Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween!  Though it was a freezing, wet, and even snowy night, the girls still had a great time trick-or-treating!  Sadly, most people weren't passing out candy or participating but we still found a few houses!  They dressed as scarecrows :)

 

The day before, Josh decided to carve a pumpkin with the girls while I was at music practice for church.  This picture is before the huge mess.  The carved it together and the girls touched the pumpkin guts and were thoroughly grossed out.  Then he told them that they could cook and eat the seeds of a pumpkin.  Amelia sorted all the seeds and put them in a bowl of water.  While Josh was trying to wipe off Charlee, the whole bowl of seeds and water dumped all over the table and floor.  In the mean time, Amelia had asked to go to the bathroom but he told her to stay on the chair until he could wipe off hands.  Just after he'd cleaned up all the water off the table and floor, she waited to long and had an accident all over the chair and floor!  Yikes!  What a mess!😦  I laughed when I heard all of the evening's events but I'm sure it was not too funny at the time!  Josh said, "I don't think I'll be carving any more pumpkins without you anymore." Haha

BY THE WAY...We're having another baby!!  The new baby will be here around the 1st of May!  Amelia and Charlotte are super excited, although they don't really have any idea what's going on.  Amelia asked, "Did you buy the baby at Walmart?"😄  I'd been pretty sick the first trimester but feeling much better now!

A few kid funnies from the last couple of months:

-The kids were "swimming" in our kiddie pool in August and then all of the sudden Amelia face planted in the pool.  After blinking away the water and surprise, she said, "Mom, did you see my trick??"

-Amelia tried Skittles for the first time yesterday.  Today, she said, "Mom, can I eat some more mosquitoes today?"

-Amelia calls the weed wacker a mow wacker.

-After Charlee moved to her big girl bed, one time I checked on her and she wasn't in her room.  She was "sleep standing" next to Amelia's bed!

-Amelia was pretending to read her Bible and she told Charlee, "Quiet Charlee, God is speaking to me."

-Amelia sneezed.  Charlee said, "Bless you."  Amelia said, "Man, I got the bless yous again!"

It's so good to be home!

Oh, it's so good to be home!  A couple of weeks ago we went on a vacation to Tennessee.  There were many fun activities and times but we sure were glad to be home.  We started out the trip with a visit to Grandmother and Grandaddy's house in Kentucky.  We all really enjoyed the visit because it had been quite a while since we'd been down there.  Then we headed down to Tennessee, which was only another 5 hours or so.  Thankfully no one got car sick, even though we were going up and down the small mountain roads with hair pin turns.

In Tennessee, the girls go to catch fish, build sand castles at a lake, swim in the pool, ride a horse and other fun things.  Unfortunately both of them (an eventually me) got sick and were pretty much miserable a lot of the time. :(  They both had a fever, sore throat and were in pain, which caused them to be all out of whack and whiney.  That, in addition to be completely off our normal routine (toddlers aren't real flexible) caused some stress for  everyone ;)  But we were grateful that my mother in law let us stay with them in a condo that was really nice.

On the way back, we decided to come back straight through in one day in order to get home faster.  We visited with grandmother and granddaddy one more time in Kentucky.  The trip back took 13 or 14 hours!  Also, not very fun with toddlers.  I think we decided to stick a little closer to home while the kids are young, haha!

On the home front, Josh built us a fence!  It took a ton of work and a long time, but it looks great!  In the process though, he busted his head open and ended up getting stiches in the ER :(  Thankfully it wasn't too bad.  Could have been way worse!

Now that we're back from vacation we are enjoying normal life and being outside a lot in the summer!

Playing Hard

Today I took the girls to swim at the pool!  They hadn't been swimming since last summer, so they had forgotten that they used to like the water, haha.  The were very hesitant and cried at first, but after watching the other big kids swim around like fish, they decided it wasn't so scary after all!  By the time we left, they were both floating around by themselves and they didn't want to leave.  Charlee is pretty much fearless!  She thought floating around on her back (without any help of course) was the best!

