Sunshine and Happiness

The sun decided to grace us and all the kids went out to play.  Sometimes I feel that is how life is.  The storms come in, it's cold and sometimes lonely, but the sun always seems to shine again.

Right now we face the unknown with our future.  If we will have a job this year and how to provide for our family.  I try to find peace and hope of what I know are truths in our lives.  The sun will come, sometimes we just need to wait with faith.

My sunshine and happiness often lies in the walls of my home...I have 5 beautiful kids and a great husband that loves me.  I really am blessed. 

I love this picture of Tagg & Darin.  Tagg was so excited to learn how to swing on his own and they went out in the early morning before school to swing together.  Love it!

Here's to faith that the sun will continue to shine & happiness will always grow!

Off to the Races

After Blue and Gold comes Pine Wood Derby!  Sometimes I want to squash tradition but I will grin and bear it. It's fun for the boys...right?

Luke and his car.

Luke cut it with some supervision, and painted it.  He named it Gangster - because of the graffiti style paint job. 

And the races begin...

And end.  

Lets just say that this ward is a Little different then our last ward.  The cars were a little more professionaly done with some nice cars.  Luke didn't do so well, but he shrugged it off.  You can't win them all.  I hope he took pride that Jared gave him full say in his car and let him do most all the work.

Maybe next year we will just resurrect some old cars, do we really need to make 12 of these!!

Saint Pattys Day!

St. Patricks Day isn't so bad to celebrate once I looked it up.  It's a celebration of Christianity coming to Ireland.  Thats ok with me, especially when it falls on a Sunday.  

We had green pancakes and green milk but not green bacon.  There were a few lucky 4 leaf clover pancakes in the stack too. ;)

Everyone got a little pot of gold from their Mom.  

Gotta love the internet blog world with all the cute tags and ideas.

Green dinner

I may or may not have gotten a little carried away with the green food coloring for the day.  We were joking we would be peeing green for the next week.  The kids thought it was fun.

I put this in to try to document Darin's green shirt that is actually a St. Patricks Day shirt from ON that was a hand me down.  He was so excited to wear it on the actual day.  Love that boy! 

And mint ice cream parfaits with some cookie crunchies that I got from my friends blog.  So good. 

Happy St. Patricks Day!

B&G 2013

Blue and Gold Banquet....yet again.  Luke had his B&G and the theme was "Scouting Around the World" so Luke opted to do a bunch of nations flags.  He sat down and started drawing countries flags off the top of his head and busted out most of these.

We had fun eating frosting while doing this project.  All though I felt sick later. :) 

The proud Scout. Luke frosted most himself, I helped on a few.

He even typed up all the countries and picked the fonts and labeled them all. 

It was a nice dinner with lots of fun cakes...sorry I forgot to take my camera.  Luke got "most elaborate decorating." It was sad to see them snatched up, but they went fast. 

One more B&G down, 500 more to go! :)

Another Year Older and Wiser Too

Jared's Bday is only a few days after Vday, so I have to be on top of it, or not.  It happened to be President's Day and everyone had it off, even Jared!  Yeah!  We all slept in and had a big breakfast.

Jared loves it when I take pictures of him right when he wakes up. :)  Happy Bday! 

He got a huge set of scriptures, I'm talking huge - you can read them from across the room!  He wanted them to have for physics references.  Love this man and his love for the gospel in all aspects of his life! He also got some gift cards, money and I reordered his BS diploma since we lost it somewhere.  Now we have all 3!

We bundled up and headed to Coeur d'Alene, ID for a day trip.  We walked the boardwalk and checked out the lake and walked around the city park.  It was beautiful. 

Jared wanted to introduce the boys to trying new things - our family struggles with this concept.  So he wanted to hit a bunch of different places to eat and get stuff the boys never really have tried.  Here is our mix match lunch.  It was fun & good. 

Jared isn't traditional and doesn't like sweets, I know crazy huh? :)  He opted to skip the cake and go with Fruit Bars...and done. That was too easy.  Love this guy and all his hard work that he does to provide for his family!!

Heart Day

Oh Valentines Day, the day of love. 

Luke and Darin had to make homemade Vday boxes for school.  Apparently the kids here go all out, I just pulled out stuff I had and let them go at it.  

We had an FHE on loving and serving one another.  So we had a jar of "I love you because..." notes that they were suppose to put in each others bags all week.  Some of them were silly and some meaningful. 

Here we are making our Vday bags. 

We also took some time to rotate stations and write coupons for everyone in the family in a way we can serve them.  Some of those were interesting.  I think everyone gave Tagg a "play Wii with you."

By the way these cute books were found on my SIL blog - check it out she is awesome!

I left love notes in the boys lunches and made these for the younguns at home. 

I gave Jared updated framed family pictures for his office since the most recent he has is of Rees when he was 4 and Luke was 2...how sad is that.  I gave the kids a jigsaw puzzle to do as a family.

Jared gave me a new full length mirror since my old one fell off the wall and shattered at 2am!  It scared the crap out of me!

We had a good love week!  Happy Vday!

Reading Frenzy!

The schools here offer a free ticket to a local amusement park if you read for 600 minutes within a certain time frame.  Rees knocked it out in a week.  Darin was so excited he went gang busters with reading and begging us to read more to him!  Luke hit it slow and steady and they all did it!! 

When this kid has his heart set on something he is relentless...that can be good and bad. :)

Family reading time...it just kind of happened one night...love those nights. 

Even Tagg got in on some reading action! 

Mrs. 18 months

I cannot believe this little girl is 18 months (and then some, I'm behind). Lydia was 18 months at the beginning of the year.  She has slowly progressed in her skills and we are excited for her.  She finally started walking after constant scooting.  She is slowly speaking more and more words. She got tested at early intervention and is behind in motor skills and speech, so we are waiting for PT evaluations to be scheduled for further care.  Me, I'm not worried, this little girl just does things when she wants on her own time. :) 

"Mrs." is what Jared likes to call her, she also will respond to Lyds, Yiya, Missy, girly, princess and cutie. 

This is her spot to dance.  Anytime music is turned on she stands right in front of the couch to start dancing.  This girl loves music!

This is her go to dance move...shaking the arms up and down and bobbing up and down.  She loves to dance like her mama.

So in all the music we have, Gangnam Style is her favorite.  This is her doing the actual dance.  She loves to copy us as we do different moves.  In fact she comes to Zumba with me and will stand next to me and copy most the moves for a good 3-4 songs.  It's the cutest thing ever!  

One of her favorite spots in the house is to sit on the window sills in the bay windows in the front room.  They are the perfect little seat for her and she loves to look out the window and just sit and read her books. She loves to read books.  

Lydia's new favorite obsession is Baby Einstein videos.  She insists on sitting in the computer chair all by herself and watching them.  This is my go to when I'm making dinner.  She loves them. 

This little girl is such a joy to have.  She loves to give hugs to those who are sad, such a girl thing, I love it.  She still loves her binki, will eat anything, especially sweets.  She signs a lot since she doesn't talk a lot.  Her hair is getting long enough to actually style.  She loves her shoes and always insists on wearing her shoes.  She likes nursery - yeah! She sleeps well and is so fun to have in our family!