Snippits of our Life

Life has been pretty good lately.  Not a lot of big things happening, but enough small stuff to keep us sufficiently busy.  We have been enjoying the beautiful weather and reading a lot of books.  I thought I would just update a little on what each of my kids have been up to:

Trevor:

Trevor has been busy so far this spring running 5K races (just over 3 miles).  He did his first race last spring and got a time of 45  min.  The first one he did this spring (2 weeks ago) we told him that if he got under 35 minutes that we would pay off his library fines.   Sure enough he finished in 34:20!  We were so proud of him.  Then this last weekend he pushed even more and got an impressive time of 30:28 seconds!  Bryan says that before long it wont be Trevor trying to keep up with Bryan, but Bryan will have to push to keep up with Trevor!  Here is a short video of some of Trevor's other skills.

Kaylee: 

Kaylee is turning into a young girl.  She is more aware of how her hair is done and what she is wearing.  When we go on walks I am grateful that Kaylee is still willing to walk by me and hold my hand.  I can't say how glad I am to have another girl in the house with me.  Sometimes Kaylee and I just watch the boys, look at each other, and sigh.  Kaylee ran in a one mile race and came in the top ten or so with a time of around 10 minutes.  I think soon I will have to start running in the 5K races with her (although I am sure she could already out run me!)  Here is a video of Kaylee doing some of her new tricks.  She practices them all the time.

Nathan:

Nathan cracks me up all the time.  He is a joy to be around.  Nathan also ran in the one mile race and pushed really hard.  He finished with a time of 17 minutes.  One of his newest talents is to sing along with the radio.  Some of his favorite songs are the High School Musical soundtracks, Bleeding Love and Hot & Cold.  Here is a video of him singing along to a Wii game that shows you dance moves to do while you sing.  (Ashton is singing into the mic too, but unfortunately I cut off the video right as he got up and started to sing...sorry)

And last but not least.....

Ashton:

Ashton has kept me busy.  I am not sure if he is cutting teeth, or just entering a really bad phase, but he wants held a lot and is throwing lots of fits when he doesn't get what he wants.  That being said it is an absolute joy to have him around.  He has started talking all the time and can repeat most of what we say.  We started to include him in our family prayer rotations and he says Amen to all the prayers (normally around half way through the prayer though)  He has also started to Whistle which is what is in this video.

Spring is in the AIR!

I LOVE this time of year. When it is not to hot and not to cold. I truly believe weather in Heaven must be like this all the time. We were so excited when Barlow and Andrea invited us to go feed the ducks with them. We had just been talking about how even though Ashton loves animals we had never taken him to the duck pond. It was SO beautiful! We were even able to take some family pictures while we were there.

As much fun as the pictures were (the kids LOVED climbing in the trees...except maybe Ashton who we had to try several times before we got a decent picture) We fed the ducks the expired crackers and poptarts from our 72 hour kits and some old hamburger buns. Ashton was giddy the whole time, it was a little nerve racking. One time his shoe fell off and I caught him running toward the pond arm cranked to throw the shoe into it! Luckily I caught him just in time, he did throw the shoe but was a few feet to far away from the pond still and it didn't make it in.

Here are the other great pictures we got that day. ENJOY!

Happy Easter!

We hope everyone had a great Easter. We had a lot of fun. We colored some fantastic eggs:

They all turned out unique and beautiful. I am not sure what it is about dying eggs that I like, but it is one of my favorite activities. You would think that with a limited number of colors that all the eggs would turn out very similar, but they each turn out different.However, here is proof that Bryan and I have been dying eggs together for to long:On Sunday morning the kids woke up to find their Easter baskets had been hidden, and they actually didn't throw a fit when we told them they had to wait until after Church to find them. When we got home from Church the kids could hardly wait to change their clothes and get to searching for the baskets (thus we have no pictures of us in our fancy new Easter clothes....oh well) Then we ate some of our colored eggs (it was fast Sunday for us so we had to wait!)This is one of our favorite games too. We choose our "strongest" eggs and challenge someone else to see whose egg will crack first. We usually try to forty the ends of the egg with extra dye and crayon coloring, But you never know which egg will be champion.

Ashton much preferred the plastic candy filled eggs to the real ones. We pretty much let him have whatever he wanted yesterday (which is something I am already regretting today with a 1 1/2 year old coming off an all day sugar rush!)

Have You Ever.....

Have you ever looked at your pants while on the phone and wondered what that gooey green stuff is on your pants, only to remember your toddlers runny nose a few minutes later?

Have you ever gone early to pick up your kids from school so that your preschoolers could play on the playground and you could socialize with the other mothers only to realize that you did not do your hair or makeup that day?

Have you ever told the kids you would take them to the library if they cleaned their rooms, then wished you had just cleaned their rooms while they were at school and rewarded them with a library trip because it is you that has 2 books on hold that you really want to read?

Have you ever tried to feed a 1 1/2 year old Sloppy Joe's when he knows full well that there is a bag of chips on the counter?

Have you ever been so exhausted by the end of the day that you fall asleep on a swing?

Well I did ALL these things today...............OK, the falling asleep on the swing was Ashton, but still.....what a day!

Little Cooks

My kids love to help out in the kitchen.  Trevor more than the rest though.  Lately he has been coming up with his own recipe creations.  I thought I would share a few of them with you.  When he makes these up  he writes them on a 3X5 card to put in the recipe box.

