Mobile Moments March 2011

I know, it's almost the end of April and I'm finally getting around to doing my mobile moments for March. My excuse is that I got a new phone so I had some pictures on my old phone and some on my new phone and ....well you get the idea.
Here's March's adventures.

It has been getting warmer and we have been enjoying life outside.
Anna loves to do sidewalk chalk. I guess having a basketball court is good for something.

Anna loves to spend time reading about our favorite place in the world...Disney World.

We were glad to get our taxes done. BLAH!!! Glad to mail those off.

Grandma's house is a fun place to listen to stories with cousins. I am glad that they don't spend the whole day running around crazy. Thank you books for giving us a little bit of quite time.

Anna is a great helper in the kitchen. She loves to help make bread because she likes to play in the wheat...something I never did as a kid. Much less messy than playing in the flour.

With March comes St. Patrick's Day. And with St. Patrick's Day comes flying leprechauns on brooms.

Anna is always making funny faces and loves to play with her Minnie Mouse.

Anna loves to read books. Lately she wants to read MY books. I was looking through a cook book one day and she took it because she just had to read it. Silly girl flipped through every page. Nothing looked good I guess.

We had a wonderful 68 degree day. It was SOOO nice. I can't wait until it stays warm.

Nicholas is getting so cute. He loves to smile for the camera.

Anna learned to play Twister with her cousins. They didn't really get it, but they sure had fun stepping on the dots.

Someone, we won't name any names, decided to be really helpful and throw socks all over the floor instead of helping to match them like they usually do.

Anna has discovered that many things can fit in the swing. Blocks are fun, you can fit a lot of blocks in the swing.

We have had fun playing with Nicholas's hair. Don't worry I didn't leave it like this.

We still spend lots of time listening to stories.

Scrubbing potatoes has become one of Anna's new jobs. She doesn't mind, she loves having an excuse to play in the sink with the water turned on.

Anna loves playing the piano. It is fun to be working in the kitchen and hear Anna in "playing" the piano.

I couldn't resist the temptation to buy Anna a dollar set of paints. Now when Nicholas goes down for his afternoon nap Anna will look at me and say, "Can we go paint now?"

Nicholas and I spend lots of time hanging out together. I've gotten really good at putting things in the oven, without putting him in the oven.

There are many times throughout the day that I "lose" Anna. I just don't know where she went!

Anna got a set of blocks for Christmas when she was one. I love that she still plays with them on a daily basis. You can do so many things with blocks. Who needs dolls, give us some blocks!!!

One of Anna's new favorite places to hang out is the stairs. She fits pretty nicely.

Nicholas just hangs out most days.

Devin and Anna love to read books. I'm glad we have great places to snuggle up and read.

I still can't cut bread. Someday I'll get a cutting board that has lines on it so I can cut my bread evenly.

I like to wrap Anna up like a burrito and she likes to try and get out. Great fun!

We splurged and bought Tangled. We don't really buy movies, but this one we just had to own. It is such a good show. I love it when Anna turns to me and says, "You comin' blondie?"

Anna got a new dress from Marthe. Anna calls it her Cinderella dress. She loves to wear this dress to church, but keeps asking for something to go in her hair and she wants glass slippers to wear with it.

Nicholas successfully "blew-out" of all of his clothing when we were at Grandma's house one time. He is one happy boy when he doesn't have any clothes on.

Anna and Liz love playing together. If you ask Anna who her best friend is, she usually says Grandma or Liz.

I've been having more time to quilt, which is nice. Anna loves to play with the scraps of material. She made train tracks one day. They are pretty cool looking.

By the end of March my flowers were starting to come up in my yard. It has been so much fun watching stuff pop up. I planted a bunch of tulips, so the daffodils were such a great surprise.

And there my friends is March 2011. Good times!

Daddy Time

Devin is a great dad. It is no wonder that Anna and Nicholas love spending as much time with him as possible.
Devin is so nice to let Anna play with his phone. (I never let Anna play with my phone.)

Anna loves to help Devin with projects around the house. Here they are pruning the peach tree.

