Friday, March 30, 2007

Baby Amber, Lost Tooth, and Make-over


Sent: Friday, March 30, 2007 5:02 PM


Amber has discovered her feet, she is loving her socks off to play with her feet and then she just rocks and rocks. Also she (Amber) has started on solids, she wears more of it than she eats I believe. Lindsey and Lauren were saying that she has a beard and a mustache.

Lauren lost her tooth. She was chewing on something and got it pretty loose, and then she kept working it all day. By the end of the day I pulled it out and it didn't even bleed, just fell right out. She didn't even realize that it had fallen out.

Then of course Emily in make up, she wanted to try it out.

That's all I got for now I guess.

Love and miss ya,

Karla and family

Dinosaur Museum


Sent: Friday, March 30, 2007 4:42 PM
Subject: Dinosaur Museum


Here is the Dino's Museum, feel free to come take a tour of it. Admission is free. More of things to see that are not shown here, but this is a preview of what you can see.

I have a few more pictures to send so sit tight.

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Story time by Emiily


Sent: Sunday, May 27, 2007 5:02 PM
Subject: Story time by Emiily


I am hoping this isn't the one I just sent. This should be Emily reading to the other girls. Each day Emily is to read or be read to 20 minutes a day. Some days it seems so impossible to read for long and be uninterupted, but this works good too if they will all cooperate. Amber is so wiggly that even when we sit her up on the couch she just wiggles down. She sits fine on her own. She also loves to bend over backwards and hand upside down. So maybe that is what is going on part of the time too. I love to listen to Emily read, she gives so much life to it... it's great!

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Let it rain, let it rain, let it rain!

Wednesday, March 21, 2007 11:01 AM

We have been having extraordinary weather here, or I think so because I love the sun. Last weekend we went to the park and all got some sun. We took the girl's bikes for them to ride there and that turned out to be no fun. Their training wheels were all bending or getting loose or something and then they would whine because their bikes were too wobbly. Amber was the best of them all. On our way to the park Robert ended up taking one set of training wheels off. Emily was on that bike, so she had to have someone with her to hold her bike up. I ended up walking home and getting the car to drive home so we didn't have to ride the bikes back home.

Since we had training wheels off, I thought I would work with Emily yesterday to ride her bike a bit better. So I held on to the back of her bike and ran with her as she rode it. She would ride it on the sidewalk in front of our house and then turn up our driveway and go in the grass. I had her permission to only let go when she was in the grass. So we tried that and no falls and by the end of about 20-30 minutes she was riding her bike.

We went in for dinner, Robert had meetings to go to and I asked Emily if she wanted to go in the BIG backyard to try her bike one more time before bed. No problem we do that, and she is riding away no big deal.

Meanwhile, Lindsey had gone to the bathroom right before we started in the backyard with the bike. Sometimes she has a tendency to use a little too much toilet paper. Luckily when she does that she doesn't flush the toilet so I catch it before it clogs and floods. (I have a special toilet wooden spoon for this purpose, and fishing out any other foreign objects as well.) On top of that, our toilet has a tendency to keep running until you jiggle the handle or the handle will stick down.

We come back inside from all the outdoor riding and Lindsey and Lauren are saying, "what's that, uh oh Mom look!" All I hear is a down pour of rain... but we are inside. I look and the ceiling in our basement at the bottom of the stairs is just raining like crazy. I am looking at it and trying to figure out where this is coming from, what happened.... what to do, and I then go up stairs to a flooded carpet in the hallway, and the bathroom is about 2 inches deep in water. I have flip flops on and I take them off and they are just floating around on the water. Then I hear the toilet running. I jiggle the handle. Then I lift the lid as water is dumping rapidly out of the toilet, I get the plunger and start plunging away, finally the toilet water goes down. Phew! One thing fixed. I notice that the carpet in my room next to the bathroom is soaked, like standing water, for about 2 to 3 feet away from the bathroom door. Not to mention all the boxes and things under Amber's crib are sitting on a watery carpet now.

Robert is at a meeting and I am looking at this mess not even knowing what to do. Get a towel? Not even Bounty the quicker picker upper would work for this mess. I call Robert and tell him we have a bit of a problem. We have water standing in the upstairs bathroom and leaking all the way to the basement floor. He says, okay.

I think about our carpet cleaner, It sucks up water.... I go down stairs to grab it and then notice when I open the laundry room door, more water on the floor all the way almost to the washing machine, we have a drain in there so it stopped about there at the drain. Not only water on the floor but it is raining from the ceiling and the door jam. (Later Robert tried to shut that door, but it wouldn't because of all the waterlogged wood.) I walk through the raining ceiling to get the carpet cleaner, just thinking about where the water is coming from and how clean it is as it is dripping on my head and everywhere else.

