Daddy date (and Ella bought!)

Ella won an award at school yesterday for her excellent italic penmanship.  She was super excited about winning, but not so much about the prize.  It was a $1 gift card to The Coffee Shop.  "But I don't drink coffee!" she said.

Until mom informed her that $1 was probably enough to take dad on a daddy date to The Coffee Shop for breakfast.

And so it was...

Ella had a hot chocolate, and the best cinnamon roll I have ever tasted.

I had the All American, with sourdough.  And bacon.  Mmmmmmmm, bacon.

Which Ella promptly stole... 

 

But, she did buy, so I suppose she can steal my bacon.  Even if I did chip in the other $17...

Bye Bye Pampers

I have been busy for the last seven years changing diapers. Seven years of diapers without a break. Ella was still in diapers at 21 months when her brothers joined our family. Then Levi and Noah took their own sweet time potty training and were not officially trained (that I could trust them) until their third birthday. Luke arrived two months prior to their birthday. So you see, my four kids have been in diapers for the last seven years. Being the diaper snob that I am, that is/was a lot of Pampers we have consumed. Procter and Gamble has done well on the Addink dime for the last several years, but NO MORE.

I have seen the light, and made the switch to cloth. Yup, cloth. What took me so long? Seriously, they are so easy. They are not gross, like Jason was sure they would be. And Luke loves them!

Luke has been wearing his bumGenius diapers for over a month now, and we LOVE them!

In the beginning Jason put up a fuss and refused to use them. So Luke was put into a disposable at night when daddy put him to bed. However, being the smart (and very verbal boy) that he is, Luke began asking for "cloth diapers, not paper diapers" at bedtime too.

So now he gets his cloth diapers 24/7. Okay not really 7. We send him to church in disposables to make it easier on his teachers.

Look, they can even color coordinate with your shirts! (We prefer to be pants free in the Addink house.)

I can't wait to break out the pink ones for his little sister! Come on court date! I'm ready for a few more years of diapers.

His dream come true

Check out our new shirts!

We've been waiting to bust these out for 9 months now...

We got a call on September 13 telling us to check our email.  In our email was a referral for our little girl.

We said "yes."  Then busted out the shirts to do our first family photo, with as close as we can get to her right now.

Our children were highly cooperative...

Hmmmm, maybe sitting them on chairs will make for better photos...

 

52 pictures, and that was the best we got.


Only to be told that we couldn't post anything on our blog about her.  Yeah... that isn't going to work so much.  We've only been waiting 9 months.  We can't not post something.  Unfortunately, we can't post any details or her actual picture until we've passed our court date in Ethiopia, which won't likely be for several months.  But we decided if we made the blog private, we could at least post that we finally got a referral, and had seen her face (which, by the way, is adorable.)

But if you wanted to stop by our house, we could show you pictures.  Or if you see Paige out and about, because she has several copies in her purse, and has already chased neighbors down in the street to show them.

Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Need a little privacy

Just a heads up... we will likely be taking the blog private for a while, so that we can post about things we apparently aren't allowed to talk about on the internets. As soon as we do, the blog will be by invitation only. I'm not sure exactly how the whole private blog thing works exactly, but we will give it a try.

So if you want to continue reading, send an email to the address linked in one of our profiles (upper right) and we will add you to the list. Google limits it to 100 readers, so I'm sure there will be room for all 6 of you faithful readers. And if you have some bizarre email address like bettyboop194213, let us know who on earth you actually are. I'm not signing just anyone up for this privacy thing, and we intend to be highly selective in our admissions process. ;)

This blog will self destruct in 5... 4... 3... 2... 1...

Soooooo jealous

Proof that advertising works (or... Ella's 7th birthday.)

Seven years ago, Paige and I got the best birthday present ever (with a little help from Dr. Moore)

Her one year birthday picture (we still see that face quite often.)

And today, she turned seven. Hard to believe.

Her breakfast of choice was cupcakes, so everyone got to join in.

Her big party is Saturday, so she got to open one present today. But first, some background...

Our kids do watch TV. Ella probably made it for a few years without much TV, but with the arrival of the dynamic duo, the TV use became more frequent. We do manage to limit it largely to PBS though.

And on PBS, they don't have commercials.

And on Saturday, PBS only shows Bob Ross painting happy little trees, with maybe a bunny behind this one (which I sort of enjoy.) And This Old House (which is must watch TV in this house.) But no kid's cartoons.

Thus Saturday morning TV. With commercials. Particularly commercials for Pillow Pets.

