Happy Easter and Birthday and Birthday!!

Ya, I know, I'm just barely getting around to posting Easter and birthday pictures... But here they are:


Weeks before Easter all my kids kept asking me if I picked up the yarn, and did I get big skeins of yarn, and so I decided I couldn't string the house again this year. I don't mind doing repeats, but I don't like to be predictable. So for the little kids, Rik took pictures of different places around the house, and the pictures were their clues. Pretty simple. For the big kids, I sent them on a "one word" scavenger hunt. Like here's an example: Kayden walks up the stairs and says, "Mom, are you kidding me?! My clue is "wall?!"" With only one word, the clues were a little on the broad side. It took them about an hour to finish up. I had clues like shelf, basket, fake flower, window, Junie (it was on one of the Junie B. Jones books), chair, pillow, blanket etc; The kids liked it, and it was really easy for me. This is a good thing, because lately (like the last 3 years), I have had so much going on that I can only focus on one thing at a time, or one day at a time. A few years ago I decided my calendar was making me grumpy every day. I would wake up, take a look at it, see all that I had to do for that day, get overwhelmed, and grumpy. So I decided to do away with the calendar and just wing it day by day. For the most part this works out ok for me. But occasionally I schedule a dentist appointment at the same time as preschool, or visiting teaching at the same time I'm teaching piano lessons... but I can usually work it out. But I seem to have a hard time planning past today... ya, I know, it's because I not actually PLANNING anything. So that meant that Easter was shopped for and planned the night before Easter, and the boys birthdays were done at 1:00 in the morning the day of their birthdays. It all worked out though, and I guess that's how it's going right now.

We did all the normal Easter things, coloring eggs, Easter egg hunts, new church clothes, and yummy food. I wanted to try something a little different with the food though. I thought it would be kind of interesting to focus a little bit on Palm Sunday and Good Friday, so that the kids knew why those things were on the calendar. Then I thought we would try some traditional Jewish food for Sunday. I told Rik about my plans, and he said that didn't sound very good, and he wanted BBQ hamburgers, which is traditional... um... July 4th food... but ok, so that's what we had!


McKay's birthday was the following Wednesday. He turned 6. Can I just tell you how much he has changed in a year? I am so proud of his accomplishments of the past year! He is doing so well in school, and has FAR exceeded how I thought this year was going to go. I took him and his friend Tate (both born with the "Star Wars" gene) to ride the bumper cars. He wanted pancakes for dinner (which is what he had for breakfast too... he can eat 6 in a sitting!), and he wanted rice pudding instead of cake. He got a new bike this year, partly because he outgrew his old one, but mostly because he learned to read this year, and kept asking me why his bike said "Girl Power" on it. Darn those hand-me-downs from your sisters!


Kayden's birthday was the day after McKay's and he turned 15 this year. So far he has been a pretty good teenager. He cares about his grades, works hard and meticulously, has the cleanest room in the house, serves at church, seems to have found his niche running on cross country and track, and is very responsible. He does seemed bugged though. Bugged by his siblings, bugged by his parents, bugged by some school assignments/teachers/classes, bugged when he has too much to do, and bugged when he has nothing to do. I was telling my mom about one of his "bugged" moments, and she reassured me that they out grow that. She told me that when they get home from their missions and right up until they get married, they are a lot of fun! WHAT?! That's all I get? And I have to wait how long?! My mom needs to work on her pep talks I think... Kayden wanted Texas Roadhouse for dinner, and asked for strawberry shortcake for dessert. He got private driving lessons for his birthday. Ya, I know... I can't possibly be that old. He'll be driving all over by July (with a responsible adult.) I guess that's what happens when you start having kids when you're 13... or something like that... We got a new van a couple of weeks ago. I decided that with Kayden driving, I wanted something a little more reliable and safe. Not that I'm worried. Much.

Maybe I need some Focus Factor....

Our ward is in charge of the program for the May stake baptisms, so I started calling the families that had kids being baptized to get a program together. The first house I called, I got an answering machine, so I left a message. I also got an answering machine at the second house I called, I left my message and then ended with: "...I say these things in the name of.... What? Huh? That was weird!" Then realizing what I said I start laughing. "Huh, that's funny." Then there is an awkward long silence while I try to think of something funny and smart, and not idiotic to say, you know, like "Huh, so apparently I'm just too spiritual for my own good," but I just tried to end my message with a prayer for crying out loud... so nothing smart came to mind, so I quickly mumbled "Alrighty then, I'll talk to you later!"and hung up the phone. (Um, ya, I have no intentions of calling them back now...) Oh good grief.. I'm such a dork.


So I'm thinking I'll get some of that Focus Factor so that maybe I can pay attention enough to remember when I'm saying a prayer, and when I'm leaving a message AT A REAL PERSON'S HOUSE!! I'm telling myself that it was a kind of long message and the machine probably cut me off before I got to the "and I say these things...." part, and definitely before I started talking to myself on the answering machine.

My tulips are poking up in the front yard! It's been beautiful the last two days, and my kids have loved being outside again. Less than two months of school left! Yippee!

Yippee! I was allowed on the computer!

We've been on Spring break... and the weather has been windy/rainy/snowy/haily/coldy, so that means my kids have been indoors and on the computer, the same time I want to be on the computer! But I managed to sneak in a few minutes (and by a few minutes I mean that McKay is right here waiting to get on the computer because he needs to know which arm Ben 10 puts his watch on. Important stuff when you're 5.)

I have been really enjoying the small break from school. At the end of the quarter we get hit with all sorts of projects and extra homework assignments.

A few weeks ago the girls went to the David Archuletta concert that was here in Idaho Falls. The tickets sold out in 3 minutes, and they were so excited we got tickets. I dropped them off about 3:30 in the afternoon (no assigned seats for this concert...) and the concert started about 8:00. The weather was beautiful that day, so they just sat outside in the sun, not too far down the line, and watched the craziness! And it paid off, they had great seats. I hung out down there for a little while, and was a little jealous I gave my ticket to one of Malia's friends. But I'm pretty sure they handled the screaming girls better than I would have.


A little while ago Malia was made the Beehive president (which would be really cool, if she wasn't the ONLY beehive in our ward right now...), and she got to help plan a trip to Salt Lake for the Young Woman's conference which was last Saturday. There were three girls and their moms that went (we have a really small group of youth in this ward, but really nice, good, strong kids.) We got to SLC and did a little shopping, ate at The Garden Restaurant up on the top of the Joseph Smith Memorial building, took a tour of the Beehive house, hung out on Temple Square, and then went to the conference center. We were kind of all shocked with the seats we got. We were 12th row from the front, right in front of the Prophet. It had an amazing feeling being that close, and very memorable for Malia. After the conference we went out for pie and lots of giggling, and made it home about midnight. I really enjoyed the day with Malia and the others that came.

The view from our seats.

On Monday, Targhee had a two-fer deal going on lift tickets, so Rik and Kayden headed off to go snowboarding on the BIG mountain! They both came back sunburned, stiff, tired, and in love with that ski resort! I didn't send my camera with Rik, but when he got home he said it was beautiful up there, and he wished he had the camera.

Speaking of Kayden, here's a picture of him running. He's liking track a lot, but would like it even more if it would warm up a little, so he's not running in the snow!


The kids head back to school tomorrow (ya, I know, weird to go back for Thursday and Friday.) We're down to the last 2 months of school. I'm assuming Spring will get here one of these days too... hopefully sooner rather than later. We seem to be battling ear aches and coughs here the last week, and some warmer air (but NOT warmer WINDY air) and some open windows would be really nice.