I take the carpet cleaner up to the bathroom and turn it on, it is full in about 40 seconds max. I dump it and repeat for about an hour and a half. Sucking up the water in the bathroom floor and the carpet in my room and the hallway and down the stairs a step or two. Not to mention, it is bedtime, the girls are interested in what everything looks like. I give Amber who is tired and crying to Emily to hold, tell them all to stay in the front room while I am trying to get some of the water up.

Robert comes home with a neighbors big shop vac, he fills that completely full from the basement. To help you see this picture. After Robert had sucked up one canister of water into the shop vac, it was still so wet down stairs on the carpet then when you stepped from the stairs to the carpet it splashed like a mud puddle. You had to walk really slow and carefully for it not to splash.

As if the water part wasn't bad enough, we had all sorts of toys and things in the hallway upstairs that got soaked. We had clothes that had to be hand washed that I had washed recently and hung them on Robert's weight bench downstairs to dry that are now soaked. There was a box of kids books soaked downstairs. It looks like most of them are okay, but 3 of them may not make it. There was a box of scrapbooks that got all wet. I think they will be okay. The album that got the worse was our wedding one... figures! I think they will be okay as long as we don't try to take the pictures out of the plastic.

Robert starts tearing down wet sheetrock that is on the ceiling. He takes down a light fixture that has completely filled up with water. (Don't turn on that light!) Now not only is the floor wet, but now we have that nasty sheetrock dust on everything, but because of the water it turns to a nice paste. (Remember those clothes drying? They now have that dust/paste all over them.) Robert ripped up the carpet that was soaked, and the padding and the tack strips and all that fun stuff that goes with it. Carrying all that to the garbage can, which luckily is empty (or was) because it was just garbage day. And you know that sheetrock dust paste, well it is leading from the basement to the front door, to the girls room, to the kitchen door.... in the garage. That should be fun to clean up.

We took apart the weight set and took it to the garage. I think we might get new carpet now, and a new ceiling.... Robert thinks now is a good time to redo the room. Maybe get a fireplace down there.... (Like there will be money for that now that we have to replace everything else.) I am just glad we didn't already redo the carpet. We talked at one point about putting our computer down there in that spot where the weight bench was, which is directly under the upstairs bathroom. I am really glad that wasn't the case this time. That would have been worse, especially how messy our desk is with paper work and receipts and all that stuff. I can handle a little more laundry and a few books to be replaced... the computer thing would have been real ugly.

So about 11 pm we go upstairs to go to bed and call it a night. While I am in the bathroom or try to get in there, I realize I still have to take the shop vac, the carpet shampooer, and all the attachments out of the bathroom so we can even get in there to brush teeth and what not. Not to mention all the wet stuff in the tub that I threw in there when I was cleaning the bathroom and the hall. (Stuffed animals, a backpack, brushes, soap, hair products, all the bathroom rugs....

Oh, and another thing that was down stairs in the "rain zone" was a huge package of toilet paper from costco we had picked up a week or two ago. Of course they are indivually wrapped in PAPER, so I think I saved like 5 or 6 rolls that didn't get squishy wet, and some of those are still damp. I thought we could unroll a few of those to get something. Costco is usually pretty reasonably priced, but this turned out to be some real expensive toilet paper.

So today on my "to do list" is get rid of all the sheetrock paste down stairs, and rip up the rest of the wet carpet. Rewash the towels that are on the chair that now have sheetrock junk in them, (should have folded those before I guess) and move the fans around to dry up more carpet. I am glad it isn't snowing or too cold or we would be really freezing in the house. I told the girls to wear warm clothes today. I am not sure that maybe even water didn't go down the air intake in the hallway for the furnace. Not sure if that is a big deal or not. (ha-ha-ha-ha) I also need to call the insurance to see if this is covered or not.

I can laugh about this now, but Robert isn't quite to that point. I was laughing about it last night. It will take longer for Robert to find humor in this. And poor Lindsey, last night she just kept saying "I'm sorry Mom, I didn't know" over and over again. I told Robert we should be careful how we say things or when we talk about it so that she doesn't feel bad about it. Emily and Lauren kept saying, "you did this Lindsey." Poor girl. She seems okay today about it all.

Well, I have things to do today... guess I better get started with it all. I hope you have a fun day today, I know I will! We look forward to seeing everyone soon!

Saturday, March 10, 2007

Cowgirl Emily (birthday party)


Sent: Saturday, March 10, 2007 7:08 PM
Subject: Cowgirl Emily


"Giddy Up Cowgirls! Come on over to Emily's correl for a Horsey good time!" is what Emily' s invitation read.

Her party was today, we had a good time, Emily had a great time.... she was really tired and got a little grumpy a few times. But we all survived! Emily reported that her favorite part was the presents and what she would change to make it better would have been to have her guest stay longer.... (they were here from 1 to 4 PM).

