Happy Easter!!!

Alright everyone, this is Casey again. I promise I won't make a habit of this but I have some pictures I know you want to see. I took the girls to an Easter egg hunt today with our friends Derek, Rosa, Quentin, Maddy, Andrea, Javier, Diego, and Lucas. We had so much fun, though it was really cold out. Enjoy the pictures!!!
Here's Ella and Hadley pre-hunt with their matching (yes matching) rain coats.Hadley had fun getting the eggs. I'm not sure if she really understood what was happening until it was over and we opened the eggs. Then she was all about the CANDY!!!
As you can see, she was very excited!!!
Ella, Quentin, and Diego scheming about the best ways to get to the eggs. You didn't have to prompt these three - they knew what to do!!!

As you can see, Ella and Diego knew exactly what to do. They did awesome!!!
Right before we left, we noticed the Easter Bunny and had to get pics. Yesterday Ella told us how scared of the Easter Bunny she was but when Diego walked right up to him, Ella followed along. As you can see, Javier had to prod Quentin a little to get in the picture..."He's tall" Quentin said afterwards in awe.

Spring Break Update

Hey friends,
This is Casey typing up this update. We just got done with Spring Break a couple weeks ago and did some spring cleaning/painting in our house. By the way, if anyone needs paint - DON'T BUY IT!!! We could run a Sherwin Williams out of our garage with all the paint we have!!! Here's some pictures of the changes we made. Janelle chose a grayish color to use in the kitchen/dining room/living room area that we really liked. The red to the right of the picture is a darker red than we had previously. That red now covers the wall where our fireplace is too.
As you can see - gray and red throughout the dining room/kitchen. It really does look nice!
We took the gray from the kitchen and ran it around the living room about 36 inches up as you can see. We will eventually put a chair rail where the two colors meet.
Our next job was the office. We got rid of the giant L-shaped desk since Janelle doesn't need it anymore for work and traded a friend for a much smaller desk. This opened the space up immensely! So we rearranged and painted one entire wall stripes. If you want to know some of the colors we have in our garage - look at this picture. We made the stripes with leftover paint from all of our other projects!
As far as the girls go, they are doing great. Hadley got her cast off last week so this is a pic before she got it off. Ella is as fun as ever. Getting bigger by the minute it seems.
Janelle is enjoying a girl's weekend right now and is off having fun with her friends Andrea, Bert, and Angie somewhere in the Boise/Nampa area. I have bail money ready just in case!
I've been conducting my research for my 2nd Masters and will be finished with the research part of it in the next couple of weeks. I'm testing whether or not a virtual dissection program allows students to learn as much as an actual dissection does. So I have a program and real dissections going on. I'd attach some pictures but I'm sure you aren't interested!

Poor Hadley...

Hadley Broke her Thumb-- and gets to enjoy a new bright pink cast for the next three weeks! She was climbing on a chair, which fell backwards and, well, here we are. The biggest handicap has been that the broken thumb is none other than her good faithful sucking thumb. But don't worry, Hadley has successfully transitioned to sucking the other thumb.
Ella tells everyone about the incident-- she is Hadley's care taker since the incident.

Sisters!

Daddy, are you allergic to Mommy?

This was Ella's deduction after she heard that Daddy got sick from Mommy.
Only makes sense.... and on rare occasions (or perhaps not so rare, too) I'm sure his answer would be yes.

The updates

Hello... Has it really been two months? Wow.
Well, here's a synopsis of what's been going on:

November: ROAD TRIP! Yep, drove all the way to Arizona with Nana and Papa Stauffer. Five Traveling Days with two small ones. A true test in patience. The jury's still out on whether we passed that test or not.....

December: Well, Christmas of Course! We spent it first at Grandma and Grandpa Boothby's house and then spent Christmas day at Uncle Cody's house with Nana and Papa. Ella got a big-girl bike!

January-- This was the big month! First, Janelle quit her job! After 4 1/2 years with Family Connections, she decided to move on. After that, Janelle joined Casey as he ran his first Marathon! He ran it at Disney World and rocked it. He finished it adn then we played for several days. It was a blast. Then Janelle took two weeks off (ahhhhh....) before moving on to what is stated in February....

February-- Janelle started a new job here and has loved every day of it. She works about 20ish hours a week and still does adjunct teaching at NNU.

March-- well here we are. Nothing to report yet, but we are looking forward to Casey's spring break!!!

October 25th: Ella's Halloween Dress Up Party

Ella turned 4 on October 25th. We celebrated with a dress-up Halloween party.

Scooby Doo and the gang came to visit:

So did the Grandma's:

Hadley wouldn't miss it:

Ella's Best buds:
(Quentin & Diego) (Logan True Boothby) (Baby Cousin Jessa)
And the Lady of the Hour:

(Dressed up as Tess Tyler from Disney's Camp Rock)

This week...

'Tis the Week to celebrate the soon-t0-be four year old. Remember this? Ella's first Birthday party in October 2005-- she is priviledged to be able to wear her halloween costume for every birthday party since it falls so close to Halloween! This year, Ella will be going as "Tess Tyler" from Disney's Camp Rock. We will be celebrating by going to Disney's High School Musical-- Ella's first Movie Theatre Visit! And in the evening we will be having a birthday party...Everyone's dressing up! Pictures to come!!!

It's crazy to think about how her personality has developed since this picture of her...She is a curious, social, take charge person. We've known that since day one, but it only gets more and more refined (and sometimes messy) with each day.

And, let us not forget Hadley-- no recent pics since we have temporarily misplaced the battery charger for our camera....But, this one captures her entire being, I think! Hadley is daring, curageous, and "goofy"...she does what ever it takes to keep up with her sister and everyone else. And luckily, Ella likes to be in charge, so having Hadley at her constant disposal works out well...so far.