Spring Break, Easter fun and Birthday!

The month of March went by SO fast, we hardly even knew it came and went.  For Spring Break we started off our vacation in Fresno with Cam's parents.  We park hopped alot and just relaxed.  Let me tell ya, it was MUCH needed relaxing for all of us.  I guess I was too busy relaxing to remember to take pictures, I managed to get this one before we left.  We love getting together with these two and can't wait until the next time. 

PS: Doesn't my mother in law look like she's still in her 20's?

The kids and I dropped off Dad at the airport and made our way to St. George to visit the other Grandparents.  Katie was in town from Iowa so with the babies in tow we headed up north to visit family and friends.  A big thanks to Grandpa and Grandma for watching the older kids!  Again, I forgot to take pictures of when we went up north.  I only got lucky that my sister was a good picture taker and have a few of the visit in St. George.  

Since Kate and Mill were in town we decided to stay for a few more days and enjoy the company.  

Charlie definitely enjoyed the family time!  

The kids talked Grandma into dyeing eggs and making an Easter House.

All I have to say about getting these three to take a picture in their Easter best is WOW!

Not one good one!  I am determined to take a redo someday.

Char is really 99% of the reason we don't get a good picture.  She will NOT look at the camera or hold still.  But still, she is the cutest baby around, looking or not!

This year we decided to go out to the Mesa Temple to the Easter Pageant they do every year.  We hadn't been in a couple of years and were SO glad we went.  Jake really understood the message it gave and because of a Sunday lesson and FHE he followed the story pretty intensely.  He knew exactly what was going to happen before it happened and kept yelling out "Look that's Jesus again!"

 We attended the Surprise "Eggstravaganza" again this year.  The kids enjoyed the jumpy slides while we waited for their age group egg hunt to begin. 

Charlie got a kick out of watching the kids run around like crazy picking up candy and eggs.

This would have been the cutest "sisters" picture, but look who's hideing again.  Why bother right?

The best picture of the day!!  ARRRRGGGGG MATEY..........

It was my 27th Birthday yesterday.  I recieved so many cute cards, gifts and yummy treats.  Cam gave me the best present which was coming home early and just hanging out with us!!  We don't get that often so for me it was a treat!  I got to volunteer at Alex's school Easter Egg Hunt, the kids made me a cake and gave me the second best gift which was the COMPLETE Serie of Seinfield!  WOAH!  It's my favorite time of the day, me and Cam laying in bed with our bowl of popcorn and laughing until our bellies hurt!  Gotta love Cramer!  

Cam the man took me to a nice dinner and then we met up with great friends for a local band concert.  Nothing like loud music that makes your insides shake!  It was a great day and I'm starting to feel like the years can now slow down a bit, I'm liking 27, I think it's a great place to be for awhile.    

Art Show and Green eggs and Ham....

A couple of weeks ago Alex handed me a piece of paper saying we were cordially invited to a Dysart Art Show Reception.  I was thinking this was going to be fun, the school is having a show to display some art from the kids, how awesome and cute is that right?  The day comes, Charlie isn't feeling well so Cam opted to stay home with Jake and her.  Alex and I got to the place and I was asking Alex what her picture looked like, she wasn't sure what was going on and mumbled something about Skippy John Jones.  We walked around for awhile enjoying it just being the two of us and I got thinking maybe we were just invited to a High School art display because nothing was looking familiar to Alex.  Then her crazy art teacher came up to us and gave Alex this fireman hat and sticker and asked if we had seen her picture yet.  She took us over to our schools display and I realized that her picture had been chosen to be displayed.  Come to find out it was a picture of "Skippy John Jones" a book they read often in class. Alex comes from quite a few family members who love to draw and paint.  She has an uncle who is pretty amazing at drawing, her great grandmother is a fabulous artist and paints canvas's, her grandmother is just plain disgusting and can draw or paint anything and everything and her mother, well her mother WISHES she could draw, that counts for something right :) ?  It was special to me to know that Alex may potentially grow up to love to do the things I loved to do as a kid.  I remember going through sketch pad after sketch pad, drawing anything that my mind would wonder upon, it was something I really enjoyed.  So for the Grandparents we have been bragging to about this, here is the awaiting picture!! 

