Easter and changes

We've had an interesting week with lots of sickies in the house, including me. I prefer the times when the kids get sick and don't share it. But I will admit that it was fun to be 5 pounds lighter the next day, even if it didn't last.

The day I was feeling better, I was also feeling pretty ambitious, so I moved all the furniture in my bedroom to make room for a large entertainment center some friends had given us, then I moved that into our room and set it up. It makes my bedroom look a little smaller, but since my bedroom is at least as big as our living room in our last house, we've still got plenty of room in there.

Here are a few pictures:




And this one cracks me up, but it's one of Abby's favorite things to do lately. She climbs in one of the cabinets and then yells at me, "Mom, shut the doors! I'm hiding from you!"


And because Abby started climbing out of her crib this week, I decided to move the toddler bed into her room so she could start sleeping on that. All of her brothers had moved out of the crib at an earlier age, but since she's our youngest, I was keeping her in it as long as she'd stay. So far she's actually been really good about staying in bed when we put her there at bedtime. Last night wasn't as fun when she decided she needed to be awake from midnight until about 3:30 (and I finally got her to go to sleep in my bed), but she's been good other times.

With as cold and wet as this spring has been, it's nice to have some reminders at times that it actually is springtime. That's one reason I love the tulips I planted last fall. Here are a few pictures of my youngest 3 checking them out and smelling them:




The Easter Bunny came to our house on Saturday morning. The boys were very excited and couldn't wait to be able to go down and see what he brought them, but were pretty patient waiting for everyone to wake up. And Abby was very excited to go down when her brothers told her there would be candy there. The Easter Bunny morning always seems to be a bit of a let-down to me because it takes about 10 minutes for the kids to check out all their stuff and then find all the eggs hidden in the house. They do seem to enjoy it while it lasts though.

Here are a few pictures of the kids checking out their Easter goodies:




Saturday was a busy day though. Alex and I had to leave for his soccer game right after they were finished looking for eggs (they lost, but they usually do). Then I had to take Ben and Alex to the store to get a present for their friend Kyle, who had invited them to his birthday party. I totally get my mom's frustrations with kids who can't make up their minds after that trip. It took them forever to pick something out for him. Chris was feeling a little left out because he hadn't been invited to the party, so after they left, I took him on a mother/son date and we did his favorite thing to do on an outing like that; we went bowling. It is pretty entertaining to watch him bowl. But I need to remember not to pre-pay for 3 games and just stick to 2. He started getting a little bored halfway through the 3rd. But that was party because he really wanted to try his luck at the claw machine and try to get the yellow dolphin he saw there. I decided to let him try, figuring I could show him how those machines really just waste your money, then he actually won the dolphin. I think that was his favorite part of the whole day.

Here's Chris bowling:


Chris just had a busy weekend. He was really excited when on Sunday he lost his first tooth! He didn't even wait until bedtime before he put his tooth under his pillow for the tooth fairy. And he's been carrying his money around with him all morning today.

Here he is without his tooth, and holding the tooth in a bag:



So there are a few pictures of our week. Thrilling life, I know. :)

Finally more pictures

We finally got our new computer. Yay! It's amazingly fast and boot up in seconds, so I'm really enjoying it so far.

But now that we have it, I can actually put on some of the pictures I promised to put on before. I know you're thrilled beyond belief. So without further ado, here they are:

First, here are some pictures from Christmas:







After Christmas, Bryce's parents came to visit for a couple of days. Here are a couple of shots with them and our kids, but first is one of Chris being silly while they were here. You'll notice in the others how well the kids sit and smile for pictures:





Next up is Alex's birthday. He turned 7 this year. He is such a smart, nice, funny kid. He can be such a tease, but he's always been our one to make sure he shares with everyone else and will even still give his mom hugs in front of the other kids at the bus stop.





I was going to try to post a video again, this time of us singing happy birthday to Alex, but it appears to not want to work, so you just get to miss out on that.

