Prego

Announcement! I am expecting baby #5! The baby is due October 3rd. Our whole family is very excited. As I sit here and type, I am trying to eat food that does not look appetizing to me anymore. This is my big problem of pregnancy. If I eat enough food regularly, I can keep up decent energy and not get sick. But food becomes unappetizing during pregnancy and I have a hard time eating enough. Blech. I just try to remind myself that my problems could be worse. Count my blessings... my "little treasures" count will soon be 5!

Living Room Fort

The other night the kids made a fort in the living room. And of course, a fort is not complete without the "insides" -blankets, stuffed animals, pillows, a huge stack of books and a flashlight.

Dishwashing Fairies

A couple weeks ago I had put off doing the dishes, then put it off again as more piled up, then again. I kept watching the number of dishes growing, and was not looking forward to washing them all. I commented to Ezra: "I'm disappointed that the dishwashing fairy never showed up today to wash my dishes for me." 

Five minutes later, four fairies were at the sink, happily washing! They truly must be magical fairies indeed!

household going-ons

Random going-ons at the Hallam household:

Ezra took his boards a few weeks ago and recently got the results:  he passed! Yeah!

Friday Olivia got tubes put in her ears! Ezra, Olivia and I left the house at 5:45 am and were back by 8 am. Pretty quick for a surgical procedure. They used a gas mask to put her to sleep for it. She did not like waking up from that. She cried and cried. But she was perfectly fine the rest of the day.

Friday I went on a fieldtrip with Annabelle's class to the Children's Museum. It was to explore the balls and motion room. The kids loved every minute of it. They had free time to explore any other room they wanted for a while before heading back. I really enjoyed being there with the kids! So fun to see how the kids interact with each other. They all wanted to show off how much they knew and wanted to shout out their new discoveries and be in charge. I especially loved that when we had instruction time, Annabelle wanted to sit in my lap or hold my hand. So sweet!

Grandpa Arne was babysitting. Grace and Jonah had a most wonderful day with Grandpa. I’m sure Grandpa read at least 20 books and Grace still wanted more. He counted money with Jonah and built lincoln log cabins. 

I have been looking at houses with a realtor (in case we do get to stay in Iowa - we find out March 19th)! I took Ezra to see my top picks, and together we agree on 3 houses that we really like. 

Grace is having problems with markers. We keep markers put away and bring them out only at special times. The reason for this is because Grace doesn't put lids back on markers, nor put them back in the marker bucket. It was a recurring frustration for me, so I finally packed them all up and out. So now Grace seems to find permanent markers around Dad's desk.  I guess she thinks they look like dry erase markers, which sometimes the kids are allowed to use on their dry erase board. So Grace sneaks a marker and starts drawing in random spots - a few scribbles on the dry erase board, some on the bed, on the baby doll, on the remote control, a few marks on the blanket, another spot on the wall... with black permanent marker! Ahhh! She has to have big long time outs in the bathroom.

Olivia’s only word she says now is Puppy. When she sees puppies on TV or in books she lights up and says it over and over. No other words, though. She even stopped saying Uh oh. Once I thought I heard Kitty.

Visit to Ames for a day

We spent a night and a day in Ames. Grandma let the kids do experiments! She got out lots of mini paper cups, and let the kids choose what to put in each (dish soap, milk, lemon juice, vinegar, Dr Pepper), some Grandma chose some herself. Then, they submerged old pennies in each cup to see which substance would do a better job cleaning  the penny. They loved this! They didn't just get to observe, but Grandma even provided gloves so they could get their hands in and be very proactive with this.  We discovered that vinegar and Dr Pepper work great at cleaning pennies. To end the activity, Grandma mixed vinegar and baking soda to make a mini-volcano. To watch the video clip, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHeRATIYQG4.

It was warm enough to play outside, so the kids went of course to the playhouse in the backyard. They had a picnic snack. They sure love it out there!
Early in the morning, watching cartoons. We could only find cartoons in Spanish, but they didn't seem to mind. In case you were wondering, Olivia was posed there, and stayed only long enough for the picture. She does not sit and watch TV.
We enjoyed a great day at Grandma and Grandpa's. Some more highlights are getting balloons at Hickory Park, playing in the band, and walking to the park with Grandpa in knee-deep snow and getting wet and cold.