Picture heavy

We were excited to dye eggs with the kids this year.

Caleb was excited too.

Emily loves anything creative.

Elinor only dropped one. Out of one.

 We headed to San Antonio to visit Jared and Sue right after Emily's ballet class.

The kids had fun with the little Easter egg hunt Jared and Sue set up.

Joseph was thrilled to give Caleb a Frankenstein egg basket.
What better way to celebrate resurrection?

Elinor was sort of sick and drugged up.

Easter morning brought all kinds of surprises for the kids.

Elinor was (and is) still fighting off her sickness, but she liked her new doll.

I love Emily's face here as she realizes the bike is red and not blue.

Blue means Caleb's and red means new bike!

We are generally not so extravagant as to give bikes for Easter, but we had been holding on to this red bike for a while and Easter seemed like a good occasion to give it to her. Plus she was really good about going without while Caleb owned a bike.

Those three kids and their loot.

Caleb's new shoes. He wears shoes about 10% of the time he's outside, but when he's shod, he looks good.

Joseph and the kids worked on finishing the eggs up on Sunday morning.

I have to say, I love the little hats.

And I love the little hands.

Happy Easter!

Blue Bonnets

So, I just don't normally post twice in a night, but I thought that last announcement deserved its own space. I am so happy with the symmetry of our family. I can't help but wonder, will this next boy be dark like the girls or light like Caleb? Or will he really surprise us and be a girl? I suppose I'll have to wait, but I wish I knew right now!

Moving on, a friend of ours, who is a great photographer (took Caleb's awesome profile picture), took us out to a nearby patch of bluebonnets the other day and we were able to sit for some pictures. I was excited about this because it is probably (hopefully) our last spring here in Austin and the bluebonnet pictures will be such a fun reminder of our time in Texas. Elinor is sort of a serious baby, so she was hard to catch smiling, but we do have a few gems in with the lot. I am so excited to share these pictures! I really like them.

Love this.

A little awkward, but really captures the essence of our family right now.
We'll worry about getting good family pictures when the kids are older.

Love.

Those boys.

Probably my favorite picture of Caleb. Ever.

A morning well spent. Katie was so fun and efficient and even brought treats for the kids. We love her!

It's a...

BOY!!!!

we are so excited for more of this...

and this...

No, really, we are.
We couldn't be happier!

Nursery

Today was Elinor's first day of nursery and she did great!!!* It helps that we have awesome nursery leaders who even recruited an extra person just for Elinor today.
I can't even believe I get 4-1/2 more months of this before the next baby! (usually it's a week)

*minus minor mishap involving poopiness in a cloth diaper while Joseph was in the middle of singing time and I was teaching.

SuperDad

going and going

Today was an adventure!
The first thing I did was sew a patch onto Emily's well-worn pants.

 
Next we headed out to a lovely patch of bluebonnets where a friend took some family pictures for us. I am so excited to see them and kind of sad we didn't take any candid shots on our own camera. I guess that's a future post.
After bluebonnets we rewarded the kids with a trip to a local candy store, Big Top Candy Shop. It is a funky local shop, so it was really fun to look through.

Sorry the picture is so blurry - I could not get Emily to hold still and I didn't even try with Caleb.

The kids each got to choose a piece of candy. Emily chose a Strawberry Shortcake monstrosity of a marshmallow-pop, Caleb chose a battery-operated boxing glove candy contraption, and Elinor chose a Tootsie Pop. It was comically difficult to get Caleb to open his eyes and choose an unusual candy. When we told them they could each choose something, he picked up a single Tootsie Roll and announced that that was what he wanted. It would have been a lot cheaper!

After the candy shop we wandered along South Congress for a while and it was a lot of fun. Joseph and the kids made friends with the firefighters and got a brief tour of the truck and station while I slipped into a yarn shop. Hill Country Weavers was amazing! Every wall covered in shelves, stuffed full of yarn. I am absolutely returning in a week or two when I start my next knitting project.
We walked past at least a dozen food trailers and some really fun flea-market type stands. It was a fun morning to have Joseph with us for.

After returning home for lunch, I made some bread,

 some dishwasher soap, and some laundry soap.
With all the bread and soap making and the patch sewing going on today, I felt like quite the frontierswoman.

 By this point the kids were about ready to die so we headed outside for some fun.

Emily and Caleb have been working on a giant hole for a little while, and today they decided to fill it with water from a nearby leaky spigot. A bunch of the neighborhood kids decided it was a worthwhile project and joined them. It was pretty funny to see a line of children carrying buckets, cups, and shovels full of water across the playground. Then they all took some time to cool their feet. I love the muddy handprints on the stucco that will probably be there all summer.

We had some filthy kids on our hands!

