Pictures of April

Our Easter Eggs, Addy was the photographer

Maren loves wrapping paper

Sydnee opening her b-day presents

I didn't know how to play this game, but one push of a button and it shot out 350 tickets

I hope this isn't an indication of a future career

My cute friend Jamie and her kids

Addy, Sydnee, Garrett and Rylie

The waterfall as you enter Pirate Island

The view from our table

The Captain

Me and the birthday girl

The kracken, our 2 ft. wide pizza, it was huge!

Sleepy baby

The cake, those are our candyland playing pieces being used as decorations

playing together, I think Addy was a little jealous

Maren's first spaghetti dinner

The stinker climbing the stairs, this is her new favorite place to play

Maren's 9 month photo, she hams it up when the camera comes out

Spring Break and Such

I feel like I'm always trying to catch up, so here is the events of the first week of April...

• April 1st Sydnee had her pre-school Easter egg hunt and I attended the general young women workshops. I'm really excited about the new personal progress website they announced.
• April 2nd I got to help with Addy's class Easter party. 1st graders are so funny! We decorated bags that look like bunnies. The boys made their cute little bunnies into vampires and added horns and blood. So funny! It was great, the egg hunt lasted about 5 minutes and then it was over. Sydnee went shopping with G&G Yancey for her birthday. Grandma Yancey let Sydnee pick out lots of stuff from Big Lots. We have lots of great toys now!
• April 3rd Saturday general conference was great! I love conference. We missed the second session so that we could go the Ben's parents for Easter dinner/birthday party for Sydnee and Hope. Afterwards, we rushed home so Ben could go to priesthood and me and my girls could go to Grandma Williams house for our traditional Girls Night In party. It was a busy, but great day.
  
• April 4th Easter Sunday! I love having conference on Easter, it was such a beautiful day full of reminders of the atonement and true reason for Easter. We colored eggs in between sessions, After conference we went to my parents house for Easter dinner with the whole family and more birthday celebrating.
• April 5th Ben and I celebrated our 9th wedding anniversary in style! We went to Wal-Mart to shop for Sydnee's birthday and we had lunch at a little Mexican dive called Maria Bonitas. We had fun just being together. After 9 years, we still love each other! That night we had a FHE lesson on the temple and told the girls about the day we were married and how special it was.
  
• April 6th the weather was yucky and so we did laundry and vegetated.
• April 7th Sydnee's 5th Birthday. We celebrated by going to Pirate Island Pizza. We were joined by Grandma Williams, Aunt Camille and my friend Jamie and her two kids Garrett and Rylie. Jamie and I have been friends forever, it has been fun seeing our kids play together. We had a huge 2 foot wide pizza and the kids played games in the aarghcade and rode on the merry- go -round. Sydnee kept dumping tokens into the merry-go-round, after a while she started to stand up and hang on the poles. It looked like she was doing a pole dance. It was lots of fun, so much fun that Maren fell asleep. We had birthday cake and presents and Maren sprouted her 5th tooth.
• April 8th we had our Fancy Nancy party part deux. Deux is a fancy word for saying two. Aunt Camille and I gave Addy and Sydnee pedicures and then we made cute little headbands and ate fancy food with our pinkies up. The butler wasn't feeling well, but all 5 of us girls had a wonderful time! Thank You Grandma for a fun party!
• April 9th Maren came down with a cold during the night and so she wasn't too happy. Addy went to play at my friend Marie's house while I took Sydnee in for her kindergarten checkup. Sydnee was too shy to talk to the nurse and so she failed her hearing test. I spent the whole visit wrestling Maren to wipe her nose and trying to keep Sydnee calm for her shots. Sydnee did well with her shots, she flinched a good bit and cried for a while. Her Barbie sticker and sparkly pencil helped a little, but I think her smoothie from McDonalds helped her feel better. Have you had their smoothies, yummy!!! I'm glad I don't go to Old McDonald's very often, those things could become very addicting.
  
• The rest of the weekend is kind of a blur. Maren got sick, Sydnee ran a fever and didn't feel good after all of her shots. Both kids were up during the night which means that I was up too. I got a cold and so the rest of our month has been spent not feeling well. This cold has lasted for several weeks. I'll be really glad when Maren's nose stops running. We're all finally feeling better, so hopefully we can do a few fun things this last week of the month.
  

