Weekend Review.

We had quite the happenin' weekend. Starting with the funkiest...

My nephew - Mikey (or Mic) - playin' at the Raven, downtown Prescott.

Kinda annoyed that I had to find out from my cousin, but whatever, I'll take it no matter how the information finds its way to me. Tia, Taylor and I went and saw Mikey raise the roof on the cafe with his band on Thursday night. We thought we were so cool...sippin' on the hot chocolate (and watching Taylor drink a lot of weird looking sodas). Ahh...to fake like we were young and carefree...

This was definitely my favorite...He totally busted out the trumpet and wailed.

Oh...reality check, (baby Bree) although she was a perfect angel and slept the entire time.

Mikey also took on the mic for a little front stage time and played guitar...

The picture of the young and carefree...(I won't mention that I was exhausted the next day...completely worn out!)

I love the processing on this image...

And he also rocked the bass guitar...

I wanted this to be me in this picture...but oh well..I'll settle for Taylor since he was the one who got us there.

On Friday, we took the kids to the Y for swimming. Here would be a good opportunity to state my distress at the KidZone discontinuing there care of infants...I'm doomed. Laina and McLaren were raised from 6 weeks on in KidZone...this poor baby will miss out on that wonderful experience.

So, back to the Y for swimming. Then we came home and after 3 hours of hard intense work (and a few failures) Tia, Taylor, Sheri and I managed to get some edible homemade pizza...on a pizza stone. Tia has a great recipe for dough that was incredible, and we learned the hard way that you must have cornmeal for the pizza to slide from the paddle to the stone!

Saturday, Tia worked her bottom off (and Friday night) cleaning my house. She and I kinda have this little competition on leaving the house cleaner then when you came. She killed me. I can't hold a candle to her hard work (and there's no point in using pregnancy as an excuse.) We took the kids to the park and worked on our sunburns.

Last night I finally (I believe I am the last person on the planet) sat down and watched Twilight. Even my husband went and saw it in the theater. I was ill with morning sickness and based on all the reviews, didn't think it worth my time. I have to say, when you watch something with zero expectations, you can be pleasantly surprised. I had heard all the negative about the show, so I thought it would be awful, but it wasn't. Sure, it wasn't a big budget film, but I did not think it to be a complete flop. This also happened when I read and hosted the book for book club all those years ago :)...I chose it partly thinking it would be a flop and I would be kicked out :) who knew what it would turn in to?

Today, during sacrament meeting, I had the pleasure of playing 3 rounds of hangman with Laina. Have you ever had the opportunity to play hangman with a kindergartner who spells words just like they sound? All I could do was giggle to myself....I had no idea what the words were tenagr and senub...give up? teenagers and bunnies (perhaps some dyslexia going on?) she was having the funnest time that it was hard to burst her bubble, however I never was "hung"!

Little Man...

When I walked in to do this session I saw a snapshot of this little guy from the hospital...I thought "wow...he sure looks like his dad". Then I walked into his room and saw him in person and had the thought confirmed - he is a clone of his father :) (My own little guy was fortunate to be a clone and every time someone would see them together they would just laugh).

This little man slept very nicely for his debut, and he had quite the nursery (I think his grandma helped out a bit :)

Spring Break

So we headed to Yuma for our annual spring break (Matt is actually getting better about letting us leave...it used to be pretty painful to try and sneak away during tax season, but thankfully he has taken up exercising (better positive outlook on life, shorter time at home after dinner) - and I can always coerce good friends into feeding him (20 minutes or less) and watching out for him while we're gone.)

Yuma was sunny and warm and we even got to celebrate St. Patricks day with my mom. The St. Patricks day meal was definitely in the top five meals of all time growing up. I looked forward to March 17th every year - just so I could have corned beef and cabbage and green pistachio pudding salad. (Not sure what that says about the other meals that made it into the top five category???)

We also went swimming at my friend Jill's house (aka "cookie") where Laina was able to practice her "teddy bear teddy bear turn around..." (she's mildly obsessed with jump roping right now-I've been whipped a few times by a wandering carefree jump roper...must be a kindergarten thing?) Jill ran around making everybody happy and comfortable (and fed with ice cream and grapes) and sunscreened! I talked some little girls into doing some modeling for me...not bad for their first time eh?

Check out the hops we have goin' on:

I had fun playing around in PS with these ones:

**Okay so there were so many good ideas on the blog book, that I'm going back and printing 2 more so that each kid can have their own library! (Not to mention I want to add a few more things that were left out)

Senior "M" - Yuma style

While I was in Yuma, I was able to do a senior session. We had a fun time with colorful shoes and colorful clothes (you can never go wrong with either!). The weather was gorgeous...and my senior gal was too!

Ecstatic. (That's a fancy word for really happy)

I can not tell you how ECSTATIC I am...


I just received my first BLOG book for the year 2008. (I have 6 months to publish for 2007, but thought I'd start off with a full year.) This was the ONLY reason I started a blog (after being nagged by my sister...she finally said "you know you can put it all into a book...") I was sold and now that I have it in my little hands I'm even more thrilled.


I was telling a friend that I really try to add as much of my family life on here complete with images for proof later on. My kids have been fighting over it all morning long (no need for a picture of that), they even made their little friends sit down and look through it with them. I can't believe that I have over a 100 pages of family blurbs and images to look back over. I no longer carry the guilty burden of not journaling (although I need to add more personal notes into my own journal occasionally), but seriously I bet nobody ever envisioned this - when they told us to document our history!

