Tumbling year in review

Blondie had her last Tumbling class the last Friday in March. We found out at her second to last class that the teacher had to end the classes at the end of the month because of a class that he had to take. We are quite sad. Blondie has loved the class and the teacher and she has learned a lot more in one year than she did her first year taking it and more than M&M learned from all of the Tumbling classes we tried with her. Blondie's teacher was really good with the kids and he actually knew how to teach the different skills and could demonstrate for the kids. We have decided to take some time off from tumbling and then in the fall see if we are able to fit a tumbling class into our schedule (and hopefully with the same teacher). The last thing that Blondie was working on was a roundoff into a back handspring (with her teacher spotting her). I will try and get some video of her up when I get a moment. The one nice thing about the class ending though is that I have less running around to do on Fridays (and it's especially nice with soccer having started up again).

Out with the old, in with the new!

We decided to try and sell our old couch for a really low price on the online classified ads, but had no takers so we finally listed it in the free section. Unfortunately I had several people call and express interest but then once they started asking questions, it turned out that they were looking for something nicer. I actually had one person call and ask if she could come and look at it. So she drove 20 minutes to get to my house and drove over in a car that she couldn't transport it in and said she would have to see if she could get a truck to borrow. She called back later and said that she couldn't get a truck that day (I don't think she was really interested after seeing i)t. We have owned this couch for over 12 years and it has definitely taken a beating from our kids. I listed all of the problems with it in the classified ad and we were listing it for free so I was frankly surprised with how many people called hoping it would be something that it was not. Finally at the end of the third day that we had it listed someone called up and came and took it away. I was quite surprised at how difficult it would be to give away a couch... (We are currently keeping the matching love seat and it is in our bedroom right now for a little sitting area.

Having some fun!

Kay talk

When DH and I came home with the chairs, Kay was in the living room when DH came through the front door with one of the chairs. She immediately said, "Dad! You've got a chair! It's a big, comfy chair!"

One day I was driving M&M to her piano lesson and Kay and MJ were in the car with us.
Kay: "Sheep! Sheep!"
Me: "Cheep, cheep? Do you see some chicks?"
Kay: "Sheep! Baa, baa!"
Me: "Oh, sheep! Did you see some sheep? Where?"
Kay: "In the clouds. And there's a turtle and a dragon too!"
Me: "You see a dragon? Is it a good dragon or a bad dragon?"
Kay: "A bad dragon! It's got fire! It's going to get those trees!" (She said this as we went down a hill and it looked like the clouds were coming down to the level of the trees.)

Living room

Our living room is starting to come together piece by piece. The wood floor was our first step, then we finally found and ordered a couch that we liked. Our next step was to find two chairs to put over by the windows. DH and I looked at many, many different types of accent chairs and we would find one that we liked the look of, but wasn't very comfortable so we kept looking. There were two chairs that I found that I thought were comfortable - one was a beautiful accent chair at Bassett Furniture (where we ordered our couch from) and the other was a wingback chair at a smaller furniture store in Salt Lake. The Bassett chair was super expensive and I was having a hard time justifying buying it (and two of them eventually). The wingback chair was nice, but also expensive and we weren't quite sure on the colors that were offered for it. I decided to try looking around at some classified ads on the internet and had found some that would work but I would need to get them reupholstered (which could be quite expensive). One day I came across an ad for some dark blue wingback chairs with some gold and red coloring on the fabric - exactly the same colors as one of the accent pillows that we picked out for the couch. Finally DH and I decided to go and take a look at them and we decided to buy them! We went on a Thursday evening (March 24th) and only took MJ with us - the person selling them lived near downtown Salt Lake and we had to take the back bench out of the van. We paid about half the price of what we would have paid to get the cheaper set of wingback chairs at the furniture store. Then the next day our couch was delivered! Now we need to find an area rug and decide if we want any tables or other furniture in the room. The one thing I really want is some type of small dresser/cabinet to keep music in. (And I have been having a hard time getting any pictures of the furniture without at least one kid in the picture...)The pillows on the chairs are the pillows I made for our old couch. They are not in very good shape and I will be replacing them once we decide on an area rug. They don't look too bad on them for right now though.

Apple pie

Kay eating some apple pie (pineapple):Quite often at dinner time she is too impatient to wait for everyone so she climbs up in her chair and helps herself to what she wants...

Teething toy

MJ thinks pacifiers are nice teething toys:

April snow

We had a couple of days last week that were in the 60s and one day in the low 70s! Then this is the scene we woke up to Sunday morning - about 6-7 inches of wet, heavy snow:

Kid talk

One night at dinner last week it was super quiet for a minute or two and DH pointed it out to me.
DH: "Listen - this is a rare moment of silence for this household."
Luke: "Yeah, it's because we're stuffing our food full of mouths!"

Last night we were watching some home movies and I was figuring out how old the kids were in the clip we were watching.
Me: "M&M is 8 in this movie."
Luke: "Hey, she's my age. Oh wait a minute - am I 9 or 10?"

Wal-Mart Woes

A couple of weeks ago I had reaffirmed to me why I don't like shopping at Super Wal-Mart stores... (Although I don't mind the Neighborhood Wal-Mart that is down the street from me.) I didn't have a lot to buy there and all of the checkout lines with cashiers at them were pretty long with people buying lots of things so I decided to go to the self-checkout line which was much shorter. I waited for a few minutes for one of the stands to free up and then I went up there with my cart. Once I had scanned everything and then paid with credit card, no receipt printed out. I told the clerk that was overseeing the checkout stands and so she came over and tried to do a reprint of the receipt and still nothing happened. That meant one of two things - either the machine was out of paper or the paper was jammed. The clerk said that we would have to wait for a Customer Service Manager (CSM) to come over and unlock the machine because they are the only ones with a key - and that day there was only one CSM at the whole store. So she called the CSM over but she was busy with several other things/people and told us that we would have to wait for a few minutes. It was at least 5 minutes before she came back to help and once she unjammed the paper and then tried to print the last receipt and nothing printed out. Apparently the clerk who tried printing me a receipt before did something wrong and so there was no way to print me out a new receipt. The CSM handed me the crumpled up receipt that had been jammed in the machine and said, "Here this is the only thing I can give you. My name is ____ if you have any problems. That's Wal-Mart for you." Gee thanks...