To dye or not to dye

I just wanted to share a funny story with you. Before our trip to Oklahoma I decided that my hair needed some highlights. My natural color is a dark brown and I wanted to do some caramel highlights. I first decided to dye my hair a mahogany, just a little darker than normal. That worked just fine and then I asked my wonderful husband, Paul, to help me pull some hair through a lovely cap with holes all over it. He is a great husband, he said he would help me. So we got busy pulling hair through these little holes with a crochet hook. I then put the dye on my hair and then got busy doing things around the house. When I came back upstairs and Paul saw me he said, "WHOA, you better rinse that off!" So I quickly rinsed the dye off my hair. The end result was a ton of yellow hair with dark roots. It was already 11:00 pm by this time, so I decided to wait and fix it the next day. The next day was when we were driving to Wichita. Every time we stopped somewhere people would stare, my kids kept saying how pretty my hair was (their standards aren't that high). As soon as we got to our hotel I bought some more dye and went to work. The end result is actually pretty nice. Anyway I just had to use a ton of conditioner and not go swimming during our trip.

Trip to Oklahoma

Here is a picture of some of the cousins, the other twin is almost in the picture she is on the bottom right hand corner. It is no small task to take a picture of this many small children.

We made a trip out to Oklahoma to attend our niece's baptism. We left Friday morning, April 11, and drove 8 hours to Wichita, KS. We had a great time visiting friends. We ate good food and Paul fell in love with a Wii, he was sore the next few days from bowling, boxing, and apparently burping (who knew there was such a game). Then on Saturday we drove the 3 hours to Norman, Oklahoma. We really did have a lot of fun with my family, it just felt so good to be all together. I miss seeing them and just hanging out together. The highlight, of course, was the baptism. Our niece, Sariah, was so cute and just smiled through the whole thing! On the drive back (we left Monday morning)we missed a turn just south of Wichita and ended up in Emporia, KS. We stopped at a truck stop to figure our where we were. We filled up with gas and then parked over to the side to get on the laptop and figure out how to get home. As we were parked there looking at the laptop, and a movie playing for the kids, some guy comes over to our van and tells Paul that he is parked in RV parking and then called Paul some profane name. Paul was upset and told him not to talk like that in front of our kids. The man then said some other profane words to him. Paul then rolled up his window and drove off. I guess the people in Emporia aren't to friendly. The weird thing is that the man didn't have an RV either, go figure! Anyway we got home about midnight.

Don't be Fooled

We had a busy day today. Tyler and Brayden just got their orange belts in TaeKwondo and Brayden even got the Best Student Trophy. We then got home and had to make a quick dinner for everyone, so I made spaghetti. The kids then did their homework, got ready for bed and went to bed. I then began cleaning up the table. The kids had juice to drink with their dinner and I noticed that there was still a full cup of juice on the table. It was the expensive antioxidant juice and I really hated to waste it, so I decided to drink it myself. When I was almost finished drinking the juice I noticed that there was a bunch of spaghetti in the bottom of the cup, yuck!!

Cup Stacking

Yesterday Brayden participated with his school in the World Cup Stacking Championship. It was an exciting day. There were groups from Germany, Canada, Japan, and all over the United States. He participated in a relay style stacking doing a 3-6-3 pattern, meaning they first do a stack of 3 cups, then a stack of 6 cups, then a stack of 3 cups. They then have to unstack all 3 pyramids and then run back and touch the next person's hand, the next person then runs up and does the same thing. The whole team is timed, so they have to be fast. Brayden did a great job and their team won 3rd for their age division!

Spring Break

We just had a wonderful Spring Break. Paul's sister, Laura, and her family came to visit us. They arrived on the Saturday before Easter and stayed until Thursday. We had a great time together. We visited a castle, saw the movie "Horton Hears a Who", went to the zoo, ate yummy food, and enjoyed each others company. They have 2 children, a 5 year old and a 2 year old and all the kids got a along great. They played a lot in the backyard, all of Paul's work on the playset (it took him 2 weeks) finally paid off. We definitely need to spend more time with family!

We then went to Wyoming to visit my mom and dad. We left on Friday and came back on Sunday. We had a good visit and the kids got spoiled. Paul did not go with us, he had to work and take care of the pets. One night he was coming down the stairs and stepped in my brand new stair caddy and fell backwards hitting his head on the stairs. I felt bad for him and was glad that he was okay. I was also happy that my new stair caddy was not damaged.

Life with Children

Okay I know I've said before that life is exciting and there is never a dull moment, and that comment is true if you like getting apple juice from a juice box squirted all over you, or you've just finished painting a wall and all four of your kids come running by and every single one of them rubs up against your beautiful wall, ruining their shirts. This is the kind of week I've had. One of my friends calls it a "fork in your eye" week. Not to mention one of our parakeets, Blue, died and my beautiful girl just turned eleven. It really is a lot to handle all in a week.

Last night we went to an auction at church. The youth groups are raising money for camp this summer so they were auctioning off a lot of baked goods. As soon as we got there the kids were eyeing a bright red fire engine cake (it was adorable). We told them that we'd try to get it. Finally the desired cake was up for auction, much to our surprise another little boy also wanted the cake. The bidding started and finally we gave up at $50.00. The kids were very disappointed so we bid on some cinnamon rolls and finally won them for $40.00. I told the young man that made the cinnamon rolls that we expect pictures from camp, I was just kidding of course. Anyway this morning I received a phone call from the mother of the little boy that won the fire engine cake. She was inviting our whole family over to eat the cake with them. It was a very nice gesture and I couldn't say "no", even though I knew they were in for a wild time, especially considering they only have the one boy. So we went over, we brought some ice cream to go with the cake. I had told the children beforehand that it was very important for them to use their very best manners and to say "thank you". Everything was going pretty smoothly, we had eaten cake and ice cream and the children were playing in the back yard. After a while we decided it was time to head home. I looked out back and noticed that all the kids were playing in the garden area which was now a big muddy mess. I told Paul that we needed to go get them and leave before they came back into the house. So we loaded up our stuff and were headed for the door when all of a sudden all of my "sweet", muddy children came running into this beautiful, immaculately clean house. My heart just sank as I saw muddy footprints all over her white carpet. I told her that the kids were good cleaners and that they were willing to scrub the carpet. She kindly turned me down, who can blame her, and said not to worry. Like I said a "fork in your eye" day.

TaeKwondo - A Good Thing

This last Thursday Tyler and Brayden both got their yellow belts in Tae Kwondo. They've worked hard, and I love that they are learning to have more respect (they now say "yes maam" or "no maam"). They also learned to count to ten in Korean. Just last week I saw Tyler sitting on the floor in his room with his eyes closed and I asked him what he was doing and he said he was meditating. I say anytime he can sit still and be quiet is a good thing!