February 22nd - 28th (and probably 29th too)

Well, it's almost March, so we thought we would do a little St. Patrick's Day craft for preschool.  I forgot to take a picture of the finished work of art, but it was a pretty cute hand print shamrock.  I think they just liked getting messy for a reason.  :)

 Jaron really got into the fingerpaints....which became more like hand paints.

 Rylea sort of liked it, but I caught a bad picture of her getting ready to say cheese, but snapped a little too early.

 I bought a giant bag of carrots...totally underestimated how much 25lbs of carrots would be and I've only done about half of it, but now I have a lot of carrots ready for some carrot cake, sliced carrots for soup, and I cut up a whole bunch for carrot sticks too.

 We had a friend over this past week and she was adorable, gave me a little taste of what Rylea will probably be like in about a year.  Anyway, as we were getting ready for snack time, she had to make sure all of her 5 stuffed animals....including our giant Jagger (who she adopted while here) had a spot at the table before she would eat.  It was quite the "tea party"

 Rylea basically refuses to eat in her high chair now, she will for a few minutes, usually while I'm getting dinner ready and I give her a snack, but when it's actual meal time and we are sitting at the table she goes ballistic and won't eat or stop crying unless we take her out of the high chair and let her sit at the table....I'm just not sure if I'm ready for her to be out of the high chair, she's just so....contained there.  :)

 We went on a little walk this week, we had some beautiful days.

 Of course we had to play fireman at the lamp post.

 When Morgan comes home from his run in the afternoon he stretches a bit and the last few times Rylea-girl will copy what he's doing, it's pretty much the most adorable thing in the world, I'm glad I got some cute pictures this time.

 Rylea has a love-hate relationship with shoes.  She loves them and always wants to have them on so she can go outside, but whenever we are in the car she takes her shoes and socks off....or if she knows we aren't going outside anymore, I find that girls shoes and socks everywhere, she's worse than her mom!  Actually, since Morgan built the lockers with shoe bins in the mud room, my shoes are usually where they are supposed to be.  :)

 She likes Brittyn's flip flops because she could put them on by herself and was pretty proud that she got them on.  It was a little tricky with her socks still on, but she got it good enough to get to the door and ask to go outside.

 Saturday night after dinner we decided to take a little walk.  We gave all the kids a Creamie.

 I think Rylea and Jaron enjoyed them the most. :)

We didn't get very far though before we heard gunshots behind our house.  We were headed that direction so we changed course, but Morgan went to see what was going on, and sure enough there were some idiots shooting their handguns from the back of the truck on the dirt hills behind our house. (It was across the street, but we could still see them from the kids bedroom windows)  Morgan was pretty upset, that's where a lot of kids go to ride bikes and he was worried someone was going to get hurt.  He called the non-emergency police line and reported it.  During which time we finished our walk and headed back home for showers.  I had to drag Morgan away from the window with his binoculars to help get a bath started; he was worried they would get away.  Anyway, the cops did finally come and talked to the guys for a while, who knows what really happened, but I was happy that Morgan had the instinct to protect us, I sure love that man!

This week went by really fast and seemed busy at the time, but I have a feeling the rest of the school year is just going to fly by.  Teaching piano has made the weeks go by faster for me.  We are excited though because our Family Vacation 2016 got bumped up to Spring Break instead of the end of July.  In about a week we will be headed to Sea World, San Diego Zoo, the San Diego Temple, and of course a couple beaches.  We are really excited, the boys are going to have a blast!  Until next time.......

February 14th - 21st

 It was a fun week.  We started it off by going to Snow Canyon State Park for Presidents Day.  It was a little warmer than we though it would be, but still fun.  We hiked the Petrified Dunes.  I want to go on all the trails at Snow Canyon this year, just to check them all out.  I've mostly spent time in the caves and on the dunes, but I want to see all of it.  Rylea loves to hike, she can't quite keep up with her brother, but for most of the hike she refused to be held.

 It's always a joy to me to see my kids out in nature and loving it and having a good time. There were parts of the hike when they were losing steam and got a little whiny, but for the most part it was great.

 We got done with the hike a little earlier than we though we would and had plans to go have dinner and games at Grandma's house for Jaron's birthday.  We went over early and played games and then ended with pizza and root beer floats in the backyard, it was an awesome day and an awesome way to celebrate our Jare-Bear.

