A little of this, a little of that

Our furnace died about a month ago. The electrical panel is fried. When it happened the house smelled like something was burning. I'm glad it didn't catch on fire because the house would be gone. Our furnace sits under the house in the crawl space. We've been heating our house with space heaters since then because we don't want to pay several hundred dollars to fix a part that might not fix the whole problem. The furnace is nearly 30 years old, so we're saving up for a new one. In case you're wondering, yes, the electric bill was really high this month. A week into our space heater days we came home one night to the house smelling like burned plastic. Then we found this:

We had a bad connection in this socket and all the extra amps caused it to get too hot. That's not even where the heater was plugged in. And let me just tell you, we must have guardian angels at this house because that burned up socket was behind a curtain and left a burned spot going halfway up the wall.

At the same moment that we discovered that socket, I got a text message from our renter in Tennessee saying that our house had been burglarized AGAIN. Last year the front door was kicked in and we had to replace the whole thing. This time they broke in the front window. Thankfully, we only had to replace the glass and not the whole window.

It's a good thing I have this adorable baby to cheer me up...

As if the baby wasn't cute enough by herself, Sarah decided that she needed a snugly bear to sleep with her. 

David is multi-tasking.

This is the lovely hair cut that Sarah gave to Kathryn.

Sarah didn't think it was too much of a problem to hack all of Kathryn's hair off. (I sure did!) This isn't the first time that she has cut someone else's hair and I wasn't really sure what I could do to teach her that it's not okay to cut hair (on anyone or anything).

Later that day.....

This is the haircut that Kathryn gave to Sarah's ponies. Kathryn said "They didn't like having hair in their eyes". 

 And here is how Sarah felt about it. It took all my self control to not laugh when she started sobbing over the cut hair.

Maybe, just maybe, she'll think twice about cutting someone else's hair again. In the meantime, Kathryn gets to buy Sarah a new pony...but not until her bangs have grown back to a normal length.

That sleeper is a genuine NMSU aggies outfit. (Un)fortunately, baby wasn't too fond of it. She always gets too hot in fleece unless we're outdoors.

At his 2 year check up, David weighed 28 pounds and is 33 inches tall -- around the 20th percentile for both. 

Green chile and cheese biscuits. Yum. (before baking)

Davey is helping make dinner. He made up this recipe by himself: combine spinach, salt, and a little egg. Whisk together, then pour it into the Bosch mixer.

She's all smiles! 

Sarah likes to get her hair braided now. Her favorite is a "crown" braid, or one that goes all around her head.

Davey wants to potty train. He likes to sit on the potty and wipe. He tells me every time he needs to go (or just went). Sarah thinks it's fun to help him go potty. (Hmmmm...maybe I can get her to train him?) He's still in a diaper for now, but come summer, we'll work on it full time and I'll bet it won't take too long. (I'm crossing my fingers).

Braids and Dinosaurs

Here's a random picture of baby David, whom we've decided to call Davey for a few weeks just to see how it works. Joseph will call him Davey, but Sarah and Kathryn still just call him "Baby", Baby-Boo, or Baby David. Baby is actually fairly close to Davey, especially when Kathryn says it. He will respond to any of the above variations. One of those 4 top teeth that have been teasing us this past month has finally broken through the skin. Hopefully the other 3 are close...teething=cranky baby and nasty diapers.

 BRAIDS!

This is the first time that I braided Kathryn's hair and it turned out much better than I anticipated. She was really excited about it and held very still for me to do it. I wasn't worrying too much about making it look perfect because it was bedtime and I knew it would fall out overnight anyway, but I wanted to see if her hair was long enough--and it was!

She loved how it turned out and wore them all day the next day even though the sides were falling out.

 Of course, Sarah wanted braids too. She has awesome hair - it's thick but still soft. I still can't get over how dark it is now! See that little tuft of hair sticking straight up on the top of her head? That's where she cut her own bangs a few weeks ago. Sigh. She cut them at all different lengths and I had to go back and fix it as well as I could. She looks cute though.

Sorry this is fuzzy. Kathryn is wearing Wranglers and Justin brand cowboy boots. She is saying "I'm a cowboy girl!" Thanks Grandpa- We love the pants and boots.

Dinosaur Hunt

The older kids started studying dinosaurs at school recently, so they have been obsessed with them. We checked out some books on dinosaurs from the library to learn more. Joseph got some dinosaur stickers from Grandma Carol for Valentine's day. He spent the next two days searching his library books so he could identify each different dino sticker. Then he made a sheet with all the dino stickers and their names underneath. On Saturday, they convinced David to take them to the backyard to search for dinosaur bones. These toothbrushes are their tools for cleaning the bones when they find them.

As you may have guessed, they didn't find any dinosaur bones, so they decided to make their own replica out of rocks. David used my hot glue gun to put this guy together. It's a triceratops, just in case you couldn't tell. =) Joseph took his book out and checked the picture often to make sure everything was exactly right.

He got a little worried when the triceratops only had one horn on the top of his head ("It's a profile!" says David), but Joseph insisted that TRIceratops were supposed to have three horns. In the end, he accepted the idea that the other horn must be "lost" still.