Then life went on as normal for us, with not too much exciting happening, except I was busy with practices for The Ten Virgins play I was in. Here's a picture after our performance of our cast and crew:


Ben started going to the G/T program at school (Gifted and Talented) recently, and their first project was a country report. He started it when there were 2 or 3 weeks left to do the project, so they had told him he didn't need to do all of it, but he didn't tell us that, and we had him do it all. He originally chose to do his report on Russia, but since Bryce served his mission in India, we talked him into switching and doing it on India. Here's what his display board and report looked like:


After the play and Ben's report, our next big thing was when we went to Utah during Spring Break so we could go to Mom and Dad T's missionary farewell. I'm still SO excited for them to be able to go to the same place I served my mission!

While I was there, my mom was really nice and paid for me to get a haircut from Oscar. He does a great job and it's been a few years since I've gone to him. Cindy also went to him on the same day. Here's a picture of the two of us together after our new haircuts:


Here's a picture of Rachel, Cindy's baby, while we were there.


Abby still thinks it's hilarious to call me Cindy. She will laugh and laugh and laugh as she looks at me and says, "Hi Cindy."

After we got back from Utah, our big thing was Abby's second birthday. She was very excited for her birthday. When she first woke up and I told her happy birthday, she said, "Cake!" She definitely has a sweet tooth like her mom. Here are some pictures from her birthday:




These ones made me laugh. They were how Abby responded when Bryce told her to pose for a picture. And if you know Abby, you know she's really good at spilling on herself, which is why the front of her shirt is pink:



After Abby's birthday, it was my birthday, but we didn't take any pictures of that. Thanks, Bryce! :)

So that's basically everything up to our new computer. If you're friends with Bryce on facebook, you can see pictures of it. If you want to know what kind it is, here's what he said about the computer when he commented on the album: Silverstone FT02B, MSI P67A-GD53-B3, i5-2500K, 8 GB DDR3-1600, MSI Radeon 6970, Scythe Yasya CPU Cooler, Mushkin Joule 1200 Watt Modular PSU, Sabrent 65 in 1 Card Reader, LG 10x Blu-Ray Multi-Burner (Blu-Ray/DVD/CD), Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB HDD, Crucial C-300 128 GB SSD boot disk. I like it. I don't think that Stacey will ever let me use it though, I think she likes it more than I do... So if that makes sense to you, then you know what kind we got. If it doesn't, it's really fast, has a lot of memory (a hard drive and a solid state drive), and is really cool and actually really quiet.

More to come

I was going to be posting pictures today, but my slow computer seems to be having issues. It's a darn good thing we're getting a new one this week. It's on its way as I type this. Thursday won't come soon enough, I think. When it gets here and we get it all set up, I will post pictures. And hopefully they'll load a lot faster than they have in the past.

Have you ever wondered if your kids ever really pay attention to the things you teach them and the things you do? Every night when we have t he kids sit together for family scripture study, I always wonder if it's worth the struggle and the fighting. Then every once in a while, they will say or do something that makes me think that they do pay attention sometimes. For example, the other day Abby was sitting on our couch holding the worn-out copy of the Book of Mormon that we use when we do our family study. She was fliping through the pages a little bit and Daniel saw was she was doing. He said to her, "Abby, you're supposed to read it. You say, 'And it came to pass that he was baptized.'" I tried not to laugh out loud too much as I listened to him because I didn't want him to feel like he was doing something wrong. But maybe he does listen occasionally.

Today my in-laws are going to the MTC to begin their latest mission. I am so excited for them, even more so because they're going to the same mission I went to 15 years ago. It's changed a bit since then, but I'm sure it's still going to be a great one. They get to live right by the Sacred Grove, where Joseph Smith actually saw God the Father and Jesus Christ. I wish them well on their mission and know they will receive great blessings. And I must admit, I'm looking forward to the blessings that we'll get from their service. We'll miss seeing them, even though we don't get to see them very often, but it will be possibly the whole 18 months before we get to see them again. I'm hoping we'll be able to get the chance to go out and visit them, but who knows if that will happen?

