Love Birds

Happy Anniversary to these two love birds.

Sometimes.

Sometimes I make cookies...

Sometimes I let the kids help...

Sometimes one of the children (Howard) pulls the mixer lever too fast and gets covered in flour...

And looks really cute.

 

Kids' Closet

For nearly a year I've been struggling with where I keep the kids' clothes.  I was keeping Tracey clothes in the room she shares with the twins.  I was keeping the twins' clothes in the nursery where Lee Lee sleeps.  And I was keeping Lee Lee's clothes in my dresser in my room.

Whenever I managed to actually fold clean clothes, I could only put clothes away when all children were awake.  But I usually only folded clothes when children were asleep... then I would just have six piles of clean clothes waiting somewhere for the right window when I could try to get the clothes in the right room and dresser when the right child was awake before the children play with the pile of folded clean clothes.

It was not working.

Late one night, when I think I was panicking... I mean praying about directing the Christmas Pageant, God gave me the great idea to transform our hall closet into a kid's closet.

Here is what the closet used to look like:

Here is what it looks like now: 

Each child gets three bins of clothes -- one bin for underwear and undershirts, one bin for shirts/dresses, one bin for pants.  There is one shared bin with all the pairs of socks.  Lee Lee has two extra bins for pajamas and fancy dresses.  THEY ONLY GET THE CLOTHES IN THOSE BINS!  If they have more shirts than fits in the one bin... that child and I choose our favorite shirts because there is only one bin for shirts for that child.

I can put away laundry ANYTIME regardless of who is sleeping, and I put all laundry away in ONE LOCATION!

Also, the kids get so excited to choose their own clothes.  They know what bins are theirs and they can access them, choose clothes, and put them back.  The closet is in the hallway so there is NO OPTION to leave clothes all over or not replace their bins back in the closet.  We walk through that hallway all day -- it has to stay in order.

It has been amazing!

 

Valentine's Day

I never fully shared pictures from our little Valentine's Day celebration.

It took me several drafts, but I was pretty happy with this little collage of pictures that I shared on facebook Valentine's mornings.  What wonderful Valentines I have.

Here is a collage of the Valentines my kids made for Hubby and they gave them to him the night before because he was away at a conference on Valentine's night.

The kids were invited to bring one big Valentine to the entire class (as opposed to a little Valentine for everyone).  So they each painted the hearts, choose the picture, and helped with writing and glitter and hearts.  Lee Lee gave her Valentine to her baby-sitter. 

Our three big kids are in the same preschool class, so it made a Valentine's party much easier on me than if they were all in separate classes.  They helped their teachers make a delicious squash soup and they all wanted to sit by me.

At home, they all had a Valentine card from Grammy and Papa, a couple Valentine's presents from me, and a surprise Valentine package from two Aunts in St. Louis.

What a fun day!

 

More Dino Pics

Today Hubby showed me some pictures he took at the dinosaur museum so here are some more pictures from our fun last week... before the flu took over our life.

 

A Week of Illness

This week we have been taken out one person at a time by illness.  I think this must be the flu... but we all got our flu shots, so they have been REALLY mild if in fact it is the flu.  But its been aches, exhaustion, and vomiting for an average of 24 hours per person.  

We have had illnesses before as family but this was the first time it literally hit one person every day for a week.

Saturday - Hubby

Sunday - Hubby and Caroline

Monday - Tracey

Tuesday - Addallee

Wednesday - Howard and Caroline

Thursday - Mama

Friday - Caroline

All that to say, I don't realize how active we are as a family until we are taken out of commission by illness.  I've looked back at my phone over the past few days and I find a lot of pictures taken from a distance -- which means I was laying on the couch and took the pictures of the kids while I was laying down. 

On Thursday, as I could barely keep my eyes open, the kids got their own apples and pretzels it was nice to know they could survive without me if they had to.

Weeks like this one makes me so grateful for how healthy we stay most of the time because when someone is sick, it just changes everything for our whole family.  Work, play, eating, sleeping, school... everything is different when our family is sick.

We're Praising God that we seem to be on the mend.

Life in Colorado

This is pretty accurate.

 

A Ride

When you're twins, sometimes you're just a sister along for the ride...

Sun and Snow

These kids enjoyed the combination of sun and remaining snow the other day... 

"Caroline, Tracey, come see this!"