My other Baby Brother with my baby boy

April Rewind

April 4/5

LDS General Conference

Twice a year we stay at home for church and listen to our prophet and other leaders of the church speak to us. The local cable companies carry them so that we are able to watch them with our families in our home. This is our current Prophet Thomas S. Monson. They speak to us about teachings of our church and how to better live our lives.

When we have these conferences the church puts out a packet for the kids to work on

to learn who the leaders of our church are and what they are speaking about.

The kids on Sunday morning sitting at the table "watching" conference.

This is our loft area. He is literally sleeping on the two steps area. Does this
look comfortable to anyone else? We really have no idea how this came about.

April 8
An Easter Egg Hunt

We took part in a little Easter Egg Hunt in the park with some

of the gals and kids from our ward.

Middle of April

I can't tell you the date of this event, but one morning I was in the shower and Tyler burst in and yelled, "MOM, DAD CUT A HOLE IN THE WALL DOWNSTAIRS!!" We had discussed this before so I was not as alarmed as he was. When we bought our house the one thing I was really disappointed about was that there was no storage closet underneath the stairs. We have a lot of great storage so I don't know why this was such an issue, but it was always something I loved when we looked at the model homes. Trent's brother Nick had cut a hole under their stairs and opened up their storage space. After we heard this Trent decided to go for it. He took a regular saw and just started cutting away. Once he got into it he discovered a HUGE open space. He got it all vacuumed and swept out and TA-DA...a great storage space. I am hoping that we can get some shelves in there now and get our food storage out of the kitchen and into the closet.

April 11

"Easter Saturday"

Nick and Rebecca and the cousins came over for Easter weekend. Nick is in the bishopric of his ward so they like to get back to their ward for church on Sunday. So we had "Easter Saturday," with them this year. We colored eggs and had a little Easter Egg Hunt with them. The kids love their cousins so much and they are the best of friends. We don't have fighting when the girls are over. It's such a pleasant visit when they are over.

Amber and Cael

Rebecca and baby boy cousin

Coloring Eggs

April 12

Easter Sunday

April 11

Celebrating Tyler's early Birthday-6 years old

A Razor scooter

April 13

A special popcorn snack for Tyler's birthday at school. We are not allowed to bring anything sweet or homemade. Tyler loves popcorn so it worked out perfectly.

Tyler's wonderful teacher.

Picture of the day

A mother's work is never done.

Several April Baseball Games

An April picture of the Day

Visiting an old Friend

Isn't it the best to visit your friends who knew you "when." I met Priscilla at the bus stop on the first day of 9th grade. She asked me if I knew a guy named Travis King because he lived on her street and she thought he was really cute. Of course I knew who Travis King is, he is a basketball legend in Ephrata, Washington and probably in the state of Washington. I never dared talk to him though so I was no help to her on that subject.

Priscilla and I were inseparable in the band and tennis for the next four years. We laughed about the weirdest things and now when I read our year book entries I have no idea what most of it means. I could tell you crazy stories.

We had a really great visit with our friends Jenn and Madonna at our 10 year reunion and we hadn't seen each other for 4 years until today. Since then she has had a little girl and a boy and I have had my last two boys. The kids ran around the front yard together and had a fun time.

I can't wait until next Saturday when we will watch our childhood friend Jenn get married.

Tyler of course hates pictures because I make him take them all the time. We had two cameras going so it was difficult to get everyone to look at one at a time :)

"What was your WIN today?"

A little while ago I started living day by day with the saying in my head, "what was your win today?" Trent came home from a seminar he had attended for his job and he was so excited about the speaker that he talked all night about him. This guy was in a water skiing accident (crashed into the shore I think) when he was in high school and became a quadriplegic. While he was in the rehabilitation facility his football coach came to visit him every day. When he would come he would be hanging upside down (I am not sure why, something to do with his recovery) and his coach would come in and ask him, "what was your win today?" Here he was a paralyzed teenager, sad and depressed about the situation and without fail every single day coach would come and ask him this. Finally one day he got really mad and said, "well, I didn't wet my pants today." The coach got excited and shouted down the hall, "he didn't wet his pants today!!!" And congratulated him on the win. From then on he lived his life around what was his win for the day and didn't let his situation get him down. So I have been thinking about this lately. As a mom of 3 boys under 6 you don't often feel like you have had a "win" today. When you look around at all the messy rooms and all the things left undone it doesn't really feel like you are winning. So I think about it at the end of the night, "what was my win today." Sometimes it is just getting all the laundry done that day or one bathroom cleaned. But, every night I realize, my kids are bathed, fed and safe so I have those wins every day. The days that I get extra wins are even better.

Two weeks ago was a huge win. I was in charge of Activity Days and I wanted to do something big. So I decided that I was going to make each of the girls journal jars and they were going to cover and decorate journals. So that Wednesday I got 12 of these jars done in one afternoon. This was HUGE. I don't usually get this big of a project done in one day. Then on Thursday I went all excited to Activity Days and...I only had 5 girls :( But, they had a lot of fun and loved covering the journals. We had a little pow wow in the bathroom the other day at church and they told me that they had written in their journals every day since they got them. Yay, another WIN!! I am planning on a make-up day in July so that the other girls can all get their jars.

9 Months Old

My baby is 9 months old. I can't believe it. I love this age for so many reasons. For selfish reasons he is sleeping through the night, holding his own bottle and I stop nursing at 9 months. I love my babies, but unfortunately I do not love nursing them. I do it because I know it's the healthy thing to do. For me it is so extremely painful and uncomfortable for the first 6-8 weeks that I just tell myself over and over again that it's for the health of my baby to get through it. There is a lot of crying on both parts and bleeding involved. Months 3-6 are relatively easy and uneventful and then they start pulling off to look around every 5 seconds and biting. So...when it comes to the day that it is time to stop, I am READY and very happy :) Other reasons I love 9 months is because they start to move around and pull themselves up. I love and hate this part of it because they start getting hurt. Bumps and bruises on the tile and against the fireplace. Cael has been army crawling since he turned 7 months. If we put him on the tile with no pants on he figures out that it is cold and lifts his knees to crawl or gets on his hands and toes to bear crawl. I love the bear crawl stage. All three of my boys have done it. We have never had stairs so I worry a little. Our posts on the stairs are rounded and our gate is not tight enough to be safe if he were to stand against it. So upstairs I have just had to either put him in the jumper or shut the door to the room I am working in. It is working so far, but I still worry. He is starting to chatter da-da and ma-ma. Starting to belly laugh when you tickle thighs and neck.

"Saved for a Rainy Day"

I, like many other moms I know, am not a fan of Play-Doh. Those little balls of clay everywhere when they are done, colors mixed together until it is ruined. I know, I know, I am wound too tight when it comes to cleanliness. So, today we literally "saved it for a rainy day." We don't have to many of those around here and it is pretty bad out there today. Many, many LOUD claps of thunder. Lightning all morning. Just to tell you how few we have I noticed about a year ago while driving that our windshield wipers pretty much just move the water around on our van. Well, today was the same story because we haven't noticed since then and I was driving to and from Riverside. It was scary. I am not nervous driving in the rain, but I just couldn't see a darn thing. So, my boys are at the kitchen table happily rolling Play-Doh. Tyler just called to me, "Mom, I think you are going to have to mop the floor." It's pretty bad when he knows what I am thinking. I know, I know loosen up.