warehouse sale

Today I went to the fun warehouse sale. I love going to that darn thing! I picked up a bunch of fun brads, flowers, and other assorted embelishments. Since I didn't buy any albums or paper, I didn't spend a whole lot, but probably more than I should have. However, since I only buy stuff like this at this sale, I don't feel very bad about it. Everything is 50% off or more -- gotta love that!

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!