Wow! I am way behind on blogging! I keep thinking life is going to calm down a little, but it never seems to. Maybe that's just life with 4 kids - constant chaos.
We started out the month with a New Year's Party at our house. We invited a bunch of friends to come see our house and have fun and yummy food with us. It was great hanging out and celebrating the new year with everyone. Madison and Jordan actually stayed awake until midnight with us!
Madison started at her new school and loves it. She has a great teacher and is making lots of new friends. Her new school is only about a 1/2 mile from our house, so we walk to pick her up at least a couple times a week (loving the Vegas weather!).
Jordan turned 5 this month. We celebrated with a surprise visit from Mamah (Popi was in town for work and she decided to come down too), a birthday dinner at Applebee's and then presents and cake and ice cream back at home. 
He chose a blueberry cake with blueberry cream cheese filling and marshmallow buttercream, all covered in marshmallow fondant and served with mint chocolate ice cream - a fabulous combination! He loves dinosaurs these days, wanting to be a paleontologist when he grows up, so he wanted a dinosaur cake (and it had to be orange and blue, just like Buddy from Dinosaur Train). Jordan really enjoyed spending his birthday with Mamah and Popi! 
On Saturday, rather than have a party with his friends, he opted to go see the dinosaur exhibit at the Natural History Museum. We also got to see lots of cool animals (stuffed), live snakes, lizards, frogs, fish, sharks, and sting rays. We even got to watch them feed the sharks!
We've been busy doing lots of little projects around the house, including painting the downstairs bath and Madison's room. Hopefully we will get the boys' room painted soon, too.
Awesome gold color that my mom and sister helped pick out. It took 3 coats of paint!
Perfect little girls room - cotton candy pink!Last week Jordan (and later, Josh) got the flu. Justin was wonderful and got up with him in the middle of the night and then changed his puked-upon sheets and started a load of laundry. The next morning we went to throw the load in the dryer and discovered the laundry room floor covered in liquid laundry soap. The brand new (Costco-size) bottle of laundry soap must have fallen off the top of the washing machine, breaking open and completely emptying all over the floor. It took me over 4 hours to clean it up, scooping up as much as I could salvage and mopping the rest of it up with towels and then finally the mop! I was so sore the next day I could barely walk!
We are down to one car right now, which is really frustrating. We outgrew our Santa Fe when Michael was born, but put off buying a van so we didn't mess up our house loan. We took two cars everywhere for a while, but finally sold my car a few weeks ago. We figured it would be no big deal to get a loan to buy a car since we have (or had) great credit and a decent down-payment. Unfortunately, when we applied for loan we discovered that due to our mail not being forwarded (FINALLY got that fixed after 2 phone calls plus a visit to the post office), we didn't receive (thus, didn't pay) our final internet bill and it got sent to collections. Big sigh... so much for almost perfect credit. So now we are trying to get things sorted out with the credit bureaus, which could take several months, and trying to get by with only one car. We have rented a car a few times so that we can go places as a family (like church) and Justin has been trying to work from home a lot so I can take Jordan to preschool and Madison to dance. It is amazing that one $50 bill can affect one's credit so drastically. Hopefully it will all get sorted out soon and we will be able to buy a van.
Michael is getting big. He is smiling and laughing and starting to interact more. He loves to watch his crazy siblings and all their antics. He has also discovered his hands, sucking on them constantly and starting to reach for things.
