In the last ten days...

1) Esther is potty trained!!!!
2) Becky is GETTING MARRIED!!! - congrats Becks and Alan!!!
3)Esther has her own twitter account (Esthermathilda) - yes Mathilde is spelled wrong. i (not I) mistyped and it stuck - also thanks i&j for helping us to keep our heads above water in the technology pool.
4) I started back to work for real - mon, wed, 1/2 day fri. It's not so bad but it's hard getting used to a new schedule. And it feels hectic most of the time.
5) My mom's birthday was yesterday - HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!!! - we had a little dinner with friends at their house last night. I made mexican and followed it with a puff pastry strawberry thingie.
6) Ben has apparently started a screen play which i know nothing about.
7) I scheduled an appointment (may 23rd) at a salon for me and j to have all our luxurious locks hacked off. I'm thinking of something like this.

The weekend in pictures...

Ahhh. the sun. Hello my old friend me and my diapers have missed you...
Esther's new wheels - a potty training reward.
Our newest yard ornament: the giant trampoline. I know, i know, a little red-neck, but what can i say, i can't help myself...

Ben's found object grill. Practical, functional, and oh-so-stylish.

Looking out the backdoor for spiders
She's trying to show us her big-girl "under panties"

Easter Esther

fun site!

http://www.nanibird.com/

Asa's milestones

I've been trying to upload a video to you tube for the last two days so you can see Asa doing the Army crawl but for some reason it keeps erroring...

anyhow he now rolls front to back and back to front, smiles, giggles, and army crawls... yahooo! it might be time to break out the Johnny- jumper.

I'm going to go do a sun dance to entice it to come out... too much rain and being trapped in the house makes me a bit punchy.

Esther on Easter

Auntie Rachie "You know what today is, Esther?"
Esther "uh-huh"
Auntie Rachie "What?"
Esther "uh-huh"
Auntie Rachie "It's Good Friday."
Mommy "You remember Jesus, well on Good Friday he died"
Esther then looks at the little statue of the baby Jesus that my grandmother gave us for Christmas and says "Him? He's dying? awww."

2 hours later at Lali's house (my mother)
Mommy "Esther tell Lali what happened to Jesus on Easter"
Esther "He melted!"

1 hour later at Lali's with Auntie Chrissy (Rachie's mother)
Mommy "Esther, tell Aunta Chrissy what happened to Jesus today"
Esther "He melted"
Rachie "Esther, tell Aunta Chrissy what you do with Easter eggs"
Esther "You eat them"
Lali "You put melted Jesus on them and eat em"

french braids

Aryan babies with big eyes

some stuff...

He didn't think the purple milk was particularly funny. He wasn't angry or anything but he didn't laugh either. I think his funny bone needs a tune up.

Sometimes when the kids are napping and i can't seem to turn my brain off enough to nap i like to window shop online. I'm not sure why but it relaxes me. So i had to share my find for the day:

This has got to be the cutest sweater on the face of the earth -
Also the laundry is starting to breed and form battalions of demonic legions of the unwashed.

And i'm turning over a new anti-whiny leaf. Which may or may not be successful but i'm too whiny and it's doing nothing for me. So in lieu of barbiturates i've decided to use self-hypnosis and positive feed back (e.g. Jones, you're doing a great job. A dirty kid is a happy kid and a death trap of a house means everyone is having fun or at least meeting their full diabolical genius potential)

And i'm going to go brush my teeth now.

April Fools!!

I'm trying to think of a good April Fools to play on Ben.

I thought about seran wrapping the toilet seat. But since the last week or so has been spent in, around, and cleaning up toilet related issues i thought that might be grounds for divorce.

I thought about hard boiling all the eggs but that would result in having to eat egg salad for the next three days and just the sight of egg salad makes me a bit queasy (i'll leave it to the imagination to wonder why - i don't fee like reliving the moment).

One of my all-time fave's is putting an inconspicuous rubber band around the kitchen sink sprayer and aiming it at where the person turning the faucet on would be that way the next person to turn on the sink gets sprayed -- but we don't have a sprayer.

I thought about lying and saying the car or dvd player is broken or i lost Esther (and having her hide somewhere) -- but i'm a REALLY bad liar. My face twitches and turns pink and my eyes get really big which is i guess my way of trying to be very convincing...

So we've settled for putting food coloring in the milk. rice milk actually but the container is still not see-through so we'll see what happens.

And don't worry, said faithful and supportive husband never reads the blog so he won't find out... and you better not tell him (Ian!!!!!).