Saturday, August 14, 2010

April Adventures

April was full of fun for everyone! Easter, birthday parties, road trips, turtles, camping in the snow, perma-dirt and rats nests!

My birthday was on Easter this year, and it also was General Conference for our church. Bill and the boys picked out these gorgeous flowers for me. I think the white one was an Easter Lily... I could be wrong. And the roses were beautiful! The house smelled so good for so long!My parents ended up coming out for my birthday and they got to witness the opening of my 87 gifts. The boys decided to get me all camping stuff (which might sound weird for most girls, but I LOVE camping). I got everything one might need for a camping trip including the hugest tent I've ever seen. It will fit 2 airbeds plus some! AND, it has a closet for storing luggage!
After gifts we went outside and dyed Easter eggs and played on the trampolines. Yes, we have three trampolines now! Now that is fun for boys!

Then we had our Easter Egg hunt. It turns out Obi really likes chocolate!!! After the egg hunt we all went in and had ice cream cake from DQ, my favorite!!!! Thanks honey!







Our friend Lonnon Jensen celebrated his 30th birthday and we made sure to get him a really grown up type cake with Transformers on it! Happy birthday Lonnon! Obi was really sick at the party and had this face on the whole time. He didn't even eat cake! Poor baby!We went on a drive halfway up the mountain to see if this road led to the campsites we thought it did and found this little guy on the road. We took him home, gave him a bath and some food, and then took him back to his home the next morning. The boys named him Shelly. I know, my kids are all impressive with their original names!

Grandma celebrated her 60th birthday and we took her out to Arizona to visit Kym and Adam Woods family (Bill's sister). We all made a book of letters and pictures from all her sisters, children, and grandchildren, along with some friends. Kym made an incredible cheesecake, sugar free, for Mom and it was delicious, as Spencer will tell you!

Mosiah was so exhausted after our couple of days in Arizona. He ended up crashing at the Olive Garden where we stopped to eat in Vegas before heading home.
On our way home from Arizona we stopped to gas up our car and found this little guy hanging out in the field beside the gas station. We took him home and ended up giving him to my parents as an anniversary present. They took him home after they went to a huge concert in California with Cheyanne. Some sort of country concert that was apparently awesome! They have a chihuahua named Ceasar, so then named this guy Agustus... Gus for short. He is an angel and they love him to bits!

My second cupcake class! Because I was the first to arrived last class in March I got to pick our project for this class. After I picked the cute panda bear cupcakes Cambria banned everyone from picking the projects because they where a little harder then expected! Well, I think mine turned out kinda cute! These classes are super fun!
Note: This is the point where I lost my camera, so for the next couple of posts and the pictures after this part are all either from my cell phone or our video camera! If only I had used our stroller!!!

We finally got around to our camping trip at the end of April. The weather forecast, I admit, was not so pretty with possible wind storms in P-town. We just figured we'd be sheltered from the wind up on the mountain. Boy, where we in for a suprise! When we reached our destination it was already super windy and setting up the tent turned out to be a major event, but when it was finally up we enjoyed a nice campfire dinner and some delicious donuts and marshmallows. We didn't take Obi's portable crib, and we won't forget it again, he crawled everywhere when we were trying to go to sleep. After he went to sleep it was tollerable. There was a lot of waking up and covering him back up. He just won't keep those blankets on! The second day was fun with hikes and new adventures. The moon was full at night so we even had a moonlit hike, which lasted about 3 minutes because the kids were scared that I couldn't protect them from monsters... so I took them back to camp and they begged Daddy to take them. They were gone that time for about 20 minutes! Ah, kids, great for the self esteem! That night was cold... really cold. And about halfway through the night I was awakened by a soft brushing sound on our tent. I lay there with my heart pounding wondering what it could possibly be, then I started to see intricate patterns on the top of the tent. One of the kids kicked the tent in his sleep and the patterns floated away, that was when I realized it was snowing. After that it was a terribly long night. When I got out of the tent all I wanted to do was get off that mountain, but Bill decided we needed to have breakfast first. While I made breakfast he went to warm up the car and discovered that the battery was dead! After we ate Bill and Liam took a paper plate, wrote "help we are stranded" and hiked out to the entry way of the campsite. They used duct tape to hang it across the road way. A car would have to break through it to get by. We then tried stacking 8 batteries on top of each other and connecting them with the jumper cables to our car battery... ya, that doesn't work! We ended up being stranded there for another night as we happened to be the only ones stupid enough to camp in the snow. The last night was the coldest ever and I prayed all night that we wouldn't all die of frost bite. I woke up to the sweet sound of a really loud truck. Bill was already outside and had the jumper cables set up so our life saver started our car up pretty easily. It was a guy with his girlfriend and their dog on a little hunting trip. Thank goodness for them! I have never seen anyone pack up a campsite as quickly as we did... in the mud. We all had perma-dirt on our hands and faces and necks for about a week, and for some reason I thought I didn't really need to brush my hair while we were up there, but somehow we are still here to tell the story!

Obi's perma-dirt:
My gorgeous hair: (I know, what was I thinking!?!?)Perma-dirt hands:

Friday, August 13, 2010

March Madness

It looks like I've got a lot of catching up to do. I lost my camera for 4 months, found it in my stroller. Fell off the blog roll for a while, but now I'm into my camera again, so I'm making a come back! Check out March!

