Easter Weekend

We had a super busy, fun weekend. It was nice to have a 4 day weekend to play.

On Friday, we picked up Tanner and took him to the arts festival. He played in a "garbage can band" with his middle school band.
The boys got their faces painted, made crafts and enjoyed looking at the art.
Saturday morning we went to the Ivins Easter egg hunt. It was super busy, but the boys had fun with their friends.
Saturday evening we got to spend some time with Lucas and Shellie. Baby West is growing up so fast. Joren couldn't get enough of him... me neither.
Sydney got the great idea to dye Easter eggs like our Swiss ancestors. My dad took us out to dig up the weeds and we stunk up the house boiling roots. It was a pretty cool idea and made dying eggs a little more interesting. (For more details, click this link to Larcie Bird.)
Saturday evening the sneaky Easter bunny made an early visit while the kids were playing at the park.
They had more eggs than could possibly fill their baskets.
The Easter bunny made a maze of colorful yarn throughout the back yard. Each kid had a colored yarn that they had to follow to find their present... Brenner had a lot of fun with that!
I bought some cool old suitcases at a yard sale a few weeks ago, so I had to take some fun pics of West.
The boys wore their Easter ties to church... that their mommy made for them. (You can find the post here on Larcie Bird.)
After church, we headed over to Tisha's apartment complex for Presley's 1st birthday party. What an adorable little girl!
Monday, we went to the Santa Clara river by the Tonaquint park with Olivia and Carson who are here visiting from California. The kids played in the water/sand for about 4 hours and had a blast!!!
Next time we will come a little more prepared with a beach umbrella, water and lots of snacks!
Busy weekends and fun weekends are the best.... now, back to work, laundry, cleaning house, yard work, cooking... you know the drill.

St. George Airport

Joren's preschool class went on a field trip to the new St. George Airport.
They took a tour of the airport and the fire station. The highlight of the trip was watching the fire truck shoot the fire canons.
The airport is a LOOOONG way out of town!

Kite Festival

We got our first sunburns of the summer at the Kite Festival on Saturday. The elementary school kids read from Jan. 1st to Apr. 15th to get a free kite at the kite festival. They are also entered for drawings. They had all sorts of food booths, vendor booths, kids carnival games and bouncy houses.
Brenner had fun trying to fly a kite in absolutely no wind!
It was a good thing we put sunscreen on or we would have been more sunburned than we were!

Kayenta Street Painting Festival

The last two weekends have been the Kayenta Street Painting Festival... mostly because it got rained out the first weekend. It's kind of nice to have something fun to do in our neck of the woods. It's pretty amazing to see some of the artwork that people can paint... on the street!
The boys really wanted to do a little art of their own.
So, they each got a box of pastels and their own square.
It was really fun and a great way to get dirty:)

Walk-a-thon

Brenner's school had a walk-a-thon as a fundraiser for a teacher that has cancer. They got a silly band for every lap they walked. The boy and girl in each grade that walked the most laps won a gumball machine.  Brenner stayed there almost 3 hours and walked 18 laps. That's a total of 6 miles! Way to go Brenner!

Let the soccer season begin!

Brenner and Joren started soccer a few weeks ago.
Brenner has been playing since he was 3. He gets out there and really tries. He loved being goalie and did a great job at that.
Joren wouldn't play soccer when he was 3, so we waited a few years to try again. He loves it and he's super aggressive. He has made over 14 goals in just 3 games.
Terek wants to be just like his big brothers. He insists on wearing soccer clothes. So I had to find some of their old shoes and jerseys. He can't wait until he can play next year!
And, of course, I had to make cute soccer cupcakes for their treats!

If you ever want to come, they are at the UNITY Park in Ivins on Wednesday evenings!

Mustaches!

The other day Logan and Sydney were over for dinner. After dinner we decided to play a game... apparently Logan got bored and decided to make himself a mustache... and everyone else.

I thought it was too cute... so I had to take pics!

Evening of the arts

Brenner entered his Lego art in the 3D section of Evening of the Arts at his school. The topic was "Make a Difference." He built a playground with lots of trees.... so to make a difference, you plant trees at a playground. He came up with the idea and built it all by himself.

He won 4th Place!!!

Not our kid!

Neither Ryan nor I like seafood! But Brenner loves it! He loves shrimp, fish, clam chowder... and the other day he got the chance to eat a crab leg!He'd probably like more seafood if he ever got the chance to eat it!

Chicken Update...

Our 3 cute little yellow chicks quickly turned into 8 chicks! Grandpa Blake figured that if we were going to go to all the work to build a chicken coop and take care of chickens we should have a few more!

So, the three original yellow chickens are...
Peep
Scott
& Super Robin

The new chickens are....

Chacha (brown)
Brownie (brown)
Penguin (black)
Skunk (black with stripe)
Ducky (yellow)

They are growing up so fast.... it's weird to watch them grow. They are losing their cute baby fluff and growing feathers. I like to think the older ones are "tweens" now:)
If you run out of eggs, you know where to find some:)

Great Exercise!

I love having a huge back yard... plenty of space for the kids to run and play... however, it takes forever to mow!
I mow the lawn and Ryan does all the trimming. Terek helps too:) It takes us about 2 hours!!! I figure I don't need to exercise on Mondays... since that's my lawn-mowing day:)

The "Bowl"

I love conference weekend... I love listening to the Prophet and getting good counsel and reminders on how I should be living my life and teaching my children.

However, the kids get a little stir crazy trying to sit and watch conference all weekend.

So, Sunday after the last session was over, we headed out to go on a hike. Some friends and a student had told me about the "bowl" in Gunlock. So we headed there. The trail was pretty good at first, but then you are on sandstone and there is no real trail. We kind of got lost. Ry's brother Shane was with us, so he hiked up a mountain and finally found the bowl. In the meantime, Terek fell and got hurt so he wanted to go back to the car... and Joren was getting cold. So, we headed back to the car. Brenner said he was not going back... he climbed the red hill and he was going to climb up to the bowl as well. So, Ry, Shane and Brenner climbed up and found the bowl.
The boys really loved climbing on all of these rocks.
They are a little too fearless for me.
The moral of the story... now we know where to go to find the bowl. So, we want to do this hike again... more prepared with jackets, snacks, etc....

Never mind the speeding ticket Ryan got on the way home:(

Happy April Fool's Day

Sometimes I try to be a creative mom... I'm not good at jokes and pranks, but I like to trick the kids with their food.
For dinner we had "dessert." We had a pie... it was meatloaf with pink mashed potatoes on top.
Then for dessert, we had "candy sushi." I made these for Joren to take to preschool as well.
Grandma Blake took the boys to the party store and they bought all sorts of pranks. I got a golf ball through my windshield. We had worms, spider, eyeballs, etc. in our drinks. We got squirted when we sat on the toilet... good fun!

Happy April Fool's Day!!!