fruit salad apple tree

we have a new apple tree in our backyard. during the winter they sell bareroot apple trees that have multiple varieties. this one has four: fuji, red delicious, yellow delicious, and gravenstein. yum! also, this picture was taken yesterday and annelise is wearing her absolute favorite sunday dress. i know she's worn it the last 3 sundays at least. i'll hold out two different ones for her to choose from sunday morning, and she'll walk past me and find this one in her closet. funny girl. as long as it's clean i guess.

and a cute one of isaac taken yesterday also.

saturday was a productive day for us. not only did we get an apple tree in the ground, Jake finished the lighting inside! It is so wonderful to have our room lit up, especially at night. Jake is such a handy husband. He'd never done lighting before so he had to do some research and learning for this project, not to mention sweat in the attic. Thanks Jake! You did a great job!

dun dun dun dun dunon dun dunon

nick got a really neat birthday card last year that plays darth vader's song. it has recently resurfaced. as it so happens, when jake's boss calls this is the ringtone. this morning at 6:30 we hear the song. jake flies out of bed and totally thinks the kids have his phone since it's coming from nick's room and they are all playing in there. then he sees the card and says, oh that scared me. then jake heads for the bathroom and while he's gone i hear nick say "carly, don't, that scares dad!"

isaac's 4 months

isaac is doing a lot of smiling and laughing. he really likes it when his siblings talk to him and tickle him even though it makes me nervous when they put their faces right in his face. annelise can't help but pat his head whenever she sees him. carly will ask me if she can do me a "fever", which means can i hold isaac. she's always very eager to help. annelise is also very eager, but mostly she helps me by finding a diaper. the kids like to be in pictures with isaac too. isaac recently had his 4 month check up. he's up to 14 lbs! that's 35th percentile. we're happy things are getting better. he still has a little bit of thrush, but we're working on it.

couple of funny things. at church carly wanted something, i can't remember what it was, probably something like go get a drink, and i said no. and she said, really irritated with me, "i do what i do and i don't have a fit!"

she also informed me today that the ladybug we were looking at was poisonous because it has black legs. that's what caroline told her. funny.

new lighting

we haven't had any overhead lighting in our main room and jake agreed to put some in. i am so excited. the hardware is in, but jake still needs to do the wiring. the kids were so funny when he was up in attic. they would yell to him a lot, asking him how he was doing, and asking what he was doing up there. after the holes were in annelise asked, how are you doing in the hole?

couponing is contagious

oh those coupons. Christine is very persuasive and i think i've caught the bug. here are a few things from a recent trip. notice isaac eyeing the struedel. mmmm. and last week i got 12 small boxes of nabisco cookies & crackers for free from walgreens. in this picture, everything was 50 cents each.

and those granola clusters are so good. i saved over 80%. i use the websites grocerysmarts.com and thekrazycouponlady.com

new car

goodbye to the intrepid. it served us a long time and really helped us out. sometimes we would think it had died for good, only to come back to life. well, it had so many many problems, it was time to let it go. mom and dad sold it to a wrecker after we bought this beauty. we love our 2004 passat. we got a great deal on it. it is sure a fun fun car. jake wanted a voelckers wagon.... volkswagen. he thinks it needs a german name. any suggestions? jake's suggestions are heinrich or freidrich or otto. what are your votes?

pajamas

getting ready for bed tonight is really taking a long time. Annelise, after trying on two different sets of pajamas, settled on a turtleneck and jeans.

another tooth bites the dust

nick lost a tooth yesterday afternoon. it's been hangin by a thread for a number of days now, but nick didn't want to force it out. when it came out, he came up to me and showed me the tooth looking really worried, he said he just wiggled it a little and it just came out. i believe he said he didn't mean to pull it out. you can already see the other tooth popping through. so we took a picture after dinner of him toothless. carly, always wanting to get in on the action, asked for a picture too. obviously i haven't washed faces yet. seems like annelise always has a dirty face.