Absurd amount of pictures

So, I've been really bad at blogging lately, and it makes me quite sad. So, to kind of catch up, here are random pictures of what we did from February to today. 

Fox met the real Santa Clause dressed in his normal clothes shopping at the grocery store. He even gave him a picture!! 

Liam competed in his first cub scouts pinewood derby!

Fox, Ander, and I went to ISU theater and saw Junie B. Jones

We read with friends

Made silly faces

Told it like it is (aka Liam needs to work on his spelling skills)

Made box outfits

Celebrated April Fools day with silly food- meatloaf cupcakes, jello juice, and grilled cheese dessert (orange frosting and pound cake)

Played outside!! Yay Sun!!

Caught snakes

It got hot

Then ridiculously cold the next day (that's ice on the fuel pump nozzle)

Competed in an art competition. (We didn't win, but it sure was fun!)

Looked cute, ate icecream and played outside some more

Read books

Ate more ice cream

Dressed in rival team colors.

And trued on fancy hats!

Longing for Spring

I'm not going to lie, the last two winters in the midwest have been horrible and SO long! We've been trying to will spring along, and now its finally starting to feel like spring (that's probably how I can write this post without crying ;)). But in February and most of March it seem Spring would never come. It's bitter cold during the winter, so we don't go out much. It got so bad that when it wasn't negative we celebrated, and I made the kids walk to school ;) (what? They survived.). When it got to the 30's it was like a heat wave and I bundled up Fox and Ander and we went for walks just to get out of the house. I'm very grateful that it's finally starting to warm up! Come on Spring!! 

 During Spring break we also headed down to Des Moines and went to the Science Center of Iowa with the May's. It was a fun day out with friends.

 And now its finally warm enough that the snow is all melted!! Hooray!! :)

Henry Doorly Zoo

Over Spring break we decided to make a trip to Omaha. We are super lucky because at the time Grandma and Grandpa Bundy were working in Nebraska and made the long trip up to go with us!! We stayed for a night in a hotel, took turns in the morning going to the temple, then all headed to the zoo! It was a perfect sunny day! Liam got a little sick, but was a trooper and made it all the way through the zoo. We got to see parts of the zoo we hadn't seen before (yes, it's that big), but because we have a pass we didn't feel the need to rush to every little thing, so it was just a fun relaxing day. We loved it!! 

This last picture is a cheating one. It's from when Grandma and Grandpa Bundy came and visited us for Ander's blessing a few months before. But I love this picture and wanted to make sure it was on our blog somewhere.

The Kid Factor

I often, usually in the wee hours of the morning when I have a little time to myself, have grandeur ideas of getting amazing things done within that day. I often write these ideas down or make a mental note of them and then start my day only to discover all the things I thought I could accomplish in my day have diminished leaving only a few straggly checkmarks on my to-do list.

It use to baffle and frustrate me until recently I have discovered the mathematic reasoning behind such phenomenon and would like to share it with you--the kid factor.

You see, the normal adult activity time (which shall here be referred to has NAAT) is the amount of time that it takes an average adult, with no children, to accomplish a task. However, when you add in children the NAAT is the multiplied according to the number of children you have.

# of children(NAAT)

For example, I have four children, if I would like to clean my bathroom, a task that as an adult with no children would take me 15ish minutes, my time would now look like this

4(15)

Thus, my new time of accomplishing this would be 1 hour. You see, I forgot to take in my Kid factor. Everything I do has to have the time multiplied by 4. In my mind, cleaning the main parts of my house should take an hour, but with the kid factor  {4 kids(1 hour)} that time is now four hours.

There are many variables and exceptions to the rule. For instant should any child over 5 be sick you must add on one

(4 children +1sickness)(NAAT)

If any child under 5 is sick, you must times by two

(4 children)(2)(NAAT)

If more than one child is sick, the math is too complex. You should just arm yourself with puke buckets, tissues, and tylenol, then give up on your goals for the day.

You would think that when my two older children go to school that it would cut my time in half looking something like this

(4 children-2 gone at school)(NAAT)

But there is one sneaky element that often gets over looked. You see, when my two older children go to school the two younger (both under 5) suddenly have their older sibling entertainment gone, and the entertaining turns to me, hence leaving the child factor looking like this

(4 children - 2 gone to school + 2 that now need extra attention)(NAAT)

Thus, leaving the 2 gone to school irrelevant.

So there you have it. The kid factor. I thought I should share it with you so that when you go to plan your day you aren't horribly upset by the extra time it takes you.

Note 1: parents with only one child your kid factor is still two. Don't ask me why! That's just the way it works.
Note 2: This experiment has yet to be tested on any children over the age of 8.
Note 3: I really need to stop helping Tony with his scientific reports ;)