For those of you who don't know we are expecting our 5th baby, which we have found out is a boy, on October 28th! Get out the baby name book!!!

A Carls Jr. opened up in P-town, and that happens to be my favorite fast food so of course we had to go to the grand opening! Free ballons and awesome food? Oh ya!

Arlene, Neil and Mattea came to visit early this year! On their first night here I took the girls to a cupcake class that my awesome friend Cambria is putting on for us girls here. For our first project we made goldfish bowls with those yummy goldfish crackers.
Bill and I went to a TJED homeschool conference in Utah and Arlene, Neil, and Mattea stayed with the boys while we were gone for two nights. The conference was life changing, literally. Bill and I met this awesome lady who did one of our classes on "self deception". She is truly incredible and about 10 minutes into her lecture I realized she was from my home town. I talked to her halfway through the day and it turns out she's in my parents ward. If you know Heather Burton then you probably love her too! Whats amazing about these conferences is that they are filled with people like this who you want to be just like! Among her, Kerri Tibbets, Jodi Palmer and Nicholeen Peck you just have to be uplifted!!! We are so greatful to Neil, Arlene, and Mattea for watching our kids and giving us the opportunity to attend this wonderful event!
We went bowling. The kids always love bowling, Liam is so competitive and gets a little upset
when someone else wins, but we're working on it. He did pretty good this time when Ezra won.

Obi hanging out with Grandma Arlene while the others kids bowl:
Mosiah and Daddy:
Mattea:Me:Gotta love this cute face! :
Liam giving it his all:Ezra:
We visited the cactus gardens and the Ethel M Chocolate factory too! If you live in or near Vegas it's one of those free things that you should absolutely check out. They give you free chocolate samples and when you're done the cactus garden is gorgeous and has a bunch of paved paths, good for new walkers like Obi!

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Happy Birthday Nana!!!

Note: Be sure to pause the music at the very bottom of the blog before watching Nana's birthday movies!





Because we weren't with Nana on her birthday we decided to make her a video... and a cake!
The boys all had me take pictures of them doing their favorite things for her card, and seeing as her birthday package was still in Denver Colarado.... but on its way.... as of yesturday I thought we'd post them here as well so she could see them on her birthday.
Mo Being Silly in his batman hat:Obi eating:Liam playing Super Mario Wii:Ezra playing with Hammy the Hamster:Nana we all love you! I'll let you know when your package gets to Montana so you can see what you got!

Friday, February 19, 2010

Happy Birthday Ezra!!!


Ezra's 5th birthday was on the 11th of this month. He really wanted a fish cake. I had this really cute tutorial for a fish bowl cake and decided to make it. This is what happened....
I don't know why, but both my cakes just fell apart. Crumbled. Then I ran out of time and had to buy one of these... looks tasty, but really, tastes like chocolate covered dirt. (love you Chuck E. Cheese).
Oh well, at least Ezra's family and friends, including Chuck E. Cheese himself where there to celebrate.
We had a not so delicious Jello mold in the shape of a fish the next day, with some baby Swedish fish. All of the Swedish fish got eaten, the Jello mold got thrown in the garbage. You know when Bill won't eat something that it's pretty bad!

Disneyland - February 2010


I tried to have a Disney cast member take this picture, but instead it just recorded, so I thought I'd post it. Maybe it's cuter than a regular old pose anyway?
When we got to California it was POURING with rain. We were supposed to have a hot dog roast on the beach. Instead we spent about 10 minutes rolling up our pants and taking of our shoes, 2 minutes running to the beach and about 4 minutes of actually beach time freezing to death. We dipped our feet in the water and ran for our lives!
Our hotel was very close to Disneyland so we got to see people coming back after their Disney day. They were miserable! Plastic bags and rain coats covering strollers filled with very grumpy babies. Drenched hair-dos and souvenirs. Miserable. We were very worried about our Disney day, which was the next day, as the forecast was for rain. When we woke up Disney day morning we were happy to see cloudless skies and a bright sunny sun! The day was absolutely perfect! There were no lines, there was no rain! We walked on every ride! our longest wait was 15
minutes, you can't beat that!

To see Vanessa's (better) pictures click here.

Gingerbread Houses and Cup Cakes

Our friends the Jensen's picked up some after the Holiday Gingerbread houses for super cheap. They bought enough for 12 people to have their own. Liam, Ezra, Mo, BraeLynn, Aurouya, Keilani, Tesla, Zzyzx, Andy and Mickey got to take advantage of this. It was super fun. *Dear Jensen girls, I am very very VERY sorry if I spelled your names wrong, love Kym*.

My good friend Cambria recently got a book about making cupcakes awesome, this is one of them. I know, it's crazy good isn't it?
She's the one who made Mosiah's birthday cake this year, so obviously she had skills before the cupcake book! Here is my cupcake that I made. Good comparison, don't you think?

Scrapbook Page

I did a scrapbook page for our service project, which was actually used for another service project, imagine that! We just got our internet back after a VERY LONG WAIT, so I will be updating the blog soon, and I'll be looking at all of your blogs. We are also in the process of finding our February service project. We'll keep you updated!