Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Here we are all in green for St. Patrick's Day!

My sister Carrie has had us over every St. Patrick's Day for years, and she decorates all green and has Corned Beef, and a bunch of green stuff! So cute. (I think this is a big deal to her husband, who use to be catholic before joining the ranks of mormonism)

Here we are below, her family and mine... minus who?? oh, that would be Bruce taking the picture, the only one NOT in green... how very unfestive!

Do you even know why St. Patrick's Day is celebrated?? I asked my brother in law Geoff (AKA Uncle Buff, El Jefe) last night.... Patrick, who was made a Saint by the catholic church was the missionary/man who brought Christianity (via catholicism) to the then Pagan Ireland. And the country really embraced the new Christian religion. What a great reason to celebrate... Christianity brought to a nation! Soooo I've never been to Ireland, nor plan to, or have any Irish in me... but I'll still wear green for that! :)

And the kids had fun playing with the Brady's cute turtle!

PINEWOOD DERBY

Tuesday night Dallin had his LAST Pinewood Derby!

He turns 11 next month, and moves out of Cub Scouts.

Bruce helped cut the car, but Dallin really did paint it and design it all himself! His car was winning 1st each time, and he was all excited, then something happend to one of the wheels, and after that it stopped going as fast... but Dallin was a good sport about it, I was proud of him. Especially since the other 2 boys, D.J. and Zach, that Bruce helped make their cars, placed in the top 5! We were excited for them and Dallin still had fun!

And last month Dallin's school had this really neat program for Presidents day, where all of the 5th graders spent weeks learning LOTS of patriotic songs. It was neat to go to... how can you tell which one is Dallin below??? CLEARLY, he is the most handsome one there, in the middle with the shirt and tie!


We love you Dallin! You are such a good boy! I am so happy to see you read your scriptures every night. I see you constantly be the first one to jump up and help your siblings and others. You have such a big heart. The other day we were at "Jeepers" play place with the kids and this lady walked in the door a little ways away and dropped a bunch of plates and stuff she was holding, and without skipping a beat Dallin ran over to her and started picking up all of the stuff. I was so proud of him, and as we drove home I told him that he is really being what he has said in cubscouts for years: "... I promise to do my duty to God and my country... and help others...". I think you can really feel inside that you have kept your Cub Scout promises!
I am sorry Dallin that sometimes it is so hard for me to be patient with all of the ~eNeRgY~ you bring, because when I really sit back and watch who you have become, I am so pleased and proud!!!
I love you!!!

Kids Art and Anniversary

SUPERBOWL

(picture by Dallin)

So, I canceled my Primary Presidency meeting and we had a Superbowl party! We don't normally watch TV/games on sunday.... but we made an exception... the CARDINALS were in the superbowl?!! Bummer we didn't win... but atleast we had that long touchdown run with 2 minutes left in the game that got us all on our feet screaming! I was hoarse all night from the screaming from that 1 play... good times! Dallin was drawing Superbowl pictures all month after the game!

Now, can anyone guess who this is below????? I will give you some hints.... My parents were getting rid of old VHS movies, and gave us this 1980's series of movies, which, who knew would recently come out with another film to add to the collection....

Yes, the above picture is Indiana Jones, as depicted by Logan Vernon. Isn't it cute??

My boys have watched them all and loved them.... but ME on the other hand is about to give them away... a little too violent, especially the last one... ok, seriously, am I too overprotective of a mom if I get rid of these?? They are only PG, but I am pretty sure it was before PG-13 came in to effect. What do you think??

AND LAST, but not LEAST:

HAPPY 15TH ANNIVERSARY BRUCE!
This picture was actually taken on his 38th B-day in Feb, in the morning before the kids left for school when we opened his presents and had his special birthday breakfast. (no, not cocoa puffs, like his shirt says, which he, by the way, really sent away for from a coupon that came in a cereal box. His new 3 favorite shirts are now his Cocoa Puffs, Cheerios and Trix cereal shirts he got for $3 total. That was a lucky cereal box morning when he found that coupon!!)

