What? It's only been (almost) a month since my last update.

So somehow the promised pictures of Easter either got sucked into a black hole or are lost on the hard drive of my very fickle laptop, so I unfortunately don't have any to share. :( I also don't have any pictures of my new car - a 1999 Ford Contour. Maybe I can get some up soon, maybe not.

I am not totally without pictures, though. Emma has, several times (though, admittedly they were all a few months apart), thought it a good idea to color on walls, bricks, and doors when Mom and Dad aren't looking. Typically, she'll use a ballpoint pen or a marker, but she did get creative with blue nail polish on her white closet doors and walls once.

Until now, Erin and I have been talking to her about it and having her take responsibility by giving her best attempt at cleaning it up. So far, there are at least 4 places in our house she has redesigned and none of them have come off. The latest redecoration was a series of swirls across her bedroom doorway.

Since talking to her and having her try to clean it up has not worked, we're taking a new tactic. She was grounded from the Wii (her favorite addiction) for the weekend and we're trying to supply an outlet for her need to color walls by painting both sides of her bedroom door with black chalkboard paint. Eventually we'll do her closet doors too. Now if she gets the urge to draw on walls, she'll be able to grab some chalk and go nuts. I just hope we can convince the boys to only draw on these specific doors and nowhere else as they hit this stage.


Emma works on the bottom, Levi does the middle (they had just switched assignments) and Daddy does the top of the door.


Josh Supervises. "Stop working and pick me up!!!"



Emma does the bottom as best she can while Levi reloads his brush - the roller didn't work so well. It didn't roll once the paint was in it. We found sponge brushes work much better than the expensive stuff with this job.

Another shot of the kids working hard. One side of one door down, the other side and two more doors to go!