11 months old

Little Miss Priss at 11 months old

Mischievo at 11 months old

Well, I'm not too late with the 11 month post. She was 11 months old on the 12th. She's a fast little crawler now and she's really starting to pull herself up a lot. She has eight teeth and looks like she's working on a couple more. Thankfully it doesn't seem to bother her too much.

This is going to be a catch up post also. I have lots of things to catch up on! Last weekend we went to Moses Lake to visit Nathan and Vi. We had a very nice time and Mischievo had lots of fun playing with their black lab puppy. We finally got another family picture taken while we were there, too.

And here's a picture of Nathan and Vi.

Also, Mischievo go a bad cut on his head while we were there. Here's the picture.

He was standing up on a footstool trying to catch a ball and he fell over backwards onto the brick hearth. It bled so much. I felt so terrible for him. It made me want to cry. He recovered pretty fast and didn't even cry when we washed it out. He's such a tough kid.

Also, I'm getting motivated to get organized! I was reading Anna's blog and she was talking about the FlyLady and how she can help you get organized and actually stay on top of everything. So, anyway the first step is to shine your sink. So I did that and this is how it looks.

It made me feel so good! You're supposed to keep it like that all the time so you never have to do all that work to make it shine again. You dry it out with a dish towel every time you use it so water spots don't build up. And you're not supposed to let your dishes sit in there and air dry. I do that all that time! For the last three days I've kept it shiny. We'll see if I can keep it up. The neat thing is it's motivated me to get the rest of my kitchen sparkly clean. It makes me feel so happy to see my shiny, clean sink when I wake up in the morning. The rest of my house should follow. We'll see! I'm probably one of the most disorganized people in the world. Organizing just overwhelms me. I've slowly been learning to do better and hopefully the Flylady will help me even more.

I've got another busy weekend ahead of me. My husband's brother Ken and his wife Amy with their two children Austin and Karissa are coming to visit on Sunday. They'll be here two nights. So, I'm looking forward to that.

I forgot to mention that I got new glasses. I don't know if anyone will notice that in the family picture or not. I've worn the same glasses for 7 years, so I figured it was time for a change.

Random pictures and a video

Here's a video of Little Miss Priss saying "Happy Day". She's also making the goofiest facessas she watches Mischievo run back and forth in front of her! She is the biggest cheese ball girl you ever saw.
(The video is not working for some reason. I can't seem to get videos to work on Photobucket. Anybody have any ideas?) Here's the link so you can see it.
http://s165.photobucket.com/albums/u55/mnmleland/?action=view¤t=DSCN1529.flv
And here's some random pictures of my kids.

And finally, the pictures of our backyard with grass. It actually looks pretty good in the pictures. We had a lot of weeds come up with the grass, though.

Belated 10 Months Old Post

Little Miss Priss 10 months old
Mischievo 10 months old

Well, here's Little Miss Priss's and Mischievo's 10 month pictures. I'm very late, I know. She'll be 11 months old on Thursday! Only one more month of being a baby. I can't believe how fast time has flown by!

I'm very much enjoying my kids right now. Little Miss Priss is learning so many new things and so is Mischievo. Little Miss Priss just started pulling herself up. She's a very cautious little girl. I think she's going to be more advanced in the talking department than Mischievo. She already says several words (at least we like to think they're words!). It sounds like she says "Happy Day", which is Mischievo's favorite Sunday School hymn, so she probably hears those words a lot. She'll say "ba" for bottle or ball or her baby. She says "mama" and dada". She's been saying "dada" since she was 6 months old and I don't think Mischievo started saying that until he was 8 months or older. Mischievo is more advance in the physical department. He was crawling up and down the stairs and cruising around holding on to things by 10 months old.

Mischievo is saying new words all the time. He's growing up so fast! Every day it seems like he's talking better. He pretty much gets himself completely dressed. Some mornings he'll come into the kitchen all dressed before I even realized he was awake. He doesn't always have his shirt or shorts on the right way. He loves to play ball. I think he has just about every kind of ball you can find. He has good arm, too. He can throw it far and hard. At 7 months old he could play ball by rolling it to you.

Well, I hope I can start doing a little better with posting now. Hopefully, things have slowed down around here. I'll try to post more pictures, too. I guess I don't always have to say anything, do I? I can just post pictures. You guys probably enjoy the pictures of the kids more than what I say, anyway! They're a lot cuter, that's for sure!

Sad times

This is my nephew, Caleb Charles Leland. He passed away one week ago today. He's the son of my husband's brother. This is a very hard thing to post about, but I think it would be good for me to write about it. I have tears in my eyes as I write this. He is greatly missed by his older brother Clark, his mother Kim and his father, Steve. He has many aunts and uncles that miss him, too.

We just got back from Aberdeen last night, where Steve and Kim live. We left last Wednesday at 11:00 a.m. and got there at 10:00 their time. I was really dreading having to see them grieving so much, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I'm so glad we could be there with them in their grief. They really are holding up pretty well. They have really been feeling the comfort of the Lord in all this. Its really going to be hard once every one has left and they have to get back to life and Caleb is not there. Its going to leave such a big hole in their little family. It was so hard to leave them. I wanted so bad to make it all better. I feel so much for Clark, he's going to be so lonely without his little brother. They were best friends.

