I forgot to mention...

the fun time that we had tubing while we were in Idaho. The snow was on a north facing slope and it was quite crusty and slick. The tubes literally flew down the hill, giving us quite a thrill! (Hey, that rhymes!) Anyhoo... The stopping point at the bottom of the hill was a nice little muddy patch -- which if you were lucky, you slid over it and onto a little patch of snow so you could get off the tube and remain clean. However, if you didn't hit the mud patch just right, you ended up all muddy. Most of us weren't lucky! Mark, my dad, Randy, and Ryan were especially muddy. John had the snowmobile there to pull us up the hill, so that made things even more fun!

Easter

I feel like I should write something about Easter, even if I don't have the greatest pictures to accompany it (my memory card was full for Saturday's events and I still need to dump pictures from the rest of the weekend onto my computer!) On Saturday we went to Idaho and had a fun time visiting with many of my family. We went tubing, as I mentioned in an earlier post, had an egg hunt with the cousins, colored Easter eggs, and had a tour of John's greenhouse. Below is a picture of everyone counting their eggs and counting the money inside the eggs from the egg hunt. This hunt is always fun because there's lots of cousins -- big and small -- and lots of eggs to find. This year, some of the eggs were even hidden in the snow! We had five dozen hard boiled eggs to color. I think everyone took a turn at coloring at least a couple of eggs, even though the majority were colored by the cousins! It's always fun to experiment with crayons, rubber bands, and colors.
My mom made a wonderful Easter dinner for us -- we always love the ham and "holiday" potatoes -- my mom makes the best because its all from scratch (the potatoes), no frozen stuff! John & Karen also took us on a tour of the greenhouses -- it is definitely spring in there with all the thousands of plants and hanging baskets they've got growing. Karen's new florist shop digs are coming along great as well.

On Sunday the kids woke up to Easter baskets (or buckets) filled with a few treats -- gummy lifesavers and chocolate of course. Jacob and Matthew got new sand box shovels and Jared & Ryan each got a new pack of basketball cards. Sunday meetings were really good and I even made it through my RS lesson -- thanks to much prayer and participation from the sisters, we had a good spiritual meeting discussing Pres. Packer's talk from the last conference.

Monday evening we continued our Easter festivities with hamburgers cooked on the grill at Vawdrey's house and an egg hunt with Ethan & Rachel. We missed having Sarah be a part of the party -- especially since she loves egg hunting so much!

Disneyland

Our family went to California with Mark's brother, Alan, and his family. We had a fabulous time together! We spent one evening and 3 days exploring Disneyland and California Adventure. When we headed into the park the first evening, a guy stopped us and handed us 4 fast passes to any ride in California Adventure. Mark, Jared, Ryan, and Jacob took the passes and headed off to Soarin Over California. The rest of us went to explore bug-land. A little while later we met up to watch the electric light parade -- very cool! We were all exhausted from traveling and playing on the beach that day or we would have taken better advantage of those fast passes! Oh well, we still had 3 days to play. Here's a picture of the boys and Mark on Splash Mountain -- a true favorite! While the big boys rode California Screamin (the huge roller coaster) Matthew, Jacob and I took a few rides on the carousel.
One day we happened to catch the Pixar Parade in California Adventure. Jacob absolutely loved seeing all the characters from Monsters Inc., Cars, The Incredibles, Toy Story, etc. Below is a picture of him (Jacob is in the orange t-shirt) waving with both hands at the rats from Ratatouille.
The boys favorite rides were Splash Mountain, Space Mountain, Screamin, Soarin, and the Tower of Terror. Jacob insists his favorite was Buzz Lightyear, but he rode everything and loved it all except the Tower of Terror (and he wasn't tall enough for Screamin, or he would have loved that too!) I loved Soarin and Space Mountain. I'm too chicken to do Tower of Terror and I didn't quite talk myself into Screamin -- I wish now I would have gone, since I loved Space Mountain so much and Screamin is much more smooth and fast. Next time!

We weren't going to venture into Downtown Disney, but when we hopped on the monorail, we realized there was a stop in Downtown Disney and the Lego store was at the bottom of the staircase, so we went. What a fun store! The boys could have spent a solid hour at least exploring the store and playing with the legos. There was a life-size Darth Vader, a giraffe, and a couple other things I can't think of, all made of legos. There were tables of legos out where kids could sit down and play and create their own masterpieces, and of course there was all the cool Lego merchandise that you can't buy at Target or Wal-mart. Here's a picture of the boys on a giant lego brick outside the store:
We had a great week and the vacation was really "magical" for Jacob -- he's the perfect age to enjoy every aspect of Disney -- rides, characters, shows, shopping, food, etc.

the beach

The first stop on our vacation was Laguna Beach. The drive through the hills of Laguna to reach the beach was incredibly beautiful! The hills were deep green, there weren't any subdivisions, the traffic was light, and the "freeway" was just a two lane road! The beach wasn't crowded and we all had a great time soaking in some sun and playing in the COLD water! Here are a few picts: That's Jared & Ryan waiting for the waves to chase them onshore. Below is Matthew dipping his toes in the water -- he LOVED it!
Jacob & Ethan had a grand time playing in the sand and getting warm after being in the cold water.
I love this picture of Rachel holding the sea snail!

we're back!

