Easter Awesomeness

We had such a fun Easter Weekend. My parents, and three of my brothers and fam came up for a couple days. We had 7 little hooligans running around, Logan is the oldest and Tragon is the youngest. The 3 older boys were getting ready to go outside and get some eggs for our egg hunt.
They all made a pretty good haul.
I only found 2 or 3 eggs several days later.
The kids also got some giant bubble blowers. Damon wanted to do his by himself and basically dumped out all the solution the first time he did it. He didn't seem to mind though, he kept trying again and again.
Logan really liked the bubbles and was able to do his on his own fairly well.
Even though it was just a little chilly, it was perfect for being outside and playing around.
The kids definitely had their fill of candy, but still wanted more. In the end I had to put away my boys' baskets until after they ate something that wasn't entirely made up of sugar.
Logan loved the jelly beans the best and would stick about 5-6 in there at a time.
After the egg hunt we got out all the sand toys to play in the dirt. If you didnt' know any better we might as well be living on beach front property.
We made tunnels and roads and got messy.
We also built a few royal thrones for all the princesses of the family. :)
My mom is always down there getting dirty with the kids. This time I did help her build and awesome tunnel, which is actually still standing thanks to the giant piece of concrete or rock that we had to dig around. :)
For a later activity we did some egg carton caterpillars. It all started out pretty well and the kids were doing pretty good staying clean.
But it only took a second to realize how fun it was to paint on yourself.
We had several masterpieces made of children. Good thing it was washable fingerpaint.
I think we went through about 3 different tubs full of water as soon as the pink/brown water got too murky to clean them off anymore.

Logan didn't want to miss out on any of the attention either, which surprised me that it was Logan who wanted to get all messy and painted, but Damon really wanted nothing to do with it.
And once we were all covered in paint, if you can't beat them, join them.
I think overall the activity was a success, even though we didn't get a chance to finish them. I sort of forgot while they were drying, maybe next time we get together we'll finish them out, since there won't be anymore paint involved.
On our last Family Home Evening, we had a concert for our activity. It was the first time that we had put Tragon up at the piano and he loved it.
He went crazy on the keys, maybe he'll end up being the little Mozart.
Of course, they all had to make sure they got a picture because anytime the camera is out they love to ham it up. Logan's new hobby has been taking pictures. I may have to get him his own little digital camera for Christmas or something like that.

It was so fun to have family together and the boys had a blast, can't wait to do it again!...now that we've all had a week or so to recover :) Until next time...

New Addition

Tragon has a new addition to his mouth, his first tooth! It happened last Sunday during Sacrament meeting....maybe not happened, but that's when we noticed. Morgan was trying to fish something out of his mouth and looked over and said, "I think that's a tooth" Yay for justification for all the latest fussiness. :) Tragon is almost crawling and almost pulling himself up on things. He took his first spill down the stairs and scared us both to death, but he was fine. I think that's three for three on the stairs they've each had a fall, you'd think I'd be a little more diligent after the first child, we do need another gate for the stairs now.

Damon has an awesome accent, kind of New York, Brooklyn maybe, I have no idea where he got it, but ask him to say park, and it's more like Pawk, it's hilarious. If Damon is throwing a tantrum I usually give him a few minutes and then ask if he's done crying, most the time he'll say, "No, I want to cry more" and he'll proceed with a few more fake cries and then in a nice sweet voice, "I'm all done crying, wipe my tears"

Logan woke up early while Morgan was still eating breakfast this morning. He got him a bowl of cereal and starting eating, but then needed to go to the bathroom, but before he left he looked at Morgan really serious and said, "Now, Daddy, don't eat my cereal." Then we he got back, he looked at his bowl, chair, and then Morgan. He slid them away about a foot, then he was satisfied. You had to be there, it was too good. Then we were talking about how Grandma was coming up and would be here for dinner and we'd have pizza and he says, "Is it it pepperoni, or anchovy, I don't like anchovy, it's poop."

Conference, Birthday, Ketchup...ahem Catch Up

Wow, I have to go clear back to General Conference weekend. April has flown by so far. General Conference was great. I'm looking forward to the Ensign so I can re-read them since it's a little tough to hear all the talks when you're entertaining the kids too. They did pretty good though. We got to listen/watch a session with Morgan's parents on Sunday morning, and the weather was good enough Saturday that we actually listened on the radio outside on the porch while the kids played.I made my first batch of salsa ever. My dad makes the most amazing salsa, I love it. My salsa, really different from his, but still so good I ate it all. I didn't know that I liked cilantro until we got a bunch of it in Bountiful Baskets. I made a mango salsa with it that was awful I put WAY too much cilantro and basically killed it for Morgan, but this salsa had just the right proportion and was delicious. I'm looking forward to growing onions and tomatoes in my garden now so I can make some salsa.

