Finished Project

Despite the girls best efforts to push me over the edge with the event that will forever be known as the "Packing Peanut Incident" the wall is finished!

Speaking

Check it out! I'm one of the speakers at the NANC conference this year. Isn't that cool!

Mommy Date

Shelby and I had a great mommy date tonight. She came to the VOH graduation tonight and was so good. The whole time she was literally vibrating with excitement about how awesome our mommy date after the graduation was going to be.

She was so obedient the whole night and then was so good when we got to Purdue. She was so excited about everything - the drive over, the parking garage, the red tulips, the seeing eye dog we saw, etc, etc. She exclaimed over the amazing glass stairwell and the beautiful princesses at the dance.

We got to go to an Indian dance troupe event that was very culturally interesting. It turned out to be a little more "religious" than I was hoping, but it was a very good opportunity to experience some culture that I'd never seen before. Here's a little video clip of part of it.

My mom has started buying us tickets to event for Christmas present instead of stuff, which we LOVE. We've been able to go to Seussical the Musical, this dance troupe event, and soon Brian will take Hailey to see STOMP. We have really loved my mom's creative Christmas present!

I'll post some more pics later. It didn't start until 8 pm and we didn't get home until almost 11 pm, so I'm pretty tired.

Things That Make You Want To SCREAM!

So we had this GREAT idea about turning one little wall in our kitchen into a huge blackboard, so we can color on it, write our grocery lists on it, and all the fun things that you do with a chalkboard. So I ran to the store on my lunch break, bought the supplies, and then hurried through supper so we'd have plenty of time to get the project done.

I was feeling pretty good about life. I had a great day at work, and I mean like SUPER productive! I had cleaned the whole house on Saturday, dusting, vacuuming, etc and things were good.

Here's a pic of me taping up the wall. Shelby's being my little tape holder.

After we got the wall all taped up I let the girls have a turn with the paint roller. But then I started getting nervous because the paint was as black as tar and I was really nervous about someone either dripping it onto the hardwood floor or backing their butt up against the wall and ending up with a HUGE mess and I wasn't about to have to clean up a HUGE mess tonight.




So I let the girls participate then I kindly excused them to play in the living room.

I worked along merrily, and I realized after the first coat that I had gotten an extraordinary amount of work done without the girls in the kitchen and I silently thanked God that there would be no messes to clean up tonight.

So I ran into the living room to check on the girls and this is what I walked into . . . .

You should really double click on the picture so you can get the full effect of the situation.

Yes, that is 5,000,000 packing peanuts all over the living room floor, squished, broken apart, ground into dust ALL OVER MY NICE CLEAN, NEWLY DUSTED, FRESHLY VACUUMED LIVING ROOM.

Brian had gotten an Ebay box from a vendor obsessed with packing peanuts, and he'd put the box (which mind you was BIG, big enough to fit both girls into) next to the trash. I saw the girls get the box to play with but I had no idea that there were PACKING PEANUTS in it.

When I walked into the living room there were my 2 precious angels, naked as jaybirds (and I still don't know why they were naked) jumping all over the packing peanuts and throwing them up into the air, grinding them to dust, hopping into the pile like leaves, and innocently looking up at me as if to say "Aren't you glad we're having so much fun?".

Have you ever tried so hard to not scream at your kids that you were surprised you could actually keep from doing it?

That was me tonight, and let me tell you . . .what ever you faced today was nothing compared to static charged packing peanuts stuck in every crevice of every chair, stuck to the TV, stuck under the sofa, stuck under the rug, stuck under the dining room table, stuck to the kids, stuck to their bodies, stuck to EVERYTHING.

Whatever budget crisis you faced at work was nothing compared to trying to vacuum 5,000,000 packing peanuts that didn't want to be sucked up the hose and NOT SCREAMING AT THE KIDS.

Whatever flack you received from you boss for something you did not do was nothing compared to getting two girls covered with packing peanut pieces to stop moving so you could get the stupid packing peanuts to stop swirling around the air in your living room and NOT SCREAMING AT THE KIDS.

Whatever bad thing that happened to you today was nothing compared to hastily scrubbing tar black paint off your hands so they could be clean enough to pick up the delicate little pieces of packing peanuts off every square inch of the living room and NOT SCREAMING AT THE KIDS.

So I don't want to hear about it. Your day was not as bad as mine!

