Lovin in the Sun

Amidst the snow and rain from last week, it was actually sunny yesterday and today - and boy, did I ever soak it up. As I was gazing out at the beautiful morning thinking spring has finally sprung, I looked to the weather report thinking it would be an equally beautiful week. I looked...looked again...are my eyes seeing correctly? Yes...it is supposed to rain/snow every day this week!! I seriously wondered if I was looking at the weather report from March. I am so disgusted that the weather would play so many cruel tricks on me!

Yesterday started out on a good note with the sunshine, the Easter bunny found our house alright, and the kids seemed pleased with their basket of goodies. So far so good. After getting the girls and myself ready for church, I had to run to church early for a quick choir rehearsal. While I was gone and John was in the shower, the girls slipped into the backyard to do their bubbles from Mr. bunny. In the process, Natalie got mud/dirt/yuckiness all over her new Easter dress. When I ran home to pick everyone up - I was oh so thrilled to discover this loveliness. We were late for church as I of course had to get a washcloth, clean off the mud, blow dry her dress dry, etc. Of course, John could not understand my craziness...."Why don't you just change her outfit?" Not cool...this was her Easter dress and it was going to be worn on Easter!! (Okay, just blame it on my pregnancy hormones). I don't have pictures yet - I will do them when our tulips are in full bloom :)

Later in the day, we enjoyed the afternoon and evening literally in the backyard soaking up the sun. We cooked a yummy dutch oven dinner, played games on the porch, did some swinging, and in general enjoyed family time (aka family home evening). After dinner, we pulled out all the bikes and went on a bike ride. After 30 minutes, the girls and I were ready to try another bike route, but was vetoed by John pulling the bike trailer. I didn't blame him.


Today is Natalie's birthday - she is officially two!! Don't worry, the two-year-old temper tantrums have already set in, so I won't be surprised anytime soon. I made a yummy butterfly cake for her earlier in the day.

I'm including a picture of Kimberly's cake from last month since I forgot to post it. I was sick with the stomache flu on her birthday, so the poor girl had to make her own cake in the morning, then John came home early from work to decorate it and take the girls out to dinner. Terrible timing for an icky virus.
I think this entry has turned into an epistle...luckily, you have the choice of ducking out early in the reading process if you get bored!

Spring Break

After early outs every day of last week, I was not looking forward to the girls' Spring Break this week, but I have been pleasantly surprised...it has been a really good week. Things started out on a good note when my sister, Christy and her family arrived on Sunday. We enjoyed conference and some good dutch oven dinner.

Monday we colored Easter eggs with them and went to the castle park. They left Monday afternoon. It was sad to see them go so soon, but we will see them again in June - only 2 months away. I think I can make it.

Monday night we had our second annual moonlight Easter egg hunt with the neighbors. We decided to have a family home evening lesson beforehand and a fun craft while we hid the eggs. The kids had a blast looking for eggs with flashlights (note - each of the eggs had reflective tape on it). It is definitely a twist on the usual Easter egg hunt.

Tuesday we went to Layton Park and talked to the ducks. They informed us they were well fed, thank you very much, as could be seen by the mounds of bread floating in the water.

Wednesday the girls went down to their cousins house in West Jordan for a sleep over. Aahhh...blessed quietness with just Natalie and I in the afternoon, and then a quiet dinner with John. We had so much fun just the 3 of us running errands after dinner.

Thursday it was back to having the tribe back together again. I decided to brave the Discovery children's museum down at Gateway in Salt Lake. I was prepared for a huge crowd since it was spring break, and it was raining - two reasons to send any and all kids in the vicinity in droves to this popular play area. I was pleasantly surprised at how much fun we had even with all the extra people. We spent most of the day there and had a wonderful time. I was so glad that Kim and Alicia were old enough to stay in the general area while I stayed with Natalie.

Thank goodness tomorrow is the last day of spring break, and then back to school next week. Natalie and I are already looking forward to our normal quietness next week. As I speak, a hoard of neighbor kids have decended upon my living room where the girls have built a ginormous fort. Oh dear...I just went in to check on them and it is a huge disaster! Sigh. Cleaning house with kids is like shoveling snow in a snowstorm.

Here are more pics of our day at the museum:

Change of Routine

Most of you know that I am obsessed with my routine - I always do my laundry every Friday, I clean the house every Saturday, I change the sheets every Wednesday, and up until this month have done my grocery shopping every other Friday since living in this house (10 years). I say up until this month because John's paydays are now on the 5th and 20th of the month. This makes bill paying much easier on my stress level because we hit the days right on instead of getting a wee bit stressed when certain bills were due on the 5th, and payday wasn't until the 10th!

However, I can no longer go grocery shopping on Fridays for the obvious reason that the 5th and 20th fall on different days every month. Added to this fact, I will need to buy enough groceries for 2 1/2 weeks instead of two...Can you see my stress increasing as I think of the changes I am going to have to make!! Aagghh!! I am stressing even as I type this.

Breathe in......Breath out.....one more time now....okay, I'm relaxed (I think). Anyway, this will just take some time to adjust to. Maybe I can make it into a game. Let's guess what day of the week I will be shopping this month? Monday! At least both days are Mondays. Let's see, for the month of May I will be shopping on...Tuesday the 5th and then Wednesday the 20th! I guess that is my new excitement in life. If you call and I am not home, perhaps I am out grocery shopping.

A New Addition...

