Maddy's alter ego....

Maddy went to a birthday party on Friday where they acted out the play "Slurping Beauty". There were only girls, so a few of them had to play the men's roles. Maddy was "Prince Alarming"...which seems so fitting after seeing the makeup below...YIKES! She informed us proudly that she spoke with an English accent during her lines....we then got a full demonstration of her Prince Alarming voice. Nice. I do love that Maddy is willing to do pretty much anything and doesn't often get embarrassed...she certainly didn't get that trait from me. That is all Tim!

Throwback Thursday

So this little game was invented by my cute cousin, Candy (if you haven't checked out her awesome bags, pillows, baby stuff...on and on...scroll down to my "i spy" section). Every Thursday you pull out an old photo, post it, and give a little explanation. So...here goes. This is one of my favorite pictures of Jace. He is about 18 months and we are camping at Mill Hollow (I'm sure all the Edward's cousins have stories about that campground!). I needed this sweet face to offset the one that follows.

This is Jace the same summer at Thanksgiving Point. Two things are very apparent in this picture:
1. Jace is in desperate need of a haircut
2. He is really, REALLY happy about something...thus the major crinkle nose smile that is going on...which by the way, I absolutely love!

things that make me smile

So the weather this week has been beautiful! I spent all day yesterday raking the grass, and sore arms and farmer's tan aside, it felt great to finally be out! Tim bbq-ed hamburgers and we had dinner in the back yard...Tim even put up the hammock (more for himself than the kids). This morning, my first daffodil opened up...appropriate since today is the official start of Spring! Which is the reason for Smile #1.

Smile #2 made me laugh out loud. Laityn brought home her leprechaun paper yesterday. When I first glanced at it I read "I am going to set up a crap. I am going to put in gold". Nice. Of course what she meant was "I am going to set up a trap" (she sounded out trap ch....rap--which if you say it out loud actually sounds right). Yeah....you're sounding out chrap right now and thinking "huh...it really does say trap". Tim and I had a good laugh...this is one paper I'll be saving.

Hope you all enjoy your first day of Spring!

How do you catch a Leprechaun?

With today being St. Patrick's Day, my kids came home from school filled with tales of leprechauns, pots of gold, and rainbows. Carter came looking for a "big bowl" ..."Why?"...."to build a trap and catch a leprechaun!" He enlisted Lady and Jace as his helpers, and they went to work. After nearly 2 hours of work, they called for me to come see.

There is nearly an entire roll of tape holding those straws together, and keeping them stuck to the pan. The plan of catching goes something like this:
1. Arrange straws to prop up pan
2. Run string to various toys/books that will fall and wake you up (to see the leprechaun)

3. Tie string to vial with real gold (Carter panned for this gold during summer camp).

4. If falling books aren't loud enough to alert you, falling Legos will do the trick!

5. Hopefully, you will catch a leprechaun. If not, he should at least leave $5 in the trap to let you know he was there.

They were all so proud of their handiwork. In fact, it was the best stay-in-bed trick ever! I reminded them that if they didn't go right to sleep, they would scare the leprechaun away. They were asleep within minutes...too bad we can't catch leprechauns every night. And although they will not likely find a real little man in their trap, I suspect they will find a shamrock shaped note left by their friendly neighborhood leprechaun, Lenny.

FYI

When I opened the freezer this afternoon, everything in the door had thawed...WHAT!?! We unloaded everything to the big freezer in the basement and started calling. Turns out, some regulator blah, blah, blah had burned up. That was the source of the smell in my previous post. So now I am very curious....Did Jace really put a crayon in the dishwasher? Or did he just know he wasn't supposed to push the buttons and so he went along with all my questions and made up the whole thing? He is sticking to his red crayon story...I'll probably never know for sure...but I tell ya, the constant breaking of everything in my house lately is going to make me crazy!

..crayons are my worst enemy...

Yesterday I came downstairs to help Laityn get a game started on the computer. I left Jace upstairs coloring his paper airplane. I was just getting ready to come back upstairs (it had been about 10 minutes) when Jace came down and said he was done coloring his airplane. As I came upstairs, I started to smell a really strong burning electrical-ish smell. Hmmmm....just slight panic set in. I turned off the heater....no smell in the furnace room. I checked every outlet, light, appliance, vent....trying to find the source of the burning. I opened my doors to see if it was something outside....nope. I brought Jace back upstairs and asked him if he had touched anything while he was coloring. He admitted to pushing some buttons on the dishwasher. Hmmmm....why would my two week old dishwasher make a smell like that? I called my mom to get her opinion and see if she thought my dad should come up and take a look. I requestioned Jace, asking if he had put something in the dishwasher. Bingo! He showed me he had opened the door and put a red crayon down through the holes where the water comes out. Then he had closed the door and pushed every button in order...the last button is the heat/dry button. So now I'm thinking there is melted crayon somewhere inside. Tim pulled the inside apart last night and we found nothing....we are hoping it was chewed up in the built in disposal. When I asked Jace why he put crayon in the dishwasher he said "I was just playing a game". When have we EVER played the lets-put-crayons-in-the-dishwasher game? That boy better be sooo good when he grows up!

Maddy's Locks of Love

Tonight, at approximately 7:05 p.m., Maddy officially cut her hair...10 inches to be exact. She confessed later, "I was kind of nervous to cut my hair and it felt so weird, but good weird." Mads heard about locks of love from a friend at school. She decided last week that she really wanted to do this, and she bugged me every day to please call Trina (she cuts all the hair in our family...Lindsey, Nicole, me, all the cousins...we're keepin' her rich!) I called Trina this morning, and she squeezed Maddy in tonight so she could surprise all her friends at school. Maddy is convinced no one will recognize her.

I think Maddy looks beautiful! And I am so proud that she chose to do something so sweet, all by herself.