My men in their overalls...

Garrett's mom gave us these overalls of Garrett's awhile back and we're just now trying them on Noah.

How CUTE are those boys??

Service Opportunity

I came across this blog post over at thesleepytimegal.com about a town in Japan that of course was hit with the earthquake and the tsunami. This lady that writes the blog, Nicole is her name, she is a friend of a friend of a school teacher in this town, who is watching over some of her students whose parents never came to pick them up after all the awful disasters. They are in need of shoes and clothes and food and something to brighten their lives. Anyways, she was asking her readers if they could each just send out one box to the people of this town to help them. Here is the link to her original post about it.

http://www.thesleepytimegal.com/for-the-children-of-ishinomaki-japan/#more-3011

(This is my first time attaching a link, so I hope it works--it doesn't seem to look right. Let me know if it doesn't work.)

Anyways, I thought that was a fabulous way to help and get my kids involved in helping out these poor kids in need. So, we are in the process of putting a box together. Some of the things we are putting in are: notes from my girls and pictures that they drew; a little bag (from the Dollar Store) with coloring books; crayons; stickers; a stuffed animal (that the girls each donated); hair ponytails; small bottles of hand sanitizer (because they said that the flu is spreading like crazy there); blankets; granola bars and then I still need to go through some of our clothes to put in there.

I also learned that you can go to google translate and type in a message and it will translate that into Japanese for you. So I did that with my girls' messages. It was pretty cool!

This lady, Nicole, was kind of hoping to get about 20 boxes, but she's had so many responses from people that her goal is now 400. So, I thought I would spread this around because I thought it was a great service idea and something that kids would love to participate in. These poor kids really need our help!

St. Patrick's Day

Normally, I don't ever do anything for St. Patrick's Day. We usually wear green, but that's it. I didn't do a lot this year either, but we did a few festive things. Everyone wore green...

Paige and Bella graphed the marshmallows in Lucky Charms. I never buy Lucky Charms, because all they ever eat are the marshmallows. But, since it was St. Patrick's Day...I bought it for them to eat for breakfast.

Paige, Bella and Lydia also made cute little Leprechauns as a craft out of paper plates, yarn and construction paper.

We had a green dinner with a green and white table setting (which I forgot to take a picture of). Our dinner consisted of Pesto Pasta--green because of the pesto, green onions and broccoli-- shamrock rolls and green lemonade.

These are the shamrock rolls I found on another blog--can't remember which one though.

For their treat, I had found this idea on The Crafting Chicks blog and thought it was simple enough. Mine was filled with Reece's Peanut Butter Cups and Rolos because of the gold wrapping, then I put a bunch of Skittles on top for a "rainbow".

I guess one of these years I should try to encourage making leprechaun traps. That would be something fun.

Gone campin'

The girls had a day off of school on March 11th, so we decided to take the weekend and go camping. We went up to Mt. Hood to a place called Mt. Hood Village. I had wanted to go camping on the coast, but it was a good thing we were headed to the mountains because that was the awful day of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. The coast was having tsunami warnings, so we wouldn't have been able to camp there. We got there on Friday afternoon, and it was a beautiful, sunny day. So the girls played at the playground for quite awhile and I pushed Noah around in the stroller until he fell asleep.

Bella loves slides...she went down this one over and over again. Love the static-y hair!

Then, Garrett took the girls swimming in the pool. Noah and I watched from the side.

Saturday and Sunday it was cold and rainy, so we hung out in the trailer. Garrett took the older two girls to the little arcade place they have there and while Noah had a nap, I did a rainbow craft with Paige and Bella and then we played Candy Land.

This was our rainbow picture we made from torn paper. Paige loved it! Later in the day, Garrett took the girls swimming again and I stayed back in the trailer with Noah while he napped.

The girls doing some St. Patricks day cross word puzzles and word finds and coloring leprechauns.

The boys hanging out.

The day were leaving...Lydia pretending to follow a map to somewhere...

One last feeding before we take off...

Hike down to a little river before driving home

Throwing rocks in the river...

Poor little guy was SO tired...

Noah and Bella crashed on the ride home. It was a fun trip. It was our first camping trip of the year and the only the 2nd camping trip since Noah was born. We really need to get out more!!