Field day fun

School is now over. But before it could be, there had to be field day! So here's some pictures and videos from the fun. We went to watch Ayden in the morning, and then Eli had his in the afternoon. Brings back a lot of memories for me!
Eli doing the sack race
Eli doing the bucket blast

Cayde having a snack during field day

Ayden with his ribbons.


Here is Eli doing his part of a water relay race they did.

Now it is on to summer time and finding things to fill up our days and keep us busy. I am sure we will come up with plenty to do. On to growing grass and gardens. I am so excited there are plants sprouting in the garden! Maybe we will not be failures after all. The grass has only been going for a week, and we have been working to keep it wet. Hopefully it will begin to take root and spring up. I am looking forward to having a lovely yard!

Watering Woes

School is quickly coming to a close. I can't believe it is the end of May already and then summer will be upon us. We are working hard to get landscaping done in our yard. We finally finished moving all the rock from our back yard (of course by we, I mean Joe did most of the hard labor). So now this weekend we plan to rotatill and plant grass seed. I know it is kind of late for planting the grass seed, but this is the first opportunity we will have to get it done, so such is life. My problem now is figuring out the best way to water once it has been put down. Installing an automated sprinkler system would be ideal, but I just don't see that happening right now. So now I am looking at all the myriad of sprinklers you hook to a hose trying to figure out what would be most efficient, and of course cost effective. Some of the obstacles making this difficult are: 1. The yard is divided into 5 distinct areas-- 2 near the house, 2 across the side walk, making up the "common" area, and 1 in the backyard; and 2. All the areas are square, and most sprinklers water in a circle. Since we get a lot of foot traffic down our street, it doesn't seem like a good idea to try to water across the sidewalks, but maybe people will just have to deal with that. I just don't know. I am not complaining, just confused. There really are lots of options out there. Ideally, I would like to buy sprinklers that can be hooked together by hoses and thus water more than one area at a time, but maybe I really just need to resign myself to the fact that I will be spending the next several weeks at the mercy of a timer that goes off every 15 minutes telling me to get up and move the sprinkler! If any of you out there have any wisdom into such matters, please enlighten me. Here's hoping to more days of 70 degrees than 90 so the grass can grow happily!

Mother's Day

I had to wait til after mother's day to post this so I wouldn't ruin the surprise for my female relatives. But I have to show off what my sister and I made for our mother, mother-in-law, grandmothers and aunt for mother's day. Instead of a simple card, we made these exploding boxes with pictures and notes from our little boys in them.

Here is the inside. They had 3 different layers that all fold up into box shapes.

And the cute little quote for the top.

My sister found the idea on the internet, so if you are interested, just google "Exploding Box" and you should find some sort of help or instructions. They were a big hit with everyone. We had a few husbands who also wondered why they didn't get one too. Maybe for father's day...... Hope you all had a lovely Mother's Day!

I Heart My Washer

In the past couple of weeks, I have done a significant amount of laundry. With a stomach virus or 2 go around, we have had our share of throwing up, mostly by children, and 90% of the time in the middle of the night. And so even though my washer and dryer are kind of old, I can't say how glad I am I have them. Best $100 I ever spent at a garage sale! There are a few things that become necessity in my mind once you have kids, and a washer and dryer are definitely topping the list. Also making life easier, hard wood floors. No carpets to shampoo after previously mentioned illness. Makes dealing with it all that much more bearable. Hopefully we are past all this sickness now. It is a beautiful spring day today, so I am going out to work in the yard. We are attempting to landscape the yard now, that is move rock, put down grass seed, and create a garden. Maybe I will post some pictures when we have finally accomplished something. I am looking forward to having significantly less weeds, and I suppose the city is too so they can stop issuing us warning notices when the weeds are taller than 3 inches!

And the Ultrasound Says.......

