SPRING BREAK

We don't technically have spring break at our house but our friends do so we go on our annual camping trip during their spring break. This year we went to Snow Canyon, near St. George, it was farther away than we usually go but lots of fun and sun! It was a little nostalgic for me, I grew up vacationing in red rock. I loved the moment this pic captured, even from behind...



The colors of this picture are amazing, blue sky, red rock and the green... perfect!



We had a few mini lessons about erosion, again some nostalgia, my mom used to give us geography, history, and horticulture lectures as we went.



A little deceptive... this is the same arch from the above pic...



No camp out is complete without S'MORES!!



Kyla loves the BIG marshmallows, and prefers them "not marshed" meaning not roasted.



We spent some time playing in the sand dunes. Steve here being a big kid... needless to say we were all covered!!!



Swimming in the sand.



Johnny loved the sand too, I loved that I finally found a hat that he will wear. Hats usually last 30 seconds but he loves "Lightning a Queen" so he will keep this one on!

Sweet Awakening

My morning usually starts with Johnny or Kyla climbing into my bed and waking me up. I am not much of an alarm person, no need for one right now... Today was unusual, I woke up to Johnny coming out of his room, he likes to shut his door... hard, and then to Kyla and Johnny talking.
"Johnny, are you awake?" Kyla
"Yeah. Bumpy blanket. Softy. Dogie." Johnny naming all the things he slept with.
"Go get them." Ky
"Bumpy stuck." John
"I'll help ya." It is music to my ears when I hear Kyla say that!!
Then for the next half hour they read stories to each other. Kyla was pretty accurate, she memorizes books and "reads" them to herself or to me "when she is the teacher." It was a blissful half hour laying in bed being lazy listening to my two sweet kids being sweet together.
Then it was the 3 ring circus of breakfast, getting dressed and out the door for errands, the usual, but what a great way to start a day!!

What Johnny and Kyla have been up to...

Kyla and Johnny made some video to send to their grandparents... (Thanks for the idea Belle, they love to watch your songs and wanted to do some too!)
ps You have to go to the BOTTOM of my blog and pause the music to hear the video...

What Steve has been up to...

Steve has been wanting to "fix" our closet for awhile. It was poorly designed and always seemed messy. We emptied the closet Friday night, and this is the pile... it amazed me how much stuff you can stuff into a closet!!


By Monday night we had a new closet. He added the shelves for shoes, we were both amazed by the number of shoes we own... He added a second rod on my side, so now both sides have two rods, with a foot at one end of my side that is full length for dresses... smart guy to think of that. He also put in cedar paneling behind the clothes, I didn't take a picture before we put all the clothes back in.


He has also been wanting to fix the stairs that go into our "basement." The previous owners converted the garage into a big family room, as much as we love the space it is not the prettiest room around. (and we really miss a garage!!!) We have gone back and forth on our ideas for the room, turn it back into a garage or fix it up to be a nice space... After three years we decided not to decide and just fix the things that really bug us, future garage or not. So here are the stairs before. They just carpeted the garage stairs, so they were smaller, squeaky and well ugly. They left the door jam, just took the door off the hinges and painted...


Steve took advantage of the kids and I being in Utah for a week and tore out the old stairs. He built new stairs and added the banister. He took out the door jam and made it into an arch. I surprised him and came home a day early so I got to help with the clean up... but he did the rest solo. He likes to work that way, no kids or wife to slow him down or demand his attention...


The arch really made a difference, it feels so much less like a converted garage and more like part of the house. Ky and John wanted to be in all the pictures. This one Ky is showing her pink princess phones. Two because she lost one 6 months ago and got a replacement, then the closet clean out this weekend produced the missing pink princess cell phone.... one less missing toy to keep my up at night. :)

Beave's artistic side

Our January break from snow is over, the storms have started again. With the last one Beave took some cool pictures. He likes to experiment with the camera, I am more of an "auto" kind of person...
sunrise

night sky


OK so this one is mine, how can you tell? KIDS!!

DONE!!! for now...

