Toward the end of March, I started to realize that we were in some major shopping hot water. I'm used to living in places that have plenty of garage sales and plenty of stores with clearance sections. It takes a lot of clothes to keep all four kids dressed, and living in Pullman has made me adjust my shopping expectations. All of the kids were in need of some basics, and I had some plans for matching kids for our summer trips, so a shopping day was in order. I knew I could shop all day, and that isn't a reality for our family all together, so Alex was awesome enough to keep all the kids home all day for a 'dad day' while I went to Spokane by myself. I started the day at Target, and spent over 3 hours there. I forgot how much I love this store!
After Target I went to a mall and shopped clearance all throughout the mall. I was able to get most of the things I needed for me, and everything that the kids needed. One interesting problem that I have never had before was carrying the bags! I went through the mall, shopping a bit in 5 or 6 stores (including a book store first - whoops! - and Marshalls - a few bags worth) and when I got to the end I was carrying 8 or so bags, probably close to 75 pounds, and I had to walk down the entire length of the mall! Next time I will definitely be bringing a stroller, whether I have kids with me or not!
Alex took the kids to a bug fair, which was kind of a flop, so they went to the park instead. This awesome swing is at a not-so-awesome park, but we go just to let Hunter swing with the bigger kids :).
The first week in April was our spring break. and I had pulled the kids out of school the week before to play with cousins, so I had to get creative for all of our time together. I'm already nervous for summer break, even though I know it will be fun to have so much time with the kids. Routines are so different when you don't have any time with all the kids asleep!
On the first day of spring break, we busted out the Easter decorations and played some egg games. The kids practiced stacking them on straws, which was a huge hit. It was fun to watch the kids go from arranging them carefully to competing for the highest stack to making patterns :)
After Hunter woke up from his nap, we went to the park to feed the ducks and explore a little bit. The kids were most interested in the sheep and their llama protection detail :).
This girl and her drama :) She has a creative streak that her mom is missing, for sure.
For afternoon snack that day, I made bear toast! Maybe I overdid it that first day of spring break, because the planned activities were much fewer the rest of the week. I definitely made it out of the gate fast, but during summer I need to work on my endurance :).
On Wednesday the kids didn't get dressed, but they did do some button patterns, sorting, and graphing! Graphing is one of Olivia's favorite math activities right now.
Carter was really fun with the patterns. He wants everything to be perfect, so he really has a hard time ignoring the differing sizes and shades when he is making a pattern.
While the kids were working with buttons, Hunter and I read some books :) It's unusual to have one-on-one time with Hunter, I could probably count on one hand the number of times I have read a book with just him...special times with this sweet little caboose.
Baking that afternoon, and I looked over to see this lovely and gross sister sharing moment...
Carter's basketball class was a huge hit. Watching it as a parent was painful (it was pretty much a 45 minute shoot around each week, with no skills learned) but he had a blast. Each week he picked out his outfit days before to make sure it was clean on the right day. We are so glad that Pullman has this preschool basketball program and that he will be able to continue playing so close to our house next year!
This picture was taken of Hunter the day that I took him in to the doctor. He was a sick little guy for quite a while, battling a cold that eventually led to pneumonia. I'm glad he was able to get some extra attention because Alex's work schedule is so much more flexible in the spring, and that things seem to be looking up for him.
Our other fun science-y activity during spring break was a Paw Patrol mission to rescue our friends from giant ice cubes! Each of the kids had some Paw Patrol friends and used them to get animals out of ice. Carter was definitely the one with the longest attention span for this activity. It took Makenzie about 5 minutes to start licking the ice, and Olivia wasn't far behind in discovering that it was more fun to squirt the warm water into her own mouth then spit it into the bowl...yuck!
After a snack and some help from mom, even Makenzie was able to rescue her two friends, and we built them all new houses from legos that afternoon.
Yes, it was April, but we got a couple crazy hail storms that lasted about 20 minutes each, and the hail was bigger than a pea. The ground is at eye level in the play room, so the kids had fun watching all the hail bounce in the grass as it came down. No one braved outside this time, they learned their lesson in March.