We're back from our trip to disneyland! Yay -- we all survived and were healthy and happy to enjoy the vacation! Since we drove all the way from LA on Friday, we decided to drive to Idaho (and back since we had to be here for 9:00 a.m. church today)on Saturday to spend some time with my family doing Easter things -- and a little sledding! In one week we have done summer things at the beach, Disneyland, and tubing on the north slopes in Idaho! Wow! The snow was so crusty, the tubes just flew down the hill and gave everyone a thrill to rival any carnival ride. I'll post pictures and such in the next few days, but it is good to be home and sleeping in our own beds again. Easter Sunday weather has been fabulous today and strangely no one wanted to go for a Sunday drive or even a walk. Hmmm, I wonder why...

first steps!

Matthew actually started taking his first steps a month ago, when Mark and I would have him try to walk between us in the living room, like you can see above with Mark & Ryan. But then Matthew would never try much on his own ... till this week! He walks whenever he can. He crawls to a couch or chair or whatever to get himself up and then takes off walking as far as he can. He's getting better every day!

good Ross day

It was good shopping at Ross today. Sometimes they don't have a lot of stuff I like and other times they do. Today they had tons of stuff and I came out with a skirt, top, capri's, track pants, and boys Nike socks for just barely under $50!

a sure sign of spring

Well, I guess Spring is really here (even if the calendar hasn't caught up with us yet). Its soccer season again! Jared starts soccer this week with practice on Thursday and a game on Friday. I'm sure we'll be welcomed into the season with rain and snow -- not very springlike in my opinion! Too bad he couldn't have played yesterday -- temps in the 60's -- it was fabulous!

walls really do talk

Can you tell what Ryan is into these days?

A Perfect Running Day

Today was mostly cloudy & cool, but not at all cold, and a few rain drops were falling here and there. As I began running this morning, I remembered that today was the Moab half-marathon and five-mile that Mark & I were hoping to run (but we weren't picked in the lottery). In honor of that I thought maybe I'd push myself up the Reading hill today. When I got to the hill (it comes after 1 mile) the Go-Go's song We Got the Beat came on the iPod. I told myself I wasn't going to stop running up this hill until the song was over -- well, when the song stopped I found myself at the top! Wa-hoo! I decided to keep going on my 5K route, telling myself that I could take a short cut back home if I wanted to. However, my feet just kept on going and I ran the whole 5K route! Another wa-hoo! When I stopped I felt like I could have gone longer if I wanted to -- it was a great feeling. It wasn't five miles, but it was a 5K! I haven't run that entire route for a long, long time, so I was excited about that and it was an even better feeling to still have energy left over. I can't help but wish there were lots more days when I felt great running instead of feeling like my feet are made of lead bricks (like most days).

Sweet Baby Matthew

Matthew has invented the "Buh" game. It starts when he's sitting in his high chair and has eaten at least half or more of his meal, so he's not ravenously hungry anymore. He says "buh" and then looks around for someone to say "buh" back to him. When you do, he laughs and giggles and says "buh" again and waits for you to reply. This little game can go on for as long as someone is willing to say "buh".

The other day when I was doing laundry, I headed up the stairs ahead of Matthew to take the clean clothes to my bedroom. A minute or so later as I was folding clothes, I heard a sweet little voice calling from the bottom of the stairs, "ma-ma ma-ma"! It was so cute -- he was trying to find me! So I called down to him from the bedroom and a few minutes later he found me. I'm going to believe he knew what he was saying!

I love holding and rocking Matthew to sleep for naps. It is the one time he's cuddly! I know these days won't last forever because he's growing up quickly, so I'm going to enjoy every chance I get to sit and rock and enjoy holding him in my arms. I love looking into his little sweet innocent face and remembering how blessed we are to have him be a part of our family.

groceries

I am so tired of grocery shopping and planning daily meals. I get tired of it because someone always complains about whatever is for dinner -- I can't win. The kids wouldn't complain if we had mac and cheese or pizza every night, but the fat content for adults is literally a killer. If there's something more healthy on the menu (which is 98% of the time), at least one or more kids have to be force fed. So far Matthew likes everything, as long as it is mushed into a fine paste -- I hope it stays that way, although I know it won't. I guess I'll go make some homemade wheat bread -- everyone actually likes that and I don't have to go to the grocery store. What else is for dinner? Whatever it is, it comes with a side of complaints.

Suess - fest

Yesterday we had a Suess-fest in honor of Dr. Suess's birthday. Basically this means, we had dinner and ate "Suess" inspired food! Heidi "capped" off the dinner with this fabulous Cat in the Hat cake! There was a delicious chocolate cake and buttercream frosting underneath this fantastic red and white fondant. Awesome isn't it? (That's why I asked her to bring the birthday cake!) Other menu items were: Cat in the Hat jello cups -- This is the kids favorite item (mine too!)

Green eggs (deviled and hard-boiled -- Jacob & Ryan love just the hard boiled eggs --Jacob ate 4 of them yesterday) to represent the obvious Green Eggs and Ham book, or even Horton Hatches the Egg. The broccoli salad to represent The Lorax -- a book about trees.
Here's the ham for Green Eggs and Ham. The ham is surrounded by elephant cheese cut-outs to represent Horton. (We had ham sandwiches)
Animal crackers for If I Ran the Zoo.
Goldfish for One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish.
And we also had chocolate milk for Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You? And star shaped rice krispie treats for Sneetches. I really wanted to do a pasta salad with alphabet shaped pasta, but I couldn't find any -- I know it exists somewhere! So if any of you know where to buy ABC pasta, please let me know!