Our Little Girl and Marcus Ma'ilei of the New Orlean Saints

One of the perks of being a girl scout is meeting a guy who you have no idea who he is or what he does, but Mom and Dad are excited for you to have that experience and take your picture with him anyways.
Marcus did a program with the girls this afternoon to help them earn a merit badge.
He even participated in the friendship circle at the end.

Shall we call him Boots?

Bryce has a real love for boots. You tell him to get his shoes in the morning, and he brings boots. We go back and forth on no boots--shoes, and eventually boots usually wins (usually it doesn't matter which he wears). I really shouldn't be surprised by his love, as Amber has the same love (shes always had a pair of boots as long as shes been able to indicate a preference). But Colin highly dislikes any shoe on his ankles, therefore, with the exception of snow boots, there is a lack of boot hand me downs for Bryce.

Just earlier this week, when we had the boot "discussion" another time, I thought I should really get him some boots cause even though I don't mind him wearing his snow boots, I think the look is, well---trashy. So with this thought the other night I stopped in Kohls to see if I could find one thing and noticed that they had major clearance going on. I wouldn't be a Christiansen if I didn't check the things that are typically a little harder to find for a good price and we would need. The kids shoe section was a success. A beautiful pair of woody boots for my boy "Boots" to wear whenever he wanted and for me not to feel like I've got trashyly dressed kids in tow (Amber also found a nice pair of "fuzzy" (lined) boots that she has found true love in). Thus my two little boot lovers were in heaven, and our up and coming boot lover has a pair to cherish for at least a little while to come.

Milestones

So each of our little ones have reached cool milestones in the last little bit.

Amber turned 7 last week. It's amazing we have a 7 year old now. We had a fun evening celebrating her birthday together on her birthday. Then she had some friends over for a horse themed birthday party later that week. Eric had a fun time making the pinata for it, and Amber and her friends had fun busting it open, amongst other activities.
Our little princess is now also the proud owner of three (almost 4) permanent teeth. She likes to save her teeth for a rainy day to cash them in (which makes it hard for the tooth fairy to know when to take action), but she's proud of them.
She's also an avid little reader now too. Which is exciting but a bummer as well because Eric and I have been foiled a few times now in our sneaky way of spelling things so the kids don't know what we're talking about--time for a new code.

Colin has made a girl friend. We were working on his valentine's last week and he told me that one of his friends from class moved far away. I felt bad because there hadn't been a lot of kids his age in our old community for him to play with, but here he has blossomed and been able to make lots of friends and I was just sad he lost one of them already. But then he quickly told me that it was ok, he made a new friend. I asked him what his new friend's name was--to which he replied he couldn't remember HER name. I was shocked. We got to school that day and we arrived at the same time as his new friend, and all of the sudden I didn't exist anymore (I usually get waves all the way from the time he leaves the van till he gets in the house) and my little man made his way to class talking with his new friend the whole way.

Brycee went poop in the potty!!! I put him on the potty about a month before he turned 2 and he freaked (even though he said he wanted to try it), so I backed off and haven't attempted it since. But he's been more than willing to sit on the potty with Eric's assistance. Up until now he's just sat there and nothings happened. But last night I was getting him ready for bed and I asked him if he wanted to go potty, he said yes. So I put him on, and not wanting to freak him out, I left the room. I thought I heard him making "noises" so I went in to check and my boy had pooped!!! I was so excited, he was so excited, Eric was so excited. We all did a happy dance, washed up, got a Thomas sticker and he has since tried again this morning (with my help--amazing)!

Our baby, Owen has a couple of milestones. About a week and a half ago he rolled from belly to back. We were worried that meant the end of being able to leave him on the bed for a moment, but we still have some time. He hasn't mastered back to belly yet--but when he does...
Then when we took him in for his 4 month check up the Dr. commented on how drooly he was and looked at his gums and said he was teething and the inflammation indicated that it'd only be a few weeks. I was surprised. This is our baby, he's not old enough to have teeth yet--but he is. At church on Sun. he was chomping on my finger and it was sharper than normal--because he now has a little tooth just barely piercing the gum there on the bottom. How cute it is, how cute he is.

So it's been a while...

I was getting into the whole blogging thing back in the day, then I started getting creepy emails from people I didn't know, and ceased all interactions with the blogging scene. We'll give it another go and see how it goes this time around, I've not really been a fan of the lock down, but will do it if I start getting creeps again.

Things have been eventful, as most of you know. Eric graduated last year in Manufacturing Engineering (with Honors). Got a job an hour north of where we were currently living, but since the job offer came just a week before our oldest started school, we decided we'd let her do that school year there, then move. Thus begins the hard year of 2009. We sold, with stress, we attempted to buy with much more stress (from the sellers), we ended up homeless for almost a full 2 months, finally signed closing papers on a house and had a seller that decided to squat. So what did we do? We squatted too. It was our house, we moved in. Extremely awkward, but it was our house----oh yeah, did I mention, we were expecting our 4th child any day! She finally moved out and in less then 48 hours after, our newest addition was born. Our prayer was that we would be in our house before our baby came, and that happened, so we were happy to have at least that. Amongst the mess, our car was stolen and completely stripped one week before we became homeless, our family of 5 (6 if you count the one baking in the oven) were graciously allowed to stay in a room in Eric's parent's basement (extremely cozy, but beats being on the streets). We're happy where we're at now though. We love our house, our community is amazing!, our newest addition is thriving and bringing more joy everyday, and Eric has an hour and 1/2 more to spend with us each day living closer to his work. So we'll see where this goes. Here's to warding off the creeps!!