We painted the kitchen

We painted our kitchen the week before Easter and my sister, Katie, wanted to see some pics. I love it! The kids' art square is a dark coffee brown as well as the archway into the kitchen and the rest of the walls are so light blue they're almost white. At different times of the day, depending on where the sun is, the walls go from near white, to a fun egg-shell blue. I love it way better than the old grandma flower border that's been up there since we moved in. Why didn't I do this sooner? Oh ya, when I moved in I had a four week old baby and was so thrilled not to be sharing a house with anyone anymore, I didn't care what the kitchen looked like. Now I need to find some colorful art tiles to hang above the windows and I'm thinking of trying a vinyl letter saying on the big brown archway. It screams for something to be put up there.

Two's better than one

Luke's decided that one pacy isn't enough. Putting him to bed the other night, I picked him up and this is what I found. He now wants to carry an extra pacy with him in the car and to bed. You know, just in case the other one happens to fall out of the super sucker action he's got on the one in his mouth. Sad news for him, though. The pacies are all out of here after he turns two. We're slowly weaning him down to pacies just at nap and bed time and church. Every once in a while he'll get one if we have a long drive in a car. He's doing great without pacy at nursery now. For the first month he needed the extra consoling comfort the pacy gave in Mom's absence. Fortunately for us all, he loves going to nursery now.

OCD Boy

First of all, we found out this week that Elyse passed the third round of Hemmetter idol and is moving on to the Finals in April. Now, she says she's nervous, but I know she'll do just fine. I've never seen her freeze in front of a crowd. Second, Paul made it into Elyse's school. We don't like the school we're assigned to, since it's almost innercity and is so tiny it's like the size of the Kaysville post office we had growing up. It's a relief to know I won't have to be shuttling kids to two different schools and he's made it into the same advanced and accelerated program Elyse is in. When it comes down to it, it's only elementery school and not, you know, an ivy league college or anything fantastic. But as a Mom you worry so much about your kids' little self esteems. It's less stressful for me knowing that Paul won't class himself as the dumb kid in the family because he isn't going to the exact same school as Elyse. Why did we even bother trying to get Elyse accepted in the first place? It sets a precedent for the rest of the kids and it's way too stressful on the parents. And now that she's been there two years I don't feel like pulling her out and away from her friends. And it's so much better than the scary school we would have to go to. Anyway, Paul is very excited about Kindergarten and seeing Elyse at school. On to Luke. As he's approaching age two more and more of his personality it shining through. Elyse was my pattern-loving, logical tom-boy. Paul lives in imaginary land and is my story teller and pretender. Luke has turned into Obessisve Compulsive boy who likes to stick to schedules and has an almost scary memory for such a little kid. I asked him to help me unload the dishwasher yesterday and to my surprise, he knew where everything was supposed to be put away. Down to the last vegetable peeler and cookie sheet. He also likes doors closed. All doors. I took him to the laundro-mat with me last week when our washing machine wasn't working and what does he do? Run down the aisles shutting every single open washing machine door. He follows people to the bathroom and unrolls the toilet paper to the exact same length every time for people to tear off. He even knows when laundry day is. He wants to haul buckets to the laundry room, opening all the doors along the way, and has to be the one to push all the buttons on the machine. He also has to be the one to carry his dirty diapers to the garage and his wet diapers to it's separate pail in the toy room--and he remembers the difference. He's weird. He even remembers where lost pacies are and his shoes. I can't get my five year old and seven year old to remember where their shoes are. He is a very particular little boy and maybe age will mellow him out, or a good dose of medicine will. He's always in my stuff. Not Matt's stuff so much, but mine. Like my brushes, make-up, curling irons, nail polish, and tupperware drawer. He also likes to hijack my library due date cards that they tuck into the back of the book. I don't know what it is about those things, but they are like candy to that boy. He's my little CONSTANT shadow. He's pretty cute. Weird at times, but cute. He gives me hugs and kisses and giggles and then will turn around and be so adament about not eating his meals that he spends repeated turns in the time out chair. Children. How can they be so adorable and exasperating at the same time?

Easter Egg Hunt

A couple noteworthy things about this year's Easter Egg Hunt:
1. The snow behind Luke. I caught him mid Uh-Oh. He didn't like it that his Easter Egg had snow on it. Yes, there's still snow on the ground here in Michigan, but not much. It was definitely coat weather this year for the hunt.
2. And yes, that's Paul wearing a superman suit over his Sunday clothes. That boy gives me the giggles. Everyone at dinner today kept asking him, "Are you Superman today?" "No," answered Paul with a don't-be-stupid tone, "I'm Paul Hyrum Deibel."
3. There's also Elyse wearing tennis shoes with her brand new dress and tights.

