Easter 2011

We had to spend Easter without Trevor this year, he was stuck in Massachusetts. But we did get to spend it with Beeda and Grandpa! That's right, we had our first visitors since we've been in Ohio! We took the kids to an Easter egg hunt at the park, they had fun!

We had a good Easter, but we sure did miss dad.

Externships

Externships started for Trevor this month. He will go out on 5 one-month long externships this last year in school. His schedule is April-Massachusetts, May- Kentucky, July- Utah, August- Washington, and December- New Mexico. These first two are going to be the killers since it's two months in a row, it's too far away to visit on the weekends, and Jaden and I are both in school. Luckily my finals are the first week in May, so that will be a little bit of a relief.

Jaden understood pretty well what was going on. For about a week before he left, he would come in my room in the morning and ask if dad was gone for a month. :) KynnLee on the other hand came in my room the morning after he left and said, "Where's daddy?", despite all the hugs and kisses and goodbyes we had the day before. She wakes up much earlier than Jaden lately (thanks to Trevor being on the VA rotation in March), so when she comes in my room she expects to see both of us. I think she is beginning to understand a little better now.

Here's the kiddos sitting on the kitchen table waiting to watch daddy pull out of the driveway so they could blow him kisses. :)

Thanks to Facetime on our iPods, the kids are holding up pretty well. :)

While you were out

Well, the kids and I have survived the first week of Trevor's externships. He is in Worcester (aka Wooster), Massachusetts this month and in Louisville (that's Lou-uh-vul), Kentucky next month.

We've kept ourselves busy! With Jaden and I both in school it's not too hard to stay busy. I have school all day Mondays and Wednesdays and half a day Fridays and I love it! The only thing I hate is leaving my kiddos. Next year will be better because I will get to bring KynnLee with me to school and she will go to the preschool on campus. :)

Yesterday I was determined to wear the kids out. We had some errands to do and I had 2 coupons to Build-a-Bear for a free accessory, plus I had some Gym Bucks to redeem so we headed to the mall. They were exhausted when we got home!

Last night I kept myself busy making these bins for KynnLee's dresser.

Today it was 78 degrees out! That was a sign that it's safe to put up the trampoline, even though there is still a chance it could get snowed on. Now we will have another thing to keep the kids busy and wear them out!



One week down and seven more to go!
- Posted using my iPod

Service project

Jaden's school is requiring the students to participate in 6 hours of service in order to attend the field day at the end of the year. They sent home a paper with a couple of suggestions, one of them is a request for personal items for homeless people. A lot of the items on the list I have a small stash of in the basement that I've picked up at CVS or other stores when they were on sale and I paired them with a coupon to get the item for free, or almost free. So I thought I would involve my little man on one of my weekly runs to CVS. He helped me get the list together, look through the ad, and clip coupons.

Then the next day we did the shopping trip. He was such a good sport about it, most of you know how Jaden feels about shopping. :) He helped me find the items (we can't get the wrong size or type of item or we end up paying too much), pushed the cart, and helped me juggle the ad and coupons. While he was pretty quiet about it all, I really think he understood the importance of his service to the homeless. The poor little guy was tired at the end of the trip and was sitting on the front of the cart while waiting to check out. :)

Since there were only a couple of items on the list on sale this week at CVS, we delved into our stash in the basement. Here's what we ended up giving to the homeless.

4 tubes toothpaste

4 Deodorant

1 Dish soap

What a great little project to involve the kids in! We will need other ideas to make it to our six hours, so any suggestions are appreciated!