Scenes of Easter

I love Easter, I love the reason for Easter, and gain Faith and Strength through the knowledge of the Atonement.  I also love the Candy (it is the best of the year) the egg hunts and the excitement of my family as the weather warms the flowers bloom, reminding us of life.  I thought instead of a long blog about Easter this year I would just share it through photos.   Happy Easter!

Fabulous

Sweet Peace

First Try

I think she liked them

Everything but the Neon Sign

You know when you have several menial things that don't really mean anything but when you add them all up they equal something big...

In an effort to be more healthy I have set a goal to drink the recommended amount of water resulting in frequent trips to the restroom.

Wynter has had some rough nights and awaken at 4:30 am ready to play, resulting in me being very, very tired.  She has also become obsessed with dolls.

I have a newsletter that I receive that gives me updates on the development of my children.  Around Wynter's Birthday, I opened the letter assuming it would be about my toddler...Imagine my surprise when it was about expecting again.

Adding everything up I decided I needed to purchase $10 worth of peace of mind... I guess I needed the Neon Sign

Sprouting Curls

Overdue

I know this is way over due, but we are starting to settle in the house bit by bit.  Most of the things have been put away...well the things we need the rest is still sitting happily in boxes waiting for me to find a place to put them.  The favorite room by far is the girls dress up room, followed closely by the toy/exercise room.  I have found the girls playing on the weight bench, mostly the play masseuse or dentist.  Mia runs and gets a toothbrush and McKinlee lays with her mouth open while her teeth are checked and cleaned.  Josh and I are loving having two toilets and a dining room where the table can be in the middle.  We are anxious to start changing things to more our style and Josh is finding that leaving me alone for too long leads to lots of projects.  In the last week I have ripped the wall paper out of one bathroom, pulled up the carpet in the dining room and living room, and a few other thing he hasn't seen yet ;)  so we will keep them a secret until he finds them. hee hee  We are mostly happy to finally have SPACE.  The kids will go and play and we won't hear from them for a good hour or so.  It has been nice not being called every 5 minutes or tripping over little bodies.  And I love finding the places they find to hide. Sadly it has either rained or snowed pretty much every day since we moved in so I don't have any outside pictures...hopefully soon.  Keep checking back I will be posting before and after photo's as we go.

Tay

Today marks a year since Josh and I boarded a plane with the kids, headed to California to pay our respects to our beloved Taylia. 
It's funny how looking back it is the little things I miss.  I loved her Christmas Cards, the were always so creative.  I remember one year getting little file folders with random pieces of paper and memo's that were filled with their accomplishments of the year.  Another year we got their "To Do List" with some things checked off and others not.  And notes by the nots that said maybe next year, or we have just given this one up.  Every Christmas Time I looked forward to seeing what creative thing she had come up with this time...I would open the card with much anticipation and think, Why didn't I come up with this?  I was sad this year not to get a card.
After Mia was born Tay would call every year to wish her a Happy Birthday on September 3rd.  She always forgot that Mia's day was the 6th.  Once she finally remembered she continued to call on the third just for tradition and so she could be the first to tell her Happy Birthday.
Once we moved to Pennsylvania we would spend every Thanksgiving with Jeff and Tay in Detroit, until they moved to Shanghai.  I remember Tay insisting that her friend Ami and I made a ton of food and give us specific amounts of what she wanted brought, 8 dozen rolls, 10 lbs of mashed potatoes, etc. she wanted a lot of leftovers, once Thursday came and the food was put out she would say, why on earth did you guys bring so much, it will take us a month to eat all of this.  We would respond, you told us to, and she would say..."What was I thinking" She would do the same thing with apple picking and we would pick the 6 bushels of apples she requested, I was always grateful to go back to Pennsylvania and not have to help her and Ami spend a week turning those apples into tons of apple sauce and apple butter.  The next time we came she always made sure to send me home with several jars. 
The morning after Thanksgiving we would go Black Friday Shopping, I would sit and wait in hopes she wouldn't come up so I could go back to bed and she would lay in bed saying, maybe Jenn didn't get up, I will listen and if I don't hear her I won't get up.  Then one of the kids would cry and we would be up anyway.  So a shopping we would go.  We would finish our shopping go to Panera's and eat Bear Claws and take the kids and Josh and Jeff home a little something, not as good as Bear Claws, but still good.
We had a caramel popcorn tradition every time we went to Detroit.  We would get the kids to bed make Grandma Couch's Caramel Popcorn and watch a movie, play a game, visit, or watch Jeff and Josh compete at WII tennis.  When she moved to China the first thing she called and asked for was Grandma's recipe. She kept losing her copy of it.
I think what I miss most however, is our morning and evening chats.  Every Morning I would get Mia on the bus she would be getting her kids to bed and we would get on line and catch up, we would do the same that evening as I got my kids to bed and she got hers on the bus.  We mostly talked about stupid things, which kid is sick and with what, what funny thing Seth or McKinlee had done this time, what crazy thing is going on in the Ward, etc.  Thankfully most of our conversations were on Gmail chat, so they are saved and have become one of my most cherished possessions, if you can call Gchat that.  I guess it all boils down to I just miss her.

