Cabella's

While our family is definitely not a hunting, fishing, camping sort of family we do enjoy an occasional trip to Cabella's.  While it is quite a bit further to Cabella's here than it was for us in Utah we decided a few weeks ago to make the drive to the closest one for a Saturday outing.   (that decision may have been heavily influenced by Jake's desire to look at and handle a particular gun that he had his eye on, but we did have a fun day although mom was completely warn out by the end)  The general idea of Cabella's was still the same, but the displays of animals were quite a bit different from what we were used to.  Pretty cool though.  First the African safari display had this massive elephant that was really cool.  We were trying to imagine how you would get that from Africa to the United States.

Ashton and Abbie both had a lot of fun looking at this display while Jake and Lexie were looking at guns.  

Ashton liked the rhinos,

and Abbie liked the baby zebra (until she figured out that the lions were trying to eat it and it's mother)

This was part of the big display right in the middle of the store that we walked all the way around.  Ashton read every sign identifying the animals and Abbie had fun trying to find all the animals.  

Abbie likes to crawl into every display that she can, and I took this picture of her in this sleeping bag because it is probably as close to camping as she will ever get with our family.  

And there is Lexie in the corner with her new best friend.  The phone she has had for a while, but only recently has she been able to text.  And boy does that girl ever know how to text.  

Toothless Joe

So if I hadn't been hiding out under a rock these last few weeks I would have taken this picture 3 weeks ago and posted it then, but better late than never right?  Ashton lost one of his front teeth and then about 3 days later he lost the other one.  He pulled the last one out all by himself.  I was amazed that he did it by himself, but then again I wasn't, he can be pretty stubborn when it comes to certain things.  Anyway it was really cute listening to his lisp for the first few days as he learned how to talk with a big whole in his front teeth.  Now the new teeth are already growing back in, but I had to get a picture before it was too late.

It's Somebody's Birthday

Happy Birthday to Lexie.  I can't believe that you are 12 today.  We had a rather low key celebration today.

She opened a few presents and we tried to have cupcakes (but I burned them, or the stupid oven did) we will have a bigger, better party next weekend when Jake is home.  (It seems like Jake always ends up having drill on somebody's birthday)  

Easter 2012

So I have finally clawed my way out from under the rock that I feel like I have been living under for the past month with the help of a little white pill I am so fond of these days... zofran I love you.  Things have been going on business as usual around our house thankfully, without much help from the mom.  I am so glad that I have such great kids.  We had a whole week off of school for spring break and I had all of these great plans about what we would do with all of those days off of school.  None of them happened.  Well I guess that isn't entirely true we did go to the park one day and got some of the spring cleaning chores checked off our list, but mostly we just hung out at home and took things easy.  We did get our Easter eggs dyed one afternoon and that was really fun.

each kid gets a dozen eggs to dye.  Here are most of them.  

We made special arrangements with the Easter bunny to come on Saturday because of Jake having to work on Easter.  It kinda worked out better that way then anyway cause then all of the sugar rush was over way before Sunday and church.  I didn't get any picture of the actual easter egg hunt because we did it first thing and I was barely able to watch myself let alone take any pictures.  But the best thing the Easter bunny left us this year were these little mini green houses that the kids wanted to plant first thing after the egg hunt.  I did manage to get a few pictures of this....

first they had to get the dirt pellets wet and put them in the cup planters.

then plant the seeds.

Here is Ashton with the "boys" planter.  It has mini vegetable plants in it.  Tomato, cucumber, and pepper.  Jake helped him get everything just right.

Here are Lexie and Abbie with the "girls" planter.  It has flowers.  I don't remember what kind except for forget me nots.  Luckily for me Lexie helped Abbie and I didn't have to do anything but watch them have a good time and take a few pictures.  I was really surprised at how fast some of the seeds sprouted, some of the girls seeds sprouted the very next day.  

Overall we had a good holiday.  Too bad I didn't get more pictures....

Yucky Mess

So about a month ago on a day when the kids had a early release day (they get out of school 2 hours early) the girls were playing in the basement while we were waiting for Ashton to get home from school.  Out of no where Abbie came running to me while I was doing some dishes and told me that all of her big coloring books were wet and that "someone" had colored on the wall with a green marker, but it wasn't her.  I immediately went to investigate and found soaking wet carpet and mold.  YUCK!  I was so grossed out.  It was behind our big Ikea shelving unit full of toys.  We started moving baskets and baskets of toys so that we could move the shelf to see what was going on.  This is what we found.

don't you just love Abbie's description of the mold- coloring on the wall.  

So first things first we had to contact our landlord, no big deal except he lives in Vegas and can't really do anything from there.  He is great to work with though and got somebody here to look at it the next day.  After some confusion about which company was doing what we now have a huge mess in our basement which they are coming today to fix.  We had to let it sit for a while with a dehumidifier helping to dry things out.  Here is what we are dealing with now...

Luckily for us it wasn't as bad as it seemed at first.  There was only superficial mold all of the structural things were fine.  The plumbing guy said we caught it really quickly.  That made me feel better because I was thinking what a terrible housekeeper I must be to have let it get as far as it did.  Now if i could just get my house back to normal.  This is my test, patience. I can't do anything to hurry people along, it isn't "my" house and I am not footing the bill so I can't get anyone to work faster.  And my basement in a continual mess of toys that have no real home while we wait for it to get fixed.  Oh and the bottom of our shelves were wet and we had to try and dry that out too, so the toys couldn't be put back into it because it is propped against the pool table (not ours but came with the house, wish it wasn't there) drying out.  I think it is salvageable but not sure yet.  

What caused it all you might ask?  The value to the sprinklers outside has been leaking ever since we moved in and probably before that.  We blew out the lines in the fall and turned off the valve just like we should have, but it has been leaking all winter and freezing.  When it started warming up outside the ice melted and had no where else to go but into our house.  The valve got replaced and we should be fine once the wall gets patched up.