I don't recall our kids really noticing much of the ads on TV, other than the typical glassy eyed TV coma stare. But Pillow Pets? That got their attention. Within the span of a 2 minute commercial, they had literally memorized every advertised feature of the Pillow Pet, and repeated them back to us rapid fire style as if describing gold that had just been discovered California.

"Dad, they snap into a full size pillow!"

"Mom, they are great for travel!"

"Dad, PJs fit right inside!"

"Mom, they are machine washable!"

"Dad, there is a dolphin, a frog, a dog, a lady bug, a..."

"They make the perfect gift!"

"Mom, go to www.pillowpets.com to order them!"


Seriously, they repeated every claim the commercial makes verbatim. It was scary. Like... Rainman scary. 246 toothpicks... yeah. Some advertising genius had our kids nailed.

Soooooooo... Paige went to www.pillowpets.com. The boys had birthday money from Aunt Janna burning a hole in their pocket, and picked out and ordered their very own pillows (and a pet!) along with one for Ella and Luke. However, they had to wait to actually get them and keep it a secret until Ella's birthday. Which, amazingly for a couple of five year olds, they did.

And today, they all literally ran screaming and wild eyed around the living room with excitement over their new pillow pets. We are now the proud owners of a unicorn, a penguin, a dolphin, and a cow (which SNAP! into a full size pillow.)

Well, that post ended up longer than I planned on. Hope that Bakker guy didn't fall asleep halfway through with all those words...

Happy Birthday Ella!!!!


PS: Paige claims that the ultra soft high quality chenille fabric is in fact very soft!!!!

The pitfalls of older sisters, part four

Seriously? Part four?!?! Why do I keep finding pictures like this? Even Paige said today "Ohhhhhh, he would make such a cute little girl!"

Someone is going to have to put their foot down... soon.

Not sure what I did to deserve this

Paige went to a women's conference at church today, so I got to babysit... ahem... parent the kids today. Paige is a subscriber to Groupon (very dangerous) and saw one for some kid's play place up by my mom's house. So we invited Gina and Tim, and met them up there this morning.

Oh my goodness.

It was setting off every single "I just want to pepper spray my way out of this crowd" hair on my neck. Too many people crammed into to small of a space...



The kids, however, had a blast and didn't want to leave when it was time for lunch.

The pitfalls of older sisters, part three

"I decorated him!" yelled Ella.



Aye carumba!

Addink family bluegrass band

Ella was very excited this week that she got to take home her violin from music class. She showed us her skills at plucking the strings, and knowing which notes are which.



She's just started, so it will probably be a while until we buy a giant bus and go on the road, like these guys.



Plus the rest of us need to find some musical talent somewhere. Perhaps a garage sale.

And Paige needs to work on her clogging routine.

Bedtime stories

So precious. She is a good big sister.

Physics

Physics for kids...

Stress in a beam:

Stress = Weight of Levi or Ella · Length of the Wooden Stick They Found in the BackYard / Section Modulus

Factor of Safety = Ultimate Tensile Strength of Sun Aged Wooden Stick / Stress

Percentage Odds of an Emergency Room Visit Had I Let Them Continue = High

Acceleration and Velocity:

Force = Mass · Acceleration

Acceleration = { [Mass of Levi · Gravity · Sin (Angle of Stairs)] - [Mass of Levi · Gravity · Cos (Angle of Stairs) · Coefficient of Kinetic Friction of Levi in Laundry Basket Against Stairs] } / Mass of Levi

Final Velocity of Levi = Square Root of [ 2 · Acceleration · Length of Stairs ]

Amount of Fun Levi Was Having = Huge

Conservation of Momentum:

Momentum of Noah = Mass of Noah · Velocity of Noah

Momentum of Levi = Mass of Levi * Zero Velocity

Velocity of Two Boys Tangle in a Laundry Basket Headed Down the Stairs = [Momentum of Noah + Momentum of Levi] / [Mass of Noah + Mass of Levi]

Amount of Giggling Occuring While Attempting This Stunt = Bucketloads

Of course, the physics for dads tonight were not nearly as fun:

Pressure Discharge from a Pipe:

Velocity of Water Exiting Under Sink = Square Root of [2 · Water Pressure / Water Density]

Volume of Water Collected Under Sink = Velocity · Pi · Tube Diameter² / 4 · Time Leak Went Before Being Detected

Annoying-ness of Fixing Water Leaks Under a Sink = Great

Fatigue Life:

Plastic Strain Amplitude = Fatigue Ductility Coefficient · (Number of Cycles to Failure) ^ Fatigue Ductility Exponent

Chances that some Maytage engineer understood the above equation far better than I do, and purposefully designed a dishwasher control panel that would fail exactly 20 days after the 5 year warranty expired = Very high