Shortest blog ever

I just found this pic in my files--the girls undertook this on their own and it was so helpful! They went through their list of orders, figured out who ordered how many boxes and of which kind. Then they made labels with the person's name and the amount of money the cookies cost. I was pretty impressed!

Cooky for Cookies!

We've finally recovered from two straight weeks of high fevers, coughs, ear pain, and not a lot of interest in eating. What revived us? A lot of prayer for sure. I might add that the arrival of Girl Scout cookies seemed to perk the appetites back up in the under 7 crowd :)

Cae and Gab helped me stock their cookie sales into the back of our van in the midst of a winter snow storm. At home, they counted and labeled all the cookies, so they knew who got what and what went where--all on their own! We still have a lot of cookies to deliver (don't tell troop leader Annie :) Most of all, they are so excited to go to Build-a-Bear with the girls! It was all they could talk about during their community service project last week. Caelan, bless her heart, is going to build a bear for Graysen--who didn't get one when Grandma Judi came to build with Bren, Gab, and Cae (he was too little). She is going to buy her bear a new outfit instead of building herself a new bear. Very sweet and thoughtful that one.

I've been wanting to post a bunch of the funny things the kids are saying, but I forget to write them down. Drat! One from Graysen this morning: Caelan and I went grocery shopping. At Trader Joe's they were giving away 1 lb boxes of chocolates and peppermint coffee (they don't do mark downs, so they give away special event items, these were from Valentine's Day). When Graysen saw the pretty wrapped box, he said, "Mom what is this?" I said, "It's a present for mommy." Stroking the paper lovingly, Graysen said, "Mom, remember we are supposed to share."

Every night Graysen needs to go potty as soon as the bedtime door is closed. On one recent occasion I told him he could go, but he better make it snappy. I hear the potty flush, the water run as he washes his hands . . . next thing I know, here comes Graysen--jive style--walking sideways around the corner, big grin on his face SNAPPING his fingers! "I snappy mommy." Oh this child! :)

Caelan decided she was going to start collecting Toys R Us coupons. Not for any reason in particular, just thought it would make a nice collection. Graysen observed her doing this and brought me a piece of advertisement that he found with the newspaper. It was bedtime, again, and he knew he should be in his room. But he also had a question to ask me, and he knew he might not be getting it quite right. Pointing at the ad, with a furrowed brow, he said, "Mom, does this have a poop-on?"

Hello Gorgeous!

I was astonished at how quickly Buck agreed when I said, "Can we maybe think about getting a new stove?" It turns out, this very thing was on his mind for about 7 months, and he'd priced even them! Had I known this, I would have spoken up much sooner! Ha!

The oven we had, came with our house. It worked, mostly, except when the ceiling fan was on (then it took twice as long for food to cook) and the broiler pretty much set the fire alarms off every time we "smoked" some fish :) But despite it's disheveled appearance and it's grease covered window that allowed no view of the cooking food--we worked with it. Until the burners stopped lighting. Yes, anytime I wanted to use a stovetop burner I had to individually light each flame with a match resulting in a somewhat alarming WHOOSH as the wafting gas caught fire. I cook, pretty much all of our meals. This was no longer working out :)

So, we ran up to good old Lowes. I have to tell you, we were thrilled to see our fridge/washer/dryer buddy at work that day! He directed us to a custom oven, intended for a lady's commercial kitchen, but not quite powerful enough for the purchaser's needs. It has six burners, including a griddle tray in the center which can be swapped out for stove top cooking or not. It's shiny, silver, and looks way too fancy to be in our "antique" kitchen. But our good buddy Adam not only knocked the price down for us, but talked to his up and ups and knocked it down even more! We basically got this pretty new cooking contraption, brand new, for half price. Throw in a gift card (which came as a promotion for purchasing the insullation we installed in December), and we were in business!

Once again, my burners light . . . my fridge (which I adore!) has a handsome new friend . . . and we've made another grown up appliance purchase. What fun! :)

The "eyes" have it

We just don't know what "it" is. Poor Graysen! He gets to looking like this on an ongoing basis, and we can't figure out what is bugging him. I finally made an appointment with an allergist today. I've been needing to, but figured timing it would be impossible. Turns out the first available is on one of Buck's days off, so we are going to hopefully get this thing figured out in the next couple weeks.

Like everything else that goes amiss in our house--I am blaming the bats. Yes, they are still up there squeaking. The "bat man" tells me they will begin having babies in May, but we don't care to spend $800 removing the bats from our attic.

Maybe if Graysen is allergic to them, insurance will cover it! Ha! That's what I'm going to hope for . . .