We finally made some progress on the community garden boxes, YAY! The boxes are in and almost ready to plant and use, we're still working out all the details, but I'm really excited that I get to try my hand at gardening this year, even if all I end up with is zucchini. :)

On Saturday the 9th I ran a 5k with my neighbor...it was snowing! I hate running when it's cold, in fact I haven't been running (or working out for that matter) for the past 5-6 months because it's too cold, but on a warm "spring" day I felt like running so I signed up for the 5K in AF. We almost got lost, but eventually found our way there. After we past the 1 mile marker at 13 minutes I knew it was going to be a rotten race, my face was frozen and numb along with my toes, but in the end I finished at 28:38. My goal was to come in under 30 minutes. I'm convinced though that the first mile was really longer than a mile because I really don't think I ran two 7 1/2 minute miles for the last two-ish miles, especially when 1 mile was uphill. Regardless though I beat my goal and I'm looking forward to another run in May, probably the Thanksgiving Point Running with Angels run, it's close, not too expensive and should be much warmer.

That night we had a ward activity and "American Idol" sort of thing, only most of the acts were lip syncs. I participated in one and did a rocking guitar solo on a broom. It was really fun. I think you can find it on You Tube, I might post the link later, it's kind of hard to find.
On to the fun stuff. Tragon loves crackers! Actually right now he pretty much likes any food that he can feed himself.
Like Cheerios. The boys spilled a bowl of Cheerios...thank goodness there was no milk all over my sparkling clean floor (yeah, right) and I told them to clean up, and they did.
By eating every Cheerio there, Tragon was really excited to help.
My poor Damon has been getting beat up pretty bad the last few days. Last Sunday he tripped getting out of the car and hit his head on the car door. He got a pretty nice scratch and bruise and his eye started going a little black, but then...
He was climbing in his closet that afternoon and fell and hit the same spot. A huge goose egg about the size of a quarter stuck out of his head about 1/2 inch, it was so sad. The swelling finally went down and then he hit the same spot on a drawer in the kitchen...popped out again. And finally the next day just before bed they were playing cars and Logan crashed a big car into Damon's car, which his face happened to be right next to and it split his lip open. No stitches necessary and no pictures, but there was a lot of blood. Poor Damon, poor poor Damon.
Logan is officially 4 years old! I can't believe it. We had some family over on Sunday for cake and ice cream, and dinner too. Logan was loving it.
We had cupcakes and ice cream and then some neighbors stopped by and joined in for a little dessert. It was quite the household, but Logan sure enjoyed it. He is such a good big brother and so sweet with Tragon and playful with Damon. For the most part he gets along really well with kids one on one, but we're still working on the whole group play. :) He loves to play and be outside and loves to tell you all he knows. I sure love my Buddy!

And for the grandparents viewing pleasure, a little video of Tragon laughing it up. I can't believe how big he's getting either. Time is going by way too fast for me right now, I feel like I'm just hanging on to the coat tails. Until next time...

Logan's Growing Up

This morning I went downstairs after finishing up some work on the computer while the boys were downstairs watching Curious George and there was Logan fully dressed. He even picked matching shirt and pants and remembered to change his undershorts...granted the pants were on backwards, but I gotta hand it to the kid, he sure is growing up fast and I love that he will get dressed on his own, he's only 3! ... at least for another couple weeks. :)

