Coloring Book

We have a new coloring book at our house. :)

Last weekend, Mom had us over for a little late Easter. Kate LOVED looking for more Easter eggs. As soon as Lincoln would find an egg, he'd immediately open it and eat the candy out.

She may be a "townie" but she's still getting plenty of practice drinking water from the hydrant. Aren't Mom's tulips so fun!!

Health Update

Since I know you are all dying of curiosity, I thought I'd write a quick update on our health around here. Thankfully, we are all mostly back to normal, minus a lingering cough that Mike & I still have. I ended up with a sinus infection and Kate ended up with the respitory flu, but we have both recovered from that and are really hopeful that we are all on the mend and will have a healthy week!

Congrats Joel & Marcy!

Lincoln

One day I thought Linc was being "too quiet." He'd unloaded the wipe box and started shredding them into tiny pieces. :) He tried to pass it off as "peek-a-boo."

The Hard

This week has been one of those "hard" weeks. I started developing signs of sickness on Tuesday morning. By Tuesday night I had a sore throat and a cough, Wednesday I added the shakes and a fever, Thursday I added a stuffed up nose, and by Friday night I was in tears because I still felt so rotten. Here is a list of things that I did not do after Tuesday morning this week:

• Laundry
• Make Supper
• Get groceries
• My devotions
• Devotions with Kate
• Dishes
• Bedtime prayers and storytime
• Everything else a stay-at-home mom should be doing

So, you wonder, who did all that? My AWESOME husband took care of everything. He made supper, he got groceries, cleaned up the kitchen, put the kids to bed, picked up toys, left work early TWO nights when I called to tell him I couldn't handle it any more. He deserves some sort of reward, he has been the absolute best, but unfortunately, what does he get... his turn with the sickness. :(

It was hard for me to literally sit around and do nothing while Mike had to literally do everything, on top of his job. I felt pretty useless, but I'm so thankful for my health that is slowly starting to improve, and the help of my husband, who was probably so exhausted from burning the candle at both ends, that now he is getting sick too. I guess it figures, we hadn't been sick at our house for a LONG time.....I'd almost hoped we'd made it to spring without catching anything nasty, but I guess we are taking our turn with this crazy sickness.

Mike, Thanks for all you did!!! You are the best!!!!

Smells

Well, for those of you who know me well know that I get embarrassed somewhat easily. I hate it, but my face often turns red, sometimes for no reason at all. I sometimes even get embarrassed that I'm embarrassed. It's pathetic. God apparently thinks I need to work on this as He has given me a Kate. :) Two Kate stories for your reading pleasure:

We were in Bloomington church on Sunday for Sunrise services. There was a bit of a crowd and I was taking Kate "potty" before we went in for the service. When we got into the bathroom it had that "a lot of people have been in here before us" smell. Kate pronounced, "It's smelly in here." No problem, nobody heard her. Then we went into our stall and the woman beside us had a little "issue" to take care of. Kate loudly announced, "It is REALLY stinky in here." We hightailed it out of the bathroom as quickly as possible!

Bethany and Wendy were over and Kate was sitting on Bethany's lap. Kate says "What smells?" I thought, well, you're sitting by the garbage can, probably the garbage. But she won't let it drop. She asks again, "What smells?" Finally I caught on, she thought Bethany smelled good. She has yet to figure out that telling someone they smell is not necessarily a compliment in and of itself. :)

Kaiser Easter

We had Kaiser Easter at my Dad and Mom's this year. Grandpa and Grandma did a small Easter egg hunt for the kids, Kate LOVED it. She has a real infatuation with eggs!

Jenna & Kate are starting to become good friends, although sometimes I think Kate still scares Jenna with her spunky personality and complete lack of fear. :)

Easter Morning

Easter morning snapshots

Hydrant Flushing

One day last week, the village had hydrant flushing day. We happen to have one right in our front yard, so the kids enjoyed watching the water shoot into the street for five minutes. It's nice to know that should we have a fire, our hydrant appears to be working quite well. Hopefully, we will never need to actually use it.

