Concerning the bunnies...

They all hopped away out into a beautiful meadow where they will live happily ever after. That's my story and I'm sticking to it because I definitely have a 5 year old who can read and would be crushed if she found that the story ended any differently than that.

HOWEVER, when I told my children this story, Ainsley said in a very exasperated voice, "Mo-om, the Easter bunny would not bring us bunnies just to have them hop away."

Ummmmmmm.......

Also. Aaron and I overheard this conversation tonight between ainsley and abbey in the back seat...

Abbey: " Ainsley, once I got a stomach virus, and it was the first time I had ever thrown up."

Ainsley: "I had a stomach virus too and I threw up 11 times but then I took a bath in the morning and i felt a little bit better."

Abbey: "And that medicine you put in your bottom is CUH-RAZY, cause it just disappears!!"

Our Easter...

What a day! As I was browsing facebook this evening and seeing everyone's family Easter pictures, I had one thought..."Oh crap. I did not take one single picture of my girls in their easter dresses." So, you'll just have to take my word for it. They had Easter dresses. They were super cute.

So what was I doing this morning instead of taking pictures of my perfectly styled children? Well, Easter morn found me (once again) running around in my back yard in the pink robe and fake uggs. And it's possible I still had the towel turban going. I can't really remember. ( I think I'm having a revelation about why our neighbors keep declining our dinner invitations)

Why, you ask, would I be doing that. Well, let me just tell you. I was standing at the kitchen sink washing my hands, and staring aimlessly out the window, when something caught my eye. At first I thought it was one huge critter. Then I realized it was a bunch of little critters. 6 baby rabbits to be exact.




Every hole in our yard is filled with water with all the rain we have had. So, I'm assuming that their little nest was flooded. I couldn't just leave them all huddled in a pile in the rain so I fixed them a little laundry basket house so they can hopefully stay dry.

The girls are beyond excited about our little Easter blessings and we let them hold one. Here's hoping this turns out better than the bird's nest.



In other Easter news, i went shopping for Easter shoes to go with my Easter dress and came home with these...





Someone save me from myself.

We really did have a great Easter. It was a wonderful day spent with family (I even got to hug my parents for a few seconds :)). We are blessed :)

A story and pictures that have nothing to do with each other :)

Last night we went to a scholarship dinner. We took the girls. Abbey started the fun with a break down about 30 seconds after we walked in. She recovered in time for the entertainment portion of the evening which was a sweet, sweet family from our church singing a few songs.




Alivia apparently thought someone said karaoke night cause she sang "flower gleam and glow, let your power shine, make the clock reverse..." every time it got quiet. (That's from Tangled for all you who are unschooled in the most recent kids movies) We made it through dinner and I even managed to deny abbey permission to carry her dessert plate to the table on her head, all without a scene.



We ended the evening on a high note with Alivia announcing to every one at our table that she tooted. Numerous times.





And then a sweet, old lady said, "What lovely children you have!" Actually she said that before the karaoke and the tooting. So, maybe given the chance, she might have taken it back.

The bird update :(

Well, it's not good news. I thought things were going great. The parents were sitting on the nest, the eggs were looking good, mom and dad bird got used to us being around and wouldn't even fly away when we came near them. And then something happened...I'm not sure what. It could have been the youth group coming over. Bless their hearts. It was like the paparazzi outside a rehab center. what with all the yelling, and picture taking, and trying to get close. I can't blame them. It was pretty cool being that close to a bird sitting on a nest. I may have also taken a few pictures. But I did not yell. I had to keep some sense of decorum.

Anyway, after that incident, the birds were spooked pretty easily and would fly away. And it probably didn't help that we were using a table saw about 15 feet from the nest either. But, aside from the spooking easily, things seemed fine. And then I went outside one morning and mom bird was gone as well as one egg. I searched high and low and could not find the egg. A few days passed and the bird parents did not return. And then the second egg disappeared. And honestly, I was trying REALLY hard not to think about what type of critter could have gotten up there and taken those eggs. Until a few days ago when Abbey and Alivia were practically tearing the blinds down to get a better look a the "black squirrel" that was walking across our yard.