But seriously, now even though we forgot it was our anniversary on tuesday, until we were reminded by Janels facebook message wishing us a Happy Anniversary... AND we celebrated it that night by going to Pinewood Derby (how romantic)... I thought of Bruce all day and got teary eyed a couple times just thinking about how WOW, it has been 15 years!!!

I am so thankful to have such a wonderful husband, and what a fruitful 15 years we have had... the sixth child on her way! I have still yet to see the man lose his temper... I am thinking after 15 years, it is just not going to happen! He is everyone's favorite in the family. We all look forward to him walking in the door each day. We are so thankful for such a playful, hardworking, righeous man who reads his scriptures every day, makes sure we read scriptures as a family every day, and comes home to us as soon as he can every day! God answered all my prayers when he gave me Bruce! (and IMAGINE, we only dated 3 weeks before we started talking marriage, and after 5 weeks were officially engaged with the ring!)

So much for our Pattern!

Bruce, me and Lily went to the ultrasound today....

The ultrasound was so precious. It is amazing how it doesn't matter that I have been through this before. I cried. I could feel the baby moving the whole time and it is still just amazingly wild to me, that while I could feel her moving inside of me, I could see her moving on the screen. She kicked herself in the head a couple times while we were watching... seriously, she is going to fit in with the rest of our crazy kids!

I had felt like it was a girl all along, but right before the ultrasound I was like, what if it's not? The tech looked around at other stuff for a while, then when she showed the girl parts and said, its all girl, I of course cried, YEAH!

Some mother said to me once, who was older with 5 or 6 six kids, that she is always so happy to hear when mothers find out it's a girl. She said because girls grow up to be your friends. Boys are precious too, but they grow up and get married, and you stay close, but somehow it's the girls that really become your friends. Her comment was one of the first things I thought of when the ultrasound tech said GIRL. I thought, lucky me, FOUR daughters, four friends. I thought, through out my life, and as they grow older, they are mine, my four daughters. I feel so blessed to have 4 girls, I can't believe it. And somehow it makes my boys even more special to me, because there's just the 2, and I need to treasure those moments more!

Sooooo, the kids were SO excited when they left for school knowing that when they got back from school, they would know if they were having a brother or a sister. I decided to make it fun and went and got pink crepe paper, pink balloons, and made sugar cookies with pink frosting and put little tiny plastic babies on them, and pink hershey kisses on the table. So the kids came home to a PINK house and...

We had a PINK celebration!

girl-boy-girl-boy-girl-GIRL!

PS) Lily went with us to the ultrasound and she was such an angel, sitting on Bruce's lap watching. And Bruce says to her, Lily, look, there's our baby, pointing to the screen... and Lily says, "I can't see it." Poor Lily had no idea how we could see a baby as she looked at images like the above picture... ha ha!

All girl, All healthy, All good.

Good Idea/Bad Idea and a Cousins Party!!

Someone gave me this idea, which doesnt seem that big of a deal, but I didnt think of it... for kids/husbands lunch ideas... she makes a sub sandwich on frenchbread and keeps it in the refrigerator. Good for all week, and the kids slice off size they want. This is YUM and my kids have been loving that I do this for school lunches lately... they tell me their friends are jealous! My favorite combo: ham, pepper turkey, hard salami, munster cheese slices

not so good idea.... what is this???
BAD IDEA: keeping the tupperware of homemade cookies in the oven as a place to store out of sight... I forgot, ofcourse, and the next morning I turned on the oven at breakfast time and smelled something wierd... oozing plastic, coating the cookies. This WAS a huge round tupperware... not anymore!
Best Idea: COUSINS PARTIES!

