Leprechaun Madness

While I am not a big St. Patrick's Day celebrater (not sure if that's even a word), my kids sure are!  After being hounded for weeks in preparation of the "special" day (insert eye roll) I finally caved and agreed to make green eggs for our St. Patrick's Day kick-off!

And while the kids were at school, a visitor came.....and left a little treat with a note.  Apparently he had to use the bathroom too.  Although no one got to see the evidence because Miss Shayli apparently can't tolerate green "pee".  She flushed it down before anyone saw it.  Luckily, I managed to capture it on camera before it disappeared......

And talk about a lucky day!  Lexi managed to find a real four-leaf clover while we were at Kendri's softball game.  It looks like it's going to be a lucky year for us!

Happy Birthday Ryan! And Some Other Things

 Even though I am approximately 3 months late in posting it....Happy Birthday Ryan!  (I'm sneaky and will back date it so no one will every know......;)

Ryan was lucky enough to get a mud pie for his birthday cake.  And I must say it was delicious!
He was showered with home-made gifts from the kids along with a new gym bag and to be honest, I can't remember anything else.  I guess that's what happens when you procrastinate your blogging.  Shame, shame.

WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!

The next picture is highly graphic and bloody.  Proceed at your own risk.

This is what happens when you wrestle with your older cousin who believes body slamming is the only way to prove your prowess.  Kyson happens to believe the same doctrine.  He cracked his head on the footboard of Aunt Liz's bed.  Sigh.  The amazing thing is he came walking down the stairs to find me.  This was our conversation,  "Mom, I bumped my head." Just like that.  No crying. No panic.
                         
Me: (all calm and gentle) "You did? Well let me take a look at it."  I couldn't see anything from the front.  I assumed he might have a little bruise he wanted me to kiss or something.  And then he turned around.  GASP! I was horrified.  I was trying to figure out what all that red stuff was.  I was going through all the possibilities.....ketchup? No, how would they get ketchup upstairs?  The Halloween make-up perhaps?  Ooooh, they are in big trouble if this is fake blood.  I can only imagine the mess they've made.....

It took me about 10 seconds to finally realize that it was indeed the real thing.  The good news is, I consider myself part nurse.  Although I have no real reason to mention that as one of my accomplishments other than my mother is an actual nurse and by default it runs through my blood.  A bit of a stretch, I know.  But I did take several health courses in college.  At any rate, we made a quick phone call to the actual nurse (aka grandma) and then proceeded to super glue his head.  And I must say, it turned out quite nice.  Very little scarring.

And the last news for this post is our family loves to ride to Gammi's house for Sunday dinner! (Or Aunt Jenni's or Aunt Liz's) My siblings and I used to ride our bikes my grandma's house every Sunday and it's been fun for the kids to do it too.  Hooray for nice weather!

A Few Memories from March....

I hate to brag.  But I will.  My white chili is da-bomb.  As proven in this picture where I took home the coveted Silver-Ladle from our ward chili cook-off.  (I think it should be called the Golden-Ladle but then that would require some spray paint.)  Anyhoo,  my record for chili cook-offs is currently two for two. But who's counting? ;)  

I managed to spot Kyson right before he tried this daring stunt.  Riding two electric scooters at the same time.  Anyone else foresee broken teeth? I'm actually pretty impressed that he's balancing on them.  It takes some coordination.......And Shayli and Kendri are just cute so I threw the picture of them in too. ;)

And this is what happens when you think you can take a 15 minute shower.  Someone sniffs out the Oreos. And only eats the cream.  Shayli and Kyson.  At least they put the cookies back in the container just in case someone else might be on the cookie side.  Ahem. The cookies they licked, that is.

And Shayli was having too much fun at the park to bother with the toilet.  And then she realized that sitting down with wet pants was not fun either.  This was how we managed to get home.

Kyson surprised me with a bouquet of  "flowers". He must be learning from his daddy!

We've been enjoying spring and we couldn't let this pretty tree turn green before we got a quick picture of it!
It's actually our neighbors tree but we get to enjoy it since it hangs over our backyard fence.........

And ps, where has March gone?????  Talk about how time flies!

Happy Valentine's Day!

The girls in this family sure get spoiled......for Valentine's day we all found ourselves with beautiful bouquets of flowers and candy!  Ryan got the girls carnations.  And it was very confusing.  And now I'll tell you why. Shayli came downstairs in the morning holding her flowers.  I had just dropped Lexi and Kendri off at school and they hadn't said anything to me about flowers. I was sure they would have said something about their flowers if they had seen them before I took them to school. And I knew they couldn't have missed a bouquet in their room.  And that's when I got suspicious of my husband who was supposed to be at work.  Ryan had left at his usual time (4:30 am) and the car wasn't in the driveway. But I knew he had to have put the flowers in their rooms while I was dropping them off at school.  I started searching for him.  He was actually texting me while I was searching.  He finally popped out from the garage where he had snuck his car in before I got home.  It was a fun surprise!

