This weekend.....

We drove by the house that John lived in for the few years he lived in Boise as a kid. He went to kindergarten here at Maple Grove Elementary.
Spent some quality time outdoors, watching soccer. Owen's favorite position is goalie. He gets pretty serious about it.
We went to bounce. Where I went down the slide a lot, because Emmie liked to go down the slide a lot.

Owen boxed.
We took the family to the Cheesecake Factory where we managed to spend $35 even though it was a secret shopper assignment where we had a gift card to use for our lunch. Still a fun afternoon out though!

A budding seamstress

Recently Ains discovered a love for sewing. She's quite good. Considering she still can't tie a knot in the thread! She really wanted to sew clothes for her barbies. She got a little discouraged until I showed her the pancho dress I used to make for my barbies. If she had a mother that had any sewing skills at all her barbie clothes might look a little cooler than this.

She made these awesome slippers all by herself. (They match the barbie slippers she made.)

Here is the pillow that she fashioned.

And my personal favorite, a sunflower.

Noteworthy

Concerning Emmie:
I've mentioned before that Emmie has a thing with her nose. Well, her nose has become a residing place for items other than her finger (although her finger is still up there a lot). Here is a list of things we have found up her nose.....

Peas. 2 in the same nostril to be exact. I was freaking out when I saw the first pea in there, but once I realized there was another farther back my freaking out reached extreme levels. After much trauma, both peas were successfully removed with the help of the blue nose sucker (or bulb syringe if you want to get technical).

Rice. After finding the rice up there we became more diligent about watching her eat small objects.

Hairbands. The little tiny baby kind. Again, 2 in the same nostril. My theory is that she took them out of her hair when I put her down for a nap. One came out immediately following her nap when she sneezed. She handed it to me all snotty and gross. I freaked out and again grabbed my trusty bulb syringe and went to work. Nothing came out. But then a couple days later.......she sneezed again and another hairband flew out! This time she handed it to John. I still don't know when she put it up there. Her hairbands all remained in tact that particular day. So either she found one somewhere and stuck it up her nose, or she had been walking around with a hairband up her nose for days.

I'm completely freaked out about this terrible habit and can't help but worry that there might be something else up there!

Second noteworthy story involves my other 2 children:

Lately Owen has been giving Ainsley permission to do things we have told her not to do. For example, we put the kids to bed and Ainsley asks to read and we tell her no. Then, after we've left Owen gives her permission. And for some reason Ainsley feels like he has the power to do so. Then after Ainsley is disobeying, Owen quietly comes and tattles on Ainsley. Sneaky little stinker!

(I know this picture doesn't exactly match, but you'll just have to deal with that.)

Oh ya, and Owen is learning to ride a bike without training wheels! However I have no still shots of him, just video. And so you just get this awesome picture of him standing BY his bike. I'm always amazed at all that kids do at his age. He is currently starting to read, learning to ride a bike, going to learn to swim, and headed off to school. He's super busy :o)

New Experiences

I've had 2 new experiences in the past few days. The first involved artichokes. Last week I bought my first "bountiful basket" (http://www.bountifulbaskets.org/ which I am now completely a fan of!) and it came with 3 artichokes. I always want to try new recipes, and I've never cooked and artichoke. So, I made these grilled artichokes for dinner. Surprisingly enough, the kids tried it and actually liked it...for the first few bites and then grew a little tired of it. But that in and of itself was still shocking. They were good, but not amazing, and a lot of work for a little bit of food. So unless I get handed artichokes again, I don't know that I'll go to all that effort again.

My second new experience was much more amazing and significant than artichokes (I just felt like I should post 2 new experiences rather than just one. Because I'm weird.) John and I got to see Wicked for the first time this past weekend. I loved it! The costumes and effects were great. And I thought the singing was amazing. I wish the theater wasn't so darn expensive, and more readily available to me, because I'd totally go see this one again!

Mother's Day

This Mother's day was one where I was spoiled and reminded of the realities of motherhood at the same time. John and I were awakened to the sound of Owen puking at 4:00 in the morning on mother's day. As John and I were both working to get everything cleaned up he turned to me and said, "Happy Mother's Day!"

