Natalie's Birthday!

Tuesday was Natalie's 3rd Birthday!


I am so glad, the rain waited for her!

We decorated the living room with balloons, she was kind of grumpy when I first got her up, but when she saw the balloons, she perked right up!

We let her open her presents with the kids right after morning prayer, before school, so she could enjoy her loot, all day!

Then they all enjoyed waffles and ice cream for breakfast!

The Cinderella dress was a hit! She won't even try on the other dress!

I took the two girls to the park, she was not happy that she had to take the dress off to go. But she did decide she wanted to go, so she did. She seemed to have a great time at the park. It was a great day, here! After two hours, she finally decided it was time to go home and eat lunch. She was so tired, she wouldn't even walk home, I had to carry her. We were singing Happy Birthday all day. It was so cute, on the way home from the park, I sang to her again, when the song was over, she said so sweetly, Thank you!

She played around the house all afternoon. When she found out we were having spaghetti for dinner, she was constantly asking for spaghetti! I

guess I guessed her favorite dinner right!

Our Home Teacher, Bishop Frederickson made his delivery when I wasn't home, so I didn't get a picture, so here's one with her ice cream! She was pretty excited!!

We had spaghetti and cake and ice cream. We read stories and went to bed. With no nap, she was pretty tired, so I didn't let her stay up very late.

It's hard to believe my baby is three! It's pretty bitter sweet! She is so grown up in so many ways. I love that she still loves to be cuddled, though. And she still loves Mama kisses! She loves it when I kiss her neck, it's great! I don't know if I'll ever get over that!!

On Friday, GG came over and brought her this Strawberry Shortcake Doll! She seemed to love it, she carried it around all over the place with her. Doug and I went out for Date Night and when we came back, she was nowhere to be found! (the doll, that is!) We have looked everywhere and still no sign. I'm sorry, GG. I'm still hoping she'll turn up! She has to be around here somewhere!!

We Love You, Nattie Bug!!

Easter Morning

I'm finally getting to posting about Easter Morning. There are so many cute pics, I decided to go ahead and make another slide show! (Sorry, GG, I know you can't see them anymore.)

I have such mixed feelings about having General Conference on Easter Weekend. I felt all the "fun" stuff and excitement of Easter got in the way of being able to sit down and really listen to and partake of the spirit of conference for all of us! It just didn't feel the same. I am so grateful that I can go back and listen to and read the talks again!

Easter is supposed to be about our Savior and as hard as I try to instill that in the kids, it just kind of gets lost in the baskets and hunts! Maybe, I'll have to have a talk with the "Easter Bunny" and see if we can do our baskets on Saturday morning instead next year. Then do something for the Savior on Sunday.

I thought it was kind of funny, we have been talking about our Savior's life for a couple of weeks in church, in FHE's, etc. So the night before as we were setting out our baskets I asked the kids again, what Easter was really about. Aaron pipes up, so rehearsed like, "It's about Jesus' Resurrection, it's not about the baskets!" I said, "Oh good, so it won't matter at all if we wake up tomorrow and there's nothing in these baskets, right?" He said, with out any hesitation, "Nope!" As the silence set in, he slowly got a worried look on his face! It was priceless!

Anyway, Easter morning, we listened to conference and ate out of our baskets and played together. I was stuck in the kitchen a lot of the day, even during some of conference. I was thinking to myself is this really worth it? I felt like dear Martha in the kitchen, instead of feasting on conference. Then the talk came that spoke of Martha, and how she really gets a bad rep, but how truly special she must have been! I was very grateful, for the timing and that I was listening enough to catch it!

Well, here's the slide show...

6th Grade Renaissance Feast

Emily's teacher, Mrs. White, is at it again!

They've been studying the Renaissance era and sure enough to finish up the unit they had a huge Renaissance Feast, complete with chicken drumsticks and all!!

Each student drew what to dress up as, commoners, jester, queen, king, etc. Emily happen to draw the queen. We were lucky enough to not only know someone who had a costume that would work, but were very blessed that it actually fit her beautifully!

She's just like her Dad, likes to be a ham!!

Happy Birthday, Doug!

Doug had his 48th Birthday, yesterday! Sunday birthdays are a little hard because we are more limited in what we decide to do.

Yesterday, we went to meetings, went to church, and made one of his favorite dinners. Cheeseburgers and pistachio salad!

One cool thing we found out that everyone in our family likes our homemade cheeseburgers! I guess we need to have them more often!

After our home teachers left, we had him open his presents. Then had brownies and ice cream, yum!

I have to laugh at his pictures, he likes to ham things up for the kids. The younger kids love to give their little treasures and he's such a good sport about it. The little kids love his faces, the big kids just roll their eyes!!

I don't get too many pics of him really smiling, I love it when I do! This one he was laughing because he was making faces and switching back to a straight face between me taking pictures. I was trying to catch the funny face and I couldn't take the pics fast enough! He thought he was "so good" and got a big kick out of it!! I did get this great one of him in the process!!

Happy Birthday, Sweetheart, I Love You!!