Nicholas enjoys his Daddy Time too. I like this picture because it looks like they are talking about whatever Devin is programing.

Daddy Time is great fun! No matter what they are doing, it is always more fun with dad.

These are just cute random pictures of Anna wearing Devin's hat.

Our Little "Talker"

Nicholas has started "talking."  He is constantly talking all day long.  As you can see from the video, he has a lot to say.

Nicholas has also become a grabber.  It is really cute to watch how he looks at things and then does everything he can to get them into his mouth.

The poor giraffe doesn't realize he is about to be attacked.

Nicholas is so proud of himself when he finally picks something up.  He waves it around and usually ends up bonking himself in the face.

He is about as cute as they come.

Good Bye Mr. Dishwasher!

When we were looking to buy a house we knew that there would probably be things that we would need to repair and replace. We knew we wouldn't find a "perfect" home, and we were ok with that. We have a savings account for "home" things. We have made a list of what we would like to repair and replace in our home. It is fun to talk about what improvements we would like to make on our home. And it is fun to save up for those things. We know that some things are fun things that would be nice to do and other things are really important and need to get done as soon as possible. Enter exhibit A...

Hate is a strong word, but not strong enough for how I feel about Mr. Dishwasher. I knew when we looked at the house that this guy was old and not the best, but oh man if I only knew. Devin and I have both lived in places with cheep dishwashers, dishwashers that have been used and used and used and that are on their last leg. This guy makes all of those dishwashers look great. My biggest gripe was that no matter how you loaded the dishwasher, no matter how you thought you had anchored stuff down, everything would get flipped over. Ok, not everything, but a lot. Not just plastic stuff either. We took a picture of a classic flip job.

See the orange cup completely filled with water. That is just one example. I learned that you need to unload the bottom rack first and then unload the top because so many things were filled with water that it was impossible to unload it without the water spilling on the bottom.
I won't go into all the other things we hated about Mr. Dishwasher. It did not take long to move "replace dishwasher" to the top of our "home improvement" list.
We have been looking around and finally made the big purchase last Saturday. Did you know a dishwasher would fit in the back of my Subaru? I didn't, but it did. Devin had fun ripping the old dishwasher out and putting the new one in. Anna of course had fun helping.

After .... a while, and some good instruction reading, we now have a new QUIET dishwasher that cleans dishes, and well...makes all my dishwasher dreams come true.
Thanks to Uncle Sam for the nice Tax Return and our new friend. We love him!

Cross It Off

My To Do List this week had "Catch Up on Blog" written down on it, and I'm going to cross that one off! Here are a bunch of little random things.
Pam gave us a whole bunch of tulip bulbs last fall. I got most of them planted. Picture if you will, 8 month very pregnant Julie out in the dark planing tulips. Laugh! I'm sure I looked funny. Needless to say I didn't get all of them planted. Devin gave me this cool tulip bulb jar several years ago. You can put bulbs in it and force them to grow. It was a fun way to cheer up the "we are so sick of winter" blues.

Here is our little cook in action. Making bread. I love how she puts her toast in the bread pans and then shows me how she made bread.

Legos + Trains= Hours of Fun. (And some pretty cute pictures of Anna too!)

Many times a day, things get really quiet. I wonder where Anna is and what is she up to. Most of the time I find here doing some "quiet time" reading a book. She really "reads" the stories. It is so cute. I need to get it on video, but I love listening to her so much I don't want to miss any of the story.

The highlight of the week for Anna is to go to Nursery. Last Sunday she was sick of waiting around for 1 o'clock church to start and so she went and put her shoes on and announced that she was ready to go to Nursery.

Nicholas is really figuring out how to use his hands. He loves to touch and feel things. He especially loves his little puppy.

Here is another cute picture of Anna's "funny fingers."

Nicholas HATES his car seat. He usually screams and cries anytime we put him in it. We have been trying different toys that might make him happy. We finally found that just plain chains make him pretty happy. He still cries at times, but I actually made it to my mom's house without any tears. Hallelujah!!

There you have it. Cross off Blog from the list.