We had Easter dinner at our house this year with one side of Matt's aunts, uncles, and grandparents, and all the siblings that are in town. We succesfully crammed 17 people into our kitchen on three very cramped tables. But it was fun to all be together. Papa and Gramma Sue feed us Sunday lunch every week, so I thought I owed them a Sunday off. We hosted last year's too, so I'm wondering if this will become tradition. Speaking of tradition, I tried starting a new one. I asked all the adults to bring 6 plastic eggs a piece filled with something a grown up would like to take home. Matt and I filled ours with Star Wars postage stamps and Ferrer Roche (sp?) hazel nut chocolates. Most of the adults were good sports. Unfortunately, I found one of Uncle Ken's eggs, who protested the idea of an adult easter egg hunt by filling his with baking powder. Yummy! Guess I can make pancakes and biscuits this week.

Church today convinced me that God has a sense of humor. I'm the ward choir pianist and our director chose a very difficult piece for the piano as one of the numbers. Everyone in the choir sings "He Is Risen" in unision and the piano has these quick notes in large scales that go up, down, and all over the piano. I've spent hours and hours praciticing it and there was this one measure I could just not get. I'd sit and practice this one measure fifty times in a row and yet every time I played it for the choir, I'd ruin it. And it's the last measure of the intro, right before they're supposed to come in and it makes for a really lousy entrance for everyone when I mess up. So I practiced and practiced and prayed and prayed that I would be calm and not shaky and that my fingers would remember the notes for this measure because my brain certainly wasn't going to. So it's the last song. Hadn't ruined any of the others yet. I started playing, things were going smooth, hey, I didn't flub that tricky measure. Hurray! I even did it right for the second verse. Hey, this is going great! A few trip ups here and there, but always where the choir is singing real loud, I'm sure nobody noticed. The end of the song was in sight. Couple more measures to go before I could breathe easy. Yay, choir's done singing, just three large, dramatic chords to go and I've never messed those up: da! da! and...I flubbed the last note. The last chord! Arghhh! Flubbed so bad, I had to replay the correct chord or it would drive me crazy. Well, God answered my too specific prayer. I didn't mess up the one tricky measure. But to keep me humble, and remind me who was giving help, the last note had to go. Ha! Ha! That was a good one.

Dressed up for Easter Sunday

Our little "Idol"

Elyse's school does a mock American Idol show every year called Hemmetter Idol. Any kid in the school that wants to compete heads down to the music room after lunch and does a ten second tryout in front of the music teacher, the gym teacher, and a parent. Then it's on to round two and three. Once it's narrowed down to three kids from every grade, they have an assembly where all the winners get to sing in front of the whole school. I'm proud to announce that Elyse has made it to the third round this year. She's singing "Mississippi Girl" by Faith Hill for her third tryout on Tuesday and has to write a one page biography to take with her. Good luck Elyse!!! Whether she makes it or not, I think she's proud she's made it one round further than she did last year and I have to say that she's finally learned how to carry a tune. She's the only kid in her class to make it this far, so she's got her whole class behind her cheering her on. I'll have to record her singing her song so you guys can see it. She's got this country twang that I guess comes from us listening to too much Faith in the car. Time to go back to Laurie Berkner for a while.

Buddies and Glasses

To catch a few of you up to date, Elyse got her first pair of glasses this month. She's been having several headaches a week for most of the school year and her mother finally made the connection that she might have bad eyes like her parents. And hurray, the headaches have stopped! Here's a pic of her in her new specs and one of my two boys who happened to be wearing almost the same thing one day (unplanned by me, but aren't they cute?).

Easter Egg Artists

For FHE tonight we opened plastic Easter eggs that held different items representing parts of the Savior's atonement and resurrection. Then the kids dragged us into the kitchen to dye eggs for the hunt later this week. It's amazing how fast three kids can color twenty-two eggs. I think we've cracked four already, too, in all the excitment.

Joining the Band Wagon

Since all my friends have blogs, I thought I'd join the band wagon and create one for my family. It's not going to be too fancy because I'm not the computer nut in the house, but since I've slowed down on writing emails this will be a way for you to read a bit about what we're doing. Now all I've got to do is figure out how to put pictures on this thing! Anyone know where to get free blogger backgrounds?