I decided to finally paint Alyssa’s room.  I had wanted to do it as soon as we moved in (3 years ago), but it didn’t seem a priority at the time.  And then I procrastinated.  But it’s finally done…well almost.  I have some leaves to paint and some branches to hot glue and well…well is any room every completely done? 

I suppose it took me so long to paint her room because I couldn’t decide on the color…yellow…green…pink…white…green…pink…  Well the pink won out.  But I was nervous about pink.  I like pink, but frankly pink walls scare me because I feel like they can go from cute on paper to tacky on walls.  So I started out light.  I stayed up all night painting light pink on the walls and I received the below responses.

This is how you know you’ve messed up royally.

Husband: Hmmm maybe we should paint the baseboards purple?

Alyssa: That is NOT pink…it’s like white pink.

Alright fine. I’ll get a darker pink, but I still couldn’t see myself painting the entire room a bright pink.  So I kept 2 walls light pink and I thought about a 1/2 wall of pink…which turned into more of a pink mountain.  It was supposed to be more of a canopy of pink flowing around her bed…kind of like one of those mosquito nets (princess flowy thingies?) little girls have around their beds…just a painted version. But it was confirmed by my husband that it is definitely a mountain…especially since there are birds painted on the walls.  Apparently the birds confirm the presence of a mountain…ah well.  Well there’s that and the fact that I painted the peaks wrong, so yes it does look like a mountain and I’m okay with that.

I also added in a tree….I’ve always wanted to paint a tree on her wall and so I finally did it and it looks super cute I think…well at least it will when I finish the leaves.  I also added in a few love birds.

This little love bird below is all by himself on a different wall that you see when you walk in.  I found some really cute white branches for him to sit on, but they keep falling onto the floor…so I need to use a little hot glue maybe? or super glue? I haven’t figured that part out yet.  I’ll let you know how it went in part 2.

Here’s a little preview of her room…almost finished.  She seems to like it much better with the bright pink.  She wasn't so sure about the blue, but I convinced her that it was like the sky.  She also wasn’t thrilled about the tree ESPECIALLY Since it was BROWN…apparently she thought it should be pink…but there was no way I was painting a pink tree.  The lid is firmly on that pink paint and available for anyone to borrow!

Stay tuned for part 2…which might be a while so don’t hold your breath!  hehe

Our entire family (including our car) dressed up in Spider Man attire and sported our spidery-selves to the Trunk ‘N Treat at our church.  It was kind of a bummer that it was on a Monday night because Luke is usually in charge of remembering all the techy stuff and he met us there right after work. I had so much to bring that I forgot our camera!  Of all things right?!  But there were plenty of picture takers at the party!

(Oh yeah we did also feature iron man and the Hulk at our car too…because they were big and cool looking…thanks Hensley’s for letting us borrow them!)

Okay so now that we are on the topic of Spider Man I need to go backwards in time for a few moments to Evan’s Birthday…which was also Spider Man themed!

Here he is…our 3 year old (well in July he turned 3) and I say this in the kindest motherly way…we love our 3 year old Evan much more than our 2 year old Evan. 

Wow what a difference a year makes….seriously.  He went from our “Who wants to deal with Evan? NOT IT – rock. paper. scissors?!” to back in the running for favorite kid. 

We had originally ordered the shirt I was wearing for Evan…Luke ordered it and thought it would be a child’s large and just a tad big…well it turned out to be a youth large and it fit me, so I wore it to the party.  The week before Evan’s party I found a spider girl costume at the party sale on clearance which Alyssa thought was awesome. 

They had lots of fun attempting to do “spider moves” – they never quite got the whole spider web spraying hand move down, but they didn’t care.

Alyssa felt she needed to practice in the mirror…they both practiced their moves all day long in preparation for the party.

Since my mom and grandma flew in for Evan’s birthday I decided to have my mouth surgery the day before Evan’s party.  I think it worked out okay, I wasn’t that swollen yet so I didn’t look THAT strange to everyone at the party, but I did carry around my Spider Man ice pack…people said it looked like I was talking on my spidey phone.

And I still managed to make Evan a Spider Man cake.

Well so after Evan blew out his candles I wanted to get a family picture with us and his cake. As we were preparing for the picture he took a candle out of the cake.  I thought he would lick off the icing like kids generally do, but he had never done it before. He had only watched others do it because I had always said, “no you can’t lick other kid’s cake candles.” 

So this was his BIG MOMENT…and instead of licking the candle he took a big BITE out of it…thinking it was edible.  Watch the reaction on his face that the camera caught…so funny.  And yes, little Luke, watch and learn so you don’t do the same when your turn comes around! lol

Poor guy!

The family picture thing didn’t work out so well so I just took one with just him.  Which turned out MUCH cuter and MUCH happier!

And then we let him eat the icing off of the Spider Man instead of the candle.

That night he changed into his new Batman Jammies and said “Next year I’m going to have a Batman Party!!” 

Happy (belated) 3rd Birthday Evan!

