Dress-Up Day

Today at school the kids are supposed to dress up as their favorite character from a book. The problem is that Athena reminded me of this last night at Grandma's house at about 8pm. We got home at about 10pm and here is what we came up with. Maybe the costumes would have been a bit better with more more planning time. Athena and Samantha were still pretty proud to wear this to school.
In case you can't tell, Athena is the Cat in the Hat and Samantha is a Star-bellied Sneetch. :)

Things That Made Me Laugh

As you all know - Jeremy is king of winning things. Here is his latest win - a FREE Dr. Pepper. It makes me laugh because he gets it in 3-4 weeks! What a win. He entered in his code and they are sending him a certificate in the mail. WOO HOO!





Last week I was cleaning in the kitchen. When I got to the table to wash it off, I found this on the table. I had to really sit and ponder what it could be. Any ideas? When I realized what it was, I had a good laugh!








This one I just thought was cute. Nathan had just had a shower and we didn't want to get him dressed in his church clothes before he ate breakfast, so Jeremy fixed him up with one of my shirts and tied it in the back. Nathan was pleased as punch to wear his get-up to eat. :)

Easter Sunday Clothes

It seems like our kids are growing up so fast! This year for Easter I let Athena and Samantha pick out their own dresses. They have been counting down the days until Easter when they could wear the special dresses to church. We took these pictures when we got home from church.


Nathan looks so sharp in his little suit! He is such a little joker. He would NOT hold still so we could get his picture, he just kept playing around. I think you can still get the gist of it.


Alexandra also didn't want to hold still. We finally snapped this one and called it our best.


And here is our attempt to get a sweet little "here are our kids" picture. Yes, this is the best one.

Jeremy and Nathan.

I guess I'd better include me too.

This post would be a lot more compact if we had a family photographer at our disposal. As it is, we had to split up our pictures and take turns being the picture-taker. I'm sure proud of my little family!

Easter Egg Hunts!

This year we participated in 2 egg hunts. The first was at Jenny's house on Saturday afternoon, and the 2nd was at Teresa's house on Sunday afternoon. The kids loved both of them and came home with PLENTY of candy. I'm torn - I don't really want them eating all of that candy, but at the same time I want them to hurry and eat all that candy and get it gone. It's so tough. :) The kids don't care, they just love it all. I'm happy they had a fun time and some good memories. I've included the pictures from both the hunts here.

These pictures are at our first hunt. The race is on! We started with little kids first - off they go!

Easter egg hunts in Utah are funny. It's freezing cold outside and all we have at this time of year is dead or dead-looking foliage. The eggs stick out like a sore thumb. I guess it's all in what you are used to. Still fun.

This is Athena's first year to hunt with the "older kids" and she did oh so well.

I'm holding Nathan's bag here, NATHAN'S BAG. I didn't collect any for Alexandra this year because we just plain don't need any more candy and she doesn't know the difference. She enjoyed having me carry her around and watch the other kids. That's all she needed.


Mid-hunt picture for Samantha. She hasn't collected all her eggs yet.

Now we move on to the hunt at Teresa's on Sunday. READY . . . SET . . . GO!

Run Forrest Run! OOPS! I mean - SAMANTHA! LOL. She is having so much fun!

Top view of Nathan doing some collecting.

Ahhh, and we make it to the end. The bounty. I think it's cute to watch the kid's excitement as they open each egg to view the surprise contents. Athena has reached the age of counting. She came home and counted how much of each item she got. Jeremy and I both did that when we were little too. So funny.

Zip Line

On Saturday we went to Mark and Erin's to see their beautifully remodeled house. It does look really nice and I'm happy for them that they were able to make a nice place for themselves. It's quite admirable because I'm not the type who would ever take on a project like that!

After taking the tour, they mentioned that they have a zip line set up in their backyard and would the kids like to try it. :) Of course NONE of our kids were lining up for the new experience, so we went out to watch them ride it. Then, after seeing what it could do we finally convinced Samantha to take a ride. She is the most daring of our bunch. Yet again - we didn't have our camera out for her, but Mark strapped her in and got her all ready for her ride. She was a little nervous at first, but once she got going she LOVED it! She looked so cute riding down the zip line so fast with her big giggling grin!

It took MUCH more convincing to get Athena and Nathan to get hooked up, but once they did, they loved it too. This is Athena getting ready for her 2nd turn. Her 1st turn wasn't so happy. She had a pout so big I could've stepped on her lower lip.

This is the zip line at its highest - which is pretty high when you are that little! That's Nathan up there, and Mark giving it some muscle.

Here is Nathan enjoying his ride. He is so little and cute!

It's nice to visit friends who have a little more adventure surrounding them than we do. We got a fun new experience. All we have at our house is barbies. Thanks Mark and Erin!

Birthday Celebration

Today I have to play catch-up on our pictures. I've been taking pictures, but haven't been taking the time to put them up here for you all to see - so hopefully today's the day! :)

For Jeremy and Shauna's birthday celebration, we went bowling and then out to eat at Pier 49 pizza. MMMMM I'm so glad that a lot of family chose to participate in this event because it turned out to be a lot of fun. Unfortunately, my camera was having major battery problems that day (batteries were dead - that's a problem) so I only have a few pictures to share.

For our family, Athena beat us all by a longshot. She was using the little device for kids where they can just line up the metal thing and roll the ball down, but she still killed us! Maybe I should use that little thing. This picture is of Samantha before she got her ball and took her turn.

