Brought to You by the Number Four

So my last substantial blog post prior to this catch up was probably last Halloween. Right after that, Ellie turned four. What a huge deal the number four is in our house since that happened. Every meal, Ellie insists that she have four different foods (which has been helpful has we've worked to get her trying new foods). When there is four of something--anything--she is so excited; "and look, Mom, there's four stairs on that building just like I'm four!" [insert gleeful laughter]. Twenty  is still holding pretty strong as her favorite number, but four is a big deal. Not sure how I'm going to work things out in a couple weeks when I have to start cutting her quesadillas and apples and peanut butter sandwiches into five pieces.

Her fourth birthday was pretty exciting with a visit from Uncle Andrew and Aunt Margo and their (then) puppy Helga. Of course, I failed to take any pictures of them, but they were here, and Ellie was certain that they came just to celebrate the big 0-4.

A very proud four-year-old. Ellie would tell you that in this picture she was "lower case four," but now that she's 4.5, almost 5, she's "upper case four."

Home from church, it was time to celebrate. The proper name for those party blowers, according to four-year-olds in the know, is "celebrates."

A little harder for almost-two-year-olds to master

The presents, which I failed to take a picture of unwrapped. The ones that were the biggest hits, that still get played with every day, were the play food from my parents and the Peppa Pig figures ("guys"). Peppa Pig is a British cartoon that Ellie discovered the summer she was three. She adores Peppa Pig. At first, she called her "Pepper Pig" because she thought that was how you would say it with an American accent (silly Brits leaving off those r's). But she figured it out. She has picked up all kinds of British-isms from the show. She says things like, "can I have a go?" and frequently uses the adjective "cheeky" for toys and objects that just aren't cooperating with her. She says "tomato," "pajama," and "plaster cast" with an accent, and talks about putting petrol in the car. Deep down, I love it.

Another favorite present was this owl hat from our cousin Brianne (Ellie's second cousin). Ellie wore it all the time. All the time. Like even to bed. It got pretty stretched out. Now it sort of looks like an aviator's hat and goggles on her, but still super cute. She still occasionally wears it whenever it turns up. You know, just on a random trip to the grocery store in the middle of August.

 This last year, Ellie has really started to become one of the big kids with all her cousins (Jared is, as always, a good big brother to her whenever we get to see him). She is less anxious to try new things and loves learning and going to preschool. Her favorite thing, still, is playing with her "guys," and can spend hours with them, building houses and furniture out of blocks, using play dough to make new clothes and food for them. I can always tell she's really having a good time when I hear new, invented words coming from her play ("No, little Jessie, you have to frag the glomperlog first.")

She loves coloring, but not so much in a coloring book. She'd rather just have crayons or paints and a blank piece of paper.

She's usually game for about anything, and hasn't quite gotten to the self-conscious stage yet. (This is her blinking Rudolf nose last Thanksgiving, which was getting in the way of eating some pie).

That dimple on her cheek happened about a year ago. She was running and fell, hitting her face on the bench in the living room before I got cushions made for it. She had a huge bruise across her cheek, and the dimple  has stayed. Sad it had to hurt so much to get it, but it suits her.

Ellie is all kinds of fun, very bright, and growing way to fast! She imagines grandiose plans every day for huge adventures that we could go on or things we could make: "What if there was a huge flood? And guess what? We would build a huge boat in our living room. And guess what? It would also be a castle! And there would only be windows on the top part. And guess what? There would be a swinging part on it. And we would have a swimming playground on it too. And guess what? We would go all around the world. And guess what? If there were children who couldn't swim, I would swing down and just rescue them! And guess what? There would be a place on top to get dry. And there would be (gasp!) a TV there. And it would just be a safe winding river . . ." I have learned to not counter or object, just insert a "Whoa!" or "That would be so amazing!" now and then and let her keep escalating and bounce around the kitchen while I calmly empty the dishwasher or clear the table. Now and then I work on teaching her to read and write, hoping one day this will be an outlet for her and will give me time again to do the same.

So, once upon a time, I wrote a blog. Well, I wrote a lot of things, and then I wrote this blog. And then almost a year ago we moved into a brand-new house (hooray!). We finally finished all those years and years and years of school and job-hunting and found where we're going to live for (we hope) the next 20 or 30 years. (That deserves another hooray!). It turns out that there are a lot of projects to do when you have a brand new house. Lots of settling in and unpacking. Lots of working with builders (who did a fantastic job, we think) on finalizing things, finishing things that didn't get finished before because your nice builder actually let you move in before everything was finished since you were technically homeless for a few weeks waiting for it to get done (thanks again to generous cousins Brad and Carrie for letting us stay in their basement!). Then there is lots of organizing to do. Lots of projects for furnishing and decorating a bigger house. That's what you work on during the cold months. In between birthdays, holidays, family weddings, traveling, etc. Then the thaw finally comes and you remember that there's a whole yard to put in! So blogging has kind of fallen by the wayside. And then whenever they talk about family history or journals at church, there is this double load of guilt because this used to be how I justified myself in those categories. See, posterity? I'm doing my bit. It's all here. Except I'm not doing much of any of it lately, and not writing much of anything at all elsewhere. And I've noticed I haven't taken as many pictures of the kids in the last couple months, so maybe there's a correlation between me actually blogging and me remembering to document their lives. Ellie has been talking about her birthday coming up. I am going to try to catch up a bit before the kids age another year!