 I couldn't pick just one photo of Rylea and my mom.  There is definitely a special connection between those two.  If I even say the word Grandma at home Rylea runs to the door and keeps asking for Grandma all day.  She loves Fridays when Grandma comes over for piano lessons.  :)

 My mom has always been so selfless with her love for her children and grandkids.  I hope I can measure up and love my kids the way she loves hers.

 This one with Rylea's smile looking up at Grandma is my favorite.  Rylea adores her Grandma.

 Instead of wrapping presents we did the grab bag method...which I'm quite fond of now.  I took all his toys out of the crazy packaging and put them all in a bag and then he got to pick out the presents one at a time.  No mess, no paper everywhere, and Jaron was as happy as he could be.  I loved it.

 Jaron is my happy go lucky kid and can almost always bring a smile to your face.  He can be a stinker though and loves to steal food from the kitchen and pantry if I ever leave anything out that he likes.  His belly laugh is contagious and it's hard not to smile when he laughs and runs away.  Of all my boys, he is the most forgiving.  Of course they fight, but when the others apologize or ask for forgiveness, he never hesitates.  I love that about him.

 It was taking to long to re-order the pictures, so they are a little out of order on the hike, but oh well.  Here's a few more from our hike at Snow Canyon.

 It's really hard not to take a lot of pictures of her and even harder to decide which ones I like the best.  :)

 This family of mine is so amazing.  I love them each in their own special way!  I can't imagine my life without them.

 Logan was our pack mule for a while.  This sweet boy offered to carry all of the boys camelbaks when they were getting tired.  We didn't even ask him to, he just saw that we could use help and went for it.  Of course, later he had to show off all the muscles he got from carrying all the packs.  :)

 I was the pack mule in a different way.  They really did great, but we under estimated how far it would be to get back to the truck and they were pretty tired by the end of the hike.

 Logan took a selfie after taking a picture of my holding Jaron.  Just a little farther on, Tragon was ahead an standing by the side of the trail...which happened to be next to the road...and was just going pee.  Luckily no cars came by while his pants were down, but our favorite line came from Logan who chimed in with "Yeah, Tragon, you shouldn't be doing that, people will take pictures or video and then you'll be famous on Facebook for something bad."

 And now back to Grandma's with the birthday boy.  We played a few games, but mostly when all the kids get together, they just want to be left to their own devices and the weather was awesome and they had a great time.

 We went to the park fro playgroup this week and Ryle can climb all over the place and go down the little slide by herself, she's getting so big.

 Rylea is addicted to my phone...I know, sad, I said I would never just give my kid the phone...well, I'm guilty, I do, but usually when I'm trying to get my hair done, or do something that needs my attention.  She doesn't nap during the day hardly ever now and she is a very busy girl.  Anyway, in trying not to always give her my phone, I've been pulling out random stuff here and there to entertain her.

 This day, it was buttons, I had two small containers of buttons and I think she spent a good hour (literally) dumping buttons out and putting them back in then going somewhere else to dump them out and put them back.  It was awesome and she was pretty good at staying in one location, so clean up wasn't too terrible.

 Her next distraction was getting all the tuna cans from the pantry and building towers.

 Logan built a Mars Rover out of recycled goods for scouts this past week.  He loves scouts and I love that he loves it.  I think he thrives on the structure and "rules" of it.  Everything is very clearly laid out.

 And our entertainment comes from jumping off things upstairs.

 I finished the Book of Mormon for the second time this year and I have one left to go to finish the goal.  My pencil started out mostly new and is down to itty bitty now.  This has been a really neat experience and I feel like I'm really starting to see more of the whole picture of the Book of Mormon and understand it a little better.  It's amazing how things that I already knew just become more solidified as I'm reading.

 Saturday was Damon's day to pick and activity and we thought about heading to Zion, but in the end decided that we would just go check out the local bike path.  What we didn't anticipate was how long it would be.....5.3 miles later we finally finished.  The boys did great.  We had a neighbor friend with us too and there was basically no complaining.  We had a couple scooters, a couple bikes, a wagon and a stroller.  I was wearing horrible shoes and my feet were killing me by the end, but we made it and I was so proud of the kids.

Whew, it was a busy and fun filled week.  I don't think I even covered the majority of it, but I got some of the best parts.  I love seeing our family grow together.  Until next time....