Pajama Day

 It was a rough week. Busy, with children that got upset easily. They miss having daddy home. Mark was suppose to be home sometime on Saturday. He wasn't never near Michigan until Saturday night. Hopefully, He'll be home sometime tonight.

Saturday morning I woke up feeling very unwell. I decided we would have pajama day and watch movies. Thankfully the movies got the kids to stop bickering for a bit. I actually picked up my knitting for the first time this week. 

Late afternoon Mark's mom called and invited us for dinner. I had to get everyone dressed, but it was worth getting out of the house. The kids played a bit outside. Henry had multiple breakdowns with crying and telling me he hates me. He is not taking daddy being on the road again very well.
Neither am I.

Life, or something like it.

So many updates, where should I begin? Well, we found a dentist here in town for the kids. The best part is that it isn't just a hole-in-the-wall-we-take-your-state-dental-plan kind of dentist. It is a nice office and within walking distance from our house. The kids went one morning during spring break. I think we were the first appointment of the day. The kids were very good, even Gavin! He sat in the chair and let them clean his teeth like it was no big deal. I was so impressed!

We are STILL looking for doctors for the kids down here. Nothing. I am discouraged and am about to schedule Irene's 5 year appointment with the doctor in Traverse City...an almost 3 hour dive from here!

Henry has been doing well in school. He tries to earn 5 stickers each day from the teacher. If he gets all five he gets to choose a small toy. Usually it is a small car or ball. If he has a good week we get him a Matchbox car. We've also been having him go for half an hour of tutoring each week. His tutor is the woman who was the substitute teacher for his class while his other teacher was out for several months. We were very upset when the teacher came back because Henry had done so well with the substitute. Thankfully, the sub offers tutoring. Henry has done an amazing job with her! He can count to 100 by 1's, 5's and 10's. His writing is getting much better and he is doing well with letter combination sounds. This week he brought home a book and read it to us! I am so thrilled!

Irene's report card came from preschool. She is smart, confident, and is a bit hard on herself. She is ready for Kindergarten! Irene has also been taking a baton twirling class. She loves it and is really good at it. She'll have the opportunity to be in the 4th of July parade here and some other parades around the area.

Gavin has become a talkative little boy. He is still in love with dinosaurs and Buzz Lightyear.

In other news...Mark has finally found a job. This is a good thing because we have been living off of our small tax return. Between Henry's tutoring, paying for preschool, and all the other small expenses that add up to large sums, we are in desperate need of money once again. Unfortunately, the job is another over-the-road truck driving job. He is driving for a small company and is only suppose to be out a week at a time. Still, he left yesterday and I don't know when he'll be back. This is usual since they rarely give you a return time until they know what your return load will be. It is hard having him gone. I miss him and the kids miss him. Living in this small town is hard since I know no one around here besides Mark's parents. I don't have the funds for gas to join any knitting nights or mom groups in nearby towns. Another difficulty is taking the kids to school or any activities. If I take Henry or Irene to school that means I have to take all three kids. Ugh. I'm tired and overwhelmed and lonely.

i am trying to find the bright side of it. One thing is that my in-laws are about 7 miles from our house. If we have a problem it wouldn't take long for them to get here. Plus, they own the house we live in, so my landlord will be quick to take care of any problems with the house!

I think that about covers things for now. As always, please feel free to check out my knitting blog by clicking here.

Easter!

Running around and hunting for Easter eggs at Grandma's house.

Posing for pictures in the sweaters I made them for Easter.

It's hard to get them to all look and smile at me at the same time!

Very windy out there! Was difficult to get the pictures I wanted.

The Easter bunny stopped at our house and left some goodies and a small gift. To Grandma and Grandpa's for yummy dinner cooked by Grandma and an Easter egg hunt set out by Grandpa. All this followed by a lot of time spent outside playing. A good day spent with my kids!

Updates on life coming soon...not that we live an overly exciting life ;-) And, if you'd like to read more about the Easter sweaters, you can check out my knitting blog by clicking here.

Right now, in this moment, Everything is Perfect

I know that this won't last. In a few minutes or even just seconds someone is going to start to yell or cry, but right now is perfect.

The sun is shining, there is a lovely breeze, the wind chimes are tinkling. The children are playing happily and quietly. Corned beef, cabbage, potatoes and carrots are cooking away in the crock pot for tonight's St. Patrick's Day dinner. I've just pulled out a loaf of Lazy Irish Beer Bread from the oven. The house smells wonderful.