Climb Every Mountain

Life sure has its ups and downs and right now I'm just enjoying some really great "up" time. The weather is getting warmer, we can play outside more. Logan is so full of information and soaking everything in and comes up with the wildest stories. Damon is always playful, eats great and talks a lot. Tragon doesn't spit up anymore and is doing great with solids, he can sit up on his own and really scoot around, does some great push ups, but not quite crawling (secretly I don't want him to crawl yet, he's going to be a busy baby). We've got a roof over our heads, food in our belly, and we're surrounded by awesome people!So, with the weather being warmer...sometimes, we found a giant dirt mountain that the boys love to climb and what luck it happens to be in our "front yard" one of the many perks living in a new construction neighborhood.
Anytime we go outside, they usually want to go to the "lake" (a little pond of water filling a future home lot that hasn't drained, which now has ducks) or the "mountain" Our neighbor friend came with us one day so I was able to run back inside and grab my camera.
The first time Morgan took the boys out I was terrified they would fall and get hurt, but the dirt is pretty soft and they really can't fall too far from any one point and they love it.
They were "bowling" down the mountain. Usually when Tragon is taking his naps we go outside and play if it's warm enough.
Damon can get up by himself, but usually would wait at the bottom for me to run up with him. It's actually a pretty good workout going up and down about 20 times. :)
Of course, have the mountain ended up in my house from their pockets and shoes and socks, but we'll just have to get used to that this Spring and Summer because we love being outside.
A couple weekends ago my mom and sister in law came down to visit, so we blew up the air mattress and it stayed in the extra room for about a week. This was the new parking lot for all the cars.
Logan loves talking on the phone (those are the old ones that don't really work). It's so fun to hear him carrying on a conversation with some imaginary person, although most of the time it's grandma he's talking to.
Playing in the dirt again. Of course we had to take my niece and nephew to the mountain when they came to visit. We even broke out the shovels.
Damon gets along really well with his cousins when he's one on one with them. He was having a great time with Sequoia.
Logan and Lincoln had a blast climbing up the mountain and sliding down and bowling and just getting dirty.
From behind these two could be twins, they both have the cute Charlie Brown head, but turn them around and you can tell, one with bright blue eyes, and one with the darkest of browns.
If you have ever met my mom, you know she is probably the coolest person in the world. I love when she comes and visits, she's always getting down and dirty with the grandkids and teaching me how to be better mom.
They had some pretty awesome roads and holes dug out for the cars.
We had a great time playing and really wore the kids out. I think all of them fell asleep within about 5 minutes of bedtime. That's pretty good for four hyper kids 3 and under. That left us to have a girls movie night while Morgan was at a YM activity.
Logan has always been my "clean" child, but when it comes to digging and playing in the dirt and climbing and hiking he's all boy and doesn't really mind it at all. We had a really great time and I hope that we can do it again sometime soon! And hopefully the weather will be just a tad bit warmer. Maybe I'll stay caught up on my blog this go around too. I really want to try and post shorter entries that deal with the day to day humor that I find and then maybe blogging won't be so daunting. So, until next time.....

The Basement Revealed

I didn't take many pictures, but I did get this video of our basement. It's kinda shaky since I was walking around, but at least now we have a record.

We learned a lot in the process of finishing our basement and it was a fun project, but we're sure glad it's done. We're still pretty busy and I'm starting to wonder how we ever found the time to do the basement, because we thought once it was done we would have tons of time to play and have fun, but somehow we are just as busy. Oh well, at least we have a fun place to play.

This other video is of Tragon laughing, you can kind of make it out over Damon's laugh, he was laughing even harder before I finally ran upstairs and grabbed the camera. I sure love my boys. Right now we can just hardly wait until warmer weather, it has been so nice to be playing outside more. We wore Logan out so much yesterday he almost fell asleep at the dinner table. Until next time...

February in a Nutshell

February is one the worst months of the year for me. I start the year with great ambitions and motivation and do really well during January to meet all my goals. Then February hits along with reality and I'm not doing so great anymore. The biggest goal though in attending the temple once a month happened, but just barely on the last possible day of February that we could go and even then we staggered it so we wouldn't have to get a babysitter for sick kids. Anyway, March will be better it always is after a little February humility and another boost to re-commit to goals.

The most recent family photo. Some days it takes a second to register that I have 3 kids which means we are a family of 5! It's pretty crazy most of the time, but I sure love all my boys.
Logan was not cooperating this for the camera, but Damon was happy to oblige.
Usually over President's Day we find ourselves down in St. George, but with the work on the basement almost complete we decided to stay up here and my parents came up here for the weekend. The basement is officially finished!!! It's been so nice to have a place for the boys to play and to have a tantrum room back and not have the loud echoing coming from down there. :)
We really enjoyed having Grandma and Papa over and wished they could have stayed longer. Hopefully we'll get to see them again soon. Honestly, the past couple weeks are just a blur of business. I'm sure there was more that happened. We didn't really do much for Valentine's Day, at least not on Valentine's. The boys got a little treat which they didn't end up to fond of, but I have yet to catch the holiday itch and go all out for the holidays, maybe when Logan is older and hears about other cool stuff all his friends do, I may have to step up my game, but until then, I really enjoy low key holidays. I did a "14 Days of Valentines" for Morgan and each day I put a little note in his lunch along with a treat or love note and he even got a couple "presents" like a watch and a gift card for itunes. He surprised me a few days before with some beautiful flowers that actually managed to survive the weekend and then some.

I also became a Volunteer Site Coordinator for bountiful baskets. My cousin had been doing it, but she's pregnant and was able to pass it on to me. It's been really fun. I'm only "in charge" every other week and we have a really good group of volunteers. Bountiful Baskets has sort of been my "thing" that I do every Saturday and I love it. I love having the variety of produce and good food around, someday maybe my kids will even help me eat some of the veggies instead of just the fruit. And it's saved us a ton of money that we would have been spending on groceries.

Other than another round of colds we're all doing well and wishing it were Spring. I think I've got Spring fever and now I have a new grand scheme of how we can do some square foot gardening, I just hope it works out, I would love to have a garden and have the boys "help" me with it, I think it would help us get outside more this spring and summer. So, until next time....which will hopefully be in a week and not another month. :)