New Faces

What do you get when you have 5 people, 14 eyes and a new tooth? Read on. A little bit ago I noticed that Trevor has an eye that will turn inward if he's concentrating on something up close. I kinda dismissed it because we had both Ashlee and Trevor's eyes checked for strabismus (a condition that Kassi has - weak eye muscles that require treatment for long term correction...it always presents in infancy/toddler years) and neither of them had a problem. Anyway, Kassi was in great need of a new pair of glasses *thanks for the nudging, Mom & Dad!* and so I set an appointment up for Trevor, too. Come to find out, his vision is fine, but he has a considerable issue that is baffling in it's timing; something that needs to be corrected. Since his vision is great, the glasses are just that - something to look through without any prescription - BUT he does have to have a high bi-focal in them to help his eye. He'll also get to play pirate at home for a few hours a day. We'll patch the good eye to try and strengthen the other. We go back in a few months to see if he'll need surgery (according to our ophthalmologist - it's quite likely) on the eye. Personally, I say we should do the surgery and be done with it, but the doctor always wants to do glasses first. I'm convinced it's because he doesn't have to fight with the kid to keep his glasses on! :) Anyway, while at the gym I got a message saying that both Kassi's and Trevor's glasses were ready to pick up. Great news.

After my shower - not such great news. I received a call from the school nurse about Kassi. "Mrs. York, this is the school nurse. I wanted to call and let you know that Kassi has had an accident on the monkey bars and has broken a tooth." I'm thinking, great. No biggie. The tooth fairy will just have to up the ante to make her feel better about this one..... She goes on - "It's on the top. It's a permanent tooth. It's a pretty big break, but the bleeding has stopped and she's doing okay."

WHAT???? A broken tooth? In the front? On top? LOVELY. Yeah, I pretty much got off of the phone and called my sister to tell her how unfair life seems to be for my darling little girl. I was pretty much ticked. Not at Kassi. I wasn't mad at her. I was just mad at life, ya know? Why? Why does this have to happen to my sweet little Kassi? After I had thrown some clothes on, I thought to call the nurse back to have her tell me exactly about the "break." When I called her back I asked "Is it a chip? A break? What does it look like?" The answer: "Oh no, Mrs. York. It's a break. A pretty good one. It's in a triangular shape from the bottom to the top." Again. All I could think was L-O-V-E-L-Y. I stopped at the dentist's office on the way to the school and they told me to forget about finding the broken part of the tooth. They wouldn't need it. They wanted to see her right away so I proceeded to the school. I have to tell you, I felt 100 times better when I walked in. All of this had happened about 20 minutes prior, but word spread like wildfire. She had been released back to class, but it seemed as though the first 10 people I bumped into had already checked on Kassi and told me all about her tooth. I even saw her teacher from last year walking in the hallway and she said "I haven't seen Kassi, but I heard she's okay!" Talk about a flooding of love. I was so grateful. I was so touched that they each love Kassi enough to make sure she's okay when something goes wrong. You can't ask for more then that when you can't be with your kids yourself.

So, to end the saga, I pulled Kassi and Trevor out of school and we marched over to the dentist. She hit it a good one. It's a little loose and it broke right below the nerve. He's concerned about possibly more damage done than what he could tell right then so we have to go back this Friday. He did go ahead and fix it by building a new portion of the tooth. I don't know what the procedure is called but whatever it is, it sure looks great. You can't even tell right now that she doesn't have half of it. They said that she should be in pain for the next 4 or 5 days, but, of course, she's taking it like a champ. You can always count on Kassi. *muah*

So, on with the pictures of my Friday.

Trevor Before:


Trevor After:

He picked these out himself. He was searching for the best Harry Potter glasses in our hunt for his pair.

Kassi's Before:


Kassi's After:

This is her fourth pair of glasses and I like the style better on her each time. These are my favorite shape for her!


So, what do you get when you have 5 people, 14 eyes and a new tooth? THE YORK FAMILY!!!

Homemade Parade

Oh my goodness...I didn't think I'd remember how to do this. seriously. ;) Anyway, I'm stoked. My extremely talented and creative friend Amy posted this on her blog and it was just enough motivation to get me to add somethin' new on my own blog. This is what the excitement is all about folks - this right here...
The first five people to comment on this post will get something made by me! My choice. For you. This offer does have some restrictions and limitations:
1. I make no guarantees that you will like what I make!
2. What I create will be just for you.
3. It'll be done this year (hopefully sooner than later.)
4. You will have no clue what it is going to be.
5. I reserve the right to do something extremely strange.
The catch? Oh the catch is that you must re-post this on your blog. The first 5 people to do so and leave a comment telling me you did will win a marvelous homemade gift by me!

Let the games begin!!

The thing is, I don't think anyone even looks at this anymore! It may take 'til the end of the year to get 5 people signed up! hahahaha!

All right...it's time to punt

My wife says that everyone keeps telling her to update the blog, but she hasn't because it is too daunting a task to catch everyone up for what has been going on over the past 8 months...so I am now declaring that she can punt the last eight months and just start with what is going on now. For those that are not up on your sports analogies, that last sentence will be a great conversation starter for you and your husband. :)

And now...on with the show.

Jen and I heard this on CMT last night and we LOVED it! Couldn't find a way to download it to the iPod or anything, so we thought we'd post it for all to enjoy!