The older kids also spent some time journaling and drawing about what we did during the week. Carter's page reads 'I jump with my dad', but I somehow lost the picture I took of his preschool spelling.
Olivia's is much easier to read, but for ease and memory, here is what it says: 'Yesterday
I was really proud of her paragraph that just came from my prompt of 'Draw a picture of something we did today or yesterday and write about what you draw'. She constantly surprises me at how much she is excelling academically, and she pushes me to teach her more each day.
I have a lot of favorite things about being a mom (hand-holding, sweet smiles, big eyes looking at you, surprise hugs, etc.) but one of the best things I can imagine walking in to is all the kids sitting and reading together, or to each other, or to themselves. We are one kid short in this picture, but it's so sweet. Olivia is teaching Carter to read using the Bob books (they sound out each word together) and Makenzie is half listening as she reads her own book. Olivia takes the big sister role quite seriously, and every once in a while it turns into a magical moment of learning for one of her younger siblings. The rest of the time comes across as quite bossy and competitive, but that is a story for another day :).
Just a random picture of Hunter trying his first lime. Not overly impressed, but they always go back for more, and he was no exception.
We had company for Easter, so the kids and I planted a few plants for the front porch that week. I'm horrible (and super slow) at decorating, so the front porch isn't even on the radar yet, but I wanted something to look like spring, and the kids were very helpful. Whether I needed the roots squished (Carter), the plant watered (Olivia), or excess dirt eaten from the ground (Hunter), we had all of our bases covered.
As we got closer to Easter, I tried to come up with some easy egg activities for the kids to do while Olivia was at school. I will admit that I have gotten lazier and lazier throughout the years, so Carter and Makenzie have rarely seen a planned learning activity, but I made an effort one day, and it was a huge hit. I sent the kids on an Easter egg hunt (actually I had them hide the eggs first, then find them :)) and inside was a letter. Carter was matching uppercase (in the egg) to lowercase (on his paper). Makenzie was matching capitals of the letters in her name. She knows about 1/3 of the letter names, but she only knows lower case, so I wanted to show her the capitals.
I was really impressed with how much they completed the activity without any help. I had to open most of Makenzie's eggs for her, but she never asked for help with placing the letter, and Carter only had trouble with G and the difference between capital I and lowercase l. It was really fun to spend some time with the two of them and have them show me how independent they are becoming.
Every school day, Makenzie goes right to sleep when we get back from dropping Carter off at school (around 12:45). I feel awful every day because I have to wake her up at 2:45 to pick up Olivia from school. She never gets as much sleep as she wants, and waking up sleeping babies is SO against my only parenting rule. Anyway, this particular day I woke her up, pulled her into my lap to put her shoes on, then turned around to slip my shoes and she crawled back into bed. Then I woke her up again and held her hand to walk with her into Hunter's room (to wake him up) and as soon as I let go of her hand, she crawled back into bed. Then I moved her pillow off the bed (as a deterrent...) and got Hunter's shoes on. As soon as I stood up she went back to her pillow and laid down. When I got back with Hunter's shoes on, she was completely asleep. At this point I texted Alex and had him run across town to pick up Olivia and give Makenzie an additional 1/2 hour of sleep. It was so sweet and cute that she just wanted more sleep, and I absolutely love that Alex can back me up in this simple but meaningful way throughout the day. A few times throughout the year he has met me at the doctor to take some kids, or picked up kids from school when I was sick or had super sick kids. It's such a difference from the last year in the Bay Area, and then with his previous jobs where he was driving all over the valley. This job really works so well for us!
Pictures are out of order, but here is the family room after the Easter Bunny made his appearance Saturday night. We were SO excited to tell the kids about our upcoming trip to Disneyland, but more on that parenting fail later...