What is a cousins party?? Well, I am one of the older cousins, and babysat all my younger ones, love them, so 9 years ago, when they were in jr. high/highschool I started having them all over for Cousins Party sleepovers. We did random retarded things like video games, karaoke, heart attack Wal Mart at 1:00am, serenade gas stations, T.P, and always LOTS of junk food, etc... All the boy cousins have gone on missions and many of them have told me the thing they missed most were cousins parties, how sweet! But now most everyone is grown, married and in their 20's, and we still do cousin parties! No sleepovers... but the last one to leave this time was 2:30am. They bring their little ones, and it is a full house, and my kids just pass out wherever, having eaten candy all night. My kids live for cousins parties... and all week in family prayers they were blessin and thankin for the

cousins party on friday!


This time we rented a big slide for it...

and a cotton candy machine!
Grand Total for the night: 45 (including adults and kids)
And yes, the neighbors did tell us to keep it down at 11:00pm, oops!

Happy B-day Karen!

Rockband ofcourse...

So, the next morning at 10:00am the kids were playing on the slide outside, and Bruce and I start seeing kids running by the window happy as they can be with big sticks of fresh cotton candy... Ashlin and Macy had mastered the art the night before and cranked it up for breakfast...

YUM!

A Day Off

So, after our cousins party friday night... I finally woke up monday morning physically recovered and decided I should probably clean up after the party now! Since it was MLK day and no school, I said if we spent the morning cleaning, THEN we would go to FUDDRUCKERS, yum! Why Fuddruckers, well because sunday night Ashlin was complaining to me about all her friends who go out to eat more than us, and informed me that MACY's family goes to Fuddruckers ALL the time, so why don't we EVER go?? Wow, the deprivation. Well, Ashlin is lucky because I was feeling unusually kind and did not say, too bad so sad, but said, lets go tomorrow!! YUM! Everyone complained it up while we cleaned, but sure enjoyed the reward afterwards... shakes and hamburgers all around!

...afterwards we went to the Riparian Preserve behind the library to walk around the lake and play at the park, because we thought it was a beautiful day... WRONG, it was 84 degrees, and it felt HOT, did I miss the memo, is it not still winter??! But thats ok, fun outing, house cleaned, good day!

Superstars

Before we get to the "Superstars"...

Introducing:

Miss. Unibrow

Oh this is not the first time Lily has dove head first into the unibrow world via the mascara from my makeup purse. It really makes her feel like a princess to have mascara on. How do we break the very un-princess news to her?? not cute lily.

And where are her parents while she is doing this... below you will see Bruce is planted on the counch addicted to LOGAN's christmas present (a DS), and most likely I was just as unproductive on the computer.

And don't we love the new kitten Ashlin got for Christmas.

Introducing: Blitz

He slept in Lily's lap for almost an hour, oh, she loves her new baby while the older kids are gone at school!

I think that Blitz likes Logan's new DS about as much as Bruce and Logan do!




On to the Superstars...

So, we have a stage in our backyard... it was meant to be an elevated stone area for a table and chairs, but we soon discovered a better use for it... the stage!

Emma had karaoke birthday party #2 (2 years ago also) for her 9th bday. Don't think they let Lily up on stage, oh no, this picture is taken after the party is over and Lily's princess CD is in, I only sat in the audience and Lily finally got her moment to shine...

this photo as well, after the party Logan got a turn at the mike...

Now, the PARTY!! You get a karaoke machine, balloons, some microphones, and random dress up stuff... and lots of girls who like to be the center of attention... and you have a great

Karaoke Party!!




Below is Emma's favorite friend Kinsely she has made at Mesquite this year. She is in Emma's class and in a wheelchair, with some physical disabilities. Emma loves her and wanted her to come to the party. It was so sweet to see all the girls so nice to her and helping her and loving seeing her sing to the music, even though her vocals are a little slow, and not quite with the beat of the song... but she rocked out anyway!! Go Kinsley!!



And below, a very quickly put together assortment of video/pictures of the karaoke fun, 1 minute. (beware, not a full "Vernon Production")...




Happy 9th Birthday Emma!

We love you!