Our Lovely Easter

So, according to Kassi, we had a very boring Spring Break. "Are you ever going to be done with your church work, Mom?" "Can't we do anything fun besides your enrichment stuff?" "Can you please stop and take me to the movie, Mom?" Apparently, I was the worst spring break Mom there was this year. Kassi would have nominated me for an award if there was such a thing! So, come Friday, Enrichment was done and we decided we should do something fun. We went to the day-old bread store and the kids got to pick out what they wanted (sounds weird, I know, but we went with the intention of picking out pies. It didn't end up that way, but they liked it!) After that, we went to the mall to get little sweaters for the girl's Easter dresses and looked at a few things. After that, we went to see "Horton Hears a Who". The kids loved being at the movies with their friends. Nathan said that the movie was pretty cute. I couldn't hear a lot of it, but the animation was adorable. I'm pretty sure she had enough fun on Friday to kind of make up for a few of the other days. The rest of the weekend made up for the rest, and I redeemed myself as a fun mother. Whew! That was a close one!




Easter started with a Primary party on Saturday. The kids got to decorate little Easter sacks and then played a few games. After that, the hunt was on...all 2 minutes of it! The primary kids are fast, man! I got a few action pictures of the kids running around trying to gather enough eggs to reach their quota. The kids had a great time. Trevor had been asking to hunt for eggs ever since they had received their package from Grandma & Grandpa. That was on Thursday. I was so grateful to the primary to have their party on Saturday! The rest of the day was spent cleaning up the house (it had enrichment-itis. For those of you who have never put on an enrichment, you wouldn't know. For those of you that have, you'd be familiar with the volcano/tornado/explosion like mess your house can get to if you work on enrichment non-stop for a few weeks!) I got so busy tiding up that we forgot to color eggs. It's a good thing we have 1:00 church and my kids were still awake at 10:30 p.m.(!) when I decided I better color eggs with them. We had a good time, with probably more giggles than usual due to the late hour. I'm not a bad parent, I'm just making great, silly memories, right?!? (only time will tell!!!)






On Sunday, it was a lovely morning. The kids woke up to another trick from the funny bunny this year! Every year we get the silliest bunny at our house. He knows just what to do with our yarn that we leave out the night before. This year, we even left out our own baskets that the kids picked out from the store. I think he was happy he just had to fill them! Anyway, the bunny takes all 3 skeins of yarn and strings it all over the house. The kids have to follow their color of yarn (they pick it out @ the store) to find their basket. Our bunny has taken us all over the house and around the yard before, but never did the bunny go through the refrigerator like he did this year. Kassi was going to die laughing! After they found their baskets (under the kitchen table) they played with their goodies and decided it was time for the real hunt. They had a great time trying to find their colors that the bunny left for them. I have to say, next year I think we'll do breakfast first, as they devoured their candy from the eggs in pretty record time. They didn't eat much of their teal french toast, pink scrambled eggs and purple juice. Crazy kids. We put on our Little People Easter CD (a great buy, by the way) and danced until it was time to get ready for church. The kids looked so sharp in their Easter get-up. I COULD NOT get them to get a good picture. Sorry to those that live away. The ones that live here got to see them in person, but I don't think the pictures do their look justice. They just looked so spiffy! Look at the first picture - it cracks me up! They were trying really hard to be good - look at the camera and smile - but the sun was just too darn bright! They couldn't even keep their fingers together. It was like their eyes were being electrocuted!




These were the pictures taken after church. Nursery adventures added a cute bunny nose and Primary adventures had apparently forced Trevor to untuck his shirt. Like MiaLisa said about taking pictures of kids - these aren't perfect, "but at least they have character!"



The night moved on with a group of great friends over for an Easter meal. I had a lovely time in my little house, and I hope the others did too. It was a little cozy, but a good cozy. I hope that all of you had a great Easter, too!

Trev's Soccer Pictures

Trevor had his team soccer pictures taken. These were the shots I could sneak in... Plus a shot of the girls cheering him on at the game!

When they told the team they were going to take a silly picture, this was the face he pulled! Cutie pie!

Kassi on Lunch Duty / Her Half-Birthday

Kassi told me that she was helping this week in the cafeteria. They have two kids from each class wash their class table and sweep the floor. We decided we'd join her for lunch and then see her in action. The camera's batteries were out, but Nathan jetted home from her school and saved the day by bringing the batteries just in time! Notice how her hand is positioned when she's sweeping the floor. She's so darn cute!


The same day she had lunch duty, it also happened to be her half-birthday. In our house, those days are events not to be missed! We celebrate like it's your birthday, just without the same amount of presents. You get a few, just not as many. *wink* We got to visit her classroom bearing 1/2 a cake to Kassi and each child got 1/2 cupcake and 1/2 a cookie. We sang "Happy Half-Birthday" to her and everyone thought she was the coolest girl ever. They'd never heard of a 1/2 birthday before, so Mrs. Kayser-Boyd explained it to them. She just loved it. It was nice timing, too, because then the kids got a treat right before their spring break/Easter holiday! Ashlee and Trevor love going to her big school and being in her classroom. They thought this was the best, though, because they got to all eat Kassi's cake. Besides that, Kassi's classmates shower attention on them. They think it's great fun! For the rest of the day, we ran errand after errand for Enrichment meeting but that's a different story. My little Kassi must have been inspired because she chose Souper Salad for dinner and that little whisperings of the spirit got me out of a huge rut for Enrichment! I decided to have them cater my event and it took a load off of my mind! Thanks, Kassi! It was a nice half-birthday for a nice little girl!