This week Isak and Lucy made some pictures by blowing paint with a straw across the paper. It was a lot of fun and Isak could do it pretty well. Lucy just fingerpainted and made a huge mess, which was fine since we can use our bathtub again! Isak likes to help me by putting away the silverware out of the dishwasher. I have made it is official "job" and after I take the knives out, he pulls up the stepstool and sorts it out in the drawer. I hope this is the first of many tasks he can take over for me. Lucy has been really into wearing her hat lately and will bring it to us yelling 'haat! haat!" until we put it on her head. She also loves shoes (such my daughter) and will bring them to us demanding we put them on her feet. Her favorites are the frog boots which we recently replaced with new, bigger frog boots that look just like her old ones. She will bring us cartons of milk and juice out of the fridge with a sippy cup and yell she wants a drink "in here!". She will drag them quite a long ways if I don't catch her and sometimes the milk is almost a full gallon. She's building some big muscles.

Annnndd she discovered how to pull out the chairs, climb on the counter, and attack the brownie batter. Now that is one happy face!

Ding Dong the Oven is Dead!!!!

A wonderful thing happened at my house this weekend. My awful, 70's, avocado green stove officially was laid to rest. Its days were definitely numbered and may it rest in peace in the pit. No more stuck cookie pans, no more cursing at my oven, no more burnt fingers and bracing myself against the counter to pull dinner out of the oven. Did I mention I got to help pull it out of the wall with the crowbar? Yes, it was very liberating. We were able to get a suite of appliances on Black Friday last year and they have been sitting in storage ever since, waiting for us to redo our kitchen. Since its probably going to be at least summer before we get to do the whole kitchen, I thought why not use the appliances now that we've paid for? They are just sitting there while I am cooking on 2 cookie sheets everynight to keep stuff from burning.

I made cupcakes today with the kids and BOTH PANS fit in the oven! I was so excited! Oh the little things you take for granted. We are going to put in the fridge too and leave the microwave hood and dishwasher till summer since ours work fine. We also pulled out the cooktop stove and threw that in the pit as well. Our bathroom tile is finished , just need to do some finishing work. I had quite the battle scars on my hands after the past few days but its totally worth it.
Its too bad real life isn't like HGTV and all your home renovations can't be completed in a day or 2.
Isak desperately wanted to make cupcakes today so we recycled our christmas plates and made some valentines cupcakes. A combination of holidays. And I found some willing people to take these plates for me so I don't end up eating 10 cupcakes, which is a very real possibility.

I am painting this mirror for our bathroom and Lucy loves to sit in front of it and talk and sing to herself. She truly is her own biggest fan. I am glad she has such great confidence at an early age. Hopefully it will carry on to her teen years, which I don't want to start thinking about just yet.

Isak and I made a fort this morning out of our new toilet box. We made Lucy an adjacent tunnel so she could hopefully be contained. Isak decided it was a rocket ship and cut out some paper to be his control panel. Boxes are awesome.

Getting my Isak to eat his vegetables is difficult. I will admit, I am not a super strict mom when it comes to this. He is rather picky, it is probably my fault and most of the time, I don't want to battle. I am trying to improve, get him to eat something green once in a while, but in the meantime, I have to improvise. I put spinach in his smoothies in the morning and whatever other pureed vegetables I want to dig out along with whey protein powder. I cover it with some orange juice and yogurt, and he can't even tell. I usually add frozen blueberries or strawberries or whatever else I have laying around in my freezer. I think I might start adding some flaxseed as well. He loves them and asks for his "shake" every morning. Lucy loves them as well, although, she is much more adventurous when it comes to eating compared to her brother. Anyway, I am always feeling like I am a horrible mother because I let Isak eat a whole lot of chicken nuggets and honey and PB sandwhiches. Knowing that perhaps I do one thing right in his diet a day makes me feel a whole lot better.

What a happy kid! He doesn't even care that his "shake" is a lovely green color today. How do you get your kids to eat whats good for them?

Lately we have been very busy with some home renovation projects. We are tiling our entryway/hallway and bathroom. So Kevin and I have been scraping old linoleum and cutting carpet out in our spare time. This week we (really Kevin and his dad) are laying the tile. Isak has been "helping" the demolition process, donning his safety goggles and snow gloves. I will post some pictures of the lovely before and after once it is all done. I feel like our projects in this house are neverending, there is always something to be painted or replaced or torn out. Like that oh so lovely green oven that is going to be in the garbage very, very soon. I think I might set it on fire and dance around it in my backyard.

Last week the kids and I spent a lot of time indoors going stir crazy. We did a lot of playdough, lots of bed jumping, dancing, painting and playing random games that Isak would request me to make up at a moments notice. I also spent quite a few hours being a bad guy, robot talks with green eyes, the eliminate guy, and purple spiderman. Yes, I was quite happy to get out to work last Friday afternoon for some adult conversation. I found a super sweet Rescue Ranger Castle for Isak at Goodwill for $3, I forgot a picture but he LOVES it. I got that and a huge bag of action figures for $4 and a Spiderman sleeping bag for $4. I don't know why I ever buy any of my kids toys new, they never know the difference! Lucy really loves to play with playdough and eat it as well. She also loves to paint and will bring me the paint bottles, yelling, "painnt! painnnt!". Tonight she was waving and yelling "bye bye!" to herself in the mirror and then running away, coming back, and doing it again. Such a crazy nut.

My brother Aaron got us this super sweet trampoline for Christmas and the snow finally all melted so we set it up on Monday. We still need to put up the safety net around it but Isak was so excited. He's been asking everyday for weeks if it was warm enough yet to have it up. They both love jumping on it and get really upset when I make them come in the house.

Lucy loves to sing. Its not always intelligible, but some of her recent favorites are the Cat in Hat Theme song from PBS and if your happy and you know it song from primary. On Sunday I was singing the latter with her and she grabbed some boxes of pudding and was clapping to the beat. She always makes sure to cheer for herself at the end :).

It has been pretty cold around here lately and the snow hasn't gone anywhere. I try to take my kids outside once a day unless its super duper single digits cold. I got lucky and have had so much family around lately, I have gotten out of this duty but I realized yesterday we were all going stir crazy since it had been a few days. Lucy was begging to go outside as well although I am not sure she knew what she was asking for, judging her reaction to the cold.

We were outside for probably 2 minutes when she started complaining "Im cold, I'm cold". and wanted to be held. Yes, she is not too tough that one. So I bundled her up in the stroller and Isak and I walked to Kathy's house. It was just what we needed to get out of the house and none of my kids got frostbite or any sicker than they have already been. We got a lot of weird looks along our way, Im guessing you don't see too many strollers out in snow. Although, it wasn't too bad and we really enjoyed our walk.

Those are trees behind my hair in that picture, I swear I think I remember combing my hair that morning.
Kevin and I joined the gym here in Othello this week so I no longer have to run outside in super cold temps unless I really want too. We also bought our tickets to New Zealand for this spring for our trip we have been planning forever. I am so so excited and now we are looking for motels to stay and planning our activities/sights while we are there. Kevin still knows some people there from his mission and it will be fun to meet some of them too.

Isak and "Big Bear" that him and Lucy got for Christmas. Its been added to his stuffed animal fleet that he sleeps with everynight. This is how we found Isak the other night in his bed. Loved the cross legs.
Lucy will be 2 next month and despite all her cuteness, she is no longer a baby, so I have been trying to be stricter with her and more dispilinary. Which really means, telling her no and making her give things back to Isak when she takes them. The video below will demonstrate how well this is going.....