Easter fun and madness

Our big handsome boy.  5 years old....with a short baby tie on.  Nice going dad.

It shouldn't come as a surprise to any of you that Henry is crazy about candy and there has been a lot of it at our house recently.  This morning the kids woke up extra early and ate a ton of candy for breakfast, wouldn't even eat their eggs and had candy fits and meltdowns in sacrament meeting.  Henry left primary twice asking for candy from Justin and Bea was in a sugar low during nursery and didn't say a word or move, but just sat there observing all the fighting(someone actually drew blood today in a battle over a car) so I guess it was a good thing that she wasn't down there in the brawl. 

As soon as I said for Henry to put his arms around the girls this is what he did...and then they both cried.

We did have a nice little photo session today after church and we actually got all the kids smiling in quite a few photos. Finally!!! The girls are wearing their home made dresses and Henry is actually wearing an outfit that fits him! It's a miracle!

Henry wanted me to take multiple photos of himself eating the candy. 

We had our best friends/family over for dinner, watched a video from Easter three years ago and laughed our heads off and ate wonderful lamb steaks with middle eastern side dishes.  Yum, yum, yum.  Seriously, you would have been jealous of our meal.  Then we ate tiramisu for dessert(mormon style using Italian orzo, a wheat drink). We talked and laughed and had a wonderful time.  I just love my friends and family here and I'll be sad to leave them in a few weeks.

I made Henry button his shirt for the photos.  I love how it turned out.

Little Sponge

I am so glad for those moments when you realize your child is actually listening when you think they're not and when they're absorbing information when you think their brain is in outer space.  Last week we were in the Boston Science museum hopping from exhibit to exhibit not really knowing if he was taking in any of the actual science of the displays.  Henry and I ended up putting together a model of the human body and I told him a lot of things about what was going on with the heart and lungs and other physiology of the body and today while Justin was getting his blood drawn at home for a disability insurance quote Henry looked down at Justin's arm and told the nurse, "This vein is blue and that means it has no oxygen in it.  The red one is the one that has the oxygen." The nurse said to Justin, "oh, you must be a doctor or something" but Justin responded, "well, yes I am, but I didn't teach him that." Well, I have news for you.  I did!

Eggosaurus

These were a fun craft I found at Aldi.  I babysat three kids today who were the same age as my three so it was basically like having three sets of twins.  They were all boys too and were all super attached to their mom, which I'm not accustomed to.  When we leave our kids anywhere, they're like, "see you in a few days mom.  We're having a sleepover!!!" They have no attachment complex, which I am totally fine with.  Luckily they didn't mind being cuddled by me so we spent a lot of time on the couch snuggling and reading stories since they all wanted to be held all at the same time(not going to happen). Good thing they're all so darn cute!

As many of you know, I love eggs.  I make a ton of Easter egg crafts and Christmas eggs stuff and I love to eat eggs, in fact, I think I ended up eating four soft boiled eggs(my all time favorite snack) today since the kids didn't finish theirs and I was in heaven.  I put freshly ground salt and pepper on them from my gourmet pepper mix combo with red(I know they're not really pepper), white and black peppercorns smashed on a piece of toasted super crusty bread from my favorite bread store and I am in heaven.  That is up there with dark chocolate for me.  I really have to stop myself from eating eggs all day long.  Don't tell Justin though because he's convinced that the cholesterol in eggs is basically poison, which I don't believe at all.  Read all about it if you google cholesterol myth.  Anyway, I love eggs and so do my kids!

Hentropy

When I finally got the entire house clean, it was time to bathe the babes.  Here they are all clean, pink and smiley.

This morning I got up really late because I'm still recovering from still not getting any sleep since the kids are used to crying for water all night long and Clementine had a blow out that took a half hour to get cleaned up.  So anyway, I got up around 9:15, got dressed, found Clementine who had pooped all over herself again, so I gave her a quick bath, tidied up the upstairs and came down at about 9:50, ten minutes before this lady was scheduled to come over to give us a moving quote and I couldn't believe how horrible the house was.  It looked like a tornado had hit our kitchen.  Henry and Bea had been cutting stuff out all morning and had crumbled crackers all over the place, peeled string cheese, ate pasta, craisens, paper was strewn all over the place, markers were all over the floor and they had colored all over the table and spilled water all over the table and it was all underneath the table and there were still dishes in the sink from the day before, which I was hoping was the only thing I had left to do before this lady came and as I was standing there contemplating the mess, she rang the doorbell, like 9 minutes early!  I don't think anyone has ever seen my house that disgusting.  Not only was it cluttered, but it was covered in food and filth.  There was almost no place to walk around.  At least she was a woman and the upstairs was clean. 

Straight from Henry's Head

Henry and Wee-o digging for dinosaur bones at the Nat. His. Museum

Since we have sold our house and I'm not cleaning and organizing every day, Henry doesn't get to play Little Big Planet or watch TV anymore and his mind has gone into make-believe overdrive.  He pretends so many different things every day and creates elaborate paper objects ranging from Pirate flags, hats, full body armor, alien heads, and always gives me and Justin a present that says, "I luv yoo mom/dad, frum Henry".  Many times when I come downstairs in the morning he has a treasure hunt all planned out with either clues or a map.  The best part is that he treats me like I treat him when he can't find what I have hidden for him and starts talking to me in a baby voice, "can you see it mommy?, just look a little harder right around HERE" and basically points right to it.  Haha.  He's so creative.  He also writes and illustrates at least 10 pages of something every day.  Today he made me a drawing of me in "the savannah" with two trees, a lion and a giraffe that were amazingly cute.

Grinding corn Native American style

The other day when it was uncharacteristically warm outside we had some friends over and Henry and his friend Thomasin started digging for bugs.  Every bug they found was either mauled to death, drowned, or suffocated and every time they discovered that they had killed their new pets they felt really bad about it.  They they found a big worm they named Skipper that eventually died after also being drowned and they decided to have a funeral for it under our front yard mailbox.  They found a stone from the back yard and used crayons to color it and put stickers all over it.  Henry wrote a note to him and brought out a napkin, which supposedly his favorite blankie,  and tucked them both under the rock while they had his funeral. The mail lady drove up to deliver the mail and they told her the whole story and I could hear her from my window as she struggled to keep in her laughter.  It was so amusing.  We have also played vikings, dragons, dinosaurs, cowboys, etc.  I am really enjoying having a five year old.  He's so much more emotionally stable, is so sweet, tells me he loves me every day just out of the blue, kisses and hugs me often, takes care of his little sisters, is usually obedient, talks about Jesus and is curious about religious topics often.  I am so grateful for him and what he is becoming.  Just watching him being so proactive and independently interested in so many things is making me so excited to start seriously home schooling him.

Henry and Lucy having fun with phone games on the Culebra ferry