A Peek at the Poulsens

Sometimes I find pictures that I haven't used on the blog and they are too cute to pass by but don't exactly go with anything...hence, overflow. Sam has been working on his guitar and Natalie was LOVING listening to him play and sing. *coughmusicalgenescough* (Can I start her on piano yet?!) omg the wave Family lunch at Tico's (clearly, this was March Madness time) Austin having his own snack in the Bumbo At first glance, this picture may just look like a stack of pillows. It's so much more though - I was too lazy to get out of bed to close the blinds during my precious nap, so these two blessed pillows pulled through and created a very effective barricade to the lovely but interrupting light. Ahhhh, bliss.  a common sight at our house I've mentioned this before, but my best friend gave me the Smitten Kitchen cookbook around Christmas and it is A M A Z I N G. Go buy it, seriously. I've loved everything I've tried in it, and ...

BUT FIRST, (some of many) reasons why I hate the dishes : 1. They never end. 2. Your hands get wrinkly and smell like old rag. 3. The dishwasher gets too full to add anything else but you still have six pots and pans from dinner. 4. You think you're done, but then you walk out to the living room and find four crusty bowls, two caked forks, and a cup with unknown (but definitely sketchy) liquid. 5. The dishwasher is loud. 6. The dishes pile up so much that when you finally start the dishwasher, you can't eat until it's done because the cupboards are empty. 7. They don't go away if you leave them overnight. (How many times have I woken up and prayed to find a magically clean kitchen? I have faith, but you'd need to be Moses to make that happen.) 8. Even though I try to ignore them, I can't truly focus on anything with them glaring at me from the kitchen. (As evidenced by the fact that I couldn't bring myself to blog until the dish situation was situat...

Three dumb things I've done recently: #1: My sister-in-law accidentally locked my keys in the trunk and I didn't want her to feel bad so I went into problem-solving mode and made this grand plan to go through the backseat into the trunk, using a tennis racket to reach the keys and pull them to safety. Smart, right? WRONG - if I had access to the backseat, that meant that the car was unlocked and I could have just pressed the trunk release. Duh. I didn't even think of this obvious solution until I was telling Austin (quite proudly) of how I saved the day and he was like "...so the car was unlocked?" #2: I thought I'd take advantage of Natalie's nap to paint my nails in peace and quiet, but I needed to cut them first so I tossed the two bottles of polish (coral and top-coat) onto the couch so I could go cut my nails into the trash can. My back was already turned when the bottles hit the couch...and each other, breaking the clear polish bottle into pieces...

At 8 1/2 months of age, Natalie finally peed on one of us. Fortunately for me, it was Austin, but we both got a good laugh. We've been waiting for this day since she was born and thought maybe the time had passed, but nope, she let it rip on the way to the shower* yesterday morning and it was hilarious! Muahahaha. Just thought I'd document this happy occasion. : ) (*she sounded congested, so we were doing some steam time)

It feels like we are in the midst of a lot of almosts...almost done with school, Natalie is almost crawling, her teeth are almost poking through, and she's almost weaned. The weather keeps threatening that it's almost spring; it's been in the 30s the past week and we are tired of being cold. And, we don't really have enough to blog about lately, but almost . : ) This is Natalie's favorite hang out lately: standing on this particular side of the exersaucer. She likes practicing her standing and balance anywhere, but spends more time here than anywhere else.  her favorite thing about this box is dumping everything out and then trying to find an angle that lets her chew on it  I'm accompanying for a voice recital this weekend, so I've had to actually practice (*gasp*) recently...I almost forgot how! I'm also playing in the pit orchestra for Les Mis at the local community playhouse, which is a BLAST - I love being personally responsibl...