired. It's funny because by the time she wakes up from her nap the redness is gone! :)

Our 11 year old and 9 year old cats enjoying our sun room. They must have finally worked out their differences because they haven't been hanging out much the last few weeks. Talk about a "cat fight" but now all is well again!;) They wouldn't even eat at the same time, strange I know. We took the kids to Des Moines this weekend and had a great time. It was nice to have a family day and enjoy each other, I feel so blessed. We found a great deal on a weight machine and we will pick it up this week sometime so next Monday will start our life changing eating habits. I'm very excited about it! Mario and I are not only going to start cleansing our bodies of all the junk we eat but we are changing the kids eating habits as well. On the weekends we will treat ourselves to a "fun food day" within reason because we are going to be realistic about this diet. We did this before about 8 years ago and both of us lost about 15 lbs each very quickly so I'm ready. I'm also ready to be able to carry Elise, all 16lbs of her, and not get sore arms! That's how out of shape I am. I know it's going to be a hard road but we're doing it together! I hope I'll have good news in a few weeks of inches being lost!:) I need this because I haven't been feeling very energetic!

Gabby Elise!

I snapped this picture of Elise in the middle of talking, she loves to play with her toys. She even seems to have favorites now. We have been so busy the last few weeks but I'm trying hard to just slow things down so I can really enjoy her because she is at a fun stage. Everything is so new and exciting to her. She is awake a lot more during the day. She still takes her cat nap(which is always around 30 min) in the morning then her long 2 hour nap from around 1:30-3:30 then is up until 8:00 her bedtime she gave herself. But now she likes to be entertained which is not a problem in our house! Ethan and Emma love to play with her. And she finds them extremely fun! I now know how fast this time will go! Ethan and Emma have been so busy with school, I'm so proud of both of them. Emma has been reading better and better. The other day we were in Target and Emma just started reading any word she saw, I REALLY love the new A Beka phonics we're doing this year. And Ethan is doing great too. He seems to shine at Math. And believe it or not in our math curriculum he is doing a very basic algebra. It's more or less for example ?+7=10 but he is really doing good at it. It's so rewarding to see such great progress this year as a mom and their teacher. We rented the movie Old Dogs and I don't recommend it! The story was just blah! We had high expectations though, I was so wanting it to be a good family movie. :( Ethan said Elise was more fun to watch and I have to say I agree!