We're all so thankful that Caleb passed away without any pain. He basically just fell over and was gone. He and his mother where riding their bikes over to a retirement home where they maintain the landscaping. When they got there and got off of their bikes Caleb fell and Kim thought he was having a seizure. The paramedics were called but they couldn't revive him in spite of much effort.

It's very comforting to know that he is with the Lord Jesus and he is happier than anybody could be here on earth. He was a happy little boy and often spoke of heaven and what it must be like to be there. Well, now he knows what it is like and wouldn't want to come back here if he could.

Next to the coffin they had printed this verse, "If any man ask you, Why.......Because the Lord hath need of him." Luke 19:31.

The past month has been just crazy around here. First Aunt Susan looked like she would be going home to be with the Lord and we had the Read's here at our house for a couple of days, then Aunt Susan passed away and her funeral was three weeks ago. Then we went to Seattle again. Then Caleb passed away a week ago and we left for Aberdeen after that. Now I'm home again and I have to get ready for our conference this weekend. I just took a break to post this and update everyone on what's going on in my life. I hardly had time to do this! I don't know when I'll get another chance to post anything more. My mom and sister are coming a week from tomorrow and will be here for a little over a week.

9 months old

Little Miss Priss at 9 months old

I can't believe she's 9 months old already! Time has flown by. I'm trying to enjoy her as much as I can. In 3 short months she won't be a baby anymore! She'll be a toddler. She's still not crawling or anything. Mischievo was pulling himself up and scooting on his bottom at this age. I'm surprised that she's not crawling because I thought she would be crawling a few months ago. She started rolling over at 3 1/2 months and she like being on her stomach more than Mischievo did so I thought she would crawl sooner. Oh well, at least she can't get into too much trouble yet.


Mischievo at 9 months old



Well, I won't be doing any blogging for a while. I'm getting company tonight and I don't know how long they will stay. I don't even know them!

I posted a while ago about my best friend's mom having cancer. Well, it doesn't look like she has much longer. Her body is shutting done and she can't eat anything. It looks like she's getting pneumonia and her lungs are filling up. She's in and out of consciousness. I will miss Aunt Susan so much. She's been so much help to me.

So, anyway, the company I'm getting is my friend's sister, Sharon's, mother and father-in-law. Does that make sense? They want to be here to see Aunt Susan before she goes and to be here afterwards. My friend is taking care of Aunt Susan at her house right now and they are just around the corner from us so, Ed and Maureen,(they're the company I'm getting) will be able to walk over and see Aunt Susan whenever they want.

New Kitten

This past weekend was very eventful. A lot of things got done at our house and we bought a kitten for Mischievo. He just loves it. He's always wanting to hold it. Here's a picture of it.

We haven't come up with a name for it, yet. I hope it lives a long time. I had a very sad experience with my last cat. I had to put the most beautiful Siamese cat to sleep a month before I had Mischievo. We're still not sure what happened, either a hawk or a racoon tore it up pretty good. It was very sad and I still miss that cat. I don't keep cats in the house because I'm allergic to them, so they have to live outside. We're kind of out in the country on an acre and a half, so we have wild animals out here. I'm trying not to get too attached to this kitten so I won't be so sad when it dies.

The other things that happened on Saturday were, we finally got our backyard landscaping done and we got the carpet installed on the stairs going down to our basement. I will be so glad when the grass starts growing and no more dirt is constantly tracked into the house. Right now there is grass seed and it should be pretty well grown in less than a month. We had a sprinkler system put in and on Saturday they got it all tilled and leveled and spread the grass seed.

Here's what the backyard used to look like.
This is what our backyard looks like now.













So, I'll have to post another picture of the backyard when we have nice green grass. I can't wait. Our backyard has been a mess for the last two years. We did an addition off the back of the house and when we dug out the foundation the dirt was just all over the backyard.
I'll have to do another post sometime about everything we've done to the house. We have changed the house a whole lot since my husband bought it over 5 years ago. I've got to round up some before pictures so I can post before and after pictures.

Catching up

I've been meaning to blog about so many different things. I'm always composing posts in my head but hardly ever type it all out. So, I thought I would just do one post and catch up on all the things I've been wanting to blog about.

First, my husband just recently started his own business and he had some company shirts made. He also had a couple of t-shirts made for Mischievo so they could match. I took a picture of them together.














I also took some pictures when my parents were here that I wanted to post. One day we took a little trip out to see Palouse Falls, which is about an hour away. I took some really good pictures of the falls and of my parents with the kids.

















The other day we all went fishing and Mischievo caught three fish! (with his dad's help of course!) I also caught the biggest fish I've ever caught before. It was 16 inches long. My husband also caught one 15" long. We did all this in one hour. Mischievo caught a fish within the first minute or two of casting his pole.


















Now, I have a video of Little Miss Priss smacking her lips. It's so cute when she does this. She does it a lot when she's eating and any time she wants your attention.
I can't get the video to work right so we'll trying linking to it.
http://s165.photobucket.com/albums/u55/mnmleland/?action=view&current=DSCN1283.flv