I "slurped" my blog on http://www.blurb.com/

It was sooo easy to do. You just enter your blog address and it downloads all of your posts. Then you go in and select the ones that you want to keep in your book. There were a few things I wish I had done differently:

1. The layout that uses 6 images down the side is too small to see the pictures...next time I'll make sure that I pick one where the images are bigger (no more that 4 images/page with writing on it)

2. I wish I had put a family image of us on the front - my kids get too much stage time as it is and my husband feels left out (not that he would say that...just comments like "boy, I sure don't get many pictures!" which clue me in to the fact that he needs to be included a bit more.)

You can even go in and add more entries and images before you send it off to be published - so if there were things that didn't get blogged but needed to be included it's very easy to do.

I ended up buying 2 books - one hardback ($40) and one softcover ($20) just to see what the difference was and so I could put the hardback directly into our little fireproof safe (I'm sure it will be valuable someday) and let me kids paw through the cheaper book. Both of them were great, but the hardback is definitely the way to go.

I opened the book to one of my favorite posts from last year...the Easter Bunny. The images of McLaren terrified of the big cottontail make me laugh so hard! So when he gets older I'm sure there will be a nickname for him based solely on this story. Laina was definitely the diva of the book. I'll need to balance my posts and images better this year.

So - to all my little blog lurking, non-commenting friends. Start a blog. You don't have to even share it with anyone, but start documenting all the craziness that is life - it is soooo worth it to have this little book in your hands at the end of the year!

Senior "A"

Miss "A" was quite the "A"nimal lover. We started off in her room with her snakes, then headed to the turtle, added in a few dogs and finished off with a horse! I had to include the "A"pple Bottom jeans...which, up until now, I thought were only a line from a song...silly me!

*I'm trying to play catch-up this weekend since my little trip away (notice I didn't say vacation since it doesn't count as a vacation if you have all of your wonderful children with you...on your own.) BUT we did get the car all unloaded so we're slowly getting back to normal life...can't wait for Monday and April 16th!

The Merry Maids of Willow Creek

We had a fun night acting out a little play for our Young Women (even though they all made fun of us! One even ventured to tell me that I had a mullet...funny...I see no mullet here - I think they were just jealous of my beautiful braids. :) I think we were all very happy and relieved to be done with it...although we can't wait to finish the dramatic ending... (we left it unfinished.)
The kids and I just returned home from a few sunny days in Yuma. We even had to use sunscreen - in March :)

Smiling Peek

Just one for now...need to go and start dinner so family can eat. I have to admit I'm a sucker for anyone who tells me they love sneak peeks (not that I can always produce them...and not that the exhausted mom can even pull herself out of bed to look at them...but....)

Happy Bday "little" Matty..

I'm sure that's what all of his siblings called and said today.

Birthdays' in this house are all about making that person feel special. Of course we do it in the way we ourselves would like to be treated....for me - its all about the FOOD. :)
So we started off with eggs and homemade bread and homemade jam. (Okay so the bread had my signature gaping whole in the middle of it, but I cut around it creatively). Then we got to hang Ade's Christmas present to me this year...the "birthday banner". It is so stinkin' cute and I can't wait for it to be permanently on the wall during the month of June! We made cowboy cookies (we had already had the obligatory yellow cake with chocolate frosting - that Matt creatively requests every single year - on Sunday) and had chicken piccata (anyone who has had the privilege of discussing Cheesecake Factory with Matt can visualize his description of his most favorite dish...ever.) The kids gave Matt 10 boxes of his favorite cereal (I know...so cheap...didn't anyone tell you that we're in a recession - it just fit too well :) and he received a few other nice gifts. We put up some balloons and sang and ate and wished him a wonderful birthday as he walked back out the door....30 minutes after he walked in.


Tax season birthday.

Indy insisted that we wrap all the cereal boxes. Who knows what his brother is doing...the image with the scissors just cracks me up.

The banner is so wonderful...the picture I took isn't.

Laina - after she was caught ripping into one of the 3 gifts for her dad.

Why is this picture so large??? Boxes placed in order of preference.

why on earth did I take a picture of the food? hmmm...Matt was so impressed with the cookies that I didn't have the heart to tell him they were one of those jar mixes that a friend had given to me over the holidays...Friend (Lisa) can I have the recipe please so I can pass them off as mine next week??

When we were all done, Laina asked Matt what he had gotten them for their "goodie" bags, seeing as how they were at his birthday party. Nice. We're still working on the whole "selfless" thing...

Family Fun Time (very "Recession-esque")

Its tax season (in case you didn't know :) and we only get to see Matt (a.k.a. "Dad") for about 20 minutes a day, a little bit more on Sundays, but by then he's wiped out and practically comatose all afternoon. So when he walks in at 6:30pm for 20 minutes of dinner, the kids start hounding him for some desperately needed play time. They asked me to document it for them (since I'm neither being thrown or doing any throwing :) and don't worry gma's - not one child was hurt - knock on wood.

Indy...my big poser

Laina...the instigator of the "bed-throwing"

McLaren "soars" through the air...but not before getting his fingers pointed in the right direction!

My favorite one of Matt...

**And while we're still on a "family" subject...my last day of photography sessions before maternity leave is May 2nd. I'm not sure if I'll open a day or two in October...we'll see how baby #4 settles into our home!