Every time we go bowling, it really makes me laugh to watch Nathan. He is so serious about this sport. He pushes his ball down the lane with "that thing" and then stands there, unbudged, until the ball gets to the pins. Then he reacts based on what happed with his ball - if it hit the pins or not.

Jeremy - in action! He beat me too.

Jeremy's Birthday

On Friday the 14th, Jeremy celebrated yet another birthday! He is now as old as me for 3 months - then I'll be older again.

For his birthday we took our kids to see the movie Horton Hears a Who. They all loved it! I thought it was a cute movie. I really LOVE Dr. Suess. Of course there was a lot of extra stuff in the movie to fill a full-length movie time, but for the most part they followed the book very well. I would recommend seeing that movie in the dollar movie theater or on video. :)

For his birthday, we gave Jeremy a new Jazz shirt, a basketball, a Jazz hat, and a bunch of treats to keep at his desk. he was very happy with his new attire.

Are We Running a Pageant?

This morning Athena came upstairs, ready for school, wearing this:

She had taken her marker and made the shirt the way she thought it should be. I was upset with her for writing on her shirt with marker, but even more so, I thought it was funny. So I had to keep from laughing and act mad for her sake. She seemed to think it was perfectly acceptable to wear her shirt to school like this. Looks like this gets to go in the "play shirt" pile!

Grandparent's Day

On Friday, Samantha's class hosted all the kid's grandparents for a special Grandparent's Day. She was sooooo excited for this day to come! She was counting down for over a week and kept asking me how many more days left until it came.

She invited Grandpa Dickens to be her guest for the day. He was delighted to come and be there with her and it sure made her day!

The class put on a small program for the grandparents. There is Samantha in the back. She was so concerned that Grandpa wouldn't see her back there, but it looks like he had a pretty good view regardless.

Samantha was also excited because she got to do centers with Grandpa. This is when they rotate to different tables for learning activities.

Samantha's favorite part about the experience was when her teacher was reading a story to everyone, and at the end, to go along with the story, her teacher pulled out a spray bottle and sprayed the grandparents as a surprise. Samantha couldn't stop talking about that!

I am so happy that we live close to family and I'm happy that Daddy was able to come and participate with Samantha. It really made her day and made her feel important. :)

Faulty Fairy

I feel SO BAD!!! On December 21st we were at a Christmas party at a cousin's house when Athena lost a tooth. The party was an over-nighter, so we put the tooth in a baggie. We brought it with us when we came home the next day and put it in the windowsill. By the time night came, the tooth was forgotten. It continued to be forgotten in the windowsill for another 2 months or so.

I was down in Athena's room a couple of days ago with her when she pulled out the tooth in the baggie from under her pillow. I vaguely remember her taking it out of the windowsill a couple of weeks ago, but didn't think much of it. She sadly told me that she has been putting it under her pillow and the tooth fairy just hasn't taken it. WOW! That hurt like nothing else! Believe it or not, I felt soooooo bad, but by the time night came, I didn't even remember the tooth!

Well, tonight I remembered. I snuck down there and put a dollar in with the tooth and sat the baggie next to her alarm clock.

I can't believe that she has been so faithful about checking on her tooth each morning, only to be disappointed each morning, and I didn't even know! It makes me feel really sad. I hate to learn these kinds of things about my little kids - the cute, innocent things they do in silence that you discover by chance. I hope she is really happy in the morning when she finds that the fairy remembered, and she gets the bonus of getting to keep her tooth too. :)

That is one thing you just can't tell your kids. Kids just don't know that parents need to know when the tooth is being placed under their pillow and it IS NOT just between the kid and the fairy!

Hockey for the Family

We got lucky enough to have a friend give us tickets to the UVU vs. BYU hockey game last Friday. We haven't taken the kids to a hockey game before, so we weren't sure how it would turn out. I enjoy watching hockey - SURPRISE SURPRISE! I guess that's one thing you wouldn't guess about me because I'm not a sports fanatic. Unfortunately I forgot the camera, so all you get is a stock photo.

We got to the game about 45 minutes early to make sure we would get a seat. Turns out, we had the pick of the whole stands! We went right down to the very front row, right by the ice, and it made ALL the difference. All of the kids had so much fun and they actually watched the game. We were sitting right next to where the players come out onto the ice. When it was time for them to come out, Athena, Samantha, and Nathan lined up to watch the excitement. As the hockey players ran by us, I just about passed out when I got a whiff of those uniforms. My gosh!!! They stunk so bad!!! I can't believe no one has caught onto that yet and found a way to have them start the game out clean. It was really bad.

The seats we had were perfect because several times throughout the game we had the players slam into the glass right in front of us, or a little fight would break out. We even had the puck come flying right at our faces, only to be stopped by the glass!

During one of the breaks, the PR people went onto the ice and started throwing Ding Dongs to the fans. Because they could see us on the front row with 4 kids, they came and threw a couple Ding Dongs just to us. That was really nice! The kids and Jeremy quite enjoyed that little treat. I can make 2 Ding Dongs go a loooong way. I'm so proud of myself. :)

The game lasted until 11:00pm and all 4 kids made it happily to the end. We will HAVE to do that again - of course, if our friend gives us tickets again. Thanks Vince!

Samantha's highlight of the game was when the hockey players were coming out onto the ice. She held her hand out and several of them gave her "five" with their big gloves on. She thought that was AWESOME!