Bye bye binkie

We knew for awhile that we needed to get rid of Meika's binkie, but there was always something keeping me from doing it. Whether it was a new baby, moving back to the States, living in temporary housing forever… you get the point. Finally I got the kids to the dentist in March or April and he confirmed that Meika definitely has some little buck teeth and that it was time for us to cut ties with her binkie. She has never really had it during the day, but ALWAYS sleeps with it and her "bear bear" at night. I talked to Meika about it and she decided that she wanted to go ahead and send her binkie up in the sky via a balloon up to the binkie fairy. She knew that once she did that, the fairy would leave her a present in return. I first cut her binkie off her little cow for two reasons. One, I thought it would be fun for her to keep her cow for comfort. And two, it would have been too heavy floating away attached to the cow!

We all ran outside and I was planning on doing a count down for her to let go of the balloons and we could catch it on video and I could take some pictures. As I was walking out of the house for us to start, she just flung the balloons up in the sky and yelled, "Bye bye binkie!!!" She was jumping up and down and was really excited and waved goodbye. She immediately ran inside and to the front door and saw that a present was awaiting her from the fairy.






I kept thinking, "geez, that wasn't hard at all!!" And that part was pretty easy. But when bedtime came, she was a wreck. She didn't know what to do without it at bedtime and cried for awhile. It was the most sincere, saddest cry I have ever heard and it broke my heart. I could hear Norah trying to comfort her in bed, "It's alright Meika, it will be ok". Meika would say, "No it's not Norah, it's my binkie. It's gone forever and I want it!" After having to lay with her (and shed a tear of my own), we ended up having her sleep with us for the night. After that night she has missed it, but it has been fine. She likes to sleep with her "bear bear" and her cow (that she still calls her binkie). Her teeth are already back to Normal and it was a success!

Easter

Easter was fun with the kids this year. It's funny, because I always have the best intentions of being super creative and planning fun things for the kids. Time continues to slip away from me and then last minute I realize that I have not done anything. Oh well. Maybe one day I will have a little bit more time on my hands?!










We went to a friends house for Easter dinner and on our way out I realized that I hadn't taken a picture of the kids in their Easter outfits! I made them sit on the front step in the crazy wind and they were all pretty grumpy. Of course I didn't get a good one in the 30 seconds I had, but these were by far the best. I guess this is real life though!

Road trip to California

I was dying to get out to California to see my sisters. I hadn't met Arthur yet and I was determined to meet him!! I thought Spring Break was a perfect opportunity, but of course Abe wasn't able to get off work. I decided to go anyway and bribed my mom to meet me in California so she could at least drive back with me to Utah and then I could make the final trek back to Colorado by myself. Everyone thought I was crazy, but honestly I didn't think about it too much and just went by my motto the last couple years; "Either suck it up and do it, or miss out!" While in Germany, lots of people would say that they couldn't travel very much because they had one or two little kids and they couldn't believe how much we traveled. It's really not that bad… you just do it!

Anyway, I prepped my kids for weeks telling them that we were going to be in the car FOREVER and it was going to take us two extremely long days of driving. I was mostly worried about Anders sitting in his car seat for that long since he can't entertain himself, but all the kids were awesome and were so easy to travel with. I had a bunch of podcasts and books on tape that keep me entertained the entire way!

The kids were in Heaven with their cousins and played hard every day. We went to the petting zoo, to the beach, to the pool, the local parks, out to eat, etc. Everywhere we went, people always made comments about our little flock of kids following us. It is pretty crazy that there are 11 of them and Jojo is the oldest at 8!




















































































After we spent time with Sierra and Amanda, my mom flew in and drove with me to Palm Springs so we could stay with Grandma Dofi. Oh how I love Palm Springs. The smells, the Condo, pools, scenery… everything about it makes me feel so nostalgic. I have so many great memories of Palm Springs when I was a little kid. I loved being able to see my kids fall in love with it to and enjoy it as much as I did/do. Grandma Dofi welcome the girls with some Grape juice on the patio, went swimming with them and took us out to her favorite Mexican restaurant. She insisted that she give them all dessert and watch "The Secret Garden" with them well past their bedtime. They loved it!
































Of course we stopped in Utah to drop off my mom and hang out for a day before we had to head back! We were lucky enough to be able to see Grandma Jeanne while passing through and the kids got to ride horses!