Playing catch up

It has definitely been awhile since I've updated this blog. Basically when we finished painting the downstairs part of the house in December, we knew it was only a matter of time before we needed to venture upstairs and tackle our two-story stairwell. Being the shrimp that I am, I was not very useful in helping paint the stairwell. So poor Paul got stuck doing it and it was quite the job because we had to paint the ceiling as well. He's really been a trooper with my desire to paint the whole house. Because I am vertically challenged he does most of the painting and I end up following behind him with a paint brush doing all the touch ups. And along with painting the whole house, I am also painting all the trim work and door frames as well. The only problem is now our doors look a a shade lighter than the frames, but I am not about ready to paint all the doors.

Here is Paul working on the stairwell as I stand on the top of the stairs looking down:

Using the extension on the roller brush to reach the 2nd floor.

The kids were surprisingly very well behaved while we painted.

Now we jump ahead to Joel's birthday. He turned 3 on January 9th. Here he is in the early morning, before the kids went to school, opening his presents. For whatever reason he likes to make silly faces when I try and take pictures of him. (Note: I can already here my mother saying, "that's exactly what YOU used to do.")

Lego's from Grandpa & Grandma.

Zoomo's from Aunt Lucia (the batteries were worn out by the end of the day because he loved it so much).

A parking garage from mom and dad and some little cars.

That night we celebrated with cake and ice cream. If you know Joel well enough you know that he likes to cruise around naked - only in a diaper - hence the reason why he has no clothes on in this picture.

Trying to blow out the candles - he started to "spit" in an attempt to blow them out so I leaned over and did the honors so we wouldn't have a tainted birthday cake.

I thought it would be funny to snap a picture of Joel getting his hair cut because it's not something he particularly enjoys.

He's getting restless and wants dad to hurry up!

Last Sunday (the 24th) I snapped some pictures of the kids before we headed to church. Here are Jessica and Lacey in their new church dresses from Grandpa & Grandma Evans.

Jarom and Joel.

A very cute picture if I say so myself.

Joel, Lacey, Jarom & Jessica

Last week Joel started riding the bus to preschool. It was kind of a weird thing to place my 3 year old on a bus and watch it go down the street. But he seems to enjoy it and it's nice that I don't have to drive him back and forth.

I am enjoying school so far. I really thought I would be "toast" in my business math class because it's been like 15 years since I've taken college math. But so far things are coming back to me and I feel like I am understanding what is taught. I am also trying to study for the ACT, because for some crazy reason the W.P. Carey School of Accountancy requires everyone to have a 25 or better on the ACT. I think it's a ploy to ruin our lives. Just kidding:)

Other than that everything else is going really well.

Forgive me...

Alright so I haven't updated this blog in awhile. I just started back to school and I'm taking 7 credits; it's not too bad. I have business math and financial accounting. The teachers are great, but since these classes are both heavily based in numbers, there isn't much room for a curve in the grading scale. You either get the problems right or you don't. So I am stressing a little, but I do have 90 minutes between classes that allows me to work on homework and study (without interruption) so hopefully I can get a decent grade.
Paul and I went to the Suns game last nighit. I totally forgot my camera, which stunk because we had good seats! I could've gotten some great pictures of the players. I wore some new shoes (why?) and because the parking garage is not next door to the arena, we walked, and I got a blister on the back of my foot. I knew better, I just wanted my shoes to match my sweater. It was all for the sake of vanity.
Joel started preschool yesterday (it's actually the school districts early intervention program). He was a little shy about going with his teacher to begin with, but according to her, he warmed up right away and enjoyed himself. He will also be receiving weekly speech therapy while he is there, so we don't have to pay for it anymore! Yay.
Anyway, sorry this is so incredibly boring and doesn't have any good pictures. I will try and do better next time.