I'm on a roll!

Well I have had this picture for a while, but I saw it and it made me laugh. Addie decided that when the leaves were falling that she needed to pick one for mommy and bring it home and "keep" it. So she put the leaf in her water bottle and set it on our table like the centerpiece. When she went back to the babysitters house the next day she brought home another leaf form mommy and added it to the water bottle. Every so often Addie would climb up on a chair and look at her leaves and talk about how they were doing. I finally had to tell her that the leaves had died and needed to go.

This is Ashley during her mayonnaise treatment. All we need now is some sandwich meat, pickles and bread!


This is Amber after being treated with special shampoo. She needs to wait 10 minutes and then we could rinse and starting combing out. What fun!

Okay, so it's been a while..

since I posted. But I really have good intentions. There are several times in my day that I think to myself, "I should blog about this." But I am usually at work, and lately it has been very busy for me during school. Home is the same way, always things to do.
So let me tell you about our latest fun experience. We had LICE!!!! Oh yes, and it was so much fun! We came home from school at lunch time on Monday. First we got to clean everything in our house that was fabric or carpet. Bill vaccumed, I did the shampoo treatment to Ashley. After vaccuming all the carpet, Bill went on to vaccum the couches and chairs and the car interior. Next came pulling all the bed sheets, mattress pads, comforters, shams, pillowcases, pillows, blankets, etc. and washing and drying everything. Stuffed animals, coats, hats, mittens, scarves, the backpack...everything. You can't imagine the piles of things waiting to go through the dryer or washer. Now you might be tempted to feel sorry for poor Bill, who is steadfastly gather things into piles. But I, Katie was having the best time of all. What is that, you ask?? I got the exciting job of treating Ashley's head with special shampoo ($5 per bottle), scrubbing, rinsing, combing out with the large comb and then starting and finishing the task of searching for hatched lice and their eggs (nits). Can it get any better? Oh yes, it does.
While I am treating and combing and picking (with a fine tooth comb, provided with the shampoo) I get to pull out still moving lice, and squish them. Ashley of course is keeping count of how many hatched ones we find. This is better than any game would could have bought. (Of course I am lying) This part of our process takes about 2 1/2 hours. But we are not done yet, oh no, that wouldn't be enough fun. Now after we have picked everything out that was killed off by the shampoo, we have to smear her head with mayonnaise to kill anything else (supposedly it suffocates anything left). We wrap her head in plastic wrap and sit for 1 hour. Then we can rinse out, wash with dish soap, and then wash with regular shampoo. This helps take the grease out. This concludes a fun four hour afternoon. We stayed up washing and drying things until 10:30 pm. When Amber and Addie came home, they also got to have the fun shampoo treatment and comb out, but didn't have to have the mayonnaise because they didn't have any lice or eggs, but we treated just to be sure. :)
Let me tell you, I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy, and if I could I would've just shaved her head, but Ashley told us no to that idea. Hopefully this is the last we will ever see of them. And for all of you coming to Thanksgiving, we will be treating again on Monday next week, just to be sure we killed everything off. So rest easy, we should be bug free when we come. :) Or so you hope!

Moving About

Alex has discovered that he can get just about anywhere he wants to in the family room. And one place he ends up quite a bit is under the coffee table. Usually this doesn't bother him, and he can go under and come back out all on his own, but he hasn't been feeling well, (ear infection-still not cleared up, tooth coming in, 4 shots Tuesday night) so when he gets under there he gets a little irritated, and usually bangs his head. He has figured out how to open the drawer from underneath the table. It is quite funny to see.

3 wheeler

Addie and Grandma Muffie road together.


Amber rode again, this time with Len running along next to her. At one point Amber did try to flip him over the handle bars-I'm sure not on purpose. Right??


Amber and Len, after she failed at flipping him-he really got his excercise today.

Don't I feel old...

watching Amber ride on our old yellow three-wheeler! Amber decided to try the 3 wheeler while we were over for birthdays in Cedar Falls, but once on realized there were a lot of cars around and didn't want to continue. Grandma Muffie decided to give Addie a try and rode with her into the backyard away from the cars. Addie ended up driving the 3 wheeler all by herself, with grandma running along next to her. Grandpa put a governor sp?? on the 3 wheeler so it can't go that fast. At times it actually has to be pushed up the hills. So Amber decided to come back out and take a turn and ended up doing really well. Len ran along side her and she could brake and accelerate just fine. She did slam on the brakes once and just about had Len going over top of her, but he managed to not take her off the 3 wheeler. I have photos and I will post them when I get a chance. It was very entertaining. And very hard to believe that Jim and I were really small enough to both ride that thing at the same time!

Down Time

This is the first weekend in a long time that we will have true down time. Bill is finally done with football, so that means that Saturday and Sunday he will be around. We do have our church's Mission's Conference this weekend, and Bill is in charge of that since he is the Mission Board President, but that really just means being there 15-30 minutes early. The girls have been done with soccer for a couple weeks now. That is not something that I miss. You know I really thought that when our kids got into school that I would want them to be involved...sad to say, but I would sometimes rather they didn't want to be involved. This year Amber really wanted to play soccer, and Ashley was okay with it, but after they got started, Ashley was very irritated with her mother. At one point in the season (which is only 6 weeks long) she says to me, "mommy, you never ASKED me if I wanted to play soccer!" I guess she thought this reasoning would allow her to quit. :) But now we are finally done with that, Bill is around and we actually will have some down time to be with family. Although, today that time may be in front of the TV watching college football. Well, at least we are all at home!

Our Princess

Our Vet

Our Tiger

Trick or Treating

I took the girls trick or treating last night. We had a wonderful time, despite the cold weather. Thankfully, the wind died down and this year there was no rain. Addie was very excited about this year. She really understood what was going on. I'm sure you can tell from her picture that she was very ready to go get some candy. Daddy and Alex stayed home and handed out candy. This year we didn't have as many kids come around, but this was the first year that I actually bought enough candy, so now we have a whole bowl just sitting on the counter. My bad timing I guess. Next year, I think that all four may be coming with mom. That will be fun. Dad will either hand out candy or be busy with football. We will see.