Had my 20 week (ok technically 21 weeks along) ultrasound yesterday. Did all the technical stuff, measuring, looking at vital organs and all that. Then the technician asked if we wanted to know "what" the baby will be. We said of course! I had been counting down the days lately, just really wanting to know. I am not the type that can wait. So she looked around, said the baby had its legs crossed at the thighs and really wasn't being to cooperative. What a bummer! She did some more looking from all angles, and eventually said she is 90% sure it is a Girl! I know we should all be so excited, right?! But somehow, that 10% doubt, makes me not be able to really believe it. So I feel like I am right back where we started. Guess we will have to find out the "old-fashioned" way, waiting till the baby comes out. Darn, now we have to come up with a girls name and a boys name. My brother-in-law Danny believes if you ask the youngest child what the baby will be, they always get it right. So my sister asked Simon yesterday, and he said "Girl baby....a sister, not a brother." So if we are to take the word of the 2 1/2 year old, a girl it is. I am not rushing out to buy a bunch of pink things though, there are a couple of ladies in my ward anxious to give me all their baby girl stuff, so we should be prepared either way. Oh, but can I really take 19 more weeks of not knowing for sure?! Guess I will just have to!

In more baby related news, Congratulations to my older brother and his wife on their first baby! Andrew was born on the 15th and is doing well, as is his mom. I am so excited for them and hope he won't be a whole year old before I get to meet him! I will just have to find a time to go out and visit the DC area, which I really want to do, but then there is this whole Me having a baby thing..... I am sure we will make it happen at some point.

Spring is springing

Happy Easter! April is shaping up to be a really busy month. Eli has started soccer and is enjoying it. His first game (actually it was the second as the first was cancelled because of the snow last week) was on Saturday, and was wet and miserable! But I guess that is the way it goes with spring soccer. He did a great job and Simon and I managed to stay pretty warm by watching the game from the car. We have lots of church and school activities coming up to keep us busy too. Joe is having a luau with his art club this coming Friday (as long as they get out there and sell the tickets). Then I am helping with a Daddy-Daughter luau at the church on Saturday. Lots of fun Hawaiian festivities going on. On the 22nd is our ultrasound to see the baby and hopefully find out the sex. We will have to let you all know. My older brother's baby is set to arrive on Wednesday (it is scheduled) and we are so excited for him. Lots of spring babies being born!

I just have to give a little blurb about a fun book I read last week. It is called "Letters from Rapunzel." It is technically a kids book, but I sure enjoyed it. The writing was creative and clever and left me feeling very hopeful and happy. Check it out if you are looking for a fun, quick read.

Spring Break

I said I would post pictures from our little spring break trip to Albuquerque, so here they are. We had lots of fun, and the kids did great in the car. It wasn't too bad of a drive. Simon was kind of sick for part of it (even though he was already on antibiotics) but he managed to recover and make it through.

We went to the museum of natural history and saw lots of cool things, including their dinosaurs. Here is Eli next to a nest of dinosaur eggs.





And here is Simon being very concerned during the exhibit about the extinction of the dinosaurs.

We also went to the zoo, which the kids thought was lots of fun. Here is my nephew Ayden posting next to some kind of bird. And then all the boys on the lizard statue.

We also went to Santa Fe and saw the old parts of the city. Kind of cool to look at, but the kids were somewhat bored. Guess historical sites just don't interest them yet. But then we went minature golfing and played in a nickle arcade, and they loved that.
We found the Albuquerque temple and walked around the grounds. It is a smaller temple, but of course still beautiful. (Simon and Cayde were asleep in the cars.)



Every day after all the adventures we went swimming in the hotel pool, and of course enjoyed the hot tub (well mostly my legs enjoyed the hot tub, but you know....)

We all had lots of fun, then came home and enjoyed the rest of spring break. It was fun to have time to do family things! Now we are back to school and all the other things. Eli is starting soccer this week, and April looks to be a pretty busy month. Hopefully spring will come soon and stay. So far it is teasing us with one nice day, and the next being a blizzard. Guess that is spring in Colorado for ya!