Lots of updating to do!

Ok, this is a nice long post with lots of pictures to make up for the fact that I have been terrible at updating this blog over the last few weeks.

A couple of weeks ago, I watched Sam, Jake, and Lanae while James and Elise were at a wedding. Lanae was a little fussy and didn't want to go to sleep but she was happy when Evan was reading to her - it was very sweet. We just coulnd't resist taking a picture of Grace and Sam sitting in Grace's desk together, working on their pictures.

Devon and Carter, the kids I do daycare for two days a week, were on spring break for the alst two weeks so they were here all day instead of just after school. Devon loves crafts and she organized everyone (except Evan who was into a good book) to make this cardboard box into a wagon for the barbies to ride in. It was fun to see the way they all worked together so well.

Last Friday, we had a baby shower here for Carla and her new baby, Janessa. Tammy's baby, Julie is just two months older than Janessa but that two months makes a big difference in how alert they are. Both of these little girls have a head full of hair!

Carmen was in town for her friend's wedding so she was able to come to the shower. It was great to have a visit with you Carm!

We took a "spring break" from homeschooling last week but it wasn't much of a break for me because we were doing a bunch of cleaning, sorting, organizing and rearranging in order to get ready for some renovations we are going to do in our basement this spring. We spent all of last weekend moving toys, clothes and furniture and the end result was that Evan has a new bedroom downstairs and Rachel moved out of the room she and Grace have been sharing and into Evan's old room. We are going to paint it for her in the next couple of weeks so I will post pictures when it is finished. In the meantime, here are some pictures of Evan's new room. I have to admit, it was hard for me to sleep the first night we had him downstairs, even though we had the baby monitor set up so we could hear if he woke up with a bad dream or anything. He is doing just fine and loving his new "big kid room" while I am having a hard time letting my baby grow up! :)

It poured rain last week when we had spring break, but it has been much nicer this week. Spring has definitely sprung - my tulips are popping up and the magnolia tre in our backyard is getting ready to show its stuff. It will be beautiful for a few weeks and then it will drop white petals all over the yard!


A great thing about the spring weather is that the kids have had lots of time outside. My Mom bought a book for Rachel called "Mudpie Annie" and it is definitely appropriate for our two mudpie girls! They absolutely love to be outside and get dirty. They make mud pies, mud cakes, mud soups and many other concoctions with flowers, grass, sticks and other things they find outside.


On Monday we had a lovely visit with Jim and Reta who were down from Prince George for a convention. It was so good to see them and to spend a little time with Danica. It's sad that she lives so far away and so she doesn't know us. Forrest and Cynthia came for dinner too. It's not very often Ryan, Forrest and Jim get to hang out anymore so it was great to have them all here together.

Oops, I snapped the picture just as Ryan answered his phone. He really was visiting with Jim before that.

Evan was having so much fun with the bubbles, I just had to take some pictures!

As you can tell, I really like the function of my "picasa" program that allows me to make collages with my pictures. Thanks for the tip Carm!

Here are some pictures of the girls snuggling and reading in Rachels' bed in her new room. I love the way they love to be together. Even though they don't share a room anymore, they always snuggle in each others beds when they wake up in the morning.

That's all for me right now. We are going to Manning park this weekend to celebrate my Grandma's 80th birthday so I'm sure I will have lots of pictures to post from that.