Thursday, May 26, 2011

New pictures of the kids!

I know there's a lot but I always have the hardest time deciding which pictures to get so I usually get them all.   I know, I'm a sucker.  But how can you resist these cute faces?
Here's Rach who is five (almost 6)
 Little miss Troublemaker Kate who is 1. 
 Mr. Handsome Josh who just turned 4.

 Kate who is the happiest baby in the world, would not smile. Usually you just look at her and she laughs.  So this is the ONLY picture we got of her smiling.  Notice my hands in the corner?  I had to tickle her to get something.  What a little stinker.
She's just looking at the camera like, "Are you kidding me?  Give me something to smile at and I might consider it." 








 My 3 favorite kids doing my very favorite thing.  I love this picture because it captures it all....the annoying brother who loves just a little too much, little sister trying to push him away, and big sister reading to them.  Love it. 

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Big Number 4

All right, here he is.  My little boy is now the big number 4.  I can't believe it!  He's so cute, huh?
 He had a totally awesome birthday.  He got some cool presents, that as you can see from the picture, that are already being put to good use.

 And as the most awesome cake decorator in the world, I did a cool cake.  Yep.  This boy is obsessed with baseball.  I didn't get a picture of the inside of the cake but there were 2 colors:  blue and green. It was so awesome and Josh loved it.  I should totally go into business or something (kidding, totally kidding)
 And as for the big gift items on this wonderful day......baseball stuff!!!!  We play baseball everyday (when it's not raining so it really hasn't been too much).  But we've been playing with a stick, a racquet ball and our good old hands.  Now we have balls, a real bat and Josh has a mitt. It's going to be a fun summer!
 As for what he wanted to do, he wanted to go to Boondocks.  This is only 4 minutes away from my house and I've never been there before.  We first had dinner there, played in the arcade and the kids played in the kiddie cove. They had SO much fun.  What a fun way to spend a birthday for a big boy.  Here's some shots of all the fun.
 Wait a minute.....that doesn't look like a skee-ball.......


 And I realized that we don't have a single picture of me with my black hair rather than being dressed Siamese.  So here is a self-shot of my trying to get my hair how I actually do it.
 That was a bad picture, so here's another self-shot with the birthday boy.  Another bad picture. Maybe I'll have someone actually take one of me one of these days before it goes away.
 By the end of the night Kate had had it.  She was ready for some baseball cake!  It was such a fun day.
 Then the next day Trav and Josh had the ward father/sons campout.  Josh went fishing for the first time.  Although they didn't catch any fish I got a phone call early in the morning saying, "Mom, we're fishing and I touched a worm!"  That was the highlight of my day.
 Here's some shots of a super-cool little sister who is growing like a weed and getting into such a naughty stage.  Why are 1 year olds so busy?

  It was funny because I took Josh to the doctor earlier this week for his 4 year old check-up and while we were there I mentioned that he produces tons of earwax.  (This may get graphic so if you have a weak stomach, stop reading).  She said that some people just produce more than others but that she'd clean it out because q-tips can kind of pack it in. So they put some oil in his ears then proceeded to get the earwax out.  I kid you not it was  a Shrek moment.  Do you remember the part in Shrek where he pulls his earwax out and makes a candle?  Yep, that's what I'm talking about.  It was so gross!!  They got one ear totally clean and the other one only partially clean because he was having a hard time and wouldn't hold still anymore (I can't blame him).  So now I know he can at least hear me out of one ear and he can't pull the totally glazed -over face like he has no idea what I just said when I ask him to get ready for bed, brush his teeth, or anything else like that.

 And here's one last shot of the birthday boy and the most totally awesome birthday cake ever (hey don't judge me that this is as cool as it gets in my cake decorating abilities)  Happy birthday buddy.  Love you like crazy (and no we didn't use the Shrek candle on the birthday cake)

Monday, May 16, 2011

The King and I

Okay, I have to admit it...the play was AWESOME!! Our stake did the musical The King and I and Rachel and I were in it. I was a royal wife (what else would I be?) and Rach was a royal child (again, the obvious).  As much fun as we had it took a TON of time.  I finally cleaned the house today for the first time in 2 weeks and have done 4 loads of laundry with a couple more to go. I guess I got a little neglectful of everything else in my life during the play. It's great to be back to normal but we did have a blast.  Here's some pictures of all that happened.  Here's my little Siamese girl and naughty little brother...


