Couple more pictures...

Here are a couple more pictures from my Mom's camera.


Austin told me that all she wanted to do all day was take care of the baby and make sure that she was having a good time.

The older cousins finding more eggs.

Carri and Tadd brought Easter baskets complete with bubbles!

There's the picture of at least three of the cousins that I wanted to take.  I love that Goose is wearing her snow boots.

Easter

We hosted Easter this year at our house and had an absolute blast.  Here are some of the pictures along with some others thrown in there.


The tulips for the different tables...I always think of Helen when I see tulips, she used to bring me home flowers and chocolate on occasion for no reason and often times they were tulips. :-)

Hiro is definitely the girls dog.  He loves to be near them, evidence here by having to lay on her feet.

I wanted to surprise the girls with their Easter hunting baskets, something pink and amazing but since I had to take them to the store with me they both ended up picking fluffy Elmo ones instead.

Baby Hannah making her way into the yard with her bunny basket.

I should have had the kids all line up in hindsight, but here are my girls and Hiro checking things out.

We kept Hannah's eggs in one circle which proved to even be a little bit difficult.

Kelley helping making sure that everyone has found all of the eggs.

The only picture I got of Morgan down in the valley.  I wrote everyone's names on the eggs since some had socks and what not in them, it was fun to watch them shout to each other about finding others eggs.

Grandma looking very spring like watching her grand babies.

The boys stayed their distance up by the garage.

Carri helping Goose figure out if all of her eggs say Tyler on them.

Mama Snapped

Ahhh, the Playroom...the bane of my existence.  I like my house to have order and if it does get messy to have a reason for that mess and then shortly there after getting it clean.  I am sure it drives everyone else in my life crazy even though I take care of the cleaning on my own, they are subjected to my course stares as I watch them destroy my order.  But my anxiety will melt me down if I let the house go.  With work being so busy lately I have been tidying up but not cleaning and all the while (for the last freaking week) asking the girls to pick up their playroom, which looks like a war torn third world country.  Finally two days ago I asked one last time...the conversation went something likes this.  Austin, please clean your playroom, this is the last time I will ask.  She looked at me, cocked her head to one side and said (I kid you not...the little Joe) go ahead and have Dad throw away all my toys because I WILL NOT clean it.  I stopped my hand from knocking her teeth out and smiled and said, ok so be it.  Blew off work....errr...took time off of work.  And cleaned the house including the play room.  Guess who isn't allowed in the play room any longer?!?!  Now it's clean and organized and sunny and perfect during the days...without the slightest hint of a child in there.  I am not sure how long I will bar them from it, maybe until they are tweens.

Here's the picture of Tyler on the phone with Grandma telling her about losing the play room privileges.  Obviously by the smile she is not that affected by it.

Kuma's First Show

I cannot believe how nervous I was...in fact I was so nervous that I couldn't blog about it just in case I jinxed it.  Kuma had his first show this last weekend up in Denver.  I got an email from our breeder stating that he would be entered in the Bred-By class with all the rest of the males up there and that I should work on "stacking" him.  Hmmm, after I Googled that and then watched hours of videos on how to stack a dog (make them stand at attention), now I've been working with him for weeks.  The problem is that Kuma is so well behaved that when we take walks he is rarely on lease and when we stop he sits next to our side.  Whelp that is apparently not what they are looking for in a show dog.  So I retrained him that when the choke collar is on and I touch his back legs that he stays standing but I couldn't get him to stop looking like he was in trouble.  Luckily he managed to pull it off and did very well...taking both Best Dog and Winners Dog on Saturday and Best Dog on Sunday.


Did not like the grooming table at all and the very loud blow dryer.

Here's him winning best dog...

And I think he won so easily because of how sweet he is, here's him giving the judge kisses (much unlike every other show dog there).

Here's him and the male dog he beat out.

And the female he won against is the one next to him that is black, grey and white.  As you can tell he doesn't stand at attention very well like the rest do but the judge even took me aside and said that he was a magnificent dog.

I just love this fluff ball.  Look at that face?!?!

  

Slightly failing at EVERYTHING!

In a given day I have many things that I HAVE to get done...some I like to get done and several nice to haves.  Whelp for me, currently, the entire list is a fail.  Only a slight fail, so I don't believe I will be losing my job, or Joe's walking away and the girls aren't in any real danger...but every single thing in my life right now has taken a beating.  Several times a week I get so busy that I have to throw away my lunch, which I would think would make me skinnier but it hasn't...oh yeah....diet...fail.  I have sat down with the girls and explained that Mom is much busier now and needs some help from them, they nod their little heads and run off frothing at the mouth.  Fail.  In my experience children misbehave for two reasons, attention or testing boundaries.  Currently my kids are doing both, and to some point I get it...I don't agree with it or anything.  But I used to be able to work several hours a day and take regular breaks to work with the kids, check on them, "make projects" as Austin calls it.  Now I am requiring them to entertain themselves and since I am on calls ALL the time, if they are in my office they must be silent.  Sounds like a double dog dare huh?  In fact my life is a double dog dare.  Yesterday I got an email from a client that stated...You NEED to call me ASAP!.  Hmmm, makes me wish I knew your address sir, so instead of kicking the dog I could drive over there.  Needless to say I ignored him.  One of my team mates called him and it turns out he was typing in his password wrong.  Sounds like an ASAP problem to me.  And stop using abbreviations in professional emails, if you can't muster the full words, I can't get my fat fingers to dial the phone for you.


This picture was taken several days before the picture below it.  It was finally nice enough to rake some of the yard and water the sprouting flowers.

And several days later we got dumped on.  Kuma loves to be outside because he gets hot so easy.  Hiro needs to be by Kuma but doesn't stay as warm since he still has puppy fur so he decided to lay on him.  Weird-o's!

Here's a picture of the house down the road that caught on fire last week.  Gonna be a long fire season.

Here are the demons being "very quiet" while riding Austin the pony in my office and obviously quite proud of themselves.