We've been playing outside quite a bit.  The playing hard routine is great for an easy bed time routine.  They usually just fall into bed because they're so worn out.  They are active little girls, that's for sure!  They've enjoyed playing in the sandbox this week.  Though they have tons of fun, cleaning them off after the sand is not so fun!

Funny little things:
-  Before Josh leaves for work every morning, Amelia says, "Hope your friends are nice at work today dad.  Hope they don't bite you."

-Uncle Danny taught Charlee the "pull something out of your ear" magic trick and now she practices her trick on us multiple times per day :)

-The other day at a restaurant, Amelia saw a black man with glasses walk by.  She said, "Mom!  That man looks just like dad!"  I could not stop laughing!!  She does not even notice the color of people's skin.  That's great!

-Amelia always makes a friend at the park and wants to hold their hand.

-In the car these days the girls like to try to hold hands.  Charlee's favorite word is "no" which she repeats over and over.  Amelia asks, "Charlee, no what!?"  Charlee also repeats "go."  Amelia says, "We are going, Charlee!"  I can't wait until Charlotte can talk back and they can carry on a conversation!

The other day Amelia said, "Is Oma coming on Tuesday (twos day) or Threesday?  Hahaha!

Happy Spring!

A hint of Spring!

My front door is swung open and the sunshine is beaming through the house!  Spring is on it's way!  I took a walk with the girls today (which was quite soggy, since all the snow was melting) and I realized how excited I am about Spring.

It is long past time to write another blog.  I guess my lack of blogs shows my busyness these days.  I will try to make blogging more a priority now that we're almost settled in our new house.

We have a new house!!  I would show a picture of the front of the house, but you almost can't see it because of the WAY overgrown bushes hah!  We will remove them in the spring when it gets warmer. We moved in in December, right before Christmas.  Terrible time to move, but it was nice to be in before Christmas.  We got a great price on the house, except that almost nothing in the house had been updated since 1973.  We add new projects and updates to the list almost daily!  A little overwhelming, but one at a time and eventually we'll have it just like we want it.

 First order of business was the flooring.  Because of the gross linoleum and olive green shag carpet, we decided to get new flooring right away.  We hired it done (so that it would be done fast) but unfortunately it was only done 2 days ago at the end of February!!  The new floor that they put in, bowed and dipped and was quite bad.  The company tried to come back and fix it again but after going round and round with the company and their terrible customer service and products, we finally got a refund and Josh just did it himself.  This isn't a great picture but this is our new floor!  Josh did a great job!  Amelia and Charlotte were often found helping him.

Our kitchen is semi torn up because we had to remove a couple of cabinets in order to put the floor down.  Hopefully this summer we can get some new cabinets!  That will totally change the look of the house.

Last weekend we took a trip to Kentucky to visit Grandmother and Grandaddy and Phyllis and Bill.  We enjoyed our time and it was nice to catch up with them, since we hadn't seen them since August!

These days, Amelia is talking non stop and she's very thoughtful!  She constantly told Josh, "Good job Dad!" and "I like it!" when he was preparing and laying the floor!  Amelia is now potty trained!!  Woohooo!  No more diapers :)  For her anyway...  She plays pretend all the time.  When at home, she's usually found playing with her baby dolls, cooking in her toy kitchen or playing dress-up.

Charlotte is almost 15 months old now.  She is talking up a storm too, we just can't figure out what she's saying!  She is very sweet and cuddly, yet talks very loudly!  She bosses everybody around in her jibber-jabbery way :)  She is in the process of getting all 4 molars, so nights aren't very fun these days.  She can walk and run now.  Her and Amelia like to hold hands and go round and round the center part of the house. They play well together now, which can be pretty funny at times. She also likes to play with dolls.  She loves to "brush" her hair (which is super curly!) and brush her teeth.  Man, you almost can't get the toothbrush away from her!  I guess that's a good thing that she likes to brush her teeth.

I'm in my last couple months of teaching 7th grade online with my student Rayaan.  I'm also teaching the Chinese students each morning.  Both are going well!  I'm excited to pick up more Chinese spots during the summer when I'm not teaching Rayaan.  I've also been working on the painting the whole house.

All is well!