Kate has a pair of goggles. She has been practicing wearing her goggles and holding her nose for the day when she can swim again. She is beyond excited about swimming. Almost daily she asks, "Will it be warm enough to swim today?"

Kate sayings

My neighbor reminded me of this story that happened when we had the kids at the park last week. When we got to the park, even though there are....I don't know, I'm going to say 10 swings, naturally both Bryce and Kate wanted to swing on the same swing. I told Kate she needed to swing somewhere else and when Bryce was done, she could swing on the one he was swinging on. Once Bryce had moved on to another activity, I was pushing Kate in "the swing" and she said, "I'm just kind of cranky." Lovely. When it was getting close to time to leave, I told Kate, "In 8 minutes we have to go home and make supper." She said, "Okay, but I'm probably gonna cry." She didn't cry, but Wendy and I had a good chuckle.

This week, I had the kids at Walgreens. If you've ever been to Walgreens, you know they have what I would call 'mini-carts.' Kate thought she needed to sit inside the cart, rather than walk beside me. I needed to buy two packages of diapers and when I put them in the cart with her she said, "Help, Mom's covering me up." The few customers around me chuckled. Then we got to the front to check out, we had a few boxes of mac n cheese in our cart. I had given one to Lincoln to hold because he was getting antsy. Kate was putting our items on the checkout counter and when she got the box from Linc he had started to chew a hole in the box. Without missing a beat Kate told the cashier, "He's just a little beaver." I thought the cashier might never recover she was laughing so hard. :)

Lincoln Curtis

Lincoln will be 1 on Tuesday, so we celebrated tonight with his Kaiser family. He absolutely devoured the cake Grandma made him. Happy Birthday, Linc! We love you!

As soon as he got a taste for the cake he just dove right in and proceeded to eat the entire cake, barely stopping to breathe.

Opening gifts with U. Brett.



Kate felt a little left out and had to get her U. Brett time in.

Linc got a new car from Grandpa and Grandma, it was a HUGE hit.

Sunday Morning

For some reason, we were already for church a few minutes early today and we decided to snap a few pictures of the kids. Strangely enough, they cooperated. :)

Hearts at Home

I just want to post one last thing for today. :) When I was at Hearts at Home a few weeks ago, one thing that really stood out to me is something that Jill Savage talked about. She said that as a parent we have 3 kinds of stories, the heartwarming, the humorous, and the hard. It is easy for me to share the heartwarming and the humorous stories. It's harder for me to share the hard ones. My friend, Jane F, is AWESOME at sharing the hard ones and when I get done hearing or reading about one I'm always thankful that someone else deals with the same things as me. So, I encourage you to encourage me (be kind please) that if I go too long without sharing a "hard" story, please remind me. The last thing I want is for this blog to lead you to believe that life is perfect and without it's valleys. We have our moments here just like you, but we try really hard to have joy in the journey. So I encourage you today to not be afraid to share those hard stories, you never know who you might encourage. :)

Mech Dev

I hate to even say these words out loud, BUT we've had a pretty calm week (knock on wood, cross your fingers and all that). It's been a good few days, the kids have actually gotten along some of the time. They shared a box of Nerds, naturally Kate had to hold the box, they sat at the SAME table and did paint with water pictures. Now, they still had their moments, but I was thankful for the times when they were playing nicely together. :)

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Happy days at the Rassi house, we used our last can of formula this week! Lil' Buddy turns one next Tuesday. Crazy!

This week we went to Bloomington to eat lunch with Mike at his Mech Dev job. On the way, we stopped at Aldi. I have to say that the Aldi's off Veteran's is nice AND they have these great carts that both my kids can sit up front in! Fabulous. It's a bad picture, but you get the point.

Happy Friday everyone and be sure to enjoy today. :)