When will it be Spring?

Because of all my ranting and raving in the last post, I neglected the mention the fun things we'd done in the past little while. There will be a lot of pictures in this post so bear with me.


We had a fun Sunday out in Wetaskiwin on March 8th to celebrate Mom, Rob, Natalie and Madeline's birthdays since they all fall close together. Here are some pictures from that day:

Rob is 14! Yay youth dances! I remember how excited I was to go to those.
The excitement did not last long. So I say, enjoy it while it lasts!

Natalie is 19! That makes me super old. I love the camera hog in the background.

Maddie gets to blow out candles twice -
once at Grandma and Grandpa's house and then at our house this weekend.
She loves it. She keeps asking for presents and singing Happy Birthday to everyone.

Claire had a blast with this balloon until we discovered that it was turning her fingers black.

Grandma and her sleepy babies.
(Somehow I missed getting a shot of Mom blowing out her candles - sorry!)

Self-portrait. Ryan is so good at taking these.
I always get the angle wrong or cut off someone's head when I try to do it.

Cute couple - Greg & Steph. Married almost 2 years now.

Here's a few pictures from around home last last few days.

Claire loves being in her standing frame. It serves several purposes:
It gives her another position to be in to change things up,
it helps her joints and bones and muscles by weight-bearing (since she isn't walking on her own) and it helps get the bowels moving, if you know what I mean.

Speaking of bowels...(gotta love sentences that start that way)
Auntie Stephanie and Uncle Greg got a first hand look at explosive diaper trauma the other night while babysitting. They handled it like pros so I think they're ready to have their own kids now.
They've seen the worst of it. Hopefully they will still babysit for us again.

Madeline got some money in the mail from Auntie Sheila for her birthday and
so we had fun going to the store to pick something out.
She picked a mermaid Barbie and loves to brush her hair. She was very pleased with herself!

Ryan's been doing this trick with Claire lately and I don't know how he does it.

She loves being up there though. They make one super-tall mega person.
Maddie loves all things princessy and fairy-like.
Here she is, in full get-up, dancing to the fairy dance song on our Wiggles DVD.
She's blurry because she doesn't stand still.

We spent some fun time outside during that warm weather spell.

The snow was sticky and just perfect for snowballs and snowmen.

Ryan and his creation. He did all the hard work.
Maddie and I gathered the bark chips and twigs (which made it look really creepy, but oh well), and Claire supervised the operation. It was lots of fun.

I'd been trying to get a good picture of Madeline the whole time we were outside
and hadn't been successful. I asked her to smile for a picture and she leaned up
against Ryan and posed - she stayed still and waited for the picture to be taken.
Uh, maybe you had to be there - it was funny at the time.
It made for a good picture though.

I love this picture of Claire - just pure joy at being outside and enjoying the world.

You can see our little snowman in the distance.

On a side note, sometimes I feel like cleaning my house is nothing but damage control.

Here Maddie found my box of cornstarch in the pantry and dusted the house with it.
It's never dull around here.
Do you ever dream of having the house to yourself for an entire day...just so you can clean it? This is what my life has come down to! :)