Oh and I forgot something funny about our camping experience…

On our way home we stopped for lunch at Carl’s Jr.  Which I was super excited about since they don’t have them near our house.  We went inside to find that the entire restaurant was packed out…it was like a flash back from an In-N-Out or something.  There was no way we were going to be able to find a table for our family and the Hennessy family let alone sit together to enjoy our lunch. 

SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Since we were conveniently on our way home from camping I had the great idea of eating our lunch in the parking lot with our camping chairs between our cars.  Everyone thought I was crazy and gave me crazy looks, but in the end it turned out GREAT!  Sure we got a few crazy looks, but we didn’t care. hehe

Alyssa’s outfit and pose cracks me up!

Connor and Andrew

Evan (not wanting his picture taken) Lukes, Tyler & Stephanie

Oh and on our ride to Carls Jr. Luke was pretty crabby so we kept handing him crackers…when we go there this was the mess he had made of himself…too funny.

Our family went on our very first camping trip a few weeks ago.  It was real camping…you know, the kind where you sleep in tents, don’t take showers and build fires to cook your food…like you see on TV.  That kind of camping…and we loved it! 

Okay well I should clarify that Alyssa, Evan and Luke slept in a tent while the other Luke and I slept in a trailor.  The other Luke being the little one…you didn’t think we’d let our kids sleep alone in a tent did you? 

Oh but we didn’t go on this adventure alone.  We had a great time with our Redwood Family Church friends and shared a tent with the Hennessy’s and the trailor with the Willmon’s.  The Hennessy’s had the food all planned out for us and we REALLY enjoyed the pizza and egg sandwiches we made in the iron sandwich maker…so yummy! Thanks friends!!

Here is Stephanie setting up the sleeping bags…

And the boys discussing important tenting stuff I’m sure…

Here we are about ready to go sleep in our trailor…

Fun times around the campfire!

The Lukes at the Beach…

The kids had fun throwing rocks into the water and looking for shells…and crabs!

We had so much fun we forgot to take very many pictures…I guess we’ll have to do it again then!

I made sure there were a lot of Balloons for Luke’s 1st Birthday party…they are one of his favorite things!

Since our VBS at church was panda themed this year, I decided to go with the flow and made his birthday party panda themed as well. It worked out great!  There were lots of cupcakes left over and panda posters so I used them all up and we had a cupcake LICKING contest (on our brand new deck!) and we played Pin the Nose on the Panda!

Here are the kids all lined up and ready to lick their panda cupcakes!

It was quite funny and to no surprise Samantha won!

  My dad helped Luke play too!

Here’s Evan peeking at the competition…more licking, less looking!

So besides the panda cupcakes the kids licked in their contest, I made a couple of panda cakes…one for him and one for the rest of us!

He was super curious and went in for the smash right away…as in trying to smash cake on those in his reach.  It was pretty funny because all of the kids were in really close to him when we were singing and then as soon as he had icing on his hands he tried to “get” all of the kids with his messy hands. Sign of a 3rd child?

Unfortunately our deck is not quite completed and there is a rim of dirt on the outside of the deck.  Evan introduced Luke (and his friend Tyce) to dirt on his birthday.  Apparently he generalized the cupcake licking contest and decided dirt was for licking as well….bleh. 

If you look close you can see his 2 new teeth (one on top one on bottom…same side)

Oh yeah and he got a teddy bear that is like 5 times his size! lol

Can you tell he likes it?  He attacks it every single day.

He had a fun birthday with his friends AND TWO sets of grandparents! (that is sure rare!!)

Happy 1st Birthday Luke!

It’s official. Evan is no longer allergic to milk!  He doesn’t quite understand how cool this concept is yet. He still asks for “my milk” aka soy milk, but we can’t blame him, the two milks do taste entirely different.  He’ll be soon excited when he can pick ANY flavor of ice cream when we go out to 31 flavors for his birthday!  And more importantly he can have things with milk in them without the repercussions of hives.  Yeay Evan!  Now if we can just curb that peanut allergy you’ll be on your way to more normal eating…I have faith!

In other milestone news…baby Luke got his first tooth, drank milk from a sippy cup (bye bye bottle and formula) and started walking all in the same week! That crazy kid, he’s trying to one up his siblings.  And speaking of one…he’ll be one soon…so there goes my baby.  Now what am I going to call him…just Luke? I think he thinks his name is baby Luke, boy will he be surprised when we start calling him just Luke. haha or not.

Oh and you know how some kids get milk mustaches when they drink milk.  Check out this milk action. 

The new Pampers sippy cup is really cool, but it gives Luke a milk beard every single time! It’s gross, but cute. 

As for Alyssa’s milestones, well she is turning into a beautiful curious observant 4 year old. 4 people, 4.  And she is funny…and I’m worried.  It’s going to be a Funniest Foust competition around here pretty soon.  She totally monopolizes the funny and I think Evan is catching on.  Right now he doesn’t care, but he better up his funny game if he wants to compete in the Funniest Foust Family competition.