#1

Healthy Fruit Smoothie

1 Cup of apple slices

2 Cup of strawberries

1/2 Cup orange slices

Stir up and your ready!

#2

Orange Party Cake!

Start oven at 250

1 cup flour

1 orange cake mix

2/4 cup sugar

3 Tablespoon oil

2/4 red, blue, and yellow food coloring

5 eggs, beaten

Pour into angel food cake pan, or cake pan(optional)  put in oven 7-10 minutes

#3

Fruit Pizza

2 eggs, beaten

4 cups flour

1/2 cup baking powder

3 cup strawberry

1/4 teaspoon salt

pour in mixer, take out dough, roll on counter/table, put in oven.  Cook 1-10 minutes, put apple slices on and eat (healthy)

And last but not least #4

Green Soup

1/2 cup broccoli

2/4 teaspoon oil

1 cup peas

Pour into pot on stove, cook 10-20 minutes at high.  Then add 3 cup water.  cook 1-5 minutes on stove at 5 or the dot next to the five that way or that way (meaning the dot on either side of the five, which is medium heat on our stove)

I LOVE those recipes.  He was so clever.  You can tell that they are a little off (maybe you can't tell.....) But you can also tell that he pays attention to the recipes when he is helping me.  Stuff like turning down the heat, or that some items are marked (optional).  Now cake pans are not normally optional, but still.  Or the fact that he knows he needs to specify that the eggs need to be beaten.  We have not tried any of these yet but he wants to.  I explained that we could try them, but we might need to tweak them a little.

The other thing Trevor does is make us breakfast in the morning.  Usually he makes Waffles, but the other day he was begging to make doughnuts, so I helped him out and they made some delicious doughnuts for breakfast.

Where has the time gone part 2

This post is totally unrelated to the last but the title seemed more fitting for this post.  Something happened this week, it was unexpected and has changed my outlook on a lot of things.  Let me start by saying I did not spend a lot of time on the computer.  I would sit down at breakfast and lunch and check emails and blogs and such, but I wouldn't spend that much time.....would I?

Some of you may know that the computer that we use right now is a computer that we bought before Kaylee was born.  It has an amazing hard drive of 40 gigs (and can I just say, that was a TON of memory when we bought the dumb thing!)  It has slowly gotten slower, and slower and slower.  Luckily I have amazing brothers who know tons about computers and can either answer my questions over the phone, or come right over and do a quick overhaul.  This is the only reason it has lasted this long, but alas, last week while trying to get some pictures uploaded to get prints I had ENOUGH!  I swore off our computer for good.

We had already ordered a new computer (almost 700 gigs I am SO excited!!) But it keeps getting delayed for one reason or another.  I thought to myself, it would not be that hard to not use the computer for a week while I wait for the new one.  Low and behold it WAS hard, REALLY hard actually.  I had to turn the whole thing off and even kept it unplugged, even looking at it makes me a little angry.  So where did my new found time go?  To my house and kids.  All of a sudden instead of reading blogs during breakfast, I was cleaning up the kitchen or reading my scriptures in stead.  I had all my housework done by 9:30 and had the rest of the day to.....well......to do whatever I wanted.  I scrapbooked, I read to my kids, I even went outside and played with them.  It was AMAZING.  I know when my new computer does come it will be harder to turn it off and keep this good thing going, but I am really going to try.  It has made that big of a difference in my life (and I am so serious that I didn't think I spent that much time on it in the first place!)

I have some other posts to do, but they all involve pictures which are on my "turned off computer" while I write this post on Bryan's work laptop which he brought home for the weekend.  Oh and I will update the pictures from the last blog with captions to tell you all who those handsome people were, so go check it out again!

Where has the time gone?

Wow, it has been a crazy couple of weeks.  We received news that my Grandma Bodily had passed away, so we made a quick whirlwind trip to Utah.  Utah trips for us are never easy, but always fun. (even when you throw a funeral into the mix)  We have so much family there.  It was great to see everyone.  Not only were all but one of my siblings there, but many of my cousins that I haven't seen for several years.  Here are the things we LOVED about our trip:

*Dollar Theaters!  (the movies really cost $1.25-$1.50, but STILL!)

*Being there for Aunt Beth's Birthday

*A rowdy game of Bowling

*Hobby Lobby (ahhh...someday they will have one here)

*Building Snowmen (oh where is spring?)

*Family Time (Bryan's parents were wonderful hosts, we were in and out so many times and they were always willing to watch the kids so that we could have some peaceful moments...THANKS!)

Top picture: Starting lower left and going clockwise:  Trevor, Me, My Dad, My Mom, Brother Gordon, his wife Jessica, Sister Kim, Sister Charlotte (mostly hidden), Brother Barlow

Bottom picture: Me, Charlotte, Kim (only sister missing from picture is Tami)

Top Left:  Bryan and I, Top Right:  Kaylee and my Mom, Bottom Left:  My Dad and Ashton, Bottom Right: Ashton and Kim's son Abe who is 2 days older than Ashton. (on a side note it was super hard to get them to stand that close long enough to get a picture of them together)
Top Left: SIL Jessica and Brother Gordon and Trevor, Top Right: Ashton, Bottom Left, My Dad and Kaylee, Bottom Right: Sister Charlotte and Nathan.