Spoiled Rotten

It’s been a fun weekend.  Lennard’s dad arrived for a visit on Friday night (the 26th).  On Saturday, Lennard had Priesthood Leadership and then I went to the Adult session of Stake Conference while he stayed home with the kids and visited with his dad.  It was an excellent session and I enjoyed being able to attend.  Sunday was Stake Conference and the kids did okay… thankfully we were sitting beside my parents, so that was a life saver!  On the way home from church, Emma decided to ‘help’ Ben move a little faster by pushing him… too bad he couldn’t go any faster!  He face planted with the sidewalk and scraped his nose up.  The poor kid always has some kind of bruise, cut, scrape, etc.  Thankfully it’s healing quickly.

Lovely weather for a visit - right, Dad?!

On Tuesday, we decided to go in to Lethbridge and have breakfast at Cora’s.  Yum!  Little expensive, but so delicious!  The kids thought the best part of the whole meal was when they both got balloons afterwards!  We then wandered around Costco and while grabbing the few things that we needed, Emma managed to lose her balloon (slight drama ensued) and Grandpa got the crazy idea that he needed to spoil his grandkids!  We headed home, and then, while I stayed home with the kids, Lennard and his dad headed back in to Lethbridge with the truck to buy a huge playhouse for the kids!  When they got home, Lennard had me come out to see the load of boxes in the truck only to find that Grandpa had decided to spoil more than just the grandkids and bought us a patio swing!  (So excited!).  We definitely feel very spoiled! 

Now to put everything together!

      

Ben’s nose – starting to heal.                              Love that they will hold hands!

The load of boxes!  Love you, Dad!

Hangin’ Out

We’ve had a nice quiet day hanging out with Grandpa and watching movies.  I love that Ben will snuggle right in and visit with Grandpa.  We don’t get to see him nearly often enough, so it’s nice to make memories while he’s here!

If You Chance to Meet a Frown…

While most people only see a happy, smiling little girl, I had to document that I do get ‘the scowl’ every once in a while…

       

The kids had fun playing with their cousins this afternoon.  Mason even had fun being a ‘princess’ with Emma!  Gotta love blackmail photos!

Chocolate!

Emma LOVES chocolate, so when I finished icing the brownies and she wanted to lick the spatula, I handed it over.  I started washing up some dishes, turned around, and found little miss smearing the icing all over her face!  What a little goof!

Crazy Kids

No matter how hard I try to get the kids to eat at the table, this is what I end up finding instead… Ben made his own little breakfast spot at the art table and Emma decided on a more portable option.  Amazingly, they are both using SPOONS!  (Almost never happens!)

  

This afternoon while the kids were playing outside, we found Emma enjoying a ‘shower’ off the trailer!  She was soaked!  Didn’t hurt anything… so we just let her have fun!

   

Sunday Afternoon

We made the mistake of waking Ben up from his nap after church… as you can see – he was NOT happy about it!  Won’t do that again.  What a rough evening.

After about an hour, he finally ‘woke’ up and was happy… especially when he got to hang out with Daddy!

Craft Night

Once a month I get together with some friends to have a craft night in an attempt to get some of those unfinished projects actually finished!  Well, I have wanted to make this wall quilt for years (literally, years!).  I finally pulled out the material I had and started the first few top blocks at craft night a few months ago.  Since then I’ve slowly plugged away at other squares.  I’ve learned how to paper piece (so fun) and then, last night, I finished all the applique work!  I am so excited that I’ve got it done to this point!  Now I’ve got to get in to Lethbridge to get some material for the backing and then start quilting it!  I would love to pay someone to quilt it for me, but I think I will just plug away with doing it myself.  I’m looking forward to getting it done and hung up!

Making Dreams a Reality

Ever since we were first married we have had this jar that we’ve added a coin/bill here or there with the idea that we would someday go to Europe.  There have been a few times in the past that we have been tempted to open the jar and see what how much we had accumulated, but we’ve always stopped ourselves.  Well, tonight we finally did it.  We’ve made a goal to make it to Europe next year, so we decided to open the jar up and start our Europe fund.  Before we opened it, we both made guesses as to how much we thought was in it.  We cut the tape, opened the lid and were a little shocked to see as many bills as there were!  We haven’t really put anything into the jar since we moved here.  We dumped it out and started counting.  When we finished counting the bills we were both over what we’d guessed would be in the jar, then we started counting the coins!  We ended up with over $800 ($422 in coins!).  It’s not enough to get us to Europe, but it’s a start… and that’s better than nothing!

(For all you would be robbers out there… it’s now in the bank… so don’t come looking!)

Beautiful Spring Day… ?!?

