April's Ten Things

Here are my Ten Things that made me Smile in April:

1.  Madeline lost her first tooth:

 2.  General Conference!

3.  This picture:

 4.  Easter

 5.  Fun walks outside in the nice weather

 6.  S P R I N G ! !

 7.  Madeline's ballet recital

 8.  Cooper's morning hair

 9.  Playing games with Todd and my older kids after Cooper goes to bed.  FUN!

10.  Listening to Cooper's ever expanding vocabulary.  It's pretty awesome.

Madeline, My Dancer

Madeline loves to dance.

 And I love watching her.

 This week, she performed in her fourth recital and it was a cute as ever.

I can't believe how fast she's growing up...

Excited at dress rehearsal (in her jazz skirt, the tutu is for her ballet number)

 She got two PINK bouquets and couldn't have been more thrilled.

 Ethan was a proud big brother.  I will forever love how he loves to watch her too, because he loves her so much.  Makes me happy.

This Fall, we are venturing off to a more serious/professional dance studio and I'm really excited to see where that road takes us.  If she's anything like her mama, she'll love every minute of it for as long as she can dance.

At the Lake and in My Yard

A few days ago, we decided to take advantage of the nice weather and went over to Day Break.  We had a grand time walking around the lake, especially Cooper.  This kid loves being outside so much!  He ran practically the entire time stopping only to "ooooh" and "wow wow" and point and clap and throw rocks.  And shout "water water!" every time he noticed the lake was still there.

 Pointing at the water while on the bridge.

It was a fun way to spend the afternoon and it happily wore us all out!

And while I'm still mourning the epic fail of no family Easter pictures, at least I have this cute one of the kids with the flowers.  But don't even try to get Cooper to look at the camera . . . won't happen!

 I love my yard in the spring.  Minus the weeds.  But I just pretend they're not there.

Celebrating Easter

I love Easter!  We celebrated Easter this year with a Resurrection Garden again.  I love having a Resurrection Garden so much.  I think I just might make one every year forever.  The kids loved helping collect everything for the garden in the backyard on Friday.  By Saturday night, everything was wilted and sad looking.  The kids even noticed and made mention of it. 

 But on Sunday morning came new life!

 He is Risen!  The kids loved it and were thrilled to see the stone had been moved from the tomb.  I loved having it as my center piece.

 Easter was so wonderful this year.  I spoke in sacrament meeting, which turned out to be such a wonderful experience because all the preparation really put me in a place of gratitude and worship.  I watched the Easter Special Music and the Spoken Word before church and listened to the entire Messiah.  It was a morning that will be hard to beat.  We spent the entire week leading up to Easter watching short video clips of Christ's life as well.  The whole thing just made me so happy!

We had some secular Easter fun this past weekend as well:

It didn't take long for Cooper to discover what was in the eggs.  He REALLY likes chocolate and jelly beans...

 The older kids had fun putting together their mini lego sets too.

We ended the day with a fabulous dinner at my aunt and uncle's house, and the kids were spoiled with a fun egg hunt which included 200 eggs to find.  I think their were only 12 kids, so they made out like bandits.  It sure was a wonderful weekend!

Magic

Turns out kids don't need a lot to make their day magical.  Maybe just some nice weather and some swings!

19 Months Old

19 months old and as cute and busy as ever!  Still a rascal.  Still has my heart.  Always will.

He really likes belly buttons, and shouts "button" if he gets a peak at one.  He's even chased Madeline around trying to lift up her shirt while shouting "button!"

 He's always happy if he's got puppy and blankie

 Some of today's antics:  sucking in a mouth full of milk through his straw and then blowing it out a few feet in all directions…multiple times, grabbing my metal measuring cup and climbing up on the chair to whack it on the mirror-at least I got to him before the mirror broke!, sneaking into the computer room (still don't know how he got in there) and sitting on the floor strumming both of Todd's guitars at once.

 When he figures out how to open doors, I will cry.  He'll do something like this:

 He sat on my lap saying, "more, more" while I sang lots of songs to him today.  We read books and snuggled and rolled around hugging on my bed.  I kissed him extra when I tucked him in tonight and he waved and smiled and held blankie tight and said, "bye bye mama".

Then Todd and I played games with Ethan and Madeline.  And it was fun.  And I really just like being a mom.

Smoothies, Hidden Veggies, and Mismatch Day

I love smoothies!  And lately, I've been making a ton of them.  All it took was a little encouragement from my neighbor to try out my Bosch blender and I was hooked.  I never realized how amazingly well it could take raw veggies and apple peels and such.  But it's awesome and now we pack in the raw veggies.  Here is a picture of what goes into our favorite smoothie.  A small amount of Apple Raspberry juice, half a banana, a TON of spinach, raw baby carrots, raw sweet potatoes, frozen blueberries, and ice.  It comes out a pretty purple color and is super smooth and delicious.  All five of us enjoy it.  I make them with orange juice, apples (with the peel), peaches, pineapple.  But those three veggies are my favorite for smoothies.  I giggle every time I watch my family drink spinach and sweet potatoes!  

 This past week, I also tried a new kind of veggie pasta, made from spinach and zucchini.  No one seemed to notice the difference and I served it with a veggie red sauce and asparagus.  Add the smoothie and we had 6 vegetables in one meal.  Yeah, I felt awesome.

And since my last post didn't have a picture of Ethan, here he is all ready for mismatch day at school.  Coat with shorts, mismatch socks, and mismatch shoes.

This and That

Madeline and me waiting for her turn to get her ballet pictures taken

 She surprised me with her page of numbers…made me giggle because it's so cute:

 And here's Mr. Trouble trying to eat my Chapstick:

and destroying Ethan's biography box.  And least that was after he took it to school and had it graded...

 And look, Madeline lost her first tooth and Cooper's showing his teeth too:

 see:

 and I like this picture.

And it's just wrong that I don't have any pictures of Ethan.  Because he's the most incredible dear one lately.  Helpful and fun to be around.  And his piano is awesome!  I love listening to him play.  I even found out that his teacher is doing a recital this summer.  I'm excited!  I should try to take a picture of him sometime.  Like last night when he earned his first yellow bead at pack meeting!  Awesome kid.