(last) Valentines Day!

(Ahhh! It's been a month!)
Incase you were wondering it is still stressing me out how all over the place these posts are.  There is absolutely no rhyme or reason for the order in which I am posting and I apologize, sincerely, if it is causing anyone else the same mental anxiety that it is me.  That being said...

When I came across these pictures tonight they stood out to me and pulled at my heart a little for a few reasons. For one, I can't believe how much I absolutely love these two little stink butts! So much that I let them eat WAY too many sweet treats this day (and the following 3 days).  Next was that they look different, I can't believe how much their looks change in such short times! Soph still had a trace of baby face left! And last, you can see my quad in the garage...sad.
 

 

oh yeah and we love these little dum dums too, but who doesn't?  

                                                                       Feb. 14, 2013

First Day, Third Grade, Too Cool For School.

Just over a week ago this guy started the 3rd grade.  He is crazy, wild, hilarious and a cuddler.


We were and we weren't ready for it to start.

We were ready for structure, we weren't ready for mornings. 

(we aren't exactly what you might call "morning people")

And getting him to take "normal" pictures is like pulling teeth.
It is a very rare occasion to get a decent one.                

I snapped some shots of him from afar on his walk home from school with the neighbors.  I am so sneaky. Once I was caught he was not about to comply, I wanted to get a shot of how dirty and grass stained his new jeans got on the very first day!...he wouldn't let me.
 

Soph and I made some "Happy 1st day of school" cupcakes for him, in his favorite color of course.
Jackson had some friends over for celebratory cupcakes and Xbox.  He was very excited about not having homework all week! He even reminded me every day he got home for the rest of the week.

Here was my favorite part of this day, while I was interrogating him about his first day of school (he NEVER offers up info, I have to pry it out of him), I asked what his most favorite part of the day was and this was his exact response:
"I can't believe I am saying this Mom, but everything was my favorite."

I couldn't have been happier to hear that he had such a good first day and enjoyed every part of it.

*now I might cry a tiny bit because I can't believe my little bud is in 3rd grade, holy cow.

When Summer Comes to an End

It seemed as though everyone around us started school at least two weeks before Jackson this year, so when it finally came time for him to go back it felt like we had been waiting for it for a long time.  It was a much anticipated weekend, Jackson was actually ready for school to start, I was not really sure how I felt but wanted to go out with a little bang and well, Codee looks forward to every weekend.

We decided to take Trax all the way downtown (the kids think it is totally awesome). Side note: it is not any quicker or cheaper to do this.  I think they just like being able to walk around and try out different seats or stand up the whole time.  We attempted a group selfie...fail.  We just don't have it in us to get a good shot!  

We went to explore the Leonardo museum.  It was an interesting experience.  Not exactly Codee's cup of tea to say the least.  But once we found all the hands on things the kids had a good time!  Jackson built himself a little "pixel" chair to supervise Soph while she made a cute little rainbow wall:) There were a lot of fun things for the kids to build and explore and running from one to the next was pretty exciting to Soph too.

He eventually fell over:)


After the museum we walked a few blocks up to City Creek for some dinner and to let the kids look through some toy stores.   With 2 dollars each and as much time as they like in a toy store they are pretty content

 

S.B. Part 2

While flipping through my note book I came across mine and Jamie's list of potential activities which jogged my memory a little...plus I found a little more hard evidence of some of our wild time together!! We had this great idea to go out to Antelope Island, an island on the Great Slat Lake...Great idea, involving a lake with 'Great' in the title...this should be fun right?...Wrong.  We saw some ginormous bison as soon as we got on the island, we should have just turned around and called it quits right then!! It was so stinky and bug infested! Eww. We attempted to make it up to the kids by having slurpees and huge ice cream cones, both within the next hour.   Next great idea,  Wheeler Farm.  Animals you can pet, tractors to ride, cows to milk, sure sure. NO.  Hot farm= hot animals= less than entertained kids and grumpy husbands. Booooo.
Fortunantley we are like, a totally awesome bunch and know how to turn those frowns upside down! and we stuck with the sure fire hit activities the rest of the trip.

We went to Classic Skating for some awesome skating action, a little arcade and jungle gym time. Jamie and I brushed up on our sweet skating skills on the speed track, cause we couldn't help ourselves.  