Sure kids… go play outside… oh wait… you would sink out of sight!  Yup… just another beautiful spring day here in Southern Alberta.

Time Out for Women

After all the craziness Friday night, I definitely needed a “Time Out”!  I thoroughly enjoyed getting to attend TOFW with my mom, sisters (missed you, Rachel) and friends. 

I learned a lot about having faith in our Savior; serving others; applying the atonement in our lives; finding holiness in our lives; trusting that the Lord sees the big picture; recognizing that the simple things can be what makes the difference; and finding joy in our journey NOW.  There was a lot more than that, but those are some of the highlights. 

One of the presenters (Richie Norton) asked the question, “What would you regret NOT doing when you’re 80?”  It definitely made me stop and ponder about what my priorities are and what things I’ve been dreaming about doing.  I’ve really wanted to go back to Europe for a long time.  Not just for a vacation, but because that is where Lennard’s grandpa is buried.  Lennard and Ben are both named after him and for some reason, I feel very strongly about visiting his gravesite.  Not only that, but Lennard was born in Germany and I would love to see where he was born.  I’m not quite sure how we can pull it off financially, but it’s a high enough priority (in my mind), that I want to really work towards making it a reality.  I would definitely regret not going if it keeps getting put off like it has in the past.

Group photo at lunch time.

All Patched Up

This was the view I saw when I got up this morning.  You would never know that he’d split his head open with the grin I got from him! 

Trip to the ER

It never fails that something will go wrong when you have a deadline…  I was trying to get some things done around the house before leaving to go to Time Out for Women when I heard a sickening thud and then ear-piercing screams.  I immediately raced into the living room where Ben was.  My first thought was, “What did he get on the couch now?”  and then I realized that he was covered in blood!  I raced over, picked him up, yelled for Lennard and got him into the kitchen.  I grabbed the first towel I could reach and attempted to staunch the blood.  After a couple of minutes we were able to get the blood stopped and found that he had just popped his forehead open.  I was able to get some gauze over the cut and we headed down to the ER to get it taken care of. 
By this time I only had about 45 minutes before I was supposed to pick up friends to head in to Lethbridge, so I was really hoping that we could get in and out of the ER quickly  (wishful thinking).  They were extremely busy and I finally decided to leave Lennard with Ben there while I took Emma back to the house with me.  I called my parents and my dad agreed to come stay with Emma.  In the fifteen minutes before I had to go, I attempted to clean up all the blood in the living room.  It’s amazing how much blood came from such a tiny cut! 
I managed to get most of it cleaned up, grabbed my purse and headed out the door about 5 minutes later than planned!  My mom took the truck down to the hospital so that Lennard would have a way to get home while I went and picked up my friends (Shannon and Jen).  We then stopped at the hospital to get my mom and found that Lennard was out with Ben and ready to head home!  They were able to just glue and tape the cut.  I was relieved that he didn’t have to go through getting stitches!

This About Sums It Up...

Found this cartoon on Facebook and it says it all...  This is my life... especially the one about the blankie (Emma) and wanting to be carried (Ben).  Had to laugh (better than crying!).

Bedtime Stories

Every night we read a story to Emma and Ben.  A consistent favorite of Emma’s is the book called “Tell Me Again About the Night I Was Born”.  It’s a wonderful story, except there are a couple parts that don’t fit ‘her’ adoption story.  I decided that it would be fun to make a special book just for her telling about what makes her special.  I was given a coupon for a free 8x8 book from Shutterfly (paid $8 in shipping) and so I set out to make a book all about Emma!  I finished it in a couple days and today I got the final product!  I am so pleased with how it turned out and Emma is already telling me about her special book and how it’s just for her.  I was happy to hear her tell me that Benny needed one too now (which I’m already working on).  There are a number of pages in the book with pictures her birth parents, that I won’t be showing on the blog (I want to respect their privacy), but I thought you might enjoy seeing a few of the other pages! 

I’m really hoping that as we read this ‘story’ to her that she will recognize how special she really is and how much we love her and are blessed to have her in our family. 

Popping “Bubbles”!

Emma and Ben discovered the bubble wrap from their package yesterday!  I guess every part of the package is every bit as exciting as the gifts!  Thanks!  Hope you enjoy the video!

Spoiled Rotten!

Thanks to some amazing friends, Emma and Ben got spoiled rotten this afternoon!  Here are some of the pictures from them opening their ‘loot’!

 

They both got personalized placemats, sidewalk chalk and huge baskets of goodies!

 

Emma was thrilled for all the treats!  Especially all the chocolate!

Ben was SO excited to find McQueen and had the animal crackers opened first off!

  

One of the definitely favorites was the personalized water bottles… as you can see, Emma LOVES hers!