For Rent

Update!!  As of Monday morning (one week on the market) we have rented our house to a family coming from Japan!!  We're so excited!!

We are moving in a month or so and we decided to rent out our house instead of put it up for sale.  We found a good property manager and they came by this past week to take pictures of the house to show potential renters.  I took a few pictures before they came through.  The house wasn't in a perfectly clean state, but ok for pictures, I think.  Here is our kitchen...complete with little boys.

 Living room

 Our not so formal living room

 Dining room

 Master bedroom

 Master bath

 Kids bathroom

Matthew's bedroom

 Anna's bedroom

 Grant's bedroom

 Basement

Another view of the basement

Not shown - the yards, the main floor bathroom or basement bathroom...or basement guest room.  I hope we find a renter.

I Need a Hero

We had a spontaneous Superhero night a week or so ago.  I dressed up Grant in his old Batman Halloween costume for bedtime and Anna and Matthew followed suit.  Anna likes wearing this Spiderman costume with built in muscles.  Matthew wanted to be a ninja and wore some old jammies we got in Japan.  And some swim goggles to go with it.  It was our first day of swim lessons too so goggles were hot on everyone's mind.

Super Ninja!

 

 

 Spiderman!

And Batman

 

 

 Here's Anna with the goggles too and some for her horse

 And Johnny.  Not dressed as a superhero

But still excited to be a part of things

Happy Birthday Grant!

Last week was Grant's birthday.  He turned 2 years old!  He is really interested in trains right now so I thought it would be fun to make a train cake.  After the pirate ship cake disaster I was a little leery about trying to make another special cake, but we tried it anyway.  I used pound cake this time, thinking that would be denser and easier to work with.  Scott baked all the pound cake for me.  I also froze the cake before working with it.  That did seem to help.  We had the kids help us decorate the train cars once we had everything frosted.  The engine in front ended up looking kind of like a boat.  :)  The kids had lots of fun decorating!

 

 We made cake batter pancakes for Grant's special birthday breakfast.

 Here's our cake again

 The train car that carried gummy worms was the most popular

Getting ready to sing Happy Birthday 

 Johnny getting ready to sing with us

 When we lit the candles on the cake Grant started to cry.  

 He blew the candles out well before we finished singing Happy Birthday.

There.  That's better.

 He asked for a little help opening his presents

 He got the hang of it though

 Eating our train cake

  Grant with some of his gifts

Here are the kids hearing a story from Grant's new Thomas book.  Happy Birthday Grant!

Self Portrait

Matthew drew a self portrait in his art class at school.   His art teacher selected it to be in a district wide art show in which the winners received some scholarship money.   Matthew didn't win but we were excited to go to the district offices and see his art work displayed.  Here is his self portrait.

And here is Matthew with his picture.  Can you see a resemblance?

Way to go Matthew!

Happy Easter

We had a nice Easter this year, in spite of the fact that the whole family (minus John) was recovering from the stomach flu.  The kids had had it earlier in the week and were feeling well enough for candy.

Yes, Grant was wearing his Christmas jammies

He found an Elmo in his Easter basket and a lollipop

 Matthew started organizing his Easter loot right away

And then we had an Easter egg hunt

Grant was happy to participate this year

It was near freezing outside and the lawn is still grey and dreary.  Not exactly spring like.  But it made the eggs stand out more.

Grant was able to get plenty of eggs and everyone was happy

And we were all happy to come back indoors

And examine their eggs

Grant and Anna helped Scott make his buttermilk rolls

Here's Grant trying to roll his bit of dough into a snake (NAKE!)

I made bunny buns but they did not turn out very good this year.   Very dense.  I prepared the dough the night before and then  put the dough in the fridge over night.  When I took it out to warm and rise some more, the dough was not the same.  It wouldn't rise much after that.  :(  They were very dense.  Frosting helped a little.  Scott had much better luck with his rolls which turned out light and fluffy.

Getting ready to eat.  On the menu, our usual Easter feast: tangerine glazed ham, scalloped potatoes, glazed carrots, asparagus, buttermilk rolls and Scott's baked beans.  More than enough food for our picky kids and our slowly recovering tummies.

And strawberry shortcake for dessert

Happy Easter everyone