 
 Notice that black-haired girl in the back row?  Yep, that's me!  I dyed my hair black!  This is the first time I've ever dyed my hair, but I kind of like it.  It's a nice change.  Don't I look totally interested in what's happening?
 Those two little cuties that are bowing to Anna in this picture are my kids.  The one in pink is Rachel and the other is my adopted daughter Megan, for the play.  So cute.
 Here's all the kids in "Home Sweet Home" (that's the name of the song they're singing)  Rach is the little pink one on the right.  I know, they all look the same that's why I have to keep pointing us out.
 Again, hard to find Rach but she is sitting on Anna's lap singing her little guts out in this picture, her face is turned to the side.
 This is my favorite one.  Rachel had the distinct title of "disruption child" (so fitting).  At one point in the play there were 4 "disruption children that ran around the king causing chaos.  For some reason, both of my kids were dubbed to be those.  This is one where she was running around the king.
 While we weren't on stage (which was most of the time) we were in the green room trying to keep ourselves busy.  I think we played skip-bo at least 25 times.
 Then all the kids played "down by the banks"  It was so fun to watch, but now there's a ton of verses at the end that are new since I was a kid.
 Here's the super-hot hoop-skirt wives.  I like the one on the left especially.  Don't you love the dress?  I was thinking of wearing it to church or something.
 Another one of the little cutie.
 And the whole cast.  There were a lot of us!  Everyone did awesome and I want to thank everyone that came to see us.  A ton of hard work was put in so it was good to share all that with others.  The comment I heard most was "I can't believe this was a stake play!"  Don't you feel guilty for not paying money to see such a show?  You can make your check directly payable to me. 
 Oh, here's one last one for the road of the Siamese girls.  No, I didn't dye Rachel's hair, just black hairspray.  But she did have to wear make-up which made her look like she was 14.  Man, I'm getting old.
 Rach also had her Kindergarten program last week (busy week).  So I had to throw in a picture of that.
 And here's our mother's day picture I forgot to put in last time.  Yes, the kids are freezing to death.
So much fun. Our stake does a play every 4 years so we'll see if we do it again next time.  Thanks to my hon for being home early, watching the kids and holding down the fort while I was gone every night.  Love you!

Monday, May 9, 2011

Easter, Temple Square and Mother's Day


Easter this year was awesome as usual.  We did get visited by the Easter bunny.  Kate was totally digging the finding of the candy thing.  Well, she'd find one thing then carry it around.  But she's keeping an eye out for anyone taking a second look at her stash.



 I tried to get a cute Eater picture of the kids together and this is as good as it got.


 
We did decorate some Easter eggs too.



 
Then a couple weeks ago we decided to go to temple square to see all the flowers.  Fortunately we picked the one day that week that it didn't snow, but the flowers were afraid to come out in their full glory.  They knew they were being tricked with semi-nice weather just like we were.  We still had fun.  Kate loved running all over the place and especially the Christus. 

When we went to temple square we also had dinner at the Garden and then showed them where mommy works.  You should have seen how big their eyes got when they saw those desserts!  But for some reason they had to have their picture taken with pretty much every statue we saw.  Kate liked crawling through Joseph Smith's legs the best.


 
Oops, here's another Easter picture. Rachel was not thrilled to be there.
Here's 3 little monkey's in the tub.  That's one full bath!
Okay, all my pictures are out of order, but whatever I'm too tired to fix it right now.  By far the favorite part of the temple square trip was the fan vents in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building.  They would walk on them and it blows pretty hard and they all thought it was so funny.  We spent a good 20 minutes just doing that. 

  Mother's Day was wonderful and I am so blessed to be a mom.  Even though it is definitely not the easiest job in the world, it is definitely the most rewarding.  As we were driving home last night from visiting both sets of grandparents I asked the kids, "What do you love most about me being your mom?"  Okay, every mom wants to hear the answer to that question and I was very curious to see what they'd say.  In my mind I had come up with a few possible answers (or at least the one's you hope for) ...you're wonderful, smart, beautiful, an amazing cook, you do everything for me, you make me want to be a better person, you're kind and patient.....the list can go on and on)  Rachel promptly answered, "I love you because you taste like gum and you're as soft as grass."  Now where this answer came from? I don't think I'll ever know.  Then they proceeded to say "You're soft as a blanket, sneaky as a snake, hard as a rock, wet as rain."  And this list continued for a good 5 minutes.  Maybe someday I'll get the answers I was hoping for but for today I will take being as tasty as gum (because that is Rachel's favorite candy) and soft as grass (because they never like to wear shoes outside.)  It's sweet because it's my kids.

Oh, and as a side note all you men that read this blog (I know there's a huge following) okay girls just pass this one along to the men. Yesterday in church, you know how the mother's always get a little gift?  It's usually cookies or some sort of treat, a flower, a little book or whatever.  Yesterday was the best gift EVER from church.  All of the women got to:  get out of their callings for the day, go to relief society, have a super short lesson on how great we are to be mom's and then we had a brunch in the overflow and got  to sit and eat this yummy brunch and visit for 25 whole minutes. We got quiche, fruit kabobs, capri sun (mmmm...), and wait for it ....chocolate covered strawberries.  The only way to top that as a church gift would be to send us home early (alone). It was so awesome and I'm trying to get the word out so everyone can pass the word along to bishoprics around the world.  It was fantastic!  Everyone should be able to have such a good mother's day at church.