Birthday, baseball, painting, and Delaware

On Monday, March 29, Jared turned 3! There are definitely no babies around here any more. For a long time we have been telling him that he couldn't play with the little legos because they were for three and up (we don't always follow that rule, but in this case we did). First thing Monday morning he woke up and asked to play with the legos. He said "I can play with them now because I am 3!" It was very cute.

Jared with the legos


Jared wanted a train cake for his birthday. My neighbor had a pan that she let us borrow that made nine individual train cars, including an engine and a caboose. Each train car was the perfect size (like a cupcake) for an individual serving. Everyone got to choose a car and decorate it. Jared got first pick, and picked the engine. I thought they turned out pretty cute. We took pictures at several different stages of decoration.

Jared with the whole train before decorating it.


Jenna, Kevin, and Jared decorating their cars.


The finished train. I tried to keep most of the cars on plates because they were covered in frosting. :)


Here is Jared with the finished train. I think he may have been eating some of the frosting. What do you think? :)


I tried to get a picture of everyone with their finished car. Somehow I missed Jenna. The little hands reaching in are Jenna's, and they are taking the car she decorated.


Amanda with her finished car (please excuse the paint clothes)


Derek with his finished car


Grandma (Amanda's mom) with her finished car (please excuse the paint clothes)


Kevin with his finished car


Jared blowing out the candles on his finished engine.


Jared getting ready to open presents.


Jared is attempting to look over Kevin's shoulder to read his card. Gotta love older siblings. :)


A couple of the cards had money in them. Apparently Jenna has never seen so much money at one time before. :)


He asked for red crocs, so that's what he got. The next day he kept saying to everyone "I like my red crocs. Do you like my red crocs?"


Jared loves firetrucks and everything that goes along with them. This is a little fire station that makes noise, and came with a little fire engine and firefighter. He carries the fire engine around everywhere.


This is a cute book. We have read it a number of times since Monday.


This is a puzzle book. He can't do it alone yet, but Jenna loves to help him with it.


One thing that I love about this age is that children seem to be so excited about every gift they receive. Jared serious loved every gift.

Kevin had another baseball game this week. He played catcher. He isn't yet able to catch the balls that the batters miss, but he does a good job of stopping them with his body. His coach is happy with that. Unfortunately we forgot to take the camera, so we didn't get any pictures. Hopefully I will remember to take it to his game next week. His team lost again, but the game was a lot closer this time. Kevin's team does alright in the field, but they cannot bat. Hopefully that will come as the season progresses.

Unfortunately the painting is take a lot longer than we had hoped. I finished painting the cabinets, but they have not been rehung. Hopefully I will get everything back together before we leave for South Carolina on Wednesday (this week is spring break). I decided to paint the countertops. Lowes has a counter top transformation system. I have done half of the work, and so far it looks good. I will finish it up tomorrow. I am really nervous about it. It was expensive, but a lot less than replacing the counter tops. Hopefully it will work. It isn't granite, that's for sure, but it is just as good as laminate. Hopefully I will have pictures next week. My mom finished painting the dining room. It looks so good! The hard part about paining my house is that the previous owners painted all of the trim brown. (If you look at the birthday pictures you can see the turquoise walls and brown trim). We are painting all of the trim white. Painting trim takes forever, but having it white really brightens up the rooms. The walls go quickly, but the trim takes a long time. It looks awesome when it is done though. We only have two more days this week to work, so I don't know how much more we will get done.

Thursday night Derek left for Delaware for his job interview. The company paid for an extra night in the hotel so that the kids and I could go up and join him on Friday. He had his interview in the morning on Friday. Friday afternoon I picked Kevin up from school and we headed up to look around. Unfortunately we left just at the right time to hit D.C. at rush hour. It took us two hours longer (6 hours total) to get there than it should have. The problem is that I can't figure out how to get there without going through D.C. I am going to have to figure out a better way if we end up going up there a lot to find a place to live. Friday afternoon Derek received a job offer from them. We are happy with the offer. We feel very blessed to have an offer for work that Derek is very interested in. We wish it weren't in Delaware, but we know that we will be able to find an area there where we can be happy. Plus, we are thrilled to stay in the east. We are still waiting on one other company. We have to respond to the offer by April 16. We will see what the next two weeks bring, but I think we may soon call Delaware "home". Now I just need to finish getting my house here ready so that I can get it on the market. :)

I am sorry this picture is blurry, but I wanted to post it. At the hotel the children were entertaining themselves by spinning around in one of the chairs. I remember doing that as a child. Now it would make me ill. The joys of childhood. :)