Stain Removal: A User’s Guide

I’ve never had OxyClean fail me before, but when a particular child possessed by an evil spirit (could there be another explanation?) used a dry erase marker on my dining room chairs that I had re-upholstered myself, my best tricks failed to remove the stains. Finally, I “Binged” the problem (thank you Microsoft, and my apologies to Google), and found other frustrated mothers had decent luck with Murphy’s oil soap and an old toothbrush. Eventually, most stains came out or faded enough so that only I notice. And I only had to spend about an hour and half working on it.

This incident begs the questions:

1. How did I find 90 minutes to work on this?
2. How can one find a good exorcist?

Hail and Happiness

Yesterday, we woke up to hail and it didn’t melt until afternoon. We didn’t have snow at all this winter, and we get hail in April. At least it didn’t harm any of the flowers that started to bloom early because of the unseasonably warm weather we had before this!

But today erased the memory of the previous cold. First we woke up and the girls wanted to be in the crib with Wesley.

Later, since it was spring break, I took the kids down to the school yard to play. Kyla rode her scooter all the way there except the steepest hill. Piper is still mama-powered, instead of foot-powered, on the scooter.

Kyla likes to play pretend basketball—she scores every time!

Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head/In Bed

Kyla falls asleep with her new umbrella that she got for Easter. We turned it upside down to be her Easter basket and added a new outfit and books to complete the present. Clearly, she loves it.

Easter Sunday

We celebrated the resurrection of Jesus in the usual way:

A big feast! Kids got their own table this year, in the kitchen for easy clean up. Not much of an issue though, as hardly any food was eaten here. They were too excited to keep playing! All five girls are within 20 months of each other.

The grown ups crowded in a bit and enjoyed a potluck dinner. Baby Isaiah gets to hang with the big people.

The kids got to hunt eggs in the backyard. There were many photographic moments—and we parents photographed all of them! There were no pictures of the grown up’s egg hunt, but I will say Dwayne is a genius egg-hider! The two plates of brownies were fought over for over an hour before Dwayne was the loser. (It wasn’t about winning, was it Keith? You just needed to make sure Dwayne didn’t win!)

He is risen indeed!

Be Very, Very Quiet…I’m Hunting

EASTER EGGS! Our church had a giant Easter egg hunt and Dwayne and I brought the kids for their first public hunt. Each girl found two eggs, both stuffed full of candy.

In truth, Piper only picked up one egg and was so focused on finding out what was in it that she ignored the rest of the hunt. A little girl who had a basket full of eggs was enticed by her father to put one in Piper’s basket to “share”.

Kyla is quite pleased with her loot!

Showing Daddy what they got.

Mama got her face painted in the bunny fashion of the day. Wesley was content in his sling.

The girls ate all their candy on the way home. Kyla decided that she had too much and felt sick. She says she won’t eat so much candy at one time again. How long will that lesson stick?

Easter Eggs

Earning the  Purple Heart of Motherhood today, I dyed Easter eggs with Kyla and Piper (with Wesley strapped to me for an extra long nap).  We did take advantage of a sun break to do it outside, which was fortunate as Kyla spilled the first cup, Piper the second, and it was a race to dump out the third.  [Note to fellow dyers: the Paas classic kit had great stickers, excellent yellow dye, good blue dye and extremely poor pink dye.]

I read a tip about putting the eggs into whips to protect the eggs from toddler hands.  And it worked.  Piper only cracked the eggs after she took them out of the whip!

 

Smocks and sisters.

A Problem?

Piper found Daddy’s empty Mikes Hard Limeade bottle and carried it upstairs to fill it up with water. She brought it downstairs to make the Berenstein Bear video into happy hour.

This is Piper a year and a half ago (July 2008) on our family camping trip, sitting on Aunt Julie’s lap.