 That evening we split into boys and girls. All the boys went to a Jazz game and Bruges for dinner. While the girls went to dinner at City Creek then to the Gateway for...  

BUILD A BEAR WORKSHOP!


The girls were SO excited! I'm pretty sure Soph had no clue what it was but if Chloe wanted to do it that bad then so did she! They were so into it, even Claire (until we left, then she wanted nothing to do with hers).  We ended the night with some delicious treats from Hatch Family Chocolates... so good.  Really, so good.  Jamie, Karen and I discovered it while up here together one time and now we go... well, not often enough actually. 

And here are a few more fun happenings, I found this lovely gift of a picture along with many others of Billy on my camera after the fact. Apparently Soph held her own little photo shoot:)

 

This trip was so fun but not enough for us so when the day finally came for them to head south we only waited two days before packing up and following them down for another week of fun!!!
We just can't get enough:)
                   
                                                                                                  March 11 & 12, 2013

Spring Breakers Part 1

I suppose that it goes without saying that we miss everyone we moved away from.  But I have probably said it before and I am going to say it again, we miss them like crazy.  Our whole family has felt the effects of being away from everyone we were close to and spent nearly everyday with.  So much so that even though the Blackwell's have been up here what some might call "a lot" we keep begging them to come back!

We were lucky enough to have them up here for their spring break.  It wasn't Jacksons but that didn't stop us!!!  We had such a good time with them up here! I wasn't very on top of taking pictures and my memory fails me, of course, so I can't exactly recall everything we did. I do know that we went to the zoo!! There's proof of it, so we must have:)
 

 

LOVE these kids!!!
                                                                                               March 10, 2013

Grandma's Birthday

Oh the absence of chronologic...ness? is driving me coo coo!!! But I am just going with it!
SO, it was Cede's 9th birthday back in March.  I wrapped her present (as you do) and set it on the desk to be opened later and then left the room for a minute. When I returned I found Cede patiently waiting, she had perched herself on the stool at the desk staring at her present. I think we can all agree, having Cede as a pet is like having another child.  

 

What would we do without her.
                                                        March 8, 2013

Oh yeah and we call her Grandma cause she acts very much like a little old lady.

A Few Cuties

Dang it!!! I did it again, I got out of the habit, again. But I caught myself before a year had gone by this time so that is an improvement! Here are my two excuses; 1. It was summer and we were either gone or had company and 2. these pictures are so stinkin' cute I couldn't narrow it down from the near 3 million that we took!

Anyhow, we bought the girls these darling outfits for Easter and had to snap some super girly shots of them in them. Especially since we didn't even go to church (we're terrible) and didn't want them to ruin them at the Easter party so we made them change once the fun began.
 I love how silly they all are and mostly I love how close they are. Such little sweethearts we are blessed with and they are so blessed to have eachother. I hope these girls always remain best friends. "Matching"! Oh how they love to be matching.
 

Claire spent a decent amount of time running away or making grumpy faces:)
 

And of course my kid made plenty of goofy faces.
 

Jamie's favorite pose of Sophie's can be seen just below.  And I love Chloe's expressions in the two bottom corner photos, as one of the "dult's" she just thinks these two little girls are so silly!
 

And there was the behind the scenes crew Jay and I chasing the girls around trying to get them to laugh and Campbell and Carson to cool for all of this but trying to sneak in every picture:)
 

Can't express how much I love these little cuties! Including the little goofys in the last picture;)

                                                                                       April 1, 2013

Hey, It Was Easter!!

Easter/Spring Break x 2 was a crazy, long fun filled two weeks of awesome! It began with the Blackwell's coming up to our house for their Spring Break where we did all kinds of fun activities (that I didn't get any pictures of?) including but not limited to; the zoo, build a bear, a jazz game, some good dinners and desserts of course and ...I can't remember what else right now...  Anyway, that was interrupted by just a few "normal" school days and then the kids and I headed down to St. George for Jack's Spring break and Easter!



The kids all got these sweet glasses in their baskets Easter morning along with plenty of treats and other fun little surprises... of which Soph took out and had me photograph one at a time.  The Bunny also brought some silly string...it was a hit and a war broke out almost immediately.