I had to hose them off before allowing them back inside.

It has been lovely weather lately and we are grateful.

Projects

I think I am in love with Oliver + S. I just made their playdate dress and it was such an enjoyable experience! Great directions, and it came together so nicely. Next time I will use a plainer fabric so the little details are more noticeable.

I couldn't decide which picture to use so I added all three. Isn't Austin looking nice and green? We've been getting a lot of rain lately. I love the first picture where El is crouching because I was. She's such a fun little girl! This is the Nancy Mims fabric that I used on my friend's baby pants. I was motivated to make this dress because I wanted something made out of that fabric too! It fits great and will get a lot of use.

I also made this pirate bag today.

It is so Caleb-esque it makes me smile. He chose that fabric at Jo-Ann's a while ago and chose it again yesterday when I asked what he wanted on his bag.

 

 It looks especially manly next to Emily's girly bag.

This is definitely a scraps project - made from a pair of Caleb's old pants, my old jeans for the strap, and leftover interfacing from Emily's bag. I've gotta remember to make that strap longer next time.
Tutorial found here.

Finally, here's a project I finished last year, just in time for Christmas.

Caleb's long overdue baby quilt! I love the bright colors and textures in this one. The stars are fuzzy or shiny, the sails have batting underneath, and the flags are 3-d. I hand quilted it and was happy with how that turned out, but I wish I could have had a little more time to quilt it more densely. I wanted it wrapped up for Christmas though. I suppose I could add to it later but I know I probably won't.
 

 Caleb approves of the backing. Pirates are one of his favorite things right now, so he calls this his pirate blanket and sleeps with it every night.
So, Emily's is done (remember this?) and Caleb's is done. I wonder if I can start Elinor's before baby #4 joins us?

Birthday Boys!

March 1st is an important day in our home, being the anniversary of both Joseph and Caleb's births.  This year it was pretty low-key because there was so much church stuff going on that weekend, but we had fun as a family. To kick it off, Caleb opened a present early in the morning before Emily left for school.

 I'm not sure who was more excited - Caleb or Emily.

The kids love Duplos and Thomas trains, so this gift was lots of fun.
It was actually a bonus present from me and Joseph found at Saver's for $7.

Caleb spent the day playing Mama Thomas and Baby Thomas.
They are cuddling in this picture.

A friend gave me a recipe for dirt cake. Caleb is a big fan of dirt, so I thought he would like it.

This is a half recipe, which was perfect for our family.

Aww... the two birthday boys.

Caleb was not sure at all about eating dirt. He wouldn't touch it until he saw the rest of us eating.

This girl eats dirt regularly. She had no problem with the cake.

Emily would eat only after I explained to her how I had made it.

My handsome husband. He's maturing in his old age.

Later that evening the boys opened a few more presents.

Rollerskates from Grandma Cooper = so much fun and no added toy clutter!

From Grandma Oba and Mom and Dad...

... a Strider bike! Wahoo!

 

A neat hanging easel for Joseph plus graduation regalia and BYU jacket later.

 So, all in all a fun day...

Wow. Can you tell by my writing today that I am exhausted? It has been sort of a hectic week with Joseph handling bedtime duties solo every day since Sunday, since I have had meetings and other obligations keeping me away every evening from about 6:30 until 9:30. He has had a lot going on at school too, being in the midst of coordinating five professors' schedules for his dissertation proposal.
Speaking of goings on at school, Emily's school nurse called me today. I was immediately worried about my little four-year-old, out there alone at school. The nurse reassured me that everything was fine, but Emily had managed to staple clean through a fingernail in her adventures making a paper purse. The staple had hooked behind her nail, which must have been painful to remove. She now has a really sad looking cut behind the fingernail of her index finger on her left hand. But, she was happy to return to class with a band-aid and an ice pack and was pretty excited to show off her wound to anyone who would look.

I feel like I am dragging anyone reading this down with my weariness, so I will head to bed now. Look for a more upbeat post in a couple of days!

Artist in the making

Emily is our little artist. It started with this picture. Since then, she has loved to draw. She sits happily through church if she has enough paper and a good set of crayons. This little lap desk she got for Christmas has gotten a lot of use.

Today she spent her time creating art work for me and Joseph's bedroom door, since a picture we had stuck up there earlier had fallen down and never been put back up.

The girl with the crazy hair is the (beautiful) princess in her castle. I think the little blue guy is an alligator in a moat, and the green is foliage for camouflage.

After putting that picture up, Emily noticed how bare Caleb's door looked and made one for him.

I don't know why she writes backwards sometimes. It's pretty weird. Cool dragon though.

This is on Emily and Elinor's door.

Caleb really believes that those two kids are him and Emily. Close enough.