Go Hop On Pop

While cleaning the main floor bathroom I notice that the mirror had lost part of it’s mirror-i-ness due to cleaning for the last 20 years. After many years of watching HGTV, I consider myself a bit of a remodeling expert (insert sarcasm here). Everyone on pinterest is doing it, right? So I took that mirror down to see how much damage was done to the wall behind it. Lucky me, no damage. I set it in the hall so that I could go get a new mirror. Dan was afraid it would break in the hall so he moved it… and broke it. So lucky me, there was no going back it was a new mirror. I bought a new mirror, brought it home, hated it, so I decided the counter-top had to go. I think you can see where this is headed. When all was said and done, bringing down that mirror resulted in a whole new bathroom. Let me tell you $84 for the Costco toilet was the best money I have EVER spent. 2 trips to the store for a light, 2 trips for mirrors, paint, toilet, faucet and of course a new granite counter-top and sink and the room is now my favorite 15 square feet in the house. Thanks to my fabulous husband and his new found remodeling skills, he is the best. Too small of a space to get a great picture, I still need to touch up the paint on the walls where the sink banged it up going in and put one more coat of paint on the cabinet.

 

Fireflies and summer go hand in hand in Ohio. They are amazingly fun little bugs, that provide hours of entertainment.

 

 

Had a great evening as a family watching/listening to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Watched a massive lightning storm all across the sky on the drive home. Bracing for a 180 mile long storm system with 80 mph winds, expected to hit in about two hours. We may not get much sleep…

The girls have been very into fairies recently. They spent all afternoon under the maple tree building a fairy house with friends. This picture was taken right before bed, Aubrey and Alyssa had to run back out and check on it one more time. If you ask them, they saw a fairy fly in and out!

See the swan on its nest behind the stylin’ girl?

Link to Deseret News article describing our views on marriage:
Mormon Parenting: The conjugal and revisionist views of marriage

 

 

 

Grandma O sewed the girls brightly colored dresses, they turned out so cute.

Let’s wrap Spring Break up in a nice little photo bomb. Plans changed at the end of our Spring Break with a surprise visit from Eva and kids. Cousins make everything exciting. We took them with us to Hocking Hills and hiked for hours, lots of stairs and cliffs made it even more exciting. We had a picnic lunch and were freezing, I worried that it would ruin the whole trip down there. Once we started hiking we all warmed up and had a great day.

Saturday morning we got up and took care of some chores and shopping and then colored eggs, had an egg hunt. Painted nails, braided hair etc… Eva lovingly referred to me as a drill Sargent, but we got through everything. Emma and I snuck off that night for the YW conference. We stopped by Chipotle for dinner. When we got home and opened the garage we found Eva standing in there hiding eggs. She made me hide 108 real eggs for Easter. Yikes, I would have never attempted that with church being at 9:00 the next morning. So we woke everyone up at 6:00 am and found all of the eggs but 1. It was found later after church.

On Thursday we had a photo scavenger hunt at the zoo. Emma and Aubrey partnered up, Tanner and Alyssa and Danny and I teamed up with little Hallie. They had a list of 24 things they had to find and 1 animal couldn’t be used more than one time. Some things on the list were an animal sleeping, longest tail, animal that starts with the first letter of your name… They had 1 hour to complete their list. We met back at the merry-go-round. Tanner and Alyssa won with the most complete, but a few of us believe he cheated, not so much cheated as he interpreted the rules different. Emma and Aubrey got the most creative and accurate interpretation of the rules. Hallie won the craziest picture, a picture of a monkey eating poo. I wont post the picture–really gross.

Hallie at the zoo

 

Hocking Hills

 

 

 

 

 

Blowing out eggs with the girls

 

After so much excitement last night, we awoke to 3 inches of snow. Not the end of the world we knew it was coming and we don’t anticipate it staying for long. It was the sounds of someone vomiting that killed the buzz of great day. Aubrey is sick, and old enough to understand what that means for her Spring Break. Looks like plans are going to have to be altered a bit. Sigh…

 

Again, no Hallie pictured. She was sleeping because she was up multiple times in the night.

 

Notice in this picture of sick Aubrey she has a note on her dresser telling us what she wanted in her crepe for her breakfast in bed. “No cream cheese” is what is says. Poor baby, she was so excited and now is too sick to enjoy it.

 

 

 

I have spent all week torturing the children. See spring break is this week, and due to it being so close to Easter and a huge snowstorm we decided to do a stay-cation. Only I told the kids that we were having a Spring Clean-cation. I carried the story to the very end, even printing up spring cleaning check lists for the kids to follow. They rebelled and shredded the check lists on my bed tonight. I just smiled and told them they would be eating liver and onions for a week and sent them to bed. It was all in fun, they knew I was up to something, just not sure what.

After the kids were all in bed, I went downstairs and blasted some music. They were all puzzled and came down the stairs to see what in the world was wrong. There sitting in the living room was their Stay-Cation Survival Basket. It included their itineraries for the week. It was also loaded with new sunglasses, soda, gold fish crackers, and candy (all things banned from our house). Candy isn’t always banned, I just don’t buy it often. Here are their reactions.

You can look at our itinerary here:

Staycation Itinerary 2013

Poor little Hallie, she was so exhausted tonight she was asleep in the 5 minutes it took me to go downstairs and get things ready. She will have to learn about our week tomorrow. Kids are back in bed, and I’m hoping for a week full of fun and adventure.