It's amazing sometimes how quickly things change and kids grow up. I look forward to seeing what's waiting to come for our family in the future.

Long Time Coming

Yes, it's been forever since I've done anything with the blog. And I think probably too much has gone on in the last 5 months to really catch up, but I will add some pictures and stuff.

At the end of July, we went to Utah to visit family and to go to the family reunion. While we were there, we took the kids to Temple Square to see things, since we hadn't done that with them before. They had a good time. Here are some pictures:







Shortly before school started, Ben and Alex both learned how to ride their bikes. They hadn't really wanted to try, but I finally fixed the tire on one of our smaller bikes (yes, I did all by myself) and they were willing to try on that one, after I bugged them about it enough. It really only took them each a couple of minutes to figure it out, and now they love riding their bikes all over. I have videos of them riding, but not still pictures, so you'll just have to imagine it.

Then school started on August 18th for Ben and Alex. Ben was going into the 3rd grade with Mrs. Roderick as his teacher, and Alex was going into the 1st grade with Mrs. Escutia as his teacher. They were both pretty excited for school to start, but not so excited for me to take their picture on the first day of school.



A couple of weeks after Ben and Alex started school, Chris had his 5th birthday and then started preschool a few days after. He actually could have started Kindergarten this year, but with his birthday being the day before the cutoff, we thought it would be best to hold him back a year. So far he loves preschool and says he's the smartest one in his class, which is probably true, since he can already read a little bit.





We had a big day during Labor Day weekend. Ben was baptized! We had lots of family come up for it, which he loved. He said his favorite part was being in the water because it was warm, so he didn't mind when he had to do it twice. His friend Jayden was baptized the same day and he had to do it twice too, so Ben thought that was pretty fun. Thanks to everyone who came up and made it even more special for him!



I think I'll end this one now and post pictures from Halloween and Christmas and Alex's birthday later after I upload the pictures from my new camera to the computer. Hopefully it won't take 5 months. :)

4th of July, Ben's birthday

We enjoyed a quiet 4th of July at home this year. Bryce had a nice 4 day weekend, so that was nice. Of course we ended up with too many fireworks to light on just one night, but we didn't go as overboard as we have in the past. And this year, Chris and Daniel actually stayed out and watched them instead of running into the house and sometimes peeking out the front window. Daniel did go run inside after I mentioned that they had been actually staying out, but I don't think he was actually scared. And Abby loved the fireworks and wanted to see more.

Here are some pictures from our nights. Since Abby put our camera in the toilet, I've been having to take everything with my phone. Luckily, the phone is a 5.0 megapixel camera too.










And if you've seen any of my posts on facebook, you've heard about Daniel breaking his right big toe (or great toe, as all the doctors and nurses called it) by dropping a big rock on it 2 minutes after I told him to stop playing with the rocks. He was upset when he saw the cut on his toe and kept yelling, "It's broken! It's broken!" But after he calmed down, he was pretty good about it and even entertained all the doctors and nurses to the point where they all said they wanted to keep him there all night. And as we were leaving the ER( we had gone to a Quick Care place where they took the x-ray first, then sent us to the ER where they'd be better equipped to be able to deal with an open fracture, even though the fracture was an in-place fracture and the cut on his toe was caused by the rock, not by the break), Daniel was very cute and kept telling everyone he saw, "Thanks for fixing my toe!" And if you missed the pictures on facebook, here they are again:





And Ben celebrated his 8th birthday this month. Since it's an even-numbered birthday, he got to have a friend party and decided he wanted to go bowling. The problem with birthday parties in the summer is the large number of kids invited who were going out of town that weekend, so didn't get to go. He still ended up with 3 friends plus his family there, so it was fun. He even got a bowling pin from the bowling alley at his party, which was pretty cool.








And Alex lost his second tooth recently, which wasn't the one we thought would come out second, but he was still pretty excited to get another visit from the tooth fairy.