After having some colored eggs (that we colored outside, in the dark, the night before) we headed over to a big family shindig at the park! We had wheel-barrow races, played sharks and minnows and had a pinata that Garrett made so heavy he had to reinforce the whole thing with duct tape...yeah, it was a lot of candy. We wrapped it all up with some lunch and an egg hunt...cause we hadn't pumped the kids full of enough sugar apparently.  I think next year we will try to keep it under 5 candy based activities.
Needless to say it was a good, action packed 2 1/2 weeks.

Oh I almost forgot the best part, before starting our game of Sharks and Minnows Billy jokingly said "shirts and skins, take off your shirts!" To which Sophie obliged and stripped down. It was pretty funny. (there is a small picture of it above, good stuff)
                                                                                         March 31, 2013

My Buddy

 

This is my buddy Claire.  She is one of my favorite little girls ever! I think I can speak for both of us when I say that this living far apart business is for the BIRDS!  I miss seeing this girl and her crazy antics on a daily basis.  She is such a cute and sweet little stinker and I think I am going to take her mom up on the offer to keep her with me for a week or two. Her mom offers regularly but I am pretty sure she would change her mind before really letting her go, I think Claire's cuteness is all the sanity her  mom gets sometimes;) To say I miss her is an understatement.  And I think she feels the same way, here is a little story for proof, incase you needed any;
I flew into Cedar on my way to St. George a while back and Billy picked me up on his way home from work for the weekend.  We meet Jay and the kids at a restaurant for dinner.  When Bill and I walked in together Claire was so excited to see us both and you could see the struggle of who to reach for first, after going back and forth for a minute...I won!!! She reached for me! I didn't want to rub it in too much but she totally picked me first!! I love you too Claire.
                     
                                                                                     March 15, 2013

Little Smarty Pants

Jackson received a "Principal's Award" for scoring really well on a Math pre-test. The school held a small, short ceremony one morning for the Principal to give him the award.  We were so proud of him, he sometimes (always) has a hard time focusing and finishing work on time so for him to finish and excel on a pre-test was pretty impressive! He was proud, we were proud, it was cute and Soph loves going to his school for ANY reason.


I love when they actually cooperate and take pictures together.

Soph and I found a little doughnut shop and picked out some over the top doughnuts to congratulate him. I had to work that night so Codee let them go to town on them!

                                                                                        April 11, 2013

Almost One Year Later, And Now He Is 8!

So it has been just short of one whole year since I last blogged anything... and I have no excuses.  I just stopped.  But lately I have been taking pictures again with the intent of actually doing something with them.  I hate going out of order, since I obviously have many pictures that would chronologically make much more sense here, but I think this is the only way I will ever actually bite the bullet and jump back into this... so here we go, wish me luck.

The most recent event in our house was Jackson's Birthday! He turned 8 on Friday and was baptized on Sat. May 4th. It was such a great weekend!  The Blackwell's and Kim, Dee, Kenny and Leah came up for it.  We went to Gardner Village via Trax (as per Jackson's request, he didn't care where we went just how we got there) and later that night we went bowling and had Subway for dinner...bowling, subway and Trax...really? sure kid, whatever you say. He loved it.



We woke up early Sat. morning for his baptism, it went off without a hitch it was just the right amount of spiritual and speed mixed together;) Codee baptized Jackson, Dee confirmed him and Codee bore his testimony because I didn't want to get up in front of everybody and I even got everyone to hang out afterward for a minute for some pictures!  

After the baptism we went up to Bruge's for waffles then to Deseret Book to pick out some scriptures for Jackson.  The kids played in the fountains at City Creek for a bit then we came home for naps...Claire, Sophie, Codee, Billy AND Jamie!
It is a full house anytime we have company but we LOVE it, it is pretty much what we live for right now.  We would trade our peace and quite for the chaos of company anytime!

Oh, I just remembered something else! Two Sundays ago Jackson was assigned the talk in primary, up until this point we have avoided this somehow, so I prepared a little talk for him and assumed he would want me to stand up there with him for a little support but to my surprise just before sharing time he said he would do it on his own...he didn't get that confidence from me!  I'm so glad he has it though, I was so proud of him for standing up there by himself and reading the words that I had wrote for him. He did such and amazing job, the room was quite (not usually the case in our current ward) while everyone listened and I felt like clapping when he finished.
         
                                                                                            May 3 & 4, 2013