Sometime I'll get some good pictures of the interior of the house up for family members who have asked to see them (or you all could just come visit!). In the meantime, here are a few pictures of some of the many projects that have kept us busy this past year.

Here is the house just a few days before we moved in. Lots of clean-up to do still.

Here's our family a few days after we moved in. The first morning after sleeping in our new house, Charlie woke up sick. Turned out to be the stomach flu, which I also caught a day or two later. Horribly. Brady and Ellie were spared. That time.

This is a garage sale dresser that I found and refinished before we moved. I painted it white and we have it in our living room now. The TV is on top and we keep DVDs and toys in the drawers.

I should have learned from this that no project is a simple, one-weekend, or one-week project. Took forever. Forever.

I had the builder add this long bench in the living room and another on the landing going upstairs. Both open for storage. I love them. My job, then, was to make the cushions to go on top. Took me forever.

This is our backyard when things started to thaw this spring. We had put grass seed down in the fall. It's hard to see in this picture, but some of it was coming up when the snow was melting. I took this picture after I went out to retrieve a red plastic sled that Ellie had buried during the winter (I didn't want it to block the grass that was coming up there). I thought there was enough snow for me to still walk on to get to the back corner of the yard without sinking ankle deep in mud. It was tricky. Barely made it. I was stranded for several minutes trying to figure my strategic route (there wasn't as much snow as it looks like). I could actually hear the snow melting around me. I'm sure it was pretty entertaining to the neighbors.

This is the image I had going through my head when I was out there. Seriously, guys, we have got to help those polar bears.

We ended up having to reseed the grass in the spring because there was more construction work to be done. A water line to put in out by the garden (we opted not to do a sprinkler system for now), cement steps on the back porch that didn't get done before it got too cold last fall to do them, hauling in a dumptruck full of dirt to level out and fill in our garden space. So we had lots of huge trucks driving through our yard that kind of wiped out the grass that was coming in. Sad.

We also built our house on the remnants of a volcanic eruption, apparently, and have the worst soil ever. So prepping for grass seed took forever. Forever. Really. Forever. Raking and raking it smooth and we'd keep hearing that sound of metal scraping against rock. We also have a slope in our yard  coming down from the garden area. So we started putting the rocks on the slope. We'd dig them out and I started arranging them into a rock wall to prevent landslides and runnoff.

Here's some of the progress of the rock wall last fall. You can see a fence post in the back. The builders were working on getting the fence up at the same time. (Oh yeah, that was another project this spring--sealing and treating the fence. Sheesh). You can also see the neighbor's beautifully perfect, manicured yard. They are amazing. And patient. The grass has grown in below the wall and I've started growing Irish moss in the gaps between the rocks. I still have a section of the wall to finish, but the part shoring up the garden area is finished and held up during our big flood last July. No landslides!

 After we got the grass seed in, I thought I could take on another project (you know, since we couldn't go out on the yard for a while). So I bought materials to make a porch swing. In May I did that. Turns out when you don't have a sprinkler system, grass seed is really high maintenance. And then when it starts coming, the garden takes up your time. And then the swing takes way longer than you thought. And then you have flooding to deal with. And then there are a million other projects. And staining/polyurethane for the thing is a beast. And I didn't finish it until the first weekend of October.

But, hey, the grass is in (along with a lot of weeds, but it's green, drought tolerant, and low maintenance). The fence is stained. The porch is cleaned off and the kids can play on it again. And now I can get back to work on this year's Halloween costumes and birthday projects!

Preschool and Pumpkins

Finally, finally, preschool started for us. It was a long wait. After Flat Mindy's educational pursuits in Twin Falls were so unsuccessful, we thought maybe she could learn a thing or two at the open house for the kids' preschool.

First priority: dress-ups. Flat Mindy and Ellie both did really well at this one.

They found Ellie's cubbie (which Ellie pronounces "cuvvy") on our way out of the classroom. Ellie is blocking her name, so you can only see the name for the other class.

We had to hurry over to Charlie's classroom since their open house times overlapped. He was super excited to show Flat Mindy all around Toddler Lab (or "Tuggler Lab," as Ellie calls it, no matter how often we tell her otherwise). Charlie and Mindy spent some time "doing colors," lining them up carefully one at a time, rolling them over, lining them up again. I think the kid next to Charlie thought Charlie and Mindy didn't really know how to color. He just isn't aware of the many ways of playing with crayons, I guess.

Ellie, being the pro at preschool wanted to show Charlie everything. Here they are rocking in the boat see-saw. I couldn't get a picture without one of them having a blurry face. Sorry. I really liked Charlie's expression in this one. And luckily, Flat Mindy did not get sea sick.

Ellie was excited to see the playground again. Flat Mindy was sort of "Meh" about it, apparently.

And a perspective shot. Ellie really liked the picture where Hannah looked little and Mindy looked big, and asked if we could do one of those. I only stood on the other side of the sidewalk, though, because I didn't want to go out in the parking lot.

Going to preschool sure does wear everyone out. The kids like to relax on the new porch swing these days, while the weather is still nice.

It suddenly dawned on them that Flat Mindy could fall through the slats, and they became a little concerned.

Charlie took her to see the pumpkins instead. Totally safe now with the giant cat head and ghost pirate. Good thinking, Charlie.

So glad Flat Mindy could come along as we've been getting into fall. It's been fun.