Taking My Own Advice

Last Sunday I taught my Mia Maid class the lesson on keeping a journal. I'm feeling a little guilty right now. Funny, I taught the same lesson last year and thought, hey, I'm blogging that's my journal. Somehow I had child number three and I'm lucky if I can find the time to go to the bathroom during the day, let alone blog. So, I encouraged my young women to take time once a week to write about their lives and the events in their lives. Today I am going to take the challenge and write for a few minutes. To start off, today was our stake conference. It was awesome! I hate going to the tabernacle, so we went to our church building where it was broadcast. The camerawork was pretty bad and it was blurry the whole time, but that didn't matter. The theme was "Come take your place". That is also the theme for our youth conference/pioneer trek this summer. I was very impressed with all of the talks, but especially by the youth they had speak. One young woman was from the Ukraine and was adopted by a family in our stake not long ago. She talked about a school teacher she had who taught her about Jesus Christ and how to pray. Soon after she was adopted and later received the missionary discussions and joined the church. She talked about the meaning of the word pioneer, meaning to go before and prepare the way. She had a sweet testimony. The next youth who spoke told about his trek experience 4 years ago. He talked about not wanting to go at first and thought it would be lame. He had a change of heart and had a great experience. He talked about my ancestor Margaret Campbell Kirkwood (my fourth great-grandmother) She came here from Scotland with the Willie handcart company. She was a widow who had 4 sons. She lost her husband and 2 daughters to the flu several years earlier. She had a 19 year old son, Robert, who helped her pull their handcart. They had to pull her 16 year old son Thomas who was crippled and she had two sons, James and Joseph. James was 11 and Joseph was 4. They had many hardships along the way. The temperature was so low one night that Margaret's eye froze and broke. In the picture I have of her, you can see where she is missing her eye. While crossing Rocky Ridge, James and Joseph fell behind. Joseph was too tired to go any further so his brother James carried him over Rocky Ridge. When James reached the camp he set Joseph down and he died. I have always felt close to Margaret and love her story. I was so pleased to hear this young man speak of her and how much faith he gained from learning about her and her trials. The rest of the talks were all great and I truly felt the spirit. Every speaker said something that I needed to hear. It was truly a spiritual feast.

Happy Birthday to my Sydnee

Sydnee turns 5 tomorrow. I can't believe how fast time is flying. Sydnee is such a sweet girl. She is so happy and laid back. Most days she is very quiet, but then she will surprise me by coming up with questions that are very deep. She's my wise little owl. Tomorrow we will be celebrating with a party at Pirate Island Pizza. I'll post more tomorrow.

9 Years

Yesterday Ben and I celebrated our 9 year anniversary. We were actually able to go on a date by ourselves. We enjoyed doing some shopping and a nice quiet lunch. I am so lucky to be married to Ben. He is a wonderful husband and father. Here's to 9 great years!

Advice Please?

I keep thinking that in 11 months Addy will be baptized. I'm already getting nervous thinking that I haven't taught her enough and wondering if Addy will be ready to be baptized. She's a good kid and she knows a lot, but is it enough to know she is ready to be baptized. I'd like to know if you AKA all my friends who read this have ideas of things you are doing or have done to help your children prepare. I have some ideas, but I would like more. Thank you, that's all!

TROUBLE

I am in big trouble! I mean T-R-O-U-B-L-E! Maren just barely turned 8 months and she is growing too fast. She can pull herself up to standing. If/when she figures out she can lift her knee when standing, she will be up the stairs. I'm afraid I have another climber on my hands. Yikes!

March Highlights in Pictures

Isn't she cute?

Daddy jungle gym

Miss Sydnee

We were hoping that Maren would not like her bare tummy touching the floor and would learn to crawl normal. She still did her army crawl and ended up with a pink belly.

Can you tell who Maren looks like?

Addy with her St. Patrick's day feast

Maren loves her sunglasses

This smile melts my heart!

Snowy day off of school

My two Mia Maids and their cakes

Maren crawled under her saucer and got stuck, she wasn't very happy about it

March the Highlights

I'm feeling rather boring lately. Not bored, but boring. I feel like I just don't have anything good to write about and that I'm just a boring person. Then I remember that this blog is my journal, well one of them and I'm really recording the events of our lives. I'm not writing to impress or entertain anyone, although secretly I hope I make people laugh occasionally. Anywho, here are the highlights of our family life for the past month.

• Addy had a day off of school and it snowed all day. She and Sydnee had fun playing in the snow.
  
• For our Mia Maid activity we taught the girls cake decorating, it was a sticky, fun mess.
• Ben had a root canal and a crown put on (not so fun)
• We had our Relief Society birthday party, which was lots of fun. We played Hollywood squares. The "celebrities" were former relief society presidents, either general presidents or ward presidents. I stepped out of my comfort zone and played the part of Mary Ellen Smoot. We also played the game where you match the sister with her childhood picture. It was a great party.
• Another Mia Maid activity, we made little wall hangings with pictures of Jesus Christ, President Monson and the temple.
• My friend Amy was able to go to Hawaii and I helped watch her boys, they are