I took over the kitchen table and the kids were slightly neglected but I finished John's scrapbook!!! Well up to Jan 2009, I am already a month behind... I think if I do each kid's book in 6 month chunks I can keep up. It will probably take me the next 6 months to get Kyla's caught up, I have a year and a half of pictures to do. I went through our pics to print Ky's and noticed the older they get the more pics I have of them... I guess I am not into pics of babies laying around. :) She is anxious to "help" me, we can finally use all those cute girlie stickers we didn't use in Johnny's book.
It was fun to look back at all the things we have done in the last year and a half. Johnny has, of course, changed so much in that short time. When Steve was looking at the book he said he didn't remember Johnny being as happy as he looked in the pictures... Johnny was a BIG mommy's boy!!! He didn't smile too much for Steve for a long time. Now they are best buds and Beave thinks John's smile can fix just about anything! I love this little guy, so full of personality!

IT'S A...... MONKEY

I had my ultra sound last week... Going into it Kyla was betting on a girl and I thought it was a boy. Johnny and Kyla came with us, Johnny was pretty quiet taking it all in until halfway through when he yelled "monkey!!" Ky and I both lost... it's a monkey. The little one may get called monkey a time or two but the doctor says it is a... BOY!! Kyla was OK with that because she has the baby girl in her tummy.
So the end of June we will add another boy to our bunch and Ky and I will be out numbered. Steve says Kyla is girlie enough to out girl 5 brothers and is excited for John to have a brother to counter act it all.
The baby is developing well and everything checked out, which we are grateful for. A healthy baby boy... monkey.

the warm Phoenix ZOO

It is crazy to me that I can drive 2 hours and go from freezing to HOT! Saturday we left our snow and cold at home and went to warm up in Phoenix, it was high 70s! Kyla and Johnny loved the zoo, it has been awhile since we have gone to one. Johnny called everything a Zebra, until he saw the real ones! Kyla liked the Wallabies the best, you can go in with them.

Kyla hitching a ride from Beave. By the end I was wishing for someone to give me a ride, maybe not a shoulder ride though...


This mommy orangutan kept one long arm on her baby while she slept, he wasn't too into sleeping but his choices were limited... you can learn a lot about parenting from the wild... :)


Kyla doing her best lion roar!


The real guy was far less fearsome than she was...


Johnny and mom.


This flamingo cracked my up, I didn't know their legs could bend that way...

the big chair

These three are rarely sitting down when they are together... either it was a great movie or we finally tired them out! Notice Kyla is in a swimsuit, she and Jade change dress ups every 5 minutes until they find the right one for that day... apparently it was a swimsuit day.


Johnny has discovered the world of the Wii. He loves to play "ready go" with daddy. He has some rad moves on the snowboard, some even Beave doesn't know!

A nose between each pair of eyes, noses noses every size

We have had some excitement with noses the last two days. Yesterday Johnny drove his ride on car down the stairs. It was only the short stairs (5) but it still gave him a good bloody nose. Did I mention he was on the car as it went over the edge?! This is the damage the day after...


Kyla was getting herself some lotion today and had a lotion explosion! We were both glad it didn't end up in her eyes or mouth...

THE SECTIONAL

So this is our "new" couch... It started as a freebie couch from Katie and Randy when we first got married, I think they had gotten it as a freebie from someone else... Steve recovered it back then, we choose a creamy color... it was great until we had kids... Even cleaning left water marks I couldn't get out. Last year on "one of those days" the stained couch was the last straw and we got new couches. Steve couldn't let the sectional go so it moved to our basement. The few stains it got up stairs were soon taken over by the monster stains it got in the basement, it is kind of our anything goes room. I kept threatening to throw it out so Beave decided to recover it again... he really likes it. :) And here is the finished product. When Beave wants something done, he just does it, it doesn't matter if he has never done anything like it before or never been "taught" how, he just jumps in and learns as he goes. Thanks Steve for our NEW couch!

