The Kitchen Wall

I've had the large blank wall in my kitchen forever.  Every once and a while for a holiday or birthday I hang stuff on it, but for the most part it is bare.  Some of the paint had been taken off in patches and I had no touch of paint to fix it, so I finally decided to do something with the wall.

I went for a mudroom-esque feel since I don't have one of those.


Stage one:  Bought this cubbie holder at IKEA for shoes.

Stage 2:  Convinced Derek to paint a blackboard wall for me

 Stage 3:  My dear friend Becky helped me cut and nail framing around the chalkboard wall.  Derek hung me some hooks for backpacks and also it seems toddle boys to hang on.

 Stage 4:  My awesome friend Nancy Pierce charges me only $20 to make a vinyl week calendar, menu, and quote ("Every Child is An Artist" - Pablo Picasso).

 Stage 5:  My amazing Step-Dad George hangs some wire shower curtains complete with clips (also an IKEA find) for Liv to hang all the loads of pictures she creates and is always wanting me to display.

 I LOVE how it turned out.  A few random pics of the kids because we can't post a blog without an up-date of the kids.  This is like 6:45 am one spring morning.  Liv woke up and put on her snow boots (as she has no rain boots), grabbed an umbrella and was enjoying the rain.  6:45 am!!!

 Returning neighbor friends home after a play date.  How many kids can you fit in a wagon?  Probably one or two more--right?

Easter 2014

Easter was kind of fun this year.  The night before Easter, Liv honestly didn't want to go to bed she just wanted to keep talking about the Easter Bunny.  I got all kinds of questions.  Where does the Easter Bunny Liv?  Do I get to see the Easter Bunny?  Is it a boy or a girl?  Man...I wish I knew more about this Easter Bunny.

Baskets were pretty symptoms Liv got princess bubble bath, Cheetos, purple peeps, and a mini children's primary song book which she now brings to church every sunday as her "scriptures."  The boys got:  some sunscreen, some pouch applesauce, some blue peeps, and some board books for church.  Mom- the new blender, Dad- the screen for our french doors off the kitchen.

We opened baskets before church, and the Easter bunny left an Easter Egg Hunt during church.  Liv's Easter egg hunt was maybe too hard.  The boys were not all too interested in hunting for eggs but Liv was happy to step in and help with that.  

At church, I sang with the choir and the primary kids sang a song.  Then, Liv and I and two other mothers and their daughters sang Beautiful Savior with the choir backing us up with ooohs and ahhhs.   We had been practicing this song for weeks and all the girls did so well to learn the words.  I wish I could have been in the audience to watch Liv.  Derek said she sang so loud and knew all the words.  So maybe while dance isn't her thing, singing may be.  Here is the audio that someone took of the event.  It's not fabulous, but the loudest kid you can hear, that's Liv:

Beautiful Savior

After Easter Egg hunts, Tyler Thorsted was kind enough to come over and take some family photos for us.  It started out kind of disastrously because just as we were about to take pictures Liv came upstairs in her full Princess Elsa get-up.  There were all kinds of tears and bribes to try to get her back in her Easter clothes.  We finally did, but she wasn't too happy for any of the pictures, neither was Camden, or Derek for that matter and Carter was just sort of neutral as usual.

Then, after the fact all the kids got the Peeps we were trying to bribe them with and that's when we got the best pictures of them.

Liv changed back into the Princess Elsa ensemble and graced us with "Let It Go."

Liv's Dance Recital

I mean it may be too early to really tell these things, but I'm not going to lie I don't think dance is going to be Liv's strong suit.  Nonetheless she was still so excited for her dance recital and is sad that dance is now over.  They danced to two songs from Frozen (so of course she was excited).  Sadly, she missed dance the week before the recital due to hand, foot, and mouth.  And, the whole class had kind of a rough go because their first teacher who was teaching them dances to completely different music was pregnant and got put on bed rest half way through the class.  Then, the rec center was closed for two weeks and they didn't have dance.  Then, they had various substitutes until they were finally given another instructor who couldn't even make it the night of the recital!

