DRAT Donovan Rachel Abraham Tess

We love downtown Des Moines. There is so much fun stuff to discover. The founder of Papa Johns pizza donated a bunch of sculpures to Des Moines for everyone to enjoy. As if the pizza wasn't good enough now it tastes even better to me. I LOVE Papa Johns pizza. We took the kids there the other day. They loved it. We did too.

The weather has been great. Donovan and I took the kids to fly kites at the capital building. The kids loved it and they actually did pretty well. Tess let go of hers and it got stuck in a tree. We had a great time.

Ever since it has been warm enough to go outside without a winter jacket that is where we are. There are lots of lakes around here so we went to a place called Easter lake and fed the geese. Abe had fun climbing a tree(Donovan helped him get up there). All Tess wanted to do was throw things in the water. She wanted to throw in anything that she could find including geese poop! The kids love being outside

Tess is so funny she discovered she can blow bubbles with her spit and every once in awhile I will catch her doing it. It is so funny because she is such a wild fun little girl, but when she blows bubbles it takes all her concentration and focus. I got her on video so you can see some for yourself.

Donovan and I recently bought 55 gallon water barrels to fill with water in case of an emergency. They were delivered in these huge boxes, and the kids had fun for days playing with them. Donovan also made a house and a tunnel. The kids thoroughly enjoyed them until they were so thrashed that we had to throw them away.

for Family Home Evening last week we made scripture cookies, and the kids loved it. They actually tasted really good too. I am a little emberassed to say that we ate the entire batch as soon as they came out of the oven. Here is the link if you would like to try them yourself. Once you go to the link just scroll down to the bottom of the page and you will see scripture cookies.

http://lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?hideNav=1&locale=0&sourceId=91ed0d1ad9bf6210VgnVCM100000176f620a____&vgnextoid=21bc9fbee98db010VgnVCM1000004d82620aRCRD#footnote09263_000_014_1

This is an example of why changing diapers is such a difficult task in our house.

Yes, after more than 8 years of marriage Donovan knows the way to my heart. A big part of the holidays to me are the treats that you can find in the stores. for Halloween it is candy corns, and for Easter it is cadbury eggs. I LOVE them. Recently I have been finding cadbury eggs placed in peculiar places throughout the house.

Donovan is the funnest dad. He comes home and makes ups these ridiculous wrestling games with the kids. They love it. They romp around so much they wear holes in their knees just from romping around with him. Also he has worn holes in the knees of his own pants playing around with them.

So We finally were able to find out what we are having. We got an ultrasound on Monday. The whole family was able to come. The kids didn't last very long though. We found out we are having a boy. We are excited. Everything looks great and healthy. I am sure he will be another big baby. He is measuring big for his due date which is exactly how the other two kids were. He is a real mover. I don't know that he liked being poked and proded with the ultrasound thing. He kept kiching it back. We actually were able to get some of the three dimenstional pictures. I have never had those before and they are really cool.

I am sure as many of you know Donovan is a die hard football fan. When we moved out here he tried getting an antenna to get some TV channels so he could watch football. We must live in a bad spot because we have tried buying two different antennas and we haven't been able to get any channels. We are also to cheap to pay for cable or satelite just for football. More than once I would wake up in the middle of the night and realize Donovan wasn't in bed with me. I would then find him asleep on the floor listening to a football game on the radio. Anyway the superbowl was a dilema because we didn't want to invite ourselves over to any ones house. The past two years we have done a super bowl party with his sister's family in Flagstaff. He was talking to her and they decided they would try to skype the game. It was hilarious it worked and we were surprised at how well we could watch the game. So we ended up skyping his sister for about 4 hours for the whole game. The kids loved it because they got to show off for their cousins in Arizona that they miss so much. What was even funnier was everyone in awhile there would be a big nose peering over the computer screen from the other side. Ember our niece would put her face over their computer trying to been seen with out really being seen. It was a lot of fun. They pictures I am posting are of us watching the game one is of the Belnaps in Arizona in front of the game.

We wanted to do something fun with the kids for Valentines Day. We went swimming earlier in the day, and then in the evening we did a candle light dinner. It was fun. I bought some wine glasses at the dollar store. We had fun with it. We tried to get the kids to sit and enjoy and talk more during the meal so it would be like we were dinning. They just couldn't get enough of the sprite cranberry juice we put in the glasses. After they finished that they had a few bites of dinner and wanted to get down. It was fun anyway.

So since we moved here and our duplex has a little more space I have been wanting a nice couch. I figured since we will be here awhile, Donovan has a real job, and my belly is getting so big I don't like the kids sitting on my lap (we only had one chair in our living room so the kids have to sit on my lap to read books and stuff). I have agonized over this decision, "should I get something off craigslist? Should I buy something new?" Anyway I have wanted to do the craigslist thing just because I figured I could get a better deal, but I found out quickly if you aren't the first one to check out a good deal than it is gone. So I was getting frustrated with it all. All of you that know me know what a cheap skate I am and I have never bought a real piece of furniture before so this was a big deal for me. I am sure that this is more than you care to know because this info is boring to you but the exciting part is I got what I wanted today!!!!! I got just what I wanted and I got a great deal! I got a leather couch and two matching chairs. The chair recline too. I got it on craigslist and I happened to be the first one to check them out so I got the good deal this time!!! They are so nice and they look like they are riht from a furniture store there is no wear at all! So these are my new babies. I hope my kids treat them as gentle as you should treat a new baby. Spencer said he gives them a week before they have scratches. We could only fit one chair and the couch in the living room the other chair is in Abe's room.

I was so excited the day I realized that Tess' hair was long enough for pigtails. She looks so adorable in them. These pictures show them off pretty well. She was working on a carrot

Our duplex has a lot of fun perks. Our backyard is a hill and with all the snow we have gone sledding back there a few times. The kids really like it. Abe will help Tess get in the sled and then push her down. They are really becoming good buddies and they seem to get a long a lot better here. I think it is because they have more space to play anyway I am loving it!