April ketchup

April Ketchup, I mean April catching up.

I feel kinda like a bum for not posting so well in the last bit. Not sure what I can really attribute it to except maybe laziness. Instead of working on the blog after the kids go to bed, I'll just watch a sappy movie with Duane, or The Office,  or actually, I have been working on my new website design and photography prices as well! Check it out here.

Earlier this month, I broke down and purchased a train table and extra train pieces on CL for Kalvin and Tristen's remote control train. I thought that by having a table designated for the train (and four bins that slide up under the table as well, that the train would not be so bad to have around and that the kids would keep the pieces in the local area. So far, it's been pretty close to just that, so the train has come upstairs once again after being in the dungeon for months and months.

It's been fun playing with it the new train pieces and actually, I took every other toy downstairs to the furnace room and after 3 weeks of just train toys to play with everyday, the boys have rarely asked for anything else. I will admit that they have since brought up the basket of guns upstairs and a couple collapsible tunnels, but it's all been very manageable in keeping the house in better order. 

Surprisingly enough though, even with the lack of cleaning up toys I've had in the last 21 days, I still have not made time to keep up with my laundry. In fact, it seems every time I sit to start folding a mountain of clothes for my once-a-week chore, I think to myself, "If I don't want to do so much laundry, I shouldn't buy as many clothes." I really don't think I buy tooooo many clothes (though Duane may disagree), but the boys do have enough that it seems like an all-day job when I do get around to folding the mound. I easily get overwhelmed with cleaning, so if I didn't see such a large pile of clothes to fold, I would probably fold them sooner and in turn get less overwhelmed. And if the mound were not very big in the first place since the boys would run out of clothes sooner, I would do the laundry more often and overall feel better about myself as a housewife. Moral of the story is: when you see a good deal on a piece of clothing for your child, consider the repercussions.

Back to the trains. The boys love them!

Just after buying the train table we came home, put Tristen down for a nap and then Kal helped me put the table together. We had a good time piecing it together, together.

  It took all of Tristen's naptime to figure it all out and put together a cool train town. I imagine the train and table with stick around for decades to come. It really is very cool! There are many different stations, like a lighthouse that makes ocean and bird sounds when you drive under it, a docking station for the remotes that makes sounds specific to the engine you're using when you turn the train engine off and on, an exploding mountain and several others.

We have all been loving the beautiful weather (relatively speaking) the last few weeks. Last week our highs were in the 40's, but tomorrow there is a high of upper 70's. When the weather is nice enough that the snow hass melted (40 degree's outside or not), we hit up the parks! So, at least once a week, I've been tracking down friends to meet with at the park. Kalvin loves playing with his friends outside and we have been blessed with having two other boys Kalvins age in the branch!

This is Elm Avenue Park. We went there with Duane one afternoon, grilled some chicken, ate snacks and of course played on the cool wooden castle playground!

 

 We were playing as the sun was going down, so you'll notice a lot of sunflare in the photos, my fav!

 Poor little guy had a burning bottom from a poopy diaper and had just finished a screaming session with Mom as she wiped his sensitive cheeks.

 What's with me and black and whites with this post? I'm just on a B/W kick, I guess.

 

 The next week we went to the Crossings Park. Check out there site so see how awesome this place really is! It's about 8 miles away, but worth the drive if you can get there early enough to beat the crowd. I think just about every day, there is another school bus of kids that show up to this place.

I love this picture of Kalvin. It looks like he's floating. I had asked him to jump off on three and I guess he hadn't let go of his hands yet. It looks like he's posing in air.

 Sunflare!

 This is my friends little girl, she's just the cutest little thing!

Some days I'm not so great at watching the boys closely while they play with the paints. These days, this is how they end up looking after a few moments alone:

 I'm pretty sure that Tristen started the mischief and Kalvin joined in, at least that's how they usually play the game.

 Little stinkers! But I can't help but laugh as I take pictures of them in their Indian paint.

So, I've been searching for months on CL for a two twin beds for the boys. I came across one bedroom set that had the bunk/separate twins for $150 total. I'm pretty sure I was the first in line to contact them, but as we talked back and forth and after visiting their home to look at the bedroom set, I was made aware that the family was mostly interested in selling it as an entire set and that there were many people waiting in line till after we looked at it to come take away the whole bedroom set, so after "humm"ing and "haaaaing"ing, we decided to take the whole thing.It really is a very nice set and I hope to keep it all for a very long time.

You can see in this picture the bunk twin beds, complete bedding set, night stand dresser, tall standup dresser, and red rug.

 This red quilt is very nice and I really like it, but I think it cost too much for my liking. I may sell both red/jean reversible quilts. They were asking $60 for the both.

 We may also get rid of the shelf and night stand as they were asking $35/each and although they are very sturdy and well built, I'm having a hard time justifying the price right now.

 As much as I enjoy my quiet time, it can be a little eerie as well.

Desitin. Gross mostly because you can see him sucking on his upper lip.

Happy Easter to y'all! Sometimes we wonder and this year we did as well, why we choose to dye Easter eggs with the kids. I know that they really enjoy it, and really, if I could go back, I'd probably do it all again, but goodness, it can be quite stressful. We started dyeing the eggs with the clothes on and then when Kalvin knocked over a cup of dye all over himself, me, Tristen and the cloth chair he was sitting on, we had to strip them down to their undies.

Kalvin wrote his name on this egg, but only got to the letter "i" before he ran out of room.

 I love that Kalvin enjoys wearing hats, he looks good in them :-)

 And Tristen really just loved dunking the eggs in all kinds of colors!

I always enjoy seeing Duane's creations with Easter Eggs, Ginger Bread Houses, and Pumpkins, because he is so thoughtful in his planning.

 After dyeing all the eggs, Tristen dropped an egg so we let him peal it open. (Do you just love how his body is colored in dye? And his fingers!) Good thing it came off so easily. I thought it'd be stained for a week!

 After pealing and taking a nibble, Tristen decided Kalvin could eat the egg.

 Some girls in the branch put together an Easter Egg hunt at a local Elementary school playground. Since school was out for April Break, we had the playground to ourselves! Can you find Kal and Trist?

 

McKenzi did a great job of keeping the kiddos entertained with games till the eggs were all hidden.

 Run! I love that all the boys are in the front.

 Followed by the girls...

 Our friends, Sommer and Yashar's family were able to make it to the hunt as well. We had a good time chatting.

  You know, if you could only see his fingers, you'd still know that this is a boy because what little girl would have finger nails this dirty?

My goodness, I just discovered that I've deleted all our family Easter pictures from my camera! Time to go to Duane to plead for a rescue in saving our Easter pictures!

Still to come, picture from our primary activity the day before Easter: Journey to Know Jesus and some big news from our family!....!!!!