There are towels washing in the washer. Even the dogs are napping. Time to pull out my knitting and work on the Easter sweater I am making Irene.

Enjoy the day, everyone!

Monster Jams

Last weekend my father-in-law took Mark, Henry and Irene and their cousin to the Monster Jams show in Grand Rapids. Henry and Irene were very excited about going. Henry loves Grave Digger and couldn't wait to see him.

Mark said they had excellent seats and were four rows back. It was very loud, but my mother-in-law bought the kids the ear muff ear protection. Mark and his dad had ear plugs.

Grave Digger!

The Van Andel Arena is a bit too small to hold Monster Jams so the trucks were not able to do as many of the stunts and races. Still, the kids loved it and I think Mark had fun too.

Gavin and I spent the afternoon together at home. We went for a walk and fed the ducks. We even splurged and went to the coffee shop. Gavin had the triple espresso ;-) When we got home we watched Octonauts and he took a nap. It was nice to spend a little one on one time with my little guy and it was good for Hen and Roo to spend time with their daddy.

On Friday the kids had no school so we decided to go to the Grand Rapids public museum ( www.grmuseum.org ). The museum is just the right size for the kids to walk through and has very reasonable rates.

There are sections on Michigan including fish, animals, even parts of a Mastodon that was found in someone's backyard in Grandville. Gavin loves dinosaurs so all bones were dinosaur bones to him.

There were window scenes of animals as they would be in the wild. There were buttons the kids could push to hear what the animals sound like. Some of the bird calls were so spot on that I was looking around for birds before I remembered that they were imitations.

A lot of the museum was sectioned into smaller rooms. There was a larger section for Michigan in the Civil War. A room was made up to look like an old parlor and included many stuffed birds of all kinds.

Gavin loved these skeletons!

There was a small Egypt room, a room about immigrants, Native American tribes in Michigan and, of course, an area about the furniture business in Grand Rapids. There was an area that was made to look like an old fashioned Grand Rapids. There were volunteers working in some of the shops. At the print shop there was a man working on printing bookmarks. He makes all the bookmarks that are given out at the museum. He gave us a demonstration and bookmarks to keep.

There was an entire pharmacy that came from Northern Michigan. all the old boxes and bottles were there along with the long wood counters and the old cash register.

A firearms store that Henry and Mark had to check out.

There was even an old fire engine that came from Bay City. A volunteer was dressed as a fireman and gave us a lot of detail about how the old fire truck would work. It was pulled by horses in those days. During that time Grand Rapids had 4 of them. Of course, the city was much smaller then.

I've only given a small sample of what was at the museum. The kids had a great time. We did ride on the old carousal and the last room you pass on the way out is a doll room. All kids of dolls were featured plus dolls that could be played with.

The museum does have visiting exhibits. We did not go into any of the extra ones this time. However, the Titanic Exhibit is coming in February of 2013 and since Henry is quite interested in the Titanic we plan to go to it.

Duck!

Sunday was a sun filled day. Still a bit chilly, but a perfect day to get out of the house and walk. We headed right for the Riverwalk and the boat ramp to feed the ducks. There were so many of them that we couldn't keep up! Five or six of them even got out of the water to get the bread and at one point we were surrounded by ducks.

The kids had fun tossing bits of bread and once it was gone (it didn't last long with all those ducks!) we carried on our way to downtown. On Sundays there are only a couple of stores that open, the Hallmark store and the liquor store. We stopped in the Hallmark store and looked around.

The kids did not have school on Monday so we drove to my older brother's house. He lives about an hour from us, and although he and my sister-in-law were working, my dad was home with their son, Eric. The four kids had fun playing while Mark, my dad and I chatted. The topic of conversation came around to Sam's Club. The Sam's Club in Grand Rapids is very much lacking in comparison to the Traverse City store that we are used to. The Lansing store is quite nice and my dad goes once a week with two of his friends and Eric. The store is not far from my brother's house so we all went over. I must say that the Lansing Sam's Club is much better than Grand Rapids'. The food section is much larger and we would have happily have gotten some food if we didn't have the hour drive home. Still, it was a fun little trip through the store. They were giving out a few samples as well so the kids found that amusing.

Back at my brother's the kids played a bit more and both Mark and my dad fell asleep. I finally had to wake both of them since we needed to head home.

We had a nice, sun filled weekend. Too bad it is raining now with a chance of snow later!