Visit With The Jarretts

Me and Jen!

Twins are so fun to watch...these two would constantly just sit with each other like this while playing...and not mind a bit.

Watching Trumpet of the Swan....they have all read the book so getting to see the movie was even more fun...I loved how they literally Cheered and Clapped for Louis at the end. :)

Liam and Chloe....Just too cute!

Two Babies to mother....Heavenly!

It was so fun to spend a week with my sister and her family a few weeks before we moved. We have loved living 4 hours from all our Seattle Family and getting to see them a lot this past year. So we were excited when Jen and Kelly got to spend some of their Vacation time with us in Spokane...our last visit...for awhile at least.

It was only a Matter of Time....

A Nelson girl at age 3 WITHOUT a mullet....a whole new world. :)

Maddi had a blast one day using scissors on her hair. She told me that she cut her hair and at first it didn't look like a whole lot but as the day went on I kept finding clumps here and there. The biggest problem was that rather then taking a few needed inches off the lovely mullet she was growing in the back....she went straight for the already much shorter front part on only one side! This ended up being just the motivation we needed to take the plunge and say goodbye to the mullet forever. I was nervous as I let my friend just do what needed to be done and once I saw the results I kind of wondered why I hadn't done this sooner. :)

Garage Sale...and other Joys of Moving!

It was a fairly Windy and Chilly day so I think many people took pity on the two little girls trying to keep warm with their blankets while faithfully manning the donut stand!

:)

The benefit to moving for the 6th time in 7 years of marriage is that it's really hard to ever become a pack-rat. Once you see that you might have to box it up, your perspective on whether or not you really "need" it or when and if you "might" use it again someday changes pretty quickly. And recently I've learned that your perspective changes even faster when you start to think about the possibility of not only avoiding boxing it up but maybe even making money on the stuff you have to get rid of....hence our Family Garage Sale last month! This is only our second one, but so far I think they are totally worth it. And I think any kid gets excited about getting to sell lemonade or in our case: orange juice and donuts (donuts are a REALLY good seller we found out...wow!)

Our Spokane Graduation Celebration

Our Future Graduate. :)

Since we knew we wouldn't be going back to Indiana for Lance to walk at Graduation we decided to do a little celebration as a family before all the moving stuff got into full swing, so we planned to go to a "Fancy" restaurant (in this case...The Melting Pot) and take all the girls with us. We were prepping them for weeks (as a side note it was a good spring board for etiquette lessons at the dinner table the weeks preceding this) on what it would be like and how we should behave so they were quite excited to get dressed up and go. Mia (our little Party Planner) had her heart set on decorating Daddy's Office, but when you are in intern at a medical office it's a little more complicated than heart-attacking the Research Assistant office at Purdue (Something we have done before) so she settled on Decorating his Truck. It was a fun night and while we were slightly nervous about how it all would go with 3 little kids at a fondue restaurant the Girls rose to the occasion and had very good manners and the Melting Pot was surprisingly good with kids. They were really fast (I think we were in and out in less than an hour), they had these awesome (pretty much spill proof) straw cups (I know the things you get excited about as a Mom), and you really can't go wrong with cheese and chocolate....so we all left happy. :)

Just for Fun

I loved these funny pictures I took of Ella one day with all her "Finnish" Paraphernalia. Lance's brother and his family are living in Finland right now and so for the girls' Birthday's they sent them some fun stuff from Finland (ie. my little pony coloring book with Finnish writing on it etc etc) and the girls just loved it all. So here is Ella sporting her Finnish Onezie while holding her Finnish Name Plate.

Maddi's Birthday Continued

Maddi had a little Birthday Party with 3 of her cute little friends from Church. She chose to have a "Purse Cake", and to invite all her guest to dress up in their favorite costume or dress-up. Maddi chose to be her favorite character these days....Snow White. Lots of fun.

Catching up...Maddi's little Party