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!

Limo

A couple weeks ago we made an addition to our family. Let me introduce you to "Limo"...

(I didn't want anyone to be jealous of my photography skills, so I copied pictures off the internet. ;) )

I won't name any names (KYNNLEE), but we have this little person that lives in our household that has a problem with being confined, especially in the car! It started at birth. I remember her first doctor visit, she cried in the car the whole way, couldn't figure out what was wrong with my tiny baby! It has not gotten any better! The girl has hated being buckeld in anything. I swear she is the only baby on earth that didn't like those little Bumboo seats.

Anyhow, we have had 3 long, miserable years in the car. Our drive home for Christmas was just the icing on the cake when we decided to drive through the night and she didn't sleep but maybe 30min!! Not only that, but she kept Jaden awake too! It was horrible, to say the least.

So when we found out we were getting an awesome tax return (like enough to pay off my car and some leftover for a downpayment), we decided it was time for a new car! Trevor still has a year left in school, plus 3 years in residency (where he will only have an average income) so we still can't afford to feed an SUV. Besides, all of them we looked at were way over-priced and didn't have any fun options.

We ended up test driving a black 2008 Chrysler Town & Country Signature series. This thing had the goods! Dual DVD players, leather, heated seats, navigation, back-up camera, remote doors, remote start, and the list goes on! The kids came with us on the test drive, they were dead SILENT! We asked them if they liked it, they LOVED it! So then we gave the assignment to Kent...

The first one we found was in Detroit, and it ended up going for $5,000 more than the auction said the average price is because it had all the options! So then we found some in Pittsburgh. We were really debating on which ones to go for, all the goods, none of the goods and just install a DVD player... decisions, decisions! We needed (no, it really IS a NEED) the DVD player to be installed (as opposed to the ones that hook onto the headrest) so that a certain little girl wouldn't grab it, take the DVD out, scratch it, break it, etc... gosh that sounds familiar! So it all came down to this... go for the goods one more time, and if it's still too expensive then we still have the auction in Columbus to find one. It was such a pain to search through 300 Town & Country's and narrow it down. Yes, we were being GREEDY! But it paid off to be greedy this time! We got our top choice at the auction in Pittsburgh! It was even $1,000 less than the max we wanted to pay! I guess that because this one wasn't a Limited, car buyers didn't pay very close attention to it. Kent said that there were some Limited's that didn't have all the options that ours does that went for way MORE!

We basically got the exact same one that we test drove. It was even my top choice of color, and we couldn't be too picky about color. We definitely were banking on NOT getting navigation, leather, heated seats, double DVD players, and a few others. We got spoiled! We even got the Swivel & GO with the table in the back! That actually cracks me up to have a table in a car! We haven't used it yet, but I'm sure it will come in handy.

One of my favorite things is that KynnLee can watch Strawberry Shortcake and Jaden can watch Mario Bros. Having a girl and a boy 4 years apart makes it hard for them to agree on a movie. :)

You might think you know why we nick-named it Limo, yes it does feel as long as a limo after driving a car for 5 years. But it's actually because it has the "limo lights" along the sides of the roof console! So funny! We love it!

So I am now a mini-van mom, but only part time since I still take my car to school in Akron. But I drive my mini-van loud and proud, and in luxury! Limo and I are going to start a new mini-van trend! :)

Savin' up!

Jaden keeps his money in two separate little banks. One looks like a little safe with a combo lock on it and it's for "toy money". The other is his "crocky bank" (thanks to aunt Micalla!) that he puts money in to save up to go on a mission. We told him when he filled his crocky bank we would open him a bank account to put it in. Wow, the little guy was determined to get the crocky bank filled, even though it meant less money for toys. Little Mr. Crocky Bank can be deceiving, it doesn't look like it holds a whole lot. We were guessing around $30... heh. So we emptied the crocky bank and headed over to the Coinstar at the grocery store. We put in what seemed like a handful of change and quickly passed the $30 guess. Looks like he had way more quarters in there than we thought! Here was the final calculations... Holy smokes! That's a lot of change! He was so excited to see his bank account with a grand total of $135. Good job Jaden, you will be blessed in your efforts and in serving the Lord!

Snow day!

I finally found an app so I can blog from my iPod, so you will have to excuse any errors. :)

We ALL (mom, dad, & Jaden) had school cancelled today. We got about 5" of snow yesterday and freezing rain through the night. So glad we aren't one of the people without power!

We had one happy boy on our hands this morning when he found out it was a snow day again. We spent our snow day yesterday with our friends Haley & Kylee. Today dad got to spend the day with us. So far we have played Mario Galaxy, Michael Jackson, and Bonocoly (aka Monopoly).

Happy Snow Day to all!!

- Posted using my iPod