The pictures say most of it. I didn't get a picture of them playing horseshoes or saddle the horse (same as pin the tale on the donkey, poster behind Emily at the table in a picture I think). We then played with balloons doing miscellaneous games from relay racing to who could pop your balloon the fastest.

We had a great group of girls here.... Lindsey was my biggest battle today, so that was okay.

Gotta get those kids in bed.... early morning church on top of daylight savings time.... YUCK!!

Wishing you could have all been her to help celebrate too,

Miss and love you!!!

Karla and family


Friday, March 9, 2007

Girls and laundry

The girls are helping out with laundry...
They are good at sorting through it all...  or getting into it all.
Me weighing Amber... she weighs 13 lbs.

Sent: Friday, March 09, 2007 10:24 AM
Subject: Girls and laundry


As you have guessed, it is that time again to down load my camera. My camera is full and Emily's birthday party is tomorrow. So I thought I would send a few of these cute pictures of things that have been going on here... for the last month.

The first picture, basically just shows how strong Amber is getting, it was from 1/30/07. Lindsey is always doing funny or crazy things and then says, take a picture of this..... Last time I had more pictures of Lauren and Amber, and this time I have more of Lindsey and Amber. Emily is usually at school during these times, so she gets cut out of them I guess.

Then there is a sunset that Emily loved and wanted a picture of because it was "so beautiful" that we had to get several.

I have more pictures to come... so sit tight!

Snow Girls



Sent: Friday, March 09, 2007 10:31 AM
Subject: Snow Girls


Sorry I forgot to tell you, the last set I sent, the one of Amber in the pink toy bathtub is my weighing method I do with our postal scales here.... she was weighing in at 13 lbs that day.

Now this is pictures of the girls from when we had snow, in the middle of Feb. They built a snow man and called him Frosty. They then wanted to eat snow and have pictures of it, I told them how dirty it was...since they really just scooped it off the grass. Emily found that out, she was spitting out grass and dirt. (You can maybe see on the side of her mouth it is all dirty from her spitting out the gross snow for real. The other girls were just playing.)

More pictures on the way....

Emily's patriotic program and pics of Lindsey & Amber

Sent: Friday, March 09, 2007 10:40 AM
Subject: Emily's program

Here are a few cute picture of Lindsey and Amber.

Emily had a program for Presidents Day. She did really good, had a speaking part and singing and all, you would never know she was shy. She passed off all the songs and her part to her teacher. They sang several songs.... God Bless America, God Bless the USA, Yankey Doodle, That's my Flag, America the Beautiful, and probably at least 3 more songs that I can't think of right now. They also named off all the Pres. starting with George Washington down to our current Bush. She did a fantastic job. Robert was in Texas or headed that way, so he missed it.

One more bunch to go.....

Spring time fun

Sent: Friday, March 09, 2007 10:56 AM

Subject: Mud Girls
The first picture is of all the girls, Amber wasn't too thrilled about it all, but the other girls wanted me to keep taking pictures....




About 2 weeks ago, the cat found a new bed for himself.... we keep shoo-ing him out but he just keeps coming back in. So far he hasn't been in there with Amber so that is nice. It is funny I will hear Lindsey or Lauren yelling "shoo, shoo, you shoo out of there now... shoo, shoo GATO, Shoo!!" He isn't too threatened by their words.


The picture of Amber in this one I just love, not sure if it is her angle or the flower or what..... I just love it though!



Two days ago was a nice somewhat warm sunny day. The girls were going around looking at the "signs of spring" sprouting bulbs, crawling of bugs, and so on. I have a flower bed that doesn't get much water during the winter, it is under an overhang from our upstairs so it is pretty sheltered and all. So I normally will throw snow on it when we get snow or water it from time to time. So being a nice day, I hooked the hose up and thought I better water the dry bed. We have crocus coming up and blooming but only about half that should be there. The girls then decided to water my other plants. I told them sure go ahead. I gave them a watering can and shut the hose off. They came back in for a few big cups for more water. (Everyone needs their own.) They used the faucet outside. Next thing I hear is Emily and her friend yelling saying don't touch us, my mom will be so mad! I look out the door, to find Lindsey and Lauren covered in mud. They watered their little mud hole they dig in during the summer.


It was funny when I was trying to take their picture, Lindsey wanted to put her hand on Lauren's shoulder. Lauren was freaking out saying, "You are too muddy, don't touch me!" They finally agreed on holding hands. You can't really see it great but Lindsey has two hand prints on her back. I was laughing. Robert came home during the end of their play time.
Poor girls I was washing their feet so they could come in the house... the water was just freezing.... I was having numb hands from just wiping their feet clean. It couldn't have bothered them too much because they continued to play in the mud.

Well that is about all I have that looked good. I am sure after Emily's party we will have more pictures. She is having a cowgirl party. She is really excited.

Love to all,

Karla and family