It was Dr. Suess's birthday this last week and the kids learned all about him. Alex was super sad because the school was having green eggs and ham for breakfast and let's face it, I can barely get everyone up and going before school much less get her there for breakfast. So me being stupid enough to think that she would forget that I said maybe we could have it for dinner was cooking some booger looking, funky stuff for dinner that night. They LOVED it! They ate every bite! They are usually kindof picky about weird looking food but they ate it up!

This is Chalrie enjoying her first taste of black beans!! Yum yum!

Teeth, Dates and Curls

Alex lost her first tooth about a month ago.  She was SO very excited since a few of her friends at school had already lost several teeth.  She is constantly tugging and wigglying her other teeth to loosen them. 

Alex's school had a Daughter/Daddy dance.  The two of them got all dressed up and had a great time.  When Alex got home I asked her if her dad embarrassed her and she just smiled a sweet smile and said, "No, dad is a great dancer!" 

Alex is always leaving me love notes around the house and I just want to remember how sweet and cute they are. 

"Oh Charlie".....that is what we are always saying to this ball of fun.  She is constantly making us laugh and giggle.  I'm sure she thinks we are all just nuts!

This bracelet is ALWAYS in Chars mouth.  You can't see that there is a big bead in her mouth but this is how she carries it around the house. 

This is her new discovery!  If I can't hear her or see her, she is in the bathroom unrolling toilet paper or playing in the toilet!

Oh those curls!!!  I can't wait to see what they look like longer!  Her Auntie Kate has some pretty mean curls and I'm thinking she didn't just inherit her name!

Happy Valentines Day!

I meant to send out Valentines to our Grandma and Grandpas and Aunts and Uncles but with a very busy week it just didn't happen.  So for those that we love here are mine and Cam's Valentines!

We LOVE LOVE all of you and hope you have a terrific day full of L-O-V-E!

 It is hard to get a picture of this girl smiling!  She is such a happy baby that smiles alot but she's a stinker to capture on film. 

How you know

your four year old got hold of your camera....

the hard evidence

Play by play of Charlie in about 1 minute

This is one that I took earlier in the day, the reason the four year old got his sticky fingers on the camera........so cute.

New Years Resolution

After being inspired by a friend, instead of making a llllloooonnnnggg list of resolutions that I may or may not (mostly likely not) accomplish I wanted to choose a one word representation of what I would like to overall aspire to work on in 2010.

The word I chose is

I chose Simplify because I want to simplify my life all around. Go back and start with the basics.

*Teach my children the basics in life, simplify my time, spending it more teaching and being with my kids and husband. They are growing up SO fast and in a moment it will all be gone and they will be grown up. My goal is to do things together that we've never done, relax and let things go that aren't important, to remember what IS important.
*I am a Relief Society teacher and our new book this year is Gospel Principles and it is straight up the basics of the gospel. I hope to learn and relearn so much this year.
*I am going to find some basic haircutting/coloring classes to refresh and maybe learn something new.
*I would love to take some cooking classes, something that will teach me to use simple things to make yummy meals.

I 'm going to live my life in the now and soak everything up, remember everything and regret nothing.

Christmas 2009

We had a fabulous Christmas this year. Last minute we decided to head up to St. George and have Christmas with the family. Christmas Eve the kids decorated pizza's with Taylor and Boston while the adults had my mother-in-law's yummy potato soup. Jake really had a better time than he is showing on his face, he's not a huge fan when I pull out the camera and make him say "cheese!"

They also decorated cookies for Santa. It was funny to see each of them have their own little way of decorating. Boston won the prize for the most decorations on one cookie! He kept grabbing handfuls of sprinkles at a time.

Alex

Jake

Taylor

Boston (he was mad because dad shut him down on putting mounds of sprinkles on his cookies :(

Christmas morning the kids slept in until 8:00 and the ONE morning Charlie slept in until 8:45. We started without her thinking she would be up any minute and she just kept sleeping and missed most of the action. Mine and Cam's present this year was a video camera, hence the lack of pictures.

We headed up to Spanish Fork for Katie and Benny's little Millie's baby blessing and the kids were SO SO excited to see snow. It was all we could do to keep the from rolling all over in it.

Jake got a baseball bat and tee ball stand so we took it out to the park and broke them in.

The game only lasted so long when there was a playground 10 feet from them.

Even though we all got sick at one point and passed it along to some others we had a great time with family. We had a good year and hope to make 2010 even better!