Multiple Months in Review...Yet Again!

Well, now that I got all the chick drama off my chest, I can catch up on the last few months. Today in between my chick exploits and my April fools day pranks, I realized. It’s April 1^st and I haven’t blogged since January. I find myself wanting to blame it on being busy, but I believe I have used that as the excuse for at least half of my blog posts over the past few years. So, I guess rather then saying, "life is busy", I should just say, "life is normal".  Normal is good, and I enjoy being busy…most of the time.

I will let the pictures I managed to remember to take explain the past few months.

To survive the cold months...

We also took a trip to St George for some much needed sunshine.

 There is a story to go along with this very unflattering photo of my behind. Hudson had been asking for a very long time to hike to the top of one of the old volcanoe in the St George area he happened to noticed off the road on a drive one day. Since we all thought it would be fun we made a trip out of it.  Our family and Ross and Jenny headed out on a well beaten path that leads in a slow climbing spiral up and around to the top of the Volcano.  It was quite a long walk so, when we got to to the top and looked off into the view below, we thought, "Why not take the short cut down, by just climbing straight down the side of the volcano and skipping the long winding trail?" Great idea right?!? Well...not so much.  It was much steeper and much more slippery then it appeared sharp cinders covering the terrain.   We ended up sitting on our butts and sliding straight down with the two little girls on our laps...oddly enough, laughing the whole way.  Below is the result of our wonderful ideal.  I got away lucky however, as Ross was left with a substantial gash on his arm. At least it was memorable for sure.

At the top of the cinder cone.
Maybe the elevation clouded our judgement.

Our traditional photo for Presidents Day in St George.  It gets a little harder to achieve each year.

Back in the arctic north...

Monkey, Jake and Ross sluffin school and work to enjoy a day of skiing at the Canyons.

Thanks to a baby sitting swap for free ski passes and Uncle Ross being sweet enough to lend me his ski gear.  Jake even took me
for a fun day of Skiing at Deer Valley.  Also, a big thank you to Gram Wendy for babysitting! It was so amazing!

Even little Melly Girl got her first try at skiing on a special date with Daddy up at Park City.  

We had some other big firsts in our family....

                                        Autumns CRAZY hair finally got long enough to put it into Piggy's. THANK GOODNESS!!!

Hudson lost his first tooth.  I thought I might cry, but I managed to keep it together.
He was pretty excited that the tooth fairy came and brought him "one quarter and one dollar bill, even though I  was just hoping for the dollar bill."

Baby Boe Boe started nursery.
 I definitely didn't cry. It breaks my heart she is growing up so fast, but WOW! She is so DIFFICULT at church! Love her to bits, but WOW really really difficult! You would not believe how one little girl can disrupt an entire primary. You might think,"Whhaatt"? "That sweet thing?" "I'm sure its just bad parenting." That's what I would have said! Well, I would gladly give anyone who thinks they could do better a job at managing this little thing when she gets her mind set on something she can't have.  Fortunately, she is loving nursery. We are loving having her there!

We started working on the back yard. Hooray! 

Everybody has been pitching in :).
Actually Hudson has been almost as obsessed with working on it as Jake.  He has abandoned all of his old favorite activities for filling wheel barrels full of rocks.  After one Sunday of listening to him beg and beg to get out and work on it, we had to have some lengthy sit down discussions about why we don't work on Sunday.  He is a funny boy, with a lot of focus. 

EASTER FUN

On the hunt for treats at the Heber City Egg hunt.

Easter Dresses.

How can such beautiful things be so difficult to photograph!?!

Delicous and Educational.
Jake taught us the story of Easter by making us
  "empty tomb" rolls he learned how to make in Home Ec..
(Only in Utah ha ha. Am I right ?!?)

The longer I have kids, the more I like holidays. Its just an excuse to do silly things to make the day as fun and special as possible.  As long as they are little and enjoy it, I will probably continue with this.  Recently for St Patrick's day, in addition to all the not so visually appetizing green foods I served up for them, I spent a ridiculous amount of time searching for chocolate gold coins to use for the pot of gold at the end of the far too elaborate treasure hunt the "Leprechauns" had left for my kids to find when they awoke. It was so long Ellie lost interest half way through. The same Leprechauns, also thought it would be funny to stick shamrock shaped stickers all over the kids in their sleep, which may or may not have left Ellie with a pretty severe rash the next morning.

For April fools day, I decided to leave it pretty simple with just a few silly pranks.  I have at times in my past taken pranks a little too far.  You know where you just get a little too excited and it crosses the line from funny to destructive and police may or may not end up being involved. Well, I thought I was being cute. I thought I was being fun. I guess there are some things you just do NOT do.  

Like telling Ellie she gets to eat cupcakes for dinner when they are really just meatloaf with blue mashed potato frosting. I'm not sure I have ever seen the kids so mad at me. 

I guess there are just some lines you don't cross.

(Getting to wear PJ's during the day and clothes at night was also part of the April Fools fun.)

(I'm not that lazy....yet!)