I was so pathetic and had to watch a tutorial online to learn how to do one of those dance buns.

We practiced a couple days before and it turned out ok, but then the night of the actual recital I didn't even have time to do her hair because had to leave work early as it was to pick the kids up from Carolyn's and go straight to the recital.  Luckily Carolyn had braided her hair so it was off her face and we called it good.

The first dance they did was to Love's An Open Door and they had these cute black tutus and long pink gloves with a feather ring at the top.  Couldn't get Liv to sit still for a good picture.

The next dance they did with another class to Let It Go.  You could really tell which class had a consistent teacher and which class was ours.  Here's Liv's cute class sitting on the stage. 

And Liv.  They even were supposed to throw the crown just like Elsa does.  Liv's favorite part of the dance, but she sort of forgot to do it on the night of the performance.

We took video of both dances.  Our kid is the one standing front in center belting out the words to both songs but not really dancing.

After her recital, Grandma (who was way more thoughtful than me) gave Liv a single red rose.  Liv was sooo excited.  Still not sure what she enjoyed more about the recital. The dancing or getting to watch Aladdin in the back room while waiting for her turn to go on stage.

Hand, Foot, & Mouth Disease

We had a week long battle with hand foot and mouth disease.  All of Spring break we spent home trying not to spread it to everyone else.  We had to cancel a lot of fun plans.  First, Liv got it.  At first I wondered if she had strep.  She had a fever and her mouth looked so red, but she wasn't complaining that it hurt.  Then, i noticed white spots.  I did a strep test.  It was negative, but I decided to start her on Amoxicillin anyways because I wasn't sure what else could be causing this fever and throat to look like it did.  Then, the next morning she started getting red bumps on her hands, feet, bum (it should really be called hand, foot, mouth and bum disease) and the throat started to look more like the sores typical of hand, foot, and mouth.  Bummer!  Antibiotics won't do anything for that.  I was really hoping the boys wouldn't get it.  But...

Camden had it a few days later, and then the next day Carter started showing symptoms.  They all followed the same pattern.  A fever, then two days later bumps and sores at which point they didn't want to eat and screamed in protest if ever they swallowed something when hungry forgetting how bad their throat hurt.  The worst thing was that everyone was in the not eating stage on different days, so I felt like I was making double meals for everyone all day long.  We would make breakfast, then later smoothies, then lunch, then smoothies...you get the picture.  I made a lot of smoothies.  Here are the cute boys drinking smoothies.

  It sent my 10 year old blender from our wedding to its death.  Fortunately, this necessitated the purchase of a much nicer Blendtec from the Easter Bunny.

To top this all off.  Thursday afternoon when I'm thoroughly exhausted from dealing with crabby sick kids all week Derek comes home feverish from work.  I admit that I literally had no sympathy left for him.  He pretty much laid in our room ignored and fevering all night.  The next morning, his throat sure looked like strep.  I was thinking it would be strep since typically adults don't get hand, foot, and mouth disease and if they do it is generally very mild.  He was honestly the sickest I've ever seen him since he had mono 11 years ago when we were dating!  I sent him to my office to see Dr. Preston for a strep test, it was negative, but he was started on antibiotics while we waited for the culture.  The morning they were going to call us with the culture results he started getting red spots on his hands. 

The whole dang house had hand, foot, and mouth.  Everyone but me.  Everyone felt so bad for my poor sick family, but honestly I just kept thinking what about me?  That was the worst!  Honestly, once they got past the fever and I put them on mostly a liquid diet they sort of ran around like normal healthy kids with spots.  All except Derek that is, he was practically on his death bed!

The good news on the health front is that I took Liv to get retested for her peanut allergy because she had had a few encounters with not reaction and she is officially peanut allergy free!  Yay yay yay!

Grams Turns 80!

