I had a great Mother's Day yesterday. I have the best husband and kids! Mark made me breakfast, lunch and dinner and cleaned up the kitchen too :) Love that! He also got me a hanging flower basket and hooked up our sprinkler to it so that I don't have to remember to water it. I love plants, but am not so good at the watering part.....

Aspen was very sweet all day and kept telling me "happy mother's day", giving me mother's day hugs, and telling me how much he loved me. I love being a mommy.

This picture is of Aspen's ladybug. He LOVES bugs of all kinds - spiders, potato bugs, ants, beetles, flys, you name it. As I type this, we have a container of ants and another one of little tadpoles that he caught out of our gross pond. Actually, I think they may be mosquito larve (yuck!), but it's hard to say no to something that captures his attention for so long. Not even his "Larry Boy" computer game can do that! He has made friends with the 9 year old neighbor boy and often ropes him into helping him search for bugs. It's so much fun to see Aspen find something that he really loves.

I Love Saving Money!

I have been couponing and working on saving money at the grocery store for the last 4 months. The picture is from one of the shopping trips this weekend. I did so well this weekend that I thought I'd list out all the things I got.

7 5lb. bags organic flour
4 boxes diabetic snack bars

13 yoplait yogurts

2 icecream

1 large bag shredded cheese

tomatoes

6 cans green chilis

11 cans chicken stock

2 cans non-stick spray

2 Sunday newspapers

1 organic salad mix

1 4-pack tava

2 jars salsa
1 half-gallon organic milk

2 bags chips

GRAND TOTAL................ $18.72!!!

Sunscreen

We have been having crazy weather for April. Snow, hail, freezing temperatures, it feels more like winter than spring! These pictures are from about a week and a half ago when the sun acutally came out. Bad mommy forgot the sunscreen..........


Check out Journey's head. She has a total headband sunburn, complete with the dots from the crochet material! It ended up being a pretty bad burn and her whole scalp is now peeling. There is a total tan line now complete with the dots. Now she has to wear a headband......or grow hair!

Happy Birthday Aspen!

Tomorrow is Aspen's 4th birthday. I can hardly believe he is 4 already. Time has gone so fast!
So this has really been more of a birthday week. Tuesday night was Aspen's party. We celebrated it here with both sides of the family and had so much fun. Aspen got tons of toys (of course) and has been busy playing with them all week. I will post pics of the party after I download them from the camera. Last night Mark took him shopping to pick out his birthday present from us (a starwars lego spaceship), and tomorrow we are having cinnamon rolls for breakfast in honor of his birthday.
This year I am working on establishing family traditions. For birthdays, I have decided to do cinnamon rolls for breakfast and homemade icecream cakes for the birthday cake.

Aspen is such a fun kid to have around. We are constantly laughing at what he says and how he thinks. Today he told me to "take a pill, mom" (forgot the "chill" part). He is very loving and affectionate. He tells me all the time how much he loves me, how pretty he thinks I am, and that I am his "best girl". He is alternately tough and testing then sweet, funny and teasing. The other day he tried to talk me into eating a dead bug that was floating in the bathtub. He told me that he would give me 46 candies if I ate it. Can you say little Mark?!! I just laughted.
Routine is important to him and he always likes to know what the "plan" is.
He loves bugs. He finds bugs all the time, puts them in his bug catcher and then plays with them until they die. We actually considered buying him a bug farm for his birthday, but are a little too worried about them all escaping......

Well Aspen, this is for you. I love you so much and God has a great plan for your life. I can't imagine my life without you.

My Journey

I just love the post-nap rosy cheeks. You can see that she is still waking up. So cute!

Journey often crosses her feet together when she is sitting. Good girl, very lady like :) Oh, and notice how little they are. At 14 months she is in a size 2 which is 3-6 months size. Hmmmm, maybe that's why she isn't walking?

Peek-a-boo! Journey loves to play peek-a-boo with whatever she has at her disposal. Here it is her headband........
her dress....... sometimes it is a stuffed animal or, more often, her hands.

Just looking through these pictures gave me the lift I needed. Today was a nightmare! She has been sick and teething for the last two weeks. She is not a graceful teether! I feel like she has been living on baby tylenol lately, and that didn't come close to cutting it today. She refused to nap and had several crying/screaming fits where there was almost nothing I could do to sooth her. I was feeling frustrated until I noticed that on her fingers were deeply indented teeth marks. It had been at least 30 minutes since she had been sucking on them - poor girl! I gave her more grace after that......

My Crazy Boy

Aspen and I were reading a book and he noticed in the pictures that some of the characters had green noses....... He thought he might try that too. I let him because the markers were "washable". What a mistake! We had a good laugh about the green nose and then tried to wash it off. It wouldn't come off! I scrubbed and scrubbed, but it would not erase completely. He had to go through the whole day with a light green nose and cheeks, and was kind of embarrassed about it too :)

Progress!

Journey is now starting to walk along things like tables and couches! Yes, at 14 months tomorrow, she is a late bloomer. I am very excited about this small amount of progress because I was starting to worry that she wouldn't be walking by her 18 month appointment and her doctor would be mad at me for not keeping her in physical therapy. She is quite timid about taking those steps, but is slowly gaining confidence. She does not like to try new things or be thrown up in the air like other babies. It's just too scary for her! I am thinking that she is on the 18 month walking plan........

This is from about a month ago and is what she thinks of being pushed into "practicing" walking.