Not much other news except for one last Foust milestone. Luke and I will have our 6th Anniversary on Saturday July 23rd and I just found out that it’s the year of iron.  Iron. seriously?  What are we talking about here…I wonder if he’ll get me a flat iron curling iron, or some dumb bells?  Oh maybe a new clothes iron…or a cast iron pan?  Maybe they forgot the y and it’s the year of irony? 

Well I know there has been a drought of blogs lately, but stay tuned for more frequent Foust updates!

Well baby Luke’s milestones just keep piling up.  Within about a week’s time he began crawling, pushing himself up into a sitting position, pulling himself up into the standing position, crawling up stairs, and eating solid foods.

Oh and just for the record…It is true what they (Albert & Jenny) say about parents taking progressively less pictures as they have more children.  Poor baby Luke…we need to take some more pictures of you to to catch you up with your siblings!  Until then…here is A picture of 1 of your 5 milestones.  His motivation to stand up was to get that wipie container on top of that basket.

Okay, okay I did at least get a little bit of video…we have surprisingly kept up well with the video camera…mostly because our kids LOVE watching themselves.

Since this video he can now quickly and easily climb up this stair PLUS now he can climb up multiple stairs easily and while laughing. I’ll have to get a video of that soon.

The video below is when we caught him standing in his bed when he was supposed to be sleeping…we have since lowered his crib ALL the way to the bottom!!!

So what do these milestones mean for me?!

It means that until he can tell the difference from a hair clip and a cheerio I have to start keeping the floors of my house a lot cleaner.   Oh joy.  AND most importantly we have to put up the multiple baby gates (insert annoyed look from Luke).  Which may actually be at a good time for all of my children because just this week Alyssa fell down the stairs as she was trying to carry 4 baby dolls and a dangling blanket AND Evan can now turn on the water in the upstairs bathroom.  Yesterday after I finished cleaning up lunch I walked upstairs to find the water in the bathroom sink on full blast and a large trail of water from the bathroom to the playroom.  Where apparently Evan was serving “coffee” to his dolls.

Alyssa and Evan have really been into pretend play lately.  They often have tea and coffee parties with their dolls and role-play our family…which is quite hilarious.

I overheard this role-play today:

Alyssa: Evan you’re the daddy and I’m not going to take a nap.

Evan: Okay (which he said in a very serious tone) Take a nap Alyssa.

Alyssa: I don’t want to take a nap I want to play (insert fake crying here)

To say the least ALL of our kids are growing up faster than we expected and constantly changing.  Luke and I recently decided the kids needed their own rooms.  And it has been a wonderful change especially for Evan.  We didn’t realize it before, but having them share a room was greatly impacting Evan’s demeanor….and not in a good way.  He is a super light sleeper so when Alyssa would wake up he would wake up…weather he was ready to be awake or not…which made him in a constant state of tiredness.  And in turn this constantly tired 2 year old was greatly impacting his parents…and not in a good way.  Now that he has his own room and his own earlier bedtime life is much happier here in the Foust house.  Naps are AMAZINGLY easier and most of the time I can easily get all 3 of them down for naps at the same time. (Insert Hallelujah chorus here…if you don’t know it ask Heather...she’ll sing it or sign it for you. hehe)

As for Luke and I…we’ve decided to become Catholic…  Or not, but we did attend our very first Ash Wednesday service at our church!  A milestone for us?

Evan was sporting his new Steeler’s jersey that he got in the mail from my dad.

So I asked him, “Evan are you a Steeler’s Fan?”

Evan: no.

Luke: Evan, are you a Charger’s Fan?

Evan: no…I’m a Spider Man!

And there you have it…neither my dad nor my husband won that fan contest.

Quote of the Day

Luke decided to buzz his hair off.  While he was cutting it off I tried to speak his language “Control Z!” 

Alyssa agreed with me.

Alyssa: “Daddy, did you take a shower?”

Luke: “Yes, but I also got a hair cut”

Alyssa: “But you need to put it back on”

Luke: “Oh, well I can’t because I cut it all off”

Alyssa: “Here, but you need to put it back on”

As she said “here” she was attempting to hand him her hair own hair. :)

Alyssa noticed that Baby Luke had a band-aid over his belly button.  She said to him, “You have a band-aid, can you say ow?” Baby Luke then cooed something that sounded similar to “ow” and Alyssa said “good job, ow” like she had no doubts he would just copy what she told him to say. lol

Here are pictures of Baby Luke’s surgery “owies”  The band-aid over his belly button was covering the place were they did exploratory surgery.  The clear tape bandage is covering the incision they made to correct his hernia issues.

Below is a close up picture of the surgery area…look away if you get grossed out, but it’s not actually that gross looking.  It can get wet, but not soaked in a bath and it is supposed to peel away at the sides and then fall off on its own 7-14 days after surgery. I’ve already removed his band-aid and you can’t see anything, just looks like his normal belly button.

As you can see from the above pictures, Baby Luke is doing well and is quite the happy baby.  We just have to be careful and scoop him up (rather than pick him up only by the underarms) when we pick him up in order to support his bottom area since he may still be sore from the surgery.