The rest of March

I've decided to do a quick recap at the end of each month just to get a few more of my pictures up here so that "someday" if I do blog books I will have my pictures in one place! March turned out to be a pretty unpleasant month but I'm not one to sugar coat my life so here's the recap in all it's glory!

After Makenna's baptism and all of our family left, I plunged head long into getting stuff ready for a giant consignment sale I participated in. I've kept most of my kids clothes over the years and I had boxes of stuff to get ready. It took me hours and hours and literally took over my house and life for about two weeks. I participated through JBF, which is a national chain of kids consignments sales and I love how easy it is to use their system. Once your stuff if priced and tagged, you can keep putting your stuff in any consignment sale in the country. So... I washed, organized, tagged, hung everything... many hours. In the end I put about 400 items in the sale and sold about half. I felt like that was a good return for my first sale. I'm in the process of changing some of my prices and I will put the stuff I didn't sell in another sale this month and then I'll donate the rest. It's a huge burden lifted to be getting rid of this stuff even with all the work it is.

I was so relieved the day I made my big drop off for the consignment sale and was ready to get my life back together and my house clean after spending so many hours prepping for the sale. Until I got the call I have been dreading for all my kids childhoods. Makenna's best friend had lice. Her mom called to let me know and suggested that I check Kenna's head. Ugh. I about started bawling because I knew if her friend had it, she would too. These girls do everything together and I just KNEW.  Sure enough I had her flip her head over and I immediately found a live bug on her head. Ironically, that is the only live bug we ever found so we are so so so lucky we caught it so early. I took all the kids into the school nurse and she checked us all and we only found it on Makenna's head. She showed me what to look for and told me how to go about picking nits out of her hair.  The problem is that she has SO MUCH HAIR. I literally spend HOURS over the next few days combing out her hair, doing natural and toxic treatments, washing endless (endless) loads of laundry all while trying to keep anyone else from being exposed. It.was.a.nightmare. I swear  I would rather deal with 10 kids throwing up than one child with lice. After 3 days I wasn't finding any more nits in her hair so I thought we were in the clear. On day 5 I found a few more nits in her hair and that's when I really lost it. I knew that if after the hours I spent checking her hair that I had still missed nits that I would probably never be able to get them all out myself. And so... I did what I should have done when we first found it. I took Makenna to a professional lice picker. Yes, there is such a thing. One of my sisters-in-law recommended the service to me after her kids had lice but it is expensive so I wanted to try to get rid of it myself. That was a huge mistake. This service guarantees that they will get all of the nits, which is why lice is so difficult to get rid of (unfortunately I've become somewhat of a lice expert this month). Anyway, the service will check all of the family for free so I took everyone in (even myself and Allen) and we were checked. They ended up finding lice on Carter that I had missed so I paid to have both C & M treated. We were there for about 3 hours and it was THE BEST MONEY I HAVE EVER SPENT. No joke, I felt like a physical burden was lifted when we left there and I knew we were all clean.  They rechecked us all after a few days and we were in the clear. Ok really, this is one of the very worst things I have had to deal with regarding my kids. If we ever get it again, I will go straight to the professionals and save myself the time, hassle and stress.  Carter being treated:

There were a few bright moments in the otherwise hideous month. Allen and I were able to go see Cirque du Soleil. It was an amazing show! I got him the tickets for Christmas and it was worth the wait!

 We had fun on St. Patrick's day. Our naughty leprechaun came and wreaked havoc on our house. He turned the toilet water green and left funny notes scrawled on all the bathroom mirrors. He turned the furniture upside down and turned the milk green. He also left a fun treasure hunt for the kiddos with a some funny hats and treats for them.

Addie made a funny cabbage leaf hat white I was cooking St. Patty's dinner. We had corned beef, potatoes, yummy Irish cole slaw and lime sherbet floats. 

A fun treat that we got for the kids (we don't usually do sugar cereal so this is a fun treat for them!)

 A few other pictures from the month. This is Emery's grumpy face that totally cracks us up. It is often accompanied by hands on her hips in a sassy way. She is very TWO lately!

The girls enjoying treat/bribery from Costco. I'm so glad I get to spend my days with these two. They crack me up and I will be so sad when Addie goes to school next year. I'm guessing Emery will be pretty lonely too.

The weather has been GORGEOUS. It has been unseasonably warm and sunny for about two weeks and we've spend every second outside that we can. The kids even asked if they could run through the sprinkler the other day (it was about 65 degrees) and were mad when I said no.

 Reading... always lots of reading. I decided to keep track of the books I read to the little girls in one day and then piled them up for a picture. There were 17 books that day and a couple we read twice. This is a pretty typical day but I had never kept track before.

 A visit to the Fremont troll. There are so many cool neighborhoods and things to do in Seattle so we try to visit a few new things every month. This troll is built under a bridge and is pretty popular. The kids had a fun time climbing around and playing on it.

Whew! Like I said, not my favorite month but we survived! April is shaping up to be super busy with lots of travels + spring break!