What-What?! Week of April 1st

Happy Easter everyone!

Also, happy April Fools everyone!  I ain't got no tricks, though.

This week was also the husband's birthday of course. <3  I did not make him a cake this year, but we had dessert while at Red Robin for his birthday dinner.

He got a bunch of good stuff...

 

Like Thor: Ragnarok, which the kids are just as excited to watch as he is.

 

And the Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 soundtrack.  Both seen here, and also smelled here.

 

This is a special curved woodcarving knife I got for him -- the reviews on this all talked about how sharp it was, and people had posted pictures of their messed up hands after they'd cut themselves(!!!).  So I also got him a finger guard, which doesn't fit on hand because his fingers are big...  I guess he'll just have to be careful.

 

And I got him some books too <3

 

Kids Easter baskets -- mostly candy this year, but they also got squirt guns, a teeny genie, and a My Little Pony.

Yesterday, I had the kids to myself for most of the day, so we hit up the store and bought some perler beads.  They had a really good time making stuff -- the above are Corwin's creations -- a demon with a bow, and a tank.

The two on the left here are Osric's -- a heart and a space ship.  Mine are on the right -- a circle design and a rabbit.

These are Saffron's --  a star and a circle.  You can see on these that the melty-ness varies somewhat per piece -- apparently my iron is a bit dodgy and I wasn't moving it in circles enough.  Oh well... we had a good time anyway.

What-What?! Week of April 3rd

I did nothing this week other than go to work.

Luckily, I still have more pictures from last weekend to post!  More on the husband's birthday, and Easter stuff.

Corey got a Kreo-O Optimus Prime, put it together with daddy, then promptly took it all apart. :P

Saffron got a little sewing kit, and I sat with her while she put it together.

Sewing the carrot.

Ta-da!

Easter stuff?!  Let's dump it out all over the floor!  YEAH!

Opening presents <3

This year, I got the husband a copy of The Ghost and the Darkness, and the Munchkin version of a game called Love Letter, which is a card game based on 'risk, deduction, and luck'.  You have to keep track of the cards that have been played, and plan your moves carefully (there is one card in particular that serves to either win or lose the game for you).  It's a very quick game, lasting about 15 minutes, and we've quite enjoyed it so far.

This year, the husband made himself lemon cupcakes with cream cheese frosting.  They were delicious.

What-What?! Week of March 27th

Happy Easter everyone!

Anticipation!

We're having a good Easter so far.  The kids were up early this morning, then we spent half an hour (?) searching for eggs in the house.  It's a good thing there were no eggs outside, because it is raining cats and dogs out there.

Yesterday, we decorated eggs.  For this, set up a table outside because it was lovely, and just better.  The kids had a great time:

 

And because the weather was so lovely yesterday, I made the husband open one of his birthday presents early:

Yes, a football.  I thought it would be good fun with the kids, especially since we have the big backyard now.  So then we played with it:

The throw!

The catch!

Teaching the kids how to throw a football.

And they threw it!

Unfortunately, I didn't take into account how large a standard size football is, so it's absolutely huge in the kids' hands, and kinda big in mine as well.  Either way, I'm glad we got it out and were able to play with it.  Later today we're going to celebrate the husband's birthday and do general family stuff.

What-What?! Week of April 4th

Happy Easter!  We had a pretty good Easter, though not a very fancy one this year.  We haven't decorated any eggs or done any other festivities that we normally do.  My kids were still excited, and you better believe that we read Max Counts His Chickens many, many times this week.  Our house is in boxes right now, and so there were lots of places for the 'Easter Bunny' to leave eggs.  It's great listening to the kids questions:

• "Will the Easter Bunny leave an egg in the oven?" (Why would he leave an egg where you're not allowed to go?)
• "What about under my pillow?" (Probably not)
• "What if a monster comes up through the floor and tries to get Dad and he fights it with a sword?!?" (Um...)

(Eventually I'll make a collected works of Corwin's questions).

In other news...

Adventures in Homeownership

Okay, this picture could be better.  Sorry. D:

We bought a house!  Yeah!  We just got possession of it on Monday, and have been crazy working on it and getting things done.  The house is kind of a fixer-upper, and there are things that are wrong.  But we'll fix them.  By the end of the second year, we'll probably have enough fixed/changed that I'll be happy.

That said, Thursday, we went to the house and pulled out the carpeting in the living room.  That was horrific.  It went from "well, this is gross"...

Not shown:  Exactly how awful this carpet is.  The color disguises it somewhat.

Still not that awful.

To "who knows what evil lurks in the heart of carpeting":

The Shadow knows.

Seriously.  This experience has made me question every single carpet that I've ever trod upon.  How many pounds of dirt were underneath them?  We hadn't originally been planning on replacing the carpeting in the rest of the house, but now... now we're not so sure.

The underlayment was bright horrible IBM blue.  Still better than the linoleum underneath.

Friday and Saturday, we worked on putting down laminate flooring.  After we got the underlayment down (which took well over an hour), the living room only took us about 3.5 hours to do, while the kitchen took 2.5 hours.  It looks positively lovely now.  We paid extra for a noise absorbing underlayment, and I'm really glad we did.  The rooms still need baseboards, divider thingies, and to be a trimmed a bit here and there.  We'll take care of those soon enough.

Finished living room, complete with child and toy.

Finished dining room/kitchen, complete with lovely wife. :D

After we finished, we did go outside and enjoyed our new patio and quiet backyard.

I'm really excited for our future here. :D

What-What?! Week of April 20th

The husband and I have both had this week off from work and school, so it's been a pretty nice week.  We canned a double batch of strawberry jam, as well as getting a good start on packing.  Peter mailed off the last of his work papers, handed over the keys to the truck, and that kind of thing.  He slept in yesterday, too.

We're all ready for Easter here; the kids have been counting down to bunny day, and later today we'll be going to the farmers' market to take part in the egg hunt, for the first time!  This year was also the first time my husband has decorated eggs with the kids, which was a lot of fun.  We might do even more in a couple of days.  I see potato salad in my future, nom-nom! :D

News: At-Home Mothers on the Rise, New Research Shows via Yahoo! Shine

The Pew Research center just released a study finding that the number of stay at home mothers has grown to 29 percent, compared to 26 percent in 2008, and 23 percent in 2000.  The researchers connect these results to increases in immigrant mothers, more mothers who are unable to find work, and a greater prevalence of the attitude that women with young children should stay home, rather than working.

There are probably many factors creating this trend, but one that works against it is definitely the cost of housing, especially for young families.  In the comments section, one gentleman was describing how investors have bought up all the starter homes in the area he lives in, renovated them, and are now selling them for around $100,000 more than they were previously.  This exactly mirrors my experience.  About 18 months ago, my husband and I were looking at houses in the Scotts Valley area.  There was one house we were really interested in, and had put an offer in, only to lose the house to an investor.  This investor purchased ten foreclosed homes from the area.  Ten.  This area is not densely populated, so ten is pretty substantial.  When you have events like that, it is very discouraging for those just starting out, and many, like us, get blocked out of the market entirely.

Of course, working for this trend are childcare expenses.  For families with young children, infants especially, the cost of care is deeply prohibiting; when you spend nearly all of your income just paying for childcare, it follows that you start to question what the point of working is.  What's sad, is on the flipside, daycare workers are generally poorly paid, and that tends to translate into poorly educated.  I know that many of the people I've worked with in afterschool programs had the job as a step on the way to doing something else, like teaching, social work, or something completely unrelated.

(image from theyoungmommylife.com)