House #3 and Stuff

Aaron left Wednesday morning at about 3:30am. Yuck. We've been trying to keep ourselves busy around here.

I've mentioned our Do-A-Dots before...we still love them. Even Adelia. In this picture, she had purple Do-A-Dot all over her face. For kids that won't color with crayons, they sure spent a lot of time with these Do-A-Dots. Maybe it's all about finding the right medium?

Lincoln has been taking swimming lessons since the middle of January. He loves it, and I love that he has a place to channel his unlimited amount of energy. We go to his lessons twice a week. Aaron and I decided that swimming is an awesome life skill. For one, it's good exercise, so even if he somehow manages to not learn a single, solitary thing, he's at least getting exercise. For two, it's likely that he will learn to swim, and that is a handy skill to have. For three, if he really likes it and keeps going with it, it could lead to potential job opportunities for him in high school, like life-guarding or teaching swimming. Both of those would keep him out of the fast-food industry, and he probably wouldn't have to work on Sundays (if we still live in UT by then). But, if nothing else, it gives him an opportunity two times a week to go and learn something from someone else and to have a "classroom" ish, type experience. So ya, we'll keep doing swimming until he gets tired of it. In fact, since Ivan turns 3 in the middle of next session, he'll be starting lessons soon too. He's very excited.

This isn't a great picture, Lincoln is the one in the middle. That day in class they were learning how to get around the water in life jackets.

One day, I sent Linc into my bedroom for quiet time, while I put the other two down for naps. Usually, once the other two are sleeping, I'll go in and read a chapter or two out of our read-a-loud chapter book with Lincoln an then leave him to the rest of his quiet time. But when I poked my head in, this is what I saw.

I guess he was in the act of playing with the head lamp and fell asleep? I don't know, but he was totally out. He doesn't look very comfy though. :)

Friday, I met with our realtor (by myself!) and went to look at another house in Springville.

5 beds
3 baths (2 full, 1 half)
3600 sqft
.28 acre yard
built in 2007

I took a lot of pictures for Aaron, and tried to draw up a floor plan for him. My floor plan is not even close to scale, but you can get the gist of it.

The inside wasn't anything fancy, the walls were all plain white, the kitchen floor was linoleum, the carpet was low grade...but the walls and appliances and all that seemed to be in good condition. No gaping holes, no glaring paint, etc. I really like it. I think it has a lot of potential for us to make it ours. The floor plan is awesome, and there is so much space! And it has a big yard, and is within a 5 minute drive of Aaron's work. I think as far as floor plan and amount of space, and yard go, this one is my favorite. The location isn't as good as the other two, and I don't like the look of the outside of the house as much as the other two. But those seem like little things to me.

Anyways, we put in an offer. It's another short sale, so we'll see. The hunt continues.

Friday night, after stopping in Orem to put in the offer, we drove up to Hooper to spend a long weekend with my Mom and Kerry and Tanner. I always love going to Hooper.

This go around, my mom got me sucked into doing a fun Valentine craft using wood blocks, scrap book paper, mod podge, vinyl letters, and ribbon. When you're all done, you have four wood blocks tied together with ribbon and they say the word LOVE using a heart for the O. I was just going to help her make all the sets she was making for people, but then we were having so much fun with it, and I wanted to keep experimenting with different styles and colors, so Saturday morning we went to a construction site and took a bunch of their junk two by fours out of the dumpster. I ended up making 7 sets of blocks. Between me, my mom, and our friend Susan, we ended up making, I think, 24 sets of LOVE blocks. And I still have more ideas I like to try out on them, but we'll have to wait for another day.

The kids had a good time in Hooper too. We got them started on making their Valentines. My kids are nuts for glitter glue and stickers, so that's what their Valentines are going to be made out of this year.

My mom also gave the kids much needed hair cuts. Ivan was so funny/frustrating. He wasn't upset about having his hair cut, but he wanted Lincoln to go first, and when we couldn't find Lincoln and tried to cut Ivan's hair first, he had a complete and total melt down. And since you really can't cut a child's hair in the middle of a full-blown, arms flailing, feet kicking melt down, we didn't have much of a choice but to go find Lincoln and cut his hair first. Then Ivan calmed right down and was really good for his hair cut. Especially after Gramma Tam gave him the squirt bottle to squirt in his mouth while she did it. Anyways, that's why my mom starts laughing in the video when Ivan says he likes hair cuts.

One of the afternoons, I was sitting at my mom's computer checking my email. The sun was shining in through the window, so I couldn't see the screen very well. I stood up and shut the blinds half way, until a shadow was over the monitor, but the blinds were covering the window all the way so there was still sun shining in. I guess when I moved the blinds, it kicked up some of the dust on them, but I didn't think much about it, and sat back down at the computer. Lincoln walked in the room, and said, "Mom! What's that!", I was only half paying attention, so I said, "I don't know." without turning around. Lincoln stops and thinks for a minute, and then in a really quiet and excited voice he says, "I know what it is...those are Molly-Q's! Usually they're too small to see, but I can see 'em! I can see the Molly-Q's! Look Mom! Turn around and look at the Molly-Q's." I'm wondering what in the world he's talking about at this point, so I turn around and look. He's standing stiff as a board and staring wide-eyed at the dust particles that are floating around in the beam of sunlight. It dawns on me, that he thinks the dust particles are molecules. And I start laughing and try to explain that they aren't, that they're just dust. But he was 100% convinced that he could see molecules. 

Here's a couple pictures of the kids that my mom sent me from when she came down and stayed with them while Aaron and I went to see Brian Regan.