Category: Uncategorized (Page 55 of 201)

Have you heard that people with blue eyes are more sensitive to bright light?

I admit I had once believed that was totally untrue, but then I married Tim.  And lo, and behold, it IS true.  He has to have sunglasses wherever we go–in fact there have been times where we’ve had to stop and buy some if he’s forgotten them and it’s exceptionally sunny.  When we were first married I just thought he liked wearing sunglasses.  But over time I’ve realized that it’s actually kind of painful so the sunglasses are more of a necessity.

Which brings me to Josiah…

He has very blue eyes.   And he’s young enough that he can’t quite articulate that it’s hard for him to smile and look at the camera if it’s too bright outside… so we end up with lot of pictures like this:

Poor boy!

In fact, if you look back a couple of days at the post with the picture of all 4 kids, you’ll notice Josiah’s hand up (like a salute) and I asked him to take it down and he said he had to have it up to block the sun.

So, we learned a valuable lesson.  We need to take pictures earlier in the day.  We also need to invest in a nice pair of sunglasses for him.  I expect to have the same dilemma with Levi because, if possible, I think his eyes are even more blue than Josiah’s.   At least we’ll be more prepared when Levi is older!

Chloe and Josiah are continuing piano lessons (with me, of course!) and doing well.  If I haven’t mentioned it before, Chloe has gone through many phases of the “I don’t want to play piano” and then cycles back to the “I love piano and wish I could play that song I heard so-and-so play” and in between hits the “I’m indifferent towards piano so I’ll go ahead and practice without complaining.”  I’m quite certain this is normal.  Overall Chloe is progressing fine.  She struggles with keeping her counting between eighth notes and quarter notes steady.  We’ve actually started having her play a rhythm game on my phone to help with recognizing rhythms and keeping a steady beat while she taps them.  We’ll see if that helps or not–she just thinks it’s so fun to be able to use my phone.  She has a friend in her grade that just passed her in the books and she’s bummed.  But I did point out that he practices about double the minutes that she does and that’s what happens when you practice more!  🙂

Josiah has finally started to dwindle in his amazing over-enthusiasm for practicing and learning. Don’t get me wrong, he’s still more eager than Chloe, but I accidentally left him on the same songs for over a month (during contest season–I spaced giving him a lesson for over a month!  Yikes!) so he got bored.  No wonder really.  But now we’re starting to get back into the groove and his eagerness is returning.  He’s learning a song called “Taco Fiesta!” for the recital that he thinks is so cool.

And of course, Maddie Mae is always trying to sneak into the studio to play on the piano.  I’m hopeful that she’ll enjoy playing someday.  For now she sure enjoys being a big girl and climbing up on the bench all on her own and playing.  She does a really nice job of playing with her fingers more than just pounding.

We tried to take a picture of the kids this past weekend since we’re going to have a  busy Easter (Tim and I are going to see a show at the Orpheum–more on that later) so we probably won’t get to do cute dress up pictures.  So after church I tried to get a picture.  My first mistake was trying to do this on my own.  It’s really a two person process these days.  Seriously.  Maddie didn’t smile once.  Not. Once.  Although she did look at me a lot… whereas, Josiah spent a ton of time smiling, but not actually looking AT me.  And then Chloe’s hair kept blowing in her face and Levi was overly tired…

So, this is more of the reality of the picture:

This totally makes me laugh.  This is real life people!  I love how Maddie is waving at someone on the street.  So sociable all the time!

Anyway, it was still fun to capture a picture and remember this time in life.

(Oh, and as soon as we were done with all 4 kiddos Maddie was a smiling machine.  Of course…)

On Friday Chloe had a fun dress up day = “dress like what you want to be when you grow up.”  Unfortunately she didn’t alert us to this until Friday morning… during the frenzy of getting ready for school.  It then became less of what she actually wanted to be when she grew up and more of what items do we have that could easily become an outfit.  And thus the Librarian was born.

I actually think it ADORABLE.  And she embraced it since she genuinely loves to read.  See?  So. Cute.

Well, this little drool monster finally cut his first tooth this week (on the bottom).  I just love how when he sees you or you talk to him, his eyes light up like you are the most interesting thing in the whole entire world.  It’s mesmerizing.  He’s also discovered his voice in the past 2 weeks.  He’ll now sit and babble at you in a “normal” voice.  It’s so fun.  I’ll have to see if I can get a video of it… videos are hard since there is SO. MUCH. NOISE. all the time these days.  😉  At least most of the time it’s happy noise.

I’m way behind on posting lately… so here are the pictures from Josiah’s Art Fair back before Spring Break.  He had so much fun walking Tim around the “Museum of Art” showing him all of his creations.  My favorite is the program cover…

He really thought that was a hoot.  He loved being an Artist.  Here are a few of his creations.  (Notice the dinosaur name.. ha!)

In case you can’t read it–it says “Josiahosaurus”

Keep in mind this was our first attempt at it.   I did fluff out the curls you see above after I took the picture.  We’ve gotten better since then. Not so much flat space at the top… and we also learned to not use mousse b/c the curl comes right out.   Chloe LOVES her hair curly.

We had a busy semi-fun filled Spring Break here.  Some of the highlights included:

• Having a picnic while watching a movie at suppertime
• Painting part of the main floor (it was meant to be touch-up painting that turned into 3 days and 3 trips to the paint store and a whole lotta work.  Did you know our main entryway is THREE colors of taupe.  Seriously… who does that?)
• Helping Watching Tim work on the new patio out back
• Sprucing up the front flower gardens, complete with new mulch and everything!  This “small task” turned into a 5 hour project with multiple trips back to Lowe’s for more mulch… apparently the space was MUCH bigger than I thought.  I was sore that night.
• Trying a new heatless hair curling product on Chloe.  Pictures to come tomorrow.  It’s so much fun.  You put them in her hair wet and she sleeps on them, then you take them out in the morning and you have curl city!
• Watching Fantastic Beasts & Where to Find Them!
• Trips to the Library

And then I got sick on Saturday… nothing serious.  Just a dumb cold that settled in my throat.  So, I have spent the last couple of days wiped out.  Yesterday morning I went back to bed for an hour and a half nap when the kids went down for their morning naps.  I really needed it.  I’m feeling better today, so hopefully by tomorrow I’ll be feeling like myself again.

I’m off to upload a bunch of pictures now!

Yup–today is the first official day of Spring Break here.  It doesn’t really start for me until Tuesday, because I still teach today and then I’m also teaching Monday as a make-up day… but Chloe gets to be home, so it feels different.

The biggest news here is that Levi is transitioning to a longer schedule throughout the day, so we get to all enjoy supper together at 6:00.  The big kids think it’s so cool that he gets to sit and eat with us.  I really need to try and take a picture.  It’s definitely a full table!

In other news Chloe had her music informance at school this week and Josiah had his Art Fair.  We took pictures, but I need to get them off the camera…