Kashann and Clan

Okay I know. I have become a terrible blogger. I have my reasons.


Here are the highlights of another month around our house.

 The snow went away. And though it is still cold most days, Marcus now spends much of his time outdoors. Shoeless. He won't listen to me when I warn him about all the stickers I am going to have to pull out of his feet.

Nor does he take heed when I mention that rolling down our hill is a great way to pick up blood sucking ticks. I hate to always spoil his fun.  

Camille and Caroline started up a lemonade stand with some neighbor girls a couple weeks ago. They stole the idea from these neighbors down the street that they crashed one day after they saw they had a stand going. I insisted that the sale at our house have a few improvements. First of all everyone gets their own cup. This stand had one cup and each costumer got a fresh straw but then returned the cup for the next customer's use. And the plastic cup didn't even look cleaned. It was covered with paint from the face painting booth they were simultaneously operating. They also advertised that their lemonaid was fresh. After you paid got to watch them dump in a couple spoonfuls of sugar, and few splashes of lemon juice, and then warm water. Each customer had a different recipe. So at our sale you actually get your own cup with cold lemonaid made from Country time in our kitchen. They made about 5 bucks each in a couple hours and so Camille wants to have them constantly. It's amazing to me how whole families will walk down to visit and buy our lemonade like it's actually their favorite way to spend their money.


The last afternoon we had a lemonade stand going on Marcus, Caroline and I were manning the booth while Camille and Anna (a neighbor girl) were in making more lemonade. Marcus suddenly took off running down the street, refusing to listen to me when I screamed at him to come back. I turned my back on him for a minute to tell Caroline that I was going after him and suddenly he was gone. I saw he was headed towards Anna's house and wasn't too concerned that I had lost sight of him. He was probably hiding behind a tree or something knowing he was in trouble. But when I finally made it there, I couldn't find him anywhere. Marcus hasn't ever been over to her house but he knows where she lives. After having no luck searching the yard and woods for him I decided to knock on the door and let Anna's parents know why I was running around their yard. 

No one answered to my rings though except for two large barking dogs. A couple minutes later I heard noise around the back and walked around and found him inside their fenced-in yard sliding down their slide. I grabbed him quick scolding him all the way home for running away from me and then going on the neighbor's property without being invited. His shoes were of course missing, though I was pretty sure he had them on for once, when I last saw him. We told Anna the story once we got back to our place and I asked her if she could look around her yard for Marcus's shoes. She found them later inside their house upstairs. So he had just walked right in and made himself at home, not even worrying about the fact that he was in an unfamiliar house with big unfamiliar dogs.  I hope he can learn to mind this summer or it is going to be a difficult one.

One thing we all have missed since moving from NY is all that money that those high NY taxes brought in for our school. Our last grade school had an auditorium and put on awesome shows that were serious good entertainment. The middle school had an even larger auditorium and even an indoor swimming pool. Only our high school here has an auditorium and guess what? It doesn't even have a football team because. . . we don't have a stadium, of course. 

So there are of course drawbacks to living in the no state income and no sales tax state that we were so attracted to. In NH things are little more laid back and everyone expects a grade school show to be simple and not involve any more than a month of once a week practices. Unfortunately they chose the exact musical production that our girls were in a couple years ago at their NY school. So we couldn't help comparing one Suessical to the other Suessical. Though they sang great and had better soloists probably than the previous Suessical, there was nothing else going on. No clip on mikes in the budget around here so don't even think about doing anything but planting yourself squarely in front of that microphone.  And the other hundred kids that aren't leads stand on risers at the back of the stage and never leave the entire play. I felt bad for the parents who worked hard sewing an awesome Sneetch costume for their child only to find that you only saw the top of his head the entire play.
Camille was lucky and was cast as Horton. Along with a fourth grade boy. They switch the cast out for the second act. Which in theory is a good way to get more kids involved but it certainly doesn't to add the performance. Camille was a good choice for Horton- she is super sweet just like the elephant who was willing to sit on the egg. 

You can't see much here but look for the gray blob sitting front and center. And that's Camille's voice you will hear singing.


We all missed Caroline popping out of a giant egg as the elephant bird though. That was the best part of the last show. 

Last week was Spring Break and I find that it isn't near as fun with a combination of middle and grade schoolers. The grade schoolers would hang out all day in their jammies playing monopoly ( Caroline and Camille are obsessed with it and will play for hours, day after day)  totally content.  The middle schoolers were calling their friends all week and trying to do something exciting. Begging me to take them shopping because they were "wasting their spring break." But did they want to do any of the things that I thought were fun family activities like going to the park/ library/ a local kids concert/ or hiking? Yeah, right. So I find that life has definitely gotten complicated now we are in this stage.

Finally on Friday when Dad was done with his week we went on our second ever vacation since moving to NH. The family that use do to be known for many vacations has gotten pretty boring since we joined the real world of working and earning money and again. The only other time we left town was to head to a wintry Buffalo funeral so I don't even know if that counts for a vacation.


This time we decided to head south to Boston. We spent Friday evening at the Children's Museum of Boston which is right on the harbor. Then we drove south of Boston and spent the weekend at my cousin Marne`'s beautiful new home in Norfolk, MA. We are each other's only family in the northeast and figured we needed to have a New England Family Reunion for Easter.  We had an indoor egg hunt Saturday due to lots of rain, and then Brent, Kennon and I drove back up to Boston for a ward temple trip while 8 month pregnant Marne` fed, bathed and put the other 6 children to bed for us. You will have to rely on this narrative for the weekend because I brought a dead camera along so we have no Easter Vacation pictures at all.  Marcus decided that their almost two year old son Bowen is his very best friend and he actually cried when we said goodbye after church.


And in House Hunting News. . .we had an offer accepted on a foreclosure home here. I am so anxious to own because I love to paint and I am going insane here in this 30 year old house that needs a bit updating. Even if the landlord allowed me to update my husband won't. He says I am wasting my time and money even  if I dare to put up a curtain on a rental home. So we really need to buy a house so I can have the license again to be creative and make things a little more beautiful.  And we can't buy a house that's all beautiful because then how fun is that? And do you really think after our history that we are the type to buy the pricey perfect house that you instantly love because it's all fixed up? No of course not. We are looking for the Worst home. . . . in the best neighborhood of course. Something with potential, but plenty of problems to bring down the price. 

So we did find our promising foreclosure home listed well below what you normally would pay to live in that neighborhood. It's a contemporary style home which I never thought was my style before but for some reason I am willing to give it a chance to see if it is. 

Unfortunately the power and water are all off and so it's all a gamble. I didn't even get to see one bathroom because. . . .  I couldn't see it. With no windows and no light in the room it was impossible to check out. So we will just have to take our chances on that one.  We already know their are problems that need to be fixed. Most bedrooms without closets, no Master suite, broken rain gutters, a mysteriously missing deck from a sliding glass door that goes nowhere . . . but there could also be bigger problems like broken water pipes in the wall. It's all so exciting, all this unknown. So in the next 7 days  it will be inspected and then if we still want to take it on . .  it will be ours in Early May. The bank is insisting on a quick close.