Another Birthday Party

On Tuesday Micah turned 6! We were going to celebrate that day, but he woke up and got into trouble before anyone else even woke up, so I made him delay a day, conditional on his behaving the next day! Luckily he did not copy Caleb's 7th birthday, where he had to wait over 2 weeks before he could have his birthday, and we were able to celebrate yesterday. We went to Walmart and picked out a cake and some soda, and when we got home I made pizza. I let him open presents first, so they had something to do while I cooked. He got Star Wars legos, a clone trooper figure, and a movie.








I'ts been stinking cold here this past week. It went down below 40 several times overnight. Back when we had a warm spell (even hot one day!) Chris turned off the heat. We'd used a lot of oil in just the two months we've been here, so I didn't really complain. I figured it wouldn't get that cold, and even if it did, it would warm up enough during the day to make up for it. Well, when it only gets up into the 50s, that doesn't warm the house back up again. Ugh, it is soooo cold in here! Not good for all of us who are trying to kick this cold thing for good. Poor Jacob, he had finally had a few days without his nose running, but yesterday he had a fever and his nose was running again. Waaah. I'd like spring to come back and stay this time!

While it was warm, Troyer and Caleb worked on a project out back:



They built a tree fort out of boards and old doors they found in the barn. It started out with a rope ladder, but that broke, so now it has an old ladder they found. The fort has 4 levels, so room for everyone! Noah spent a week reading books up there. :-)

Mystery Plant

Can you help me identify this plant? It is small, low to the ground. It is kind of like a crocus, except it just came up in mid April. All my crocuses had already come up and finished before these bloomed. I really like them, but I have no idea what they are. Do you?









In other news, I have been sick. Ugh, SICK. I got the flu last week (and somehow managed to not pass it on to anyone else in the house!) and caught a cold on top of that. I am still trying to defeat the cold. I have a nagging cough that keeps me up at night, which makes me very tired during the day; plus my left ear filled with fluid and won't drain. Luckily it is not infected, so it doesn't hurt, but it is very hard to hear with that ear. While I have been sick, the house has gone waaay downhill. The boys can barely manage to behave themselves without drawing blood when I am not on top of them; nevermind taking over some chores for me. Chris did some dinners, which helped, but didn't clean up after them. I also fell more than a week behind on laundry. The drawers were literally empty of clothes. oops. I am happy to report that I am feeling well enough to catch up, but it will take a while!

We're Free!

Last week, Chris and I went to the closing on our old house, got our check and got outta there! WOOHOO!!!! Who'd have thought that we would be able to sell our house so quickly, in today's market? We certainly didn't. Our buyers had already tried to bid on another house similar to ours and lost to someone else, so they were eager to grab ours. Luckily we were eager to get rid of it! LOL Inspections went well, conditions agreed to rather easily, and they requested to move up closing by a month. No problem! So now we are free of a very heavy weight - namely, a second mortgage payment to find money for. We had saved some money aside for that expense for 3 or 4 months, but since we closed so quickly we ended up not even paying one month of double payments. We are planning to use that money to pay down the mortgage on this house so the payment is approaching reasonable. I suppose that for a lot of people out there, what we pay now is already reasonable, but it is twice our old payment, so too much of a shock to the budget at this point. Reammortizing will bring the payment closer to that of our old house. So we are one-house owners once again - Whew!

Signs of Spring

The weather here is warming up, slowly. I can't complain too much, since we don't have snow (and I am HAPPY for that!) but I do wish it were a few degrees warmer. It didn't feel too much like Easter this Sunday, but the sun was out and it was less windy than it's been the last few weeks. I found these out in my front yard on Sunday morning:







I also have some daffodils starting to come up as well. I really like living down here; the area we used to live in won't have any flowers for another month!

We went over to MIL's for Easter dinner on Sunday afternoon. Dinner was yummy, and we got to spend some time with Chris' sisters and BIL. After dinner, the boys went outside to hunt eggs. FIL colored the eggs, and then he and BIL and Aunt Shawna hid them. I was glad it was sunny and nice out, even if chilly. Last year it was really cold and the boys didn't have much fun. The way they hide eggs over there is funny. For the little kids, they do the obvious hiding spots on the deck, so the eggs peek out a bit and are easy to find; but for the older kids they really make it a challenge. FIL went out into the yard and just dropped the eggs in the grass. Then he moved leaves or grass over top of them to hide them. They boys had to wander around in the yard hoping to come across the eggs. Even funnier is that FIL doesn't pay much attention to where he drops them, so by the end of the hunt, we are all desperate to find the last of the eggs, LOL.







Finally, FIL decided to offer cash for eggs LOL and announced he'd pay a quarter an egg to whoever could find the last 2. Noah was all excited to come up with them, but just at that point MIL yelled out that there were still another 2 missing! FIL upped the payoff to $1 an egg, and everyone looked even harder. Since Levi and Jacob found their eggs on the deck, Levi kept looking there. MIL and BIL told us that all the deck eggs were found, so we just thought it was cute that he was still looking. Well, lo and behold, he came up with one of the eggs! It had rolled under the deck. Samuel found the other egg out in the grass, and FIL gave out the money to each of them.