Saturday morning, the day before Easter, we checked out a couple of the local egg hunts. The first one we went to was at Pullman Building supply. They hid hundreds of eggs in the middle of the store, and had the hunt while the store was open. It was super fun (and I appreciate that they had little kids go first!) but I felt really bad for the few people that were actually shopping and had kids running past them over and over :)
After that we went over to the city sponsored hunt at a park. They had firetrucks to explore and the Easter Bunny was there (nope...none of the kids were remotely interested in meeting him :))
They had all of the kids split up into how old they were, with everyone under 5 going at the same time. I took Makenzie to the 2 yo field, and Alex took the boys to watch Carter with the 4 year olds.
It was SUPER cold, and I felt so bad for these girls who were promised matching dresses so they didn't want to wear big coats. They were freezing the entire time, and I decided next year I will try to focus more on warmth and less on pictures :). Aren't they cute though?
Olivia was in the huge field with everyone from 5-9, and she quickly found some kids from school to run around with. I think the kids had an average of 5 eggs, but they were thrilled, so I was thrilled. As an added bonus, 4 of Carter's eggs had free treats from DQ, so we headed there right after the hunt (at 10:30 on Saturday morning, when it was maybe 50 degrees).
The other big activity of the day was egg coloring! The kids are starting to out-decorate their parents, but my artistic abilities are next to nothing, so it was only a matter of time :).
I made our colors this year...everything worked fine except the purple. Who knew that mixing red and blue for food coloring turned to a nasty pukey-brown color?
This picture was right after Makenzie dropped her 3rd egg on the floor. They had a way of just slipping out of her hands every time she moved them off her washcloth. She figured it out eventually, and ended up having a great time, but it took a while.
I was quite proud of the 'note' from the Easter Bunny, and Alex didn't give me the reaction I wanted, so I will share it here for all to see how creative I can be after midnight on a holiday :)
We took Christmas morning PJ pics even though it was Easter, I just love getting these kids together and snapping pictures. Hunter loves the camera, and totally grins any time you point the phone at him. Carter might need to take smiling lessons from him someday :).
Easter morning egg hunt!
O was so crazy running around the entire room that this was the only egg-gathering picture I got of her. We may need to work on enjoying the present and not racing about everything with this girl...
Hahahaha I just can't stop laughing. Are you all jealous yet that this guy is mine? I totally like him and his magical way of making everything fun. He definitely mellows out my high-strung nature on a daily basis.
After the kids explored their baskets (and of course argued over whose was whose, I pointed out the Disney countdown chain to them and asked Olivia to read it. She is a great reader, but with no preparation (and her attention on the candy that she desperately wanted to eat) she read nonsense, ending in 'count to Dish-a-lina'...after a few pauses she said 'Disneyland! We are going to Disneyland!' But despite my desperate efforts to get the kids to respond to that, no one cared until later that day when we looked at pictures from our last Disney trip and explained to the kids that in just 2 weeks we would be there having the best vacation ever :). They did humor me by utting on their new Mickey shirts for me that morning though, and we will pretend that they totally appreciated the adorable countdown chain.
Bunny toast for Easter breakfast was a big hit, even though it might have also been a Pinterest fail...those are weird looking bunnies. I guess that's what happens when you search for something cute, see the picture, and just try to make it work with what you have on hand.
We were having the Zollingers over for dinner, so we did the traditional holiday lunch when we are having a big early meal, which is fruit, veggie, and cheese trays. I have a major trouble not overdoing things, however, so it turned into a crazy feast, which is exactly why the kids have been asking for this lunch again since we had it last time at Thanksgiving. Apparently it is our newest tradition, and I am good with continuing it for every major holiday :).
Just like every time we have company, I didn't take a single picture of Easter dinner. We hung out outside, the kids played and wrestled on the trampoline, and Alex and I got some second opinions on our house projects from the Zollingers, who are more experienced with big projects than we are (we are total newbies, so it's going MUCH slower than we expected). Then we sat down for a great dinner and realized that we definitely need a bigger table...we have outgrown our table for 4 even when its leaf is extended. It was a great day, to end a great weekend of hanging out together as a family.
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