Had I the Heaven's Embroidered Cloths...: Catching up and detoxing

So Emmy got a cookbook for Christmas. She always wants to make something out of it when it's not a good time (right before bed), or we don't have all of the ingredients. I finally told her to pick out a recipe right before we went to the grocery store and then we could cook. She picked carrot cake. Nobody likes carrot cake. But they were super excited to bake it! Haha. It was not the prettiest cake... and heavily orange flavored... they all tried it and then I think I ate the rest of it alone for the next week. Even though I don't like orange flavored carrot cake...

I went to the doctor, again. woot. I'm tired of the doctor, even though I never see doctors, it's a long drive just to talk to the midwife for a few minutes. Sewing club that evening was more fun. I made a little bit of progress on the baby quilt I'm working on.
The big girls got to go to the dentist, which they love. There were no cavities this time!! And there was great rejoicing!
The girls and I spent an evening at the farm for Clayton and Jessica's wedding shower. They mostly stayed in the basement and played with Grandpa and Jack and Gideon. They were a little bit unsure about meeting Jessica.... but... "maybe now Clayton won't tickle us." haha.
Cadence is a little excited about her new dresser...

The plan is to move Cadence in with the older two, at least until school starts in the fall. So we took the bottom bunk out and replaced it with a double bed. They think it's pretty cool, although she hasn't actually slept in there yet.

If you stand back and squint, the dresser didn't turn out too bad. Ha. Please don't look too closely. As I was working on it, I kept thinking, man I should have done another year in 4-H woodworking... (I can see my dad shaking his head NO... hehe).

This is what I started with. Basic solid pine dresser from Ikea, nice and cheap, which is obvious up close, but it will hold her clothes just fine. It's small but ideally, we'd be able to move to the country and spread out a little more and upgrade to bigger/ better quality furniture as they grow up... someday. Anyway, I painted it, which exposed flaws that I did my best to fix. I added some trim to the bottom to match Cecily's dresser. Then I attempted to add the oak top to coordinate with Emmy's dresser. I forgot to account for the width of my saw blade, plus the blade chewed up the edge a little more than I liked, plus the dresser sides stuck up and looked funny. *sigh* I almost redid the whole thing, but then I bought myself a router (which caused some more problems- but they aren't obvious, thankfully) and got it to a point that I could live with.

Then when I was all done and ready to put the ikea knobs on the drawers that I had spent lots of time staining, half of them split completely in half because the pilot holes weren't drilled big enough at the factory. Gah! So far, clamps and glue fixed them and they are holding together. I'm not sure I would recommend trying to upgrade this particular ikea dresser.... the final product is cute, but I probably could have bought something similar for less time and hassle.
The girls got to hang out with the Beutel kids one evening and even got to visit Restmor. They were also pretty excited about McDonald's afterwards... haha. They are easy to please.
Outside with piggy-tails... life is good. Bob and Matt and Susan were busy burning the stick pile. It had gotten pretty massive over the fall and winter.

We went to the annual potato supper. I was tired and sore from working outside all day, and Cadence was uncharacteristically clingy and grouchy so we didn't stay late.
That week was spring break! Hooray! We were pretty lazy the first few days, although the girls were so excited about our mini-vacation that they tried to pack every day. Cadence filled her bag with stuffed animals and toys and told me she was ready for 'cation.

The girls got to play at Kenna's ("I yike Beh-ee's house") one afternoon and I went grocery shopping and pretty much bought out Walmart.
We watched the Beutel kids one morning. They might be as dragon obsessed as our kids... they played Dragons with the legos, the duplos, outside.... the girls were in heaven. They are all getting old enough now, too, that it hardly feels like there are extra kids.

Thursday afternoon we packed up and headed out on our great adventure to the great state of Iowa! haha. I don't have anything against Iowa, it just amused me how excited the girls were- it's not exactly a premier spring break destination. :P But I guess if Grandma and Grandpa and cousins and playgrounds and indoor water parks are involved you don't really need warmth or tropical scenery...
We stayed at two cottages on Lake Rathbun. It was a little chilly all weekend but we did get to go to the playground when it was sunny and not quite as cold.

Playgrounds are not just for kids....

So many things to climb!

The prairie is so beautiful. And contrary to popular opinion (*cough* Bob) it isn't necessarily flat and treeless...

It's not a Wyss vacation without injuries. Poor Gideon cut his head open after falling off a bunk bed. We didn't even need Uncle Randy- Matt ran out and got some super glue from a gas station and Shells glued him up.

Cecily sliced her foot open on a toy tractor.... this is not her injured face, this is her freaking out because we wanted to try gluing it before swimming (I forgot waterproof band aids).

The pool wasn't super full on Friday, which was nice. Cadence loved the slides and even got a lecture for going down head first. Not that she had any idea what they were telling her.

Pirate Emmy!

Gideon isn't picky about who reads to him. :)

The three musketeers didn't learn anything from their previous bunk bed injuries...

The boys decided our bedroom floor would be the best place to farm. But then when we were still asleep in the morning and their tractors were unavailable....

Lena brought play-dough.

There was lots of relaxing and playing and eating inside where it was warm and not raining.

So after another trip to the pool and more being lazy, we packed up Sunday morning and came home. Most of the rest of the family went to Bloomfield for church... we did not. Honestly, I just don't really want to deal with people right now. Which is terrible, I know, but give me 4-6 weeks and I'll be feeling slightly more social again. Plus, we had three tired, overstimulated kids that would have been a wreck after a day in church. As it was, one child cried half the way home because she "missed vacation," and one was super grouchy and picking fights with her sisters when she wasn't sleeping. The other one was happy as a clam- "McDonald's?! For me!? Inside!?"
This week has been vacation detox. Cecily's back to school and the other two are boooooorrrrreeeeed. Or getting into trouble. At one point, "The only thing that will make me happy is Aurelia!" Um. K.
Bob's birthday was Monday. My attempt at a Dr. Pepper chocolate cake from scratch didn't turn out well since I accidentally used Baking Powder instead of Baking Soda.... the girls keep telling me they are really good brownies. ooops. This is why I make box cake mixes. Emmy and Cadence helped me wrap presents and wrapped up some of their toys for daddy too. They had to help open them, of course.