Training

Balance + long legs = no more training wheels

I know these pictures don't indicate it, but today was the big day that the training wheels came off, and there was several instances where there was hard core training-wheel-less pedaling for several rotations in a row. Every time it was followed by "Mom, did you see that?" It was so cool!

Beautiful Day

Today was 64 degrees for a high according to the weatherman, but my office thermostat got up to 77 at one point. That's hot enough to sweat according to my counselees today, who thought I was trying to sweat the truth out of them today :-).

Tomorrow, my sweet little nephews birthday, is supposed to get up to 72 which I'm hugely in favor of.

It needs to be noted that in celebration of a perfectly clear day yesterday and a warm 55 degrees we laid out to get a suntan for the first time this year. This is the earliest ever for us to lay out. Shelby even got rosy cheeks. It's still officially winter. Isn't that great!

Today in celebration of the amazing warm weather and wonderful temperature and sunny skies still light at 8 pm I got my worker girl overalls on and fixed a window that was hanging precariously from the garage. In the last big storm the 80 mile / hour wind gusts had pushed it in until it was very close to falling out and breaking glass all over who ever happened to be innocently walking underneath it. I was so proud of myself, because I was really scared to climb the ladder. Hailey prayed for me to be brave and safe, and I did it!

Playing after the work was done

Adam's Mill is our favorite place to play, so we worked REALLY hard to get done with chores so we could go have a picnic and a boat race!

There comes a point that the girls just can't wait any more and they break out running to get here.

Our lovely picnic!

Happy Spring!

Shelby's HUGE grape she had to show me.

Hailey enjoying her whipped cream covered strawberry.

Heading to the river so we could launch the boats.

Hailey's boat was awesome!

Hailey was so excited to watch it float away.

Hailey found an old plank bridge that she mastered.

The old hollowed out tree.

Hanging by the bridge.

The best part of the day for the girls was getting the benefits of being at the beach even in March in Indiana. The sandy cliffs at Adam's Mill are great for playing on.

Saturday Work Day

This is how the girls get their laundry ready to wash.

Shelby is VERY helpful!

The girls love doing trash together!

They did a great job taking it out to the garage.

Shelby was great at pointing out spots for Hailey to vacuum.

Signs of Spring

Pussy Willows budding

Snow drops

Moss on the Ponderosa Pine

Running so fast your feet don't even touch the ground

Wind whistling

Muddy Boots

Finally being able to be free

Crocuses

Wind blowing through my open bedroom window

Remorse

This morning was a sad morning in the Wallace house with a major hour-long tempter tantrum by one of the kids who's old enough to know better. It made me late for teaching Sunday School this morning, and it resulted in time outs and early bedtime (for more than one night). That's like totally the worst ever! Only mean mommies do that.

This afternoon the child in question decided to write me a note while I was lying down with the other child, and she taped it to my wall above my desk. The note on top says "Oka, I love u faerer and er. (translated Ok, I love you forever and ever)" The note underneath is especially meaningful, because this morning while I was being screamed at she said she wanted a different mommy. The note underneath says "Du you wunt to be mi mom mom? Yes i wunt to be ya mom."

I guess some of what I said this morning got through to her. It was actually an interesting conversation on the way to church when she still wasn't convinced that she was ready to obey when I described all the ways that God tells us we have to obey and how God promises that if we don't obey we'll have a very hard life.


Yes, I want to be your mommy. . . . even when it's really, really hard.

The first wonderful day of the year

It's 60 degrees out today and it was 70 yesterday! We could hardly wait to wake up today to go play outside. Getting to be in warm air with the wind blowing through our hair makes us feel alive and kind of like we just woke up from a very long winter nap. We are happy!

These girls are such comedians. Shelby is especially getting to be really funny! I'm convinced that there are days that she thinks of doing or saying something that she knows will crack us up just to see us laugh.

This is a totally natural Shelby pose. Sometimes I catch her sitting like this eating her snack or reading a book. What a little priss!

I was doing a rapid fire posing session with Hailey, who loves to be photographed as if she is a fashion model. In the middle of that rapid fire posing session she popped off this pose and I started laughing so hard I could hard hold the camera still enough to take the shot.

Hailey wears her emotions on her shirtsleeve, so we usually have to wonder very little what she thinks about stuff. But sometimes I catch her in a pose like the next one where you feel like you can see into her soul and it's very, very deep that makes me think that God is doing some big things in her little heart. I can't wait to see what amazing things she ends up doing with her life.