But the surprise's didn't end there......He had a massage scheduled for me in the morning.  Ahhhhh. And then I left the spa sore and feeling like I needed another massage.  Those darn knots.

That night we took the kids with us to the UOP vs BYU men's volleyball game. Go Cougars! It was a fun night.

The best part was when Kyson decided to bust out his dance moves during half time.  He went to the empty stairwell you see in the above picture. The music obviously spoke to him....and boy, did he answer!  He even hit the floor with some "break dance" moves, people.  It was a musical looove connection.

Kyson and his cousin Reese

We are talking about some serious dancing.  He had lots of cheers from our section! And if you are wondering about the "ink art" all over my son, those are his teenage mutant ninja turtle tattoos that he got for Valentines Day.  We couldn't wait to use them.  Happy Valentine's Day! (from the Hood)

Happy Real Birthday Lexi!

I know, I know.  I just posted Lexi's big Par-tay.  And here she is with more Par-tays.  I just feel like you have to do something on your actual birthday.  You have so much anticipation and if you've already celebrated it's a big let-down.  Like celebrating Christmas early.  Blah!  So these are pictures on February 15th. The day she turned 10!  She had mentioned something about Kyson's wrapped doorway so we went ahead and did it for her too.  

We had cake and presents that evening and that was pretty much it.  But she had fun.

We love Angel Food Cake!  Happy happy birthday, Lexi!

At 10, Lexi is now in the double digits! She also:

loves to mother

is a great big help

very mature

gets straight A's

weighs in at a whopping 56 lbs

finally has her eye-teeth coming in after losing her baby eye teeth almost a year ago

can be very moody :) (fingers crossed this is as bad as it gets!)

wants to be a doctor or orthodontist assistant

We love Lexi!

Happy 10th Birthday Lexi!

Lexi was lucky enough to celebrate her birthday a week early since it was a 3-day weekend.  She also had a family party on her actual birthday. We decided to take a mini vacation up to Angel's Camp and let her celebrate with a few of her friends in Valley Springs.  To say the day was full of excitement would be an understatement!

Gammi was kind enough to let us take over her house for the day and turn it into a party house!

Here are the party animals.....they are soaking their feet in preparation for pedicures.

I decided to do mini cupcakes for the occasion.  It was a tea party/spa party.  The mini cupcakes were perfect.

Bracelet making.

Make a wish!

The party was a success and everyone left with cute toenails!

Night Time Ninja

She looks cute and sweet.  But don't let that fool you. Because in the dark of the night, she becomes the "Night Time Ninja."

Why, you ask? Because in the dead of the night, she sneaks out of her room and soundlessly (okay, maybe not so soundlessly) makes her way to my bedroom.  Where she proceeds to karate-chop her way over my weary body and roll into the middle of the bed.  If you think it ends there you would be naive.  Because at this point she will shove me over onto my side so as to better use her "wax-on, wax-off" skills.  In my hair.  Both little hands twirling and dancing through my hair while she lulls herself back to sleep.  Now is when I mistakenly drift off to dreamland instead of staying on guard.

 Because the Night Time Ninja does not sleep.

While I'm ignorantly sleeping, Shayli is now flailing in bed.  Karate kicking her blankets off and doing aerial helicopter moves in the center of my bed.  Now most of this movement gently jogs me to the edge of consciousness.  Which is good because at about this time, the karate kicks are coming dangerously close to causing serious injury......such as a nose bleed.  (Okay, maybe not "serious" injury but you get the gist.).

 I'll tell you about one time I was  playing peek-a-boo with sleep. Shayli was already comfy-cozy in my bed.  I instinctively jerked my head to the side just as her little foot arced out and slammed into the side of my head.  Better than the nose. Which is where it would've landed had I not moved.

 Now at this point you may be wondering why I don't always take her back to her own bed the second I hear her little ninja footsteps.  And the answer is.....I have gotten very lazy.  I don't want to leave my bed unless there is no other choice. Back to dreamland.

I think I may have gotten an hour or two of sleep before the next attack.  And then I was jolted awake to little hands in my hair again.  Nothing to worry about there.  Until she twirled my hair so tightly around her little fingers and then chose to jerk her hands back.  I heard the RIIIPP more than I felt it.  I decided to wave the white flag.  I shoved her over towards her daddy and I crept to the edge of my side.

And in the morning I checked out my new bangs.