I'm sorry, what??!! Black squirrel? Sounds like a skunk to me folks. So I'm mentally preparing myself for my first real "kill" to be a skunk, now that I have a gun and everything. Except that the skunk is going to have to come into the back yard for me to shoot him. Because I am not going to camp out in the front yard with my bb gun. I have neighbors. They think I'm normal. They do not know (i hope) that yesterday I was in my backyard in a super fluffy bright pink robe and target uggs perfecting my bb gun shot on a my little pony and a piece of sidewalk chalk.

I'll leave you with a picture that I took of ainsley a few days ago. I love it because it is totally her. I have a really hard time capturing natural pictures of her. She really likes to fake smile. No faking here :) She is just having a good time :)

Just doin' what we do...

So Aaron and I had some unexpected alone time on Sunday. His parents took the girls home from church leaving us with the whole afternoon to ourselves. So we did what any 31 year old couple would do and went straight to Academy and bought a BB gun. I believe my exact words when aaron asked me what I wanted to do were, "I need to shoot something." It's been a long couple of weeks friends.

After some debate on which gun to buy (aaron wanted the gun that looked like a machine gun and I wanted the pink one) we compromised and came home with a fab little weapon that is not pink nor does it resemble a machine gun.

We set up our target and went for it.



After a while we got bored with the target and decided we needed to raise the stakes a little.




Bless her heart. See that wood splintered right above her head? That was my first shot...deadly accurate people. She had no idea what was about to happen to her. It was Aaron that finally brought home the bacon, so to speak.

You can see where he hit her right on her booty and knocked her off the fence. You will all be glad to know that she is back at home in the sand box no worse for the wear :)

The answer to my question and a small rant...

We have a answer! My sweet cousin Kim at Wallace Family was kind enough do some research. Here is what she found...

"I have wondered too! SO, I did a quick interent search and apparently you are to respond individually to the person (via email usually). Since I personally know all the commenters on my blog, that is not a problem. If you have random commenters, you have to click on their blog/profile and find their email (which sounds like a big pain to me). At this point I get 0-4 comments-usually 0-per post, so this doesn't seem like a hard task to accomplish! :)" -Kim

AGAIN!!! I can't get out of italics!!!! Blast. Anywho...thank you Kim :) Now we can all be polite bloggers...at least when it comes to responding to comments. I have a feeling this is just a drop in the bucket people. And just to get it out there...I am not good friends with Mrs. Manners. I think my mom still is a little worried about showing her face in public because it's possible that I did not finish my graduation thank you notes. Or my wedding thank you notes. Or my baby shower thank you notes. And while I'm on the subject...graduations and weddings are one thing. But honestly, could there possibly be a worse time to have to write and send thank you notes than when you have birthed a child. Let me just tell you. No. There could not. Having said that, I also need to be fair and say that my life has been furnished by showers and our Lord in heaven. So, I am absolutely grateful for all those things. I honestly just wish my face to face "thank you so much" at the shower was sufficient.

Those Scurvy Rabbits!!!!!

I don't even know. But that is what Ainsley said as we were looking at the damage done to our sad little garden. I took the following picture AFTER we put the little fence up around the garden. He was just sitting their, looking at the garden, all fat and happy with strawberries and green peppers in his stomach, wondering where his next meal will come from.


No doubt it will come from the flowers I just planted in the front yard.

My family has a long standing feud going on with wild animals. Sometime i will have to tell you about 1. the bird in my house 2. the racoons that threw a brick on my dads car 3. the armadillo that ran around my parents neighborhood with a rake impaled in his back and 4. the mouse that me, aaron, and my mom tried to catch in my parents kitchen. I will go ahead and tell you now that my sole contribution to the mouse episode was standing on the kitchen table and screaming like a little girl.

Blogging question....

