We Love Our Moms!

Our family has been SO blessed with many mothers.  It was great last week to reflect on how precious those mothers are in our lives.  Although it is wonderful to reflect on the joys of motherhood, it is also scary to see Satan’s relentless pursuit to break up the family unit these mothers work so hard to create.  His tool belt to do this is infinite, from moral degradation and indifference, to the misuse and misunderstanding of God-given resources.  As the attack on the family continues, it would not surprise me if this evil master planner focused his energies on how we treat our mothers.  God bless our mothers.

Easter 2013 Eggstravaganza

I am a little bit ashamed to admit this but my kids went to 4 Easter egg hunts this year.  We went to the neighborhood hunt, Patterson egg hunt, Grandma egg hunt, and Easter morning egg hunt.  This really isn't typical for us, but the kids definitely weren't complaining.  We also continued our tradition of dyeing Easter eggs.  Coloring eggs always gives Nate a lot of anxiety.  He lives in fear that the kids are going to spill the dye every where, but for the 6 years or so we have been doing this activity with kids we have yet to have any spills.  The kids always enjoy dying eggs and put a lot of effort into making the ugliest egg, we had quite a few grey eggs this year.  On Easter morning the Easter bunny left the kids a chocolate bunny, a small toy, and quite a few books (apparently the Easter Bunny wants to encourage reading).  We attend church on Easter at my aunts ward to hear my cousin give his farewell talk for his mission.  He did an excellent job!  He is going to be a great missionary!  We spent the rest of Easter spending time with my family.  Since everyone was in town I hosted a very low key Easter dinner for my family.  It was a great weekend!

Spring Break 2013

Our Spring Break this year was very low key, which I feel like happens every year.  It seems like every year during spring break that the kids are sick or something happens to make it a very uneventful break.  This year I was 7 months pregnant during the break, so low key is what we did for spring break, again. Maybe, one year we will get really wild and go on an exotic trip to Utah or something over spring break.  Anyway, even in my current state I did manage to get the kids out for a few activities over the break. We went to the zoo, the golden park (that's what my kids call it, the play equipment is mustard yellow), and Lily attended a princess party with her girl cousins.  Other than that, we mostly did stuff around the house.  Which, if I am honest sometimes it is nice to have nothing going on.  We stayed in our pj's till at least 10 o'clock, did chores everyday (I wanted to prep the kids for summer) had a movie night, played some games and just puttered around our house. It wasn't anything wild and crazy but it was good family time.

Zoo

Girl Party

Golden Park

St. Patrick's Day

The sneaky leprechaun visited our house again this year.  He was even more mischievous than usual this year.  He left us a little present in our bathroom.  The kids thought this little bathroom escapade was very hilarious.  The leprechaun of course also died our milk green and left us some delicious chocolate coins.  The kids looked super cute in their green church attire so I had to snap a quick picture, of course none of the boys were cooperative so they both look a little goofy in the picture.  The kids always enjoy the yearly visit of our leprechaun friend.

Basketball 2013

Carson finished his second season of basketball last weekend.  His team this year was called the Warriors. He had a great season and improved tremendously from his first year.  Carson was a lot more confident with his dribbling and shooting, and kept excellent control of the ball and scored almost every game.  In one game Carson was on fire and managed to score 6 times!  He had a really fun season!  He worked hard at all of his practices and you could definitely see that he improved by the end of the season.  Go Warriors!

Skiing

Nate took Carson out of school this last Friday to take him skiing for the first time.  Despite a rough start and a lot of falling, Carson kept trying. By the end of the day Carson was off the bunny hill and going down a normal ski hill.  Nate was way proud of him.  He said Carson never gave up despite a lot of hard falls and was determined to get the hang of it.  They had a great time together! I think that skiing is definitely going to be a sport that Carson takes an interest in.  Way to go buddy!

Valentines

For Valentines this year I tried to make sure I spent some good quality time with my little kids still at home.  So we started out our Valentines day fun by making these cute "love bug" valentines hats.  Then Lincoln and Lily helped me make some red velvet cup cakes for our family Valentines dinner.  When making the cup cakes the kids apparently discovered that plain sugar is good.  Lincoln kept saying to me "mom did you know this stuff was good?"  Well, yes but I was hoping that you wouldn't figure it out. Lincoln was so taken with the sugar that I may need to move the sugar to a higher shelf in the pantry.  We waited for Carson to get home before we decorated the cup cakes.  Lincoln and Lily's cup cakes were covered in candy and sprinkles they were about half a pound heavier after they were done decorating them.  When Nate came home we had a nice family dinner.  We had a very nice low key Valentines day.