We have a new addition!!! Isn't he/she beautiful? John is hoping for the he version, but I told him not to get his hopes up...seeing our record of 3 girls - what's another one? Is there such thing as too many hormones residing in the same house? Just wait until the girls are teenagers and our periods all hit at the same time...you just might find John over at your house for a couple of days!

Okay, so the he/she addition will be joining us sometime on or before October 30th looking much better than it's current version of no hair, squishy eyes, holes for ears, and fish like hands. The girls are quite concerned that I will be in the hospital on Halloween. I told them, no fear...I'm sure they do trick or treating at the hospital! They were not impressed.

So far I am nearly 10 weeks and have my ob appointment tomorrow. Hopefully only a few more weeks of this yucky morning (aka all-day sickness).

I thought I would also include some recent photos of our other kiddos in this posting as well. Here they are in no particular order...




And because Natalie is so cute, she get's extra coverage in this posting with this fun video of her dancing. I had to take this video on the sly because every time I tried shooting a video, she would catch me and run over to try and see her picture on the camera (oh, the joy of modern technology!). She loves any and all music and can't help herself - she breaks out into grooves when she hears tunes. In fact this morning, she was happily playing upstairs while I was on the computer. I decided to turn on the music, and she came careening down the stairs as fast as her little legs would take her and then squealing with excitement as she came into the family room and started shaking her buns. Absolutely hilarious!

A New Way to Bake Sugar Cookies!

I absolutely LOVE eating sugar cookies - the moist and crunchy cookie layered with thick, rich gooey frosting...perfection I say. However, as you all know, sugar cookies take forever to make and the kitchen is usually a huge mess! My kids love helping too, which of course adds to the mess. As much fun as we have making cookies together, I am finding that carving out several hours for making sugar cookies now only happens on Christmas Eve. Therefore, I am deprived of my yummy sugar cookies throughout the rest of the year.

That is until I discovered I recipe last week for bar sugar cookies! I made these in ....drum roll please...under an hour with not even a fleck of flour dust on my counter top!! Can you believe it? My friend called the morning I made them and said she was having a hard time getting motivated for the morning. I told her I was just about to make sugar cookies, so she should plan on coming over in an hour...that definitely motivated her, but she wasn't sure she had heard me correctly when I said sugar cookies, knowing full well it would take longer than an hour!

She and I were both shocked at how yummy and tasty these easy bar sugar cookies were. I tried the recipe I found on the internet, but I wasn't as satisfied with the cookie. Next time I am going to use my tried and true sugar cookie recipe I got from my sister-in-law that is just the right amount of crunch and softness (thanks Delores...yes your recipe is still my absolute favorite after all these years).

What Does a Barn Owl Sound Like?

Sorry this video is sideways...user error, and I can't figure out how to change it after the fact.

This is what a barn owl sounds like.



This guy let me pet his owl too, and it's feathers were softer than anything I've ever felt before.

Girls Redecorating Ideas

Beware when your two crafty girls come up to you and say, "Come check out our room...it's really cool!" It may look like this...


We have 9 a.m. church, so we have lots of hours to kill each Sunday afternoon. This Sunday was no exception. After the girls had spent a good chunk of time watching TV and playing Wii (atleast I got my nice quiet time in there), I banned them from all electronics. Of course, this sends Alicia into the usual whining mode of, "...but I have nothingggg to dooo...I'm soooo bored." I told them to play a game with each other. This lasted only a few minutes before they were fighting. They eventually found themselves cutting away with paper and using lots of tape. I had no idea what they were doing, but they weren't fighting and they were keeping busy, so I kept my butt out of the picture.

About an hour later, my kitchen table and computer desk looked like a hurricane had blown through and the kids started begging me to come check out their room. I have to admit, it is a new look for their bedroom. They call it the rainforest themed room.

I love that my girls are crafty. It keeps them busy, and they learn how to clean up after themselves too. Saturday was another craft afternoon for them. As happens on a very rare Saturday afternoon, none of their friends could play. This left them to their own devices and they decided they wanted to paint old lightbulbs they found in one of my closets (where do they get their ideas?!?). They tried watercolor paint, but of course it did not stick on the light bulb. I let them use my fancy paint, but only with strict instructions that they wear paint shirts and paint with the paint on paper plates outside. Their bulbs actually turned out pretty good, along with all the paper plates they painted as well.

I just remembered another craft project Kimberly did with her friend Evie on Friday. They made a really, really long paper chain, then went up and down the street asking people to guess how many links were on the chain. The one with the closest answer got a treat. I of course was not aware this was going on until my friends told me later that evening about the chain guessing contest. Apparently Melissa was the winner and recieved a yummy tootsie pop as a prize!

Anyway, back to Sunday. I should have taken a picture of the paper disaster. It was awful! I made the girls clean it up so we could get started on dinner. We had yummy crock pot pork chops with parmesan potoates. It was a new recipe I tried out and it was a hit with everyone. After dinner, we pulled out the game Risk. This is our new favorite thing to do on Sunday evenings after dinner - last week we played Yatzee and I think we played the Phase 10 the week before that. It's fun that the girls are both old enough to enjoy more adultish games now. Natalie usually rotates sitting on our laps throughout the game, which ended after she saw how funny it was to throw things (i.e. dice and her bear) at the game board to see how many people she could knock down. At that point, I plopped her in front of the fridge where she became occupied with magnets until the end of our game.

One would think it is an incredibly long game, but we like to play with the cards giving you specific tasks to complete. Once you complete all of your tasks, you are the winner. Alicia won and the game only lasted an hour and a half (versus the 3 hours it has taken us in the past).