It's been a little Crazy

It has almost been a week since we moved into hour new place and it has been nuts.  I don't think we could have picked a worse week to move...here is how it went.
Thursday night Josh and I went to the final walk through which was lead by the oldest Peterson Son, we got a lot of childhood stories.  That night Wynter threw up all over our bed.  Friday morning Josh and I dropped off the kids and went to the closing on the house.  We signed about a million papers, met the rest of the Petersons' who are very nice people, and started moving boxes.  We got about three loads in before our friend Brandon got off work hitched up his trailer and was on his way to meet us to pick up the fridge some friends are giving us when he got pulled over.  His trailer wasn't registered.  So the friends with the fridge took Josh to pick up their box truck, (they own a book store) and they met the other friend who had parked the trailer on the road back at their house where they began to load it.  At the apartment our Friends the Garvins' came over and helped load the rest of the truck. We went to dinner with the helpers, then went to pick up our kids.  That night Josh and I slept on top of of blankets since I hadn't had a chance to do any laundry.  Saturday morning We had 7 men and 2 women show up to load the box trucks, while another friend took the kids for the morning. We were in the new house with in 3 hours. 
Mia had dance competition in the afternoon so we got some lunch and headed to dance.  We left before the awards since they weren't until 8:30pm.  McKinlee was up set because she wanted to go the the old place, so we took here there and she changed her mind.  McKinlee woke up in the middle of the night and threw up all over Mia and their bed.
Sunday: Josh went to church, I stayed home because McKinlee was sick and I had no idea where any of or clothes were.  I washed the sheets from both beds but I didn't have a dryer so I hung them up to dry.  Got the beds made, Josh came home and we tried to set up the Internet because we had some stuff that needed to be taken care of, 3 hours later we had to go back to the old place to hook up the Internet because it wouldn't work.  Two hours later still no luck on getting the wireless setup, we realized there was a problem with the thing they sent us.  So we went out to dinner.  We had dessert and sang Happy Birthday to Mckinlee, a nice man sitting by us came over and gave McKinlee 5 bucks for her birthday! Then he felt bad and gave Mia 2 and Wynter 1. McKinlee threw up in our bed that night.
Monday was McKinlee's birthday.  We took her out to celebrate, I forgot my camera so we had to get a disposable from Ritz, I will post on that after I get them developed. We ran some errands and the day was over.
Tuesday we  had to clean the old apartment so we could turn in the keys.  Josh ran errands and tried to get the dryer working, and Internet.  Several trips to Home Depot and still no dryer, or Internet the day ended and nothing else was done.  Wednesday Josh went back to work for half a day. Spent the rest of it working on the dryer but we finally got the Internet. 
Thursday we finally got a working dryer Hallelujah! Picked up a closet for the kitchen pantry, finally got the kids clothes put away.  So here it is a week later and I am still swimming in a sea of boxes, but hopefully we can tackle it this next week.