Grams turned the big 80 at the end of March and gave my family a reason to gather.  All my siblings and Dad met out at Grams' place in Arizona to celebrate.  We left on a Thursday night after work and drove as far as Vegas.  That night we stayed at Uncle Nathan's to Olivia's delight.  Then, we forced Uncle Nathan pretty much against his will to squish into our car for the remaining 5 hour drive to Glendale, Arizona.  Liv loved having a seat mate, the boys were neutral and Nathan didn't complain regardless of his feelings on the the matter.

The kids were overall really good.  It is a bit of a struggle to entertain the boys for these long car rides, but I brought and read tons of books and bought a bunch of new exciting snacks and would throw random toys back for them to play with.  It was exhausting. 

We arrived at Grams' place on Friday (her birthday).  Immediately Liv put on her swim suit and wanted to go swimming.  We forced her to wait until the hot tub was at least heated so we could warm up because the pool was pretty cold.  We all went to sushi, well, all except Derek and the crazy boys.  Derek was a saint and stayed back at the house trying to entertain the boys.  They watch a duck swim in Grams' pool which was obviously very entertaining.

Then, when the rest of us got back we finally got in the pool to the over-anxious Liv's delight.  It was cold!  But, you numbed up pretty quickly.  Liv stayed in the pool swimming for nearly 20 minutes.  The boys hated it and immediately were moved to the hot tub which they loved.  When Liv finally decided to join the rest of us in the hot tub she realized what she was missing.  Thank you Aunt Kylie for catching some cute pictures of my kids.  I honestly took hardly any photos the whole weekend.  I felt like I just spent the entire time trying to keep the boys from destroying Grams' house.  Here's Carter posing

and Liv in the new dress that Lynn and Poppi got her.  She has worn hardly anything else since.  Every day it's this dress.  I finally got her to let me wash it today.
 
That night for dinner we had a traditional Rowe Family crab feast with Grams' famous cole slaw.  We shipped the crabs in overnight from Pikes Fish Market in Seattle.  They were delicious.  I was so glad Ky and Nay got these awesome pics with the birthday girl.
 


That night I stayed up talking to Ky until 2:30 am since she was only in town for a short 24 hours before flying back to Reno.

The next morning, would you believe that they first thing Liv wanted to do was go swimming?!  We made her go on a hike instead while we waited for the day to warm up.  Grams and I did a 2 mile flat loop at the base of a mountain (right by where the new Phoenix, Arizona temple is being built) while everyone else did a hill hike.  We didn't bring a back pack for Liv, but I guess she hiked up the entire mountain, then Derek carried her down because we were kind of in a rush to get Ky to the airport.

Then, of course we went back to the house and went swimming again.  This time we heated the hot tub just to 85 degrees.  It was perfect for warming up, but not too hot.  Everyone enjoyed the pool a little bit more that way.  Here's Liv sitting by the pool after the swim enjoying the nice weather and a gingerale. 
 
I always remember feeling like Grams fridge was magical because no matter how many sodas you drink your favorites always seem to magically reappear.  It was the same way this time.  Here are the boys in shorts.   Cute chubby legs in cute shorts.

We attempted a somewhat fancy dinner at a restaurant that night always crazy with our kids.  Then, we all went back and watched Saving Mr. Banks.  The next morning we set off for home.  We fully intended to stop in St. George and stay the night, but by the time we got there it was almost bedtime for the kids.  Instead, we stopped at Nick and Sonni Lyman's for a couple hours till kids were ready for bed and did the rest of the drive with the kids asleep.  That part of the drive was fabulous (11 hours in one day)!

In other news, Liv has hand, foot, and mouth disease.  What a fun way to spend Spring break (this next week)!  She's been pretty energetic despite being sick, but has had fevers and hasn't wanted to eat much due to all the lovely sores in her mouth.  I don't blame her.  I think she is actually loving it because I am letting her watch all the movies and tv shows she wants and making her milkshakes upon request.   I just really hope the boys don't get it.

It was conference weekend.  Not sure I heard much of anything with all the crazy kids in this house.  Oh well, I can always read it later I guess.