Shaving Cream Painting

A little shaving cream in a muffin tin, mixed with some food coloring, is the perfect pallet!

The girls are excited to paint, which is great because little princess Norah doesn't like to do messy art type of things normally. She doesn't want to get her hands dirty. Once I explained that it was really like soap she was all for it!

I pushed the limit by "painting" Norah's belly. Surprisingly she was okay with that too!

Initially I thought it was a great idea to smear the "paint" in their hair... but then I started to get nervous since I had used food coloring and noticed some of the blue and green colors weren't washing all the way off right away. Luckily, their hair didn't stay tinted.

Daddy even came into the bathroom to see what all the giggling was about, and even got to smush some green paint on the girls' faces. (Notice how nasty the water was by the end?! We did NOT use this water to actually wash them up!)

Aaron is 2 months old!

Yesterday was Aaron's two month birthday! He had a doctor appointment today. He weighs 13 pounds 3 ounces and is 23 1/4 inches. His weight is 90th percentile and his length is 50th. Let me just remind you that Aaron started out at about the 15th percentile just two short months ago. He's gained 6 pounds and 6 ounces and nearly doubled his birth weight already! I loved the new doctor too, and I'm so glad we had someone here to give us a recommendation.

The Klemps were here for a short visit.

"Yeah, I know I'm cute."

"You wan' a piece 'ah me?!"

"Nah, just kidding!"

Wednesday and Thursday

Norah hopped in bed last night and went to sleep immediately... and that never happens. I kind of thought it was odd, but after so many nights of fighting them to sleep I thought she was maybe just so tired. Anyway, Maggie wasn't real happy about that since it meant they couldn't play around in their like they do so well. Maggie kept climbing on Norah's bed and trying to play anyway. In the end, after some tears in the doorway (we had to put the gate up now) she climbed in with Norah and went to sleep. So, like any good Mom, I snuck in and took a bunch of flash pictures! :) Oh, and Norah went to sleep so well because she was sick. She woke up early today and treated us to the puke show for a couple hours. On the bright side, she's feeling better and the girls are back to their normal bedtime antics as I type this up.

We've been working slowly but surely to get this place in shape. It's especially hard now that Tim's at work and we have such a limited time to work - just a couple hours after we put the girls down at night. I haven't been able to get much done during the day. Surprise of all surprises with three kids so little, right? I count it a good day when I am just able to keep up with the normal things and we're not all in tears when Daddy gets home. Anyway, this shelf was a project for Tim the other night while I worked on the toys in the basement. There is some shelving all across one wall in the unfinished side of the basement, but it's really flimsy and unsafe. I wouldn't feel comfortable putting more than cereal boxes on those shelves. Tim and I have made plans to fix that and he has the list of what he needs, but he'll have to go by himself to Sioux City to Lowes to get the supplies someday. For now, he used part of his shelving for the garage so that I could get the food out of boxes in the basement. He was so proud of the little grocery store he created for me and he even hung up a reusable shopping bag so I'd have something to hold all my "purchases." Haha... The majority of this food came with us from Fort Wayne. I know it took up a bunch of space on the truck, but that's less money we'll be spending here since it came from the Co-op at the Sem. and from when we were on WIC there (cereal galore, there are 10 more boxes on another shelf too). We've also made two trips to Sam's Club to stock up on non-perishable things we use a lot of. My favorite purchases from there are the huge bags of rice, flour, bread flour, and brown, white, and powdered sugar. I do love my baking! Since we have a deep freezer now we are also able to buy meat, vegetables, and cheese in bulk and repackage them into portioned sizes. I figured out that I saved $6 on just one bag of shredded cheddar cheese by buying in bulk over buying the two cup bags from a regular grocery sale (which rarely are on sale for less than $2 each). Sioux City has a bunch of Sara Lee Bakery Outlet stores too, so our first trip there I stocked up on $1 loaves of bread and bags of buns for our freezer (nope, no dessert type things). You know I love my organization, so I have already created a freezer inventory list to keep in the garage next to the freezer. It lists all the items and quantities we have with space to mark and change it when we take something out, which will help when we need to go shopping again and also aid in our using what we have and not forgetting some chunk of meat for months (or longer!).

Back to work! The girls aren't sleeping yet (7:46 pm), so we're finally going to hang pictures on the walls.

Happy 3rd Birthday Norah!

Norah's been saying since last birthday that she wanted a swing for her dolls. Well, ask and ye shall receive, right Grandma?!

I made a Princess Doll Cake for Norah (and an extra!) because she just HAD to have it. She's been obsessed with the Betty Crocker cake demo videos online lately.

The kids were cha cha cha-ing during the birthday song... Norah didn't like that at all!

Iowa Happenings

The morning after we arrived, the girls FINALLY got to play on the swingset.

Maggie can climb the ladder and do the slide all by herself!

We drove our family and friends over to Trinity in Anthon. What a nice welcoming message!

I think the girls like the carpet in the living room. They've been cozying up on the floor a lot more than when we had hardwood floors.

This picture represents a crazy weekend. We had 8 houseguests just a few days after we arrived, and 3 of them even were here since the day we moved in. Then 14 people from Tim's home church in Minnesota came for his Installation on Sunday. We had them over for dinner afterwards. It was wonderful, but completely exhausting! Now we need to finish unpacking and getting settled, which by the way would be a whole lot easier if we didn't have to go to Sioux City 45 minutes away to get all the little things we're finding we need!

Thanks to 2 of the little boys that came Sunday, the girls now think they need to wrestle all the time. Don't worry, Maggie can hold her own. She fights back just fine!

Okay, we've eaten a LOT of corn! The first 4 times Maggie didn't really want much to do with it, but this last time she got the hang of it. She nibbled and gnawed just about every last kernel off that cob and put my corn-eating skills to shame!

We bought a kite before we left Fort Wayne, knowing it was pretty windy up on our hill. Monday was the perfect day to get it out. You can see Norah got all her kite-flying gear on too, haha!

Apparently Norah's paranoia about balloons flying away also extends to kites. She freaked out and sobbed the whole time. :(

Aaron's Baptism July 31st

Sponsors Aunt Amy and Uncle Pete

Sponsors Jack and Jami Girardot

Poor Aaron was so hungry by this point. Most of the pictures include him screaming!

Only Aaron

Here's Aaron (7 week) all cozied up in Mommy and Daddy's bed. Just don't tell Norah he's got her bunny with him!

Looking like such a big boy in this outfit (7 1/2 weeks).

Aaron is 8 weeks old today. I weighed him on our scale this morning - 12.8 pounds. WOW! He's in 3-6 mo. clothes now. They fit great, but the legs of these pants were just a little long yet. Aaron is beginning to smile a lot more now. I still haven't gotten a picture of that, but hopefully I will catch it tomorrow... just as soon as I find the camera battery charger.