Sunday, March 29, 2009

Welcome Spring!






You know it must be spring in the midwest when on March 28th you get more snow than you got all winter! It was, however a perfect day for sledding. We even decided to take Mary Emma. We put her in the little backpack carrier, and atached her to Jacob. So much for thrills, though, she slept the whole time. We did manage at one point, however, to get all five of us the sled, and we thought the extra weight would make us go really fast but in fact it only made us sink and go really slow. If look closely, you can see each one of us.

After sledding we decided to come home and build a snowman. The snow was quite wet, and so it was perfect packing.







And so here we are with Elder Frosty, the perfect end of a perfect spring day . . . well maybe not a perfect spring day, but certainly a unique one.







Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Immunizations and Tornadoes



Yesterday Camilla had her five year old "school" shots and Mary Emma got her first round of baby shots. I was really impressed with Camilla that she didn't jump off the table at the first prick, but patiently allowed the LPN to give her three more with hardly a complaint. However as we waited the mandatory 20 minutes in case of an adverse reaction, her temper flared. "I don't every want to get any more shots, ever again!!!! OK MOMMY!!!" Poor thing, she has one more to go in six months, but then she's done till she's 11. Well, I explained to her that without the shots she could die (with Jacob in combat zones, we talk about dying all the time), and she decided she didn't want to die. Afterwards, we went for the traditional ice cream, that I remember getting after my school shots. Jacob was hoping I was suggesting the half hour trip into Manhattan to go to Dairy Queen, but no such luck, I opted for the five minutes away Sonic and the dollar menu. I gave Camilla the day off from school expecting her to be lying on the couch in agony, but I was quite mistaken:

As you can see, the wind was blowing quite fiercely yesterday, and continued to get stronger as the afternoon progressed. With Camilla not doing school, I decided to actually spend some time downstairs with my sewing machine. Ironically all three kids were downstairs with me, when the phone rang, Hyrum wasn't quick enough to get it for me, and it rang again. "Honestly Jacob," I thought, "can it be that urgent." Well, the tornado alerts were going off at Ft. Riley and the Commanding General was releasing the entire post to go home, or to get in the bunkers. I wasn't too uptight, I hadn't heard the alarm here, but he did finally convince me to go outside and look at the sky.

Well to me it looked like a pretty standard stormy sky, but from his perspective at the top of the hill it was a picture perfect midwestern thunderstorm sky. Oh well we didn't get any tornadoes, just a few shingles in our backyard from our neighbor's roof, and some hail, but the threat was real. And so I guess if polio, measles, mumps, and rubella, etc. won't kill ya, tornados might. Welcome to Kansas!

We Love Duplo Blocks!





On Saturday Jacob and the Kids decided to try and build something using all of our duplo blocks. This was the result, with the exception of the wheeled pieces. However, by the end of the day the building was on wheels and was being driven all over the up stairs.

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

They Grow So Fast

This is Mary Emma yesterday.
and

This is Camilla when she was a baby.
It seems so hard to believe she is five!



Camilla's New Job


Thanks to Jeanette's 25 Random things about herself, reminding me of days when we stomped on cans and watched them fill that old garbage can by the side of the house, I thought "hey, that would be a good way for my totally self motivated oldest daughter to earn a little cash." So, on Saturday complete with a bag tied to the stroller and hand sanitizer we set out to see if we could find any cans. Well, as far as I know and have seen, there are no homeless people in Junction City. I honestly don't mean to make fun of the depravity of other people's lives, because they do a great service in keeping our earth beautiful because of the need for ready cash. Well, because no one else is doing that service, you would be surprised to see how many cans there really are here. Jacob was appalled, and almost couldn't look when our little five year old Camilla would come bounding up to us, completely elated, holding a beer can that was spilling on her shoe. "She will live; it's good for immunity," I said, as he was already handing out the hand sanitizer (and he's the one in the Army!) Anyway, just from our walk we picked up 20 cans. Camilla talks about it all the time and can't wait for us to get enough so that we can take it down and turn them in for money. Five year olds are frustrating to say the least, but they sure are fun.
Just for Jacob, it is 12:34.

Friday, March 13, 2009


Here we are!

It is currently 1:00 AM and I'm finally getting my blog up. My goal was to get it up this week, and so here we are . . . exhausted hoping this baby goes to sleep soon.