John let me sleep in, a bit, we do have 9:00 church after all. But since I was the only one attending church (Ains had a nasty cough, why bother taking a toddler if you don't have to, and I had sharing time) I didn't have to get up as early as usual. I got to have a delicious breakfast for casserole for breakfast. And I had no part in making it! I opened great gifts from my family (homemade magnets, and pot holders, clothes, and the Our Best Bites cook book....yum!)

After church we took a family nap, ate a delicious dinner, cleaned up puke, made strawberry milkshakes, listened to Ains sing me the song she didn't get to sing at church, cleaned up puke, tried to watch a movie, got frustrated with Emmie (she was truly being a stinker), realized I had a sinus infection, cleaned up puke etc.

When the day had calmed down (meaning, when the children had gone to bed) I went to my parents to borrow some of their antibiotics....thank you Mexico for your loose pharmaceutical laws! We were originally going to have my parents over for dinner and dessert, but they declined our offer, wimps. It was nice to be able to go visit with my parents for a bit. Kind of a calm end to the crazy day.

Thanks John for being a trooper and making my mother's day as relaxing and special as it could be under our crazy circumstances!

Crash!

My precious new car has now already been in a fender bender! Yesterday in the school parking lot as I was dropping off kids, a lady decided she wanted to get around me and apparently didn't give herself enough room. She dented and practically tore off my bumper. The entire front bumper and headlight need replaced. I'm glad she's insured because the damage came to $2200! Sure am glad I'm not paying!

But I have to give the lady that hit me some credit, she's been very apologetic and filed a claim with her insurance company quickly and admitted full fault. Now we're just waiting on her insurance company to get everything ready and a rental car lined up so we can get ours in the shop.

I just hope it all goes smoothly, insurance companies can be such a pain! They already tried one sly move on me yesterday. I'll be grateful when this is all done.

Nice...........

As a side note....this might mean that I have the palate of a 2 year old, but I think gold fish are my favorite cracker. I crave them every afternoon. I only wish I would have known they were my favorite before I had kids.

Self Taught

Owen taught himself to do this the other day. I don't even know that he's seen anyone do a flip before. He's definately a boy.

Something I missed

Last week I had the opportunity to head down to Provo with a few friends and go to Women's Conference. It was a fabulous weekend. The speakers that I went to were great (for the most part :) and overall it was a wonderful little pep talk that gave me the boost I needed. I feel refreshed and like I've been reminded of my purpose and priorities. And what was even better was that on top of the spiritual boost, I was with 3 amazing friends that made the few days we were away a blast. I laughed and cried and slept just a little, and isn't that what makes for a fun girls getaway?
Unfortunately while I was away, I had to miss a few things. I missed Owen and Ainsley's soccer games. I missed barf, diarrhea, and other illness. And I also missed Owen's field trip to the zoo. Luckily John was able to be home with the kids while I was gone and took great care of them while I was away. He really is the best. I got a text from John one morning while I was sitting in a class that said, so far today I have dealt with poop, pee, and throw up, how is your day going? While I felt bad for John, mostly I just chuckled (as did the women around me when I read the text out loud).

And now, here are a couple of pictures from the zoo. It was a cold miserable morning, but it looks like they had a good time.

Except for maybe Emmie. Poor Emmie looks a little homeless. Good effort on the hair though, John!

Easter...a bit late

We did all the Easter festivities this year. And if you look at these pictures you will see the proof.

Cute Easter outfits were worn(although Emmie was the only one that scored a new Easter outfit this year.)
I'm thinking we need a photo shoot where the kids are a bit more posed.

We dyed Easter eggs.

The kids looked for Easter eggs and baskets. All the kids were able to find theirs before we headed off to stake conference.

We hunted for Easter eggs with friends at the annual Ball Family eater egg hunt. I'm glad that our friends like us enough to invite us 2 years in a row!

And here we have another lovely shot of Owen all dressed up.

Oh, and we ate prime rib, which was delicious. But I didn't take a picture of that. And we met Syd's boyfriend Cy. And I think that was all.