Pioneer Museum & Hogle Zoo

In trying to salvage our rainy, snowy Spring Break, and in finishing a belt loop for Aaron, we took the 5 youngest kids to Pioneer Museum on Friday. (The older ones that weren't working, went to Boondocks.)

They had fun walking and running around the place. Aaron saw all kinds of collections and how they were organized and labeled. He thought it was pretty cool. I was surprised.

After wards, we stopped and ate off the dollar menu at Arby's. It was funny to hear the kids' comments like it was so super cool to be eating there!

We decided to take them to the zoo. I was so surprised to see how busy it was! It was packed!! We almost gave up on the idea, but the kids now really wanted to go. So we decided to stick it out.

I also can't believe how expensive it is! It was $9 for adults and $7 for kids 3 - 18! Almost 50 bucks to get in. I did the only logical thing to do... buy a year pass for $90 and now we can get in how ever much we want! Not only that, but it gave us an excuse not to have to stay the whole day, we didn't have to "get our money's worth"! It worked for us because we only have to go twice to get our money's worth!

(just a note - the family pass is only $80 and that covers all kids 3 - 18, so my adult children weren't covered, so for $10 more dollars I got the family plus one guest and now I can bring any one person that's not in my family, for free!)

So, because I didn't plan on going, once again, I didn't have my camera, so these pics are from my phone again. Better than nothing, and I figured we'd be back to take some next time!!

It never changes, as much fun as they have looking at all the animals, their favorite part is always the play ground!!

Moms and Muffins

This morning was Moms and Muffins at our school. I almost forgot all about it. So at the last minute I threw on my clothes and took the kids to school. I am so thankful Melanie was home this morning for little bit before she had to head to the library or else I would have had to drag the two girls too.

Anyway, we went for a super mini muffin and listened to our principal read a cute story about monsters!

Sorry, the pics are dark, I used my cell phone. Seems I'm forgetting my camera a lot these days! Better than nothing, though!!

Jon

Jon has moved out to live with some friends on Monday.

Unfortunately, it wasn't on the best of terms. We didn't kick him out, but it was mutual that it was best for all of us that he move on. These last several weeks have been so heartbreaking. It makes me so sad that it had to be so negative, when it really didn't need to be.

I hope someday, hearts will soften and we can have a good relationship again.

I love you Soo Much, Jon!

New Calling

I was so surprised to get called into the Bishop's Office on Saturday and have him issue a new calling, again! This is my third switch in about a year's time!

I was called as the 1st Counsellor in the Primary Presidency! I have to say I did not see that coming!! I guess my mind has really been more focused on all the craziness going on around here!

I'm a bit over whelmed, it's not that it's a hard calling, just a lot of work. I've been in the presidency before, but as I did the calculations, it was about 18 years ago! So a lot has changed!!

I have a great group of women to work with! We had our first presidency meeting last night. We are jumping right in! We have a Quarterly Activity on Saturday to run, as well as get ready for our first Sunday! Loads of fun!! I think it'll be crazy, for a few weeks until we find our niche, but I also think it'll be good for me to get my mind off other things and focus on service!

Pray for Us!!

Easter..., Almost!

Since Easter Sunday was General Conference, We dressed up in our Easter Clothes the Sunday before.

Since we were all dressed up, I had to take pics. These didn't turn out as good as I had hoped, but they are still pretty good!! There's so many I decided to put it in a slide show!

It's coming to my attention that the slide show is not loading for everyone, Leave a comment and let me know if YOU can see it.

Candy Hunt

You'd think we had enough junk after Easter, but the kids would not let us forget to do our traditional Candy Hunt, the monday after, for Family Home Evening.

There really wasn't a whole lot of candy in the baskets, more non food things, but boy they have lots now!!

There were a couple of reasons we started this a long time ago... Easter candy is tons cheaper the day after Easter, it's a fun FHE activity, and can't leave out, that the kids really enjoy being able to hunt all over the house for candy!


The bigger kids that don't hunt, usually help hide, then we just let them go at it. It was funny to see the little girls finds piles of candy and pick up each piece one at a time and even walk away before they had picked it all up. The bigger kids, would just scoop the whole pile right into their baskets and run to the next spot!!

April Showers??

Ben says this is all my fault!! :) I told him a week ago, that we were probably done with snow for this year, at least any that would stick at all. It was the end of March, after all! I expected April to be wet with rain, not snow, but we woke up to several inches of SNOW this morning!!

My daffys and tulips are pretty buried!!

Can you believe it??? We are supposed to be enjoying Spring Break this week...



Well, it's a break from school, but definately, not Spring!!

Jon has Wheels!

Jon is pretty happy to have his motorcycle up and running!

He bought it a couple of years ago and couldn't license it because he didn't have the right paper work to get a proper title. So it's basically been sitting in a shed for almost 2 years!!

He lent it to the high school for their last play and decided to see if he could get it running again, and licensed. It looks sweet, but it keeps falling apart! We think we've got it under control now.

This time it worked! Unfortunately, there's been a little too much weather and he can't use it as much as he needs to, but it's still fun to have a motorcycle, most of the time!!