Ballerina

We have been reading Madeline books and watching Madeline movies at our house, Kyla loves the ones about ballet. Ok Johnny does too... They both sing "Ballet, Ballet" and do their ballet dance. I made Kyla this tutu on Saturday, she was so excited to be a "real prima ballerina." I think I should get this girl into dance... :)

Best Friends and other tid bits

Ky and John have decided that they are best friends. They play together like friends not just two kids in the same space. It is mostly Kyla who has changed... she will say things like "John do you want to come see my room?" A question she reserves for friends. If she thinks she hears him wake up from his nap she will go check on him, if he wasn't awake before she checks he is after, she is anxious to play with him. Johnny asks where Kyla is as much as he asks where daddy is now. It is a new found freedom for me. I don't have two kids following me around all the time. It means a few more messes, since I am not always in the same space, but it is great!

Kyla has discovered a new book, Fancy Nancy, if you have little girls who like to dress up, it is a great book. She wanted to wear all these hair clips at once so she could be fancy like Nancy.



We have 1:00 church now so Sunday mornings are pretty lazy around here. I was getting ready, Steve went to a meeting and these two best buddies found a cool spot to color. I think Beave took the this picture, by the time I found them they had moved on to coloring "other" books...



The other day Kyla said, "Lets do something fun today, lets make cupcakes." We did and here they are enjoying them. Johnny does a good job of devouring the whole cup cake, Ky just eats the frosting and "saves the rest for the morning."

TOO SWEET

2 Awesome Things

#1 Steve has been trying to convince me for years to get some new hiking shoes, I just wear my running shoes for everything. Well now my running shoes (note: they are no longer used for running, I walk my hilly neighborhood!) are a few years past their prime, and Beave talked me into some new shoes. I got them online and when they came they were a little small. I went to the local outdoorsy store, found the same shoe in a 1/2 size bigger and they swapped me straight across!! How great is that?!
#2 I haven't scrap booked a single picture in 2 years, something about a baby and now two busy toddlers. Anyway, I made a goal to get Johnny's book done at least up to where Ky's is, 18 months. I sat down yesterday, my only day at home this week, and cranked out 10 pages. Ky and Johnny played and entertained each other all day, the house looks like it was two kids and no mom all day but, I am that much closer to my goal!!
Some would say this is just normal everyday stuff but to me they are major accomplishments. Yeah for the little things!

Christmas

Blessing or a Curse...

It has been a crazy month full of sick kids, sick mom, and even sick dad (who never gets sick!), a country crossing travel dad, and as noted earlier lots and lots of snow. Amidst all that we have been trying to do some Christmas things, it usually includes some yummy baked goods but our oven quit last week. I have been forcibly relieved from baking this year. I came up with some Christmas style rice crispie treats. Funny little Ky helped me make them, posed for the picture, and then decided she does not like rice crispie treats...

Fun in the Bubbles

After two days of shoveling snow I quit, I let the snow stay in the driveway and played with the kids instead. Johnny wasn't too sure about the cold bubbles, he didn't like the snow on his glove, he kept telling me it was dirty. Kyla was trying to make a snow angel but sunk into her knees getting to a "good spot" so it just had wings.

Johnny got tossed off the back of the sled but it didn't phase him, he got right back on.

This time he got on the front so the next one to fall off the back was not him... smart kid. This is our friend Sarah who came to play with us in ths snow. The schools have been closed for 3 days now and they were getting bored at their house.

Bubbles!!

We woke up to 12 inches of SNOW and it is still falling. Johnny calls snow "bubbles" the first time it snowed it took me most of the day to figure out he wasn't asking for a bath but talking about the white stuff outside that looks like a really big bubble bath! Kyla thinks snow means it is Christmas day, so she was really excited about the snow this morning, "its Christmas time!" I was less excited than my kids, it is beautiful, but Steve is conveniently out of town so that means I get to shovel all 12+ inches... It only took me a half hour to get the garbage out...

Johnny's breakfast

Johnny loves bananas!! He also loves trains, today he made his banana slices into a train... He does not love pictures when they are not his idea.