One more picture just because I liked this one so much. Avonlea wanted one of her and Tabitha just because they were matching, but Tabitha was being so uncooperative this time. Usually, Isaac is the problem, but today it was Tabby. Anyway, she wasn't cooperating about the picture with Avonlea until I offered her a piece of candy when we were all done with pictures. Wow! Amazing how a little bribery will bring out a smile.

Here are the rest of the pictures. I have to say, trying to get all five kids to look good in the same picture is pretty much impossible for me.

Here are some pictures of the kids in their Easter clothes. Those of you who live near me, may be surprised that I got such sunny pictures on Easter Sunday, but of course, I cheated and made the kids get all dressed up today when the weather was nice so that I could take pictures.

I cannot tell you how excited Isaac was to have a tie like Daddy. He talked about his new tie all the time for the week and a half between when we bought it and Easter. Then, yesterday when he saw it sitting on my dresser, he grabbed it and hugged it. I wonder if he'll still like wearing a tie by the time he's twelve.

This one of Avonlea got cut out of the last post somehow.

One day the girls discovered that I still had an old prom dress and my wedding dress in a box in the closet. They put them on, wrinkles and all, and took turns between being the bride and being the bridesmaid. I even dug out my bouquet so that they could throw it. :)

painting pictures

Here are some purple walls in the kitchen. I love how the color looks with the trim. These pictures aren't the best for seeing the color, but I promise, it's great in person.

Here's Norm up on the wimpy ladder painting the kitchen. We ended up getting a better ladder later because I couldn't really reach the top of the walls on this one.

Here the kids pose in front of the newly green living room walls. I thought I'd taken some better pictures of this, but I guess not. Still, you can see the colors.

I don't know why I even pretend that I'm going to keep up with blogging. I often think that something that happens in our lives would make a good blog post, but then I just run out of minutes in the day, so it never gets written. Of course, if I liked writing more and reading less, that might help, too. :)

For April Fool's Day, someone replaced my children with look alikes who are so helpful and obedient that it only took me minutes to recognize the substitution. I should, perhaps, mention here that my own kids are actually quite helpful and obedient, but it's just not usual for them to do jobs without being told, and it's pretty common for them to need to be told to do something more than once. The substitution may have actually occurred as early as last Friday when Elisabeth asked to do an extra chapter of math and Felicity asked to read extra for history. Then, Monday evening, Felicity voluntarily caught up the extra math chapter so she was with Elisabeth again and she vacuumed without being asked to. On Tuesday, Felicity did several more chapters of math without being told to. This morning, Elisabeth and Avonlea got up and began sorting the clean laundry so that they could put theirs away before I was even up. Then, later, they were cleaning one of the upstairs bathrooms bathrooms without being told to. I don't know what's going on around here, but I like it. :)

I'm also enjoying my newly painted kitchen. This weekend we're working on the family room, so when that's done, I'll post some pictures. The kitchen is a really dark purple, and I really love it. I know some people (my parents) are a little skeptical about how this can possibly be a good color for painting the kitchen, but I promise it's great. The family room will be green and both room swill have valances made from coordinating fabric. The kitchn will have a floral print with purple flowers and the family room will have green and purple stripes than match the colors in the floral. I'm so excited to have this done. We've lived with the flat builder paint for six and a half years, so almost anything would be a good change by now. :)