Apparently, there is blogging etiquette. Who knew? Clearly not me. I generally don't concern myself with it because this is a pretty small operation I'm running here. I do wonder this...When someone comments on your blog, do you comment back right under their comment on your own blog? FYI: If you have left a comment that you feel needed a reply, that is what I have been doing.


Totally unrelated:

We have a bird of some sort that has taken up residence on our front porch. I think it is a dove. I'm pretty much obsessed with it. Momma has laid two eggs and she and daddy sit on them ALL day. I can't wait for them to hatch! Potential names that have been discussed for all members of the bird family....aaron, siley, rapunzel, and flynn. I will keep you updated on all fronts.

I'm like the Golden Corral of the blogging world...

I've got a little bit of everything tonight and none of it is that great. I know, I know. I'll be here all night :)

First...I have just barely dipped my toe into the waters of homeschooling. One of my biggest fears since deciding to homeschool has been that I will be responsible for teaching abbey and alivia to read. That is serious. I mean, if you don't get that right, you are up a creek without a paddle. Ainsley learned to read in Kindergarten. I have wondered if I could get away with sending them all to Kindergarten so that they could learn to read with the help of a reading expert. And then I could take over. But Abbey had a different plan. She has been driving me crazy (in a good way) with questions like, "How do you spell..............What sound does this make.......what does this word start with...what does t, h, e, spell,....and my all time favorite, "You tell me what this book says and then I will read it."

So, what the heck. She's ready, I've got a book. Let's see what happens. And she is doing AWESOME!!! We have really been working on it for a couple of weeks and she is able to read some very beginner level books. In case you are curious...this is what I am using and what I think about it...

"Teach Your Child to Read In 100 Easy Lessons" - I know a
few people who have used this book and really like it. I think it is pretty popular right now. It is phonics based,lessons are about 15 minutes long, and it is scripted out. Like, tells you EXACTLY what to say. For someone who was nervous about this endeavor, that was a good thing. However, I tried using this book with abbey a few months ago and followed it word for word, and it was BRUTAL. She was bored, I was bored, and there is this rhyming section in each lesson that I just never got the hang of. And I had every word I was supposed to say right in front of my face. So, I put reading lessons on hold. Then when she started showing interest again we got it back out. I'm doing it totally different now. I don't stick to the script. In fact, we can usually do 2 lessons in the time it was taking to do one. That is due to the fact that we skip a lot of stuff. Like the rhyming game that neither one of us understood, and the writing section, and anything else that gets to repetitive. I use it as a guide as to which letter to introduce next, I love their method of sounding things out, and I like the way they teach the rules.

The other book in the picture (Reading Skills) is just your basic letter recognition, and letter sound workbook. But Abbey LOVES to color and it has a lot of coloring pages in it. So that is my way of giving her a little bit of a reward at the end of a lesson. She gets to color, but it is also reinforcing a letter or sound we just worked on.

And finally, the Bob books. I love these. They were recommended in "The Well Trained Mind" and they are great. I love them because they are about as simple as you can get but they are still in book form. We are talking one word sentences. Mat. Mat sat. Cat. Cat sat. Cat sat on Mat. You get the idea. But Abbey loves them.

Second...

Every monday night we host a high school bible study at our house. One of my friends brings her kids to the bible study and then she watches my kids so that I can sit in the bible study. They usually just hang out in our room and watch a movie. Well, tonight was no different. They were watching Tangled. Ainsley is a little bit afraid of a few parts in that movie. I had warned my friend, C, that Ainsley might leave the room or act scared. After bible study, I asked how it went. C said, "They did great! But Ainsley was going in your shower during the scary parts." Well, that in itself was funny enough, but then I walked by the shower and saw this....


That my friends, is The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Just a little light reading while she waits for the scary part to be over in Rapunzel.

Third...






The girls had their annual art show at preschool. They always decorate cookies for the parents. But who are we kidding? I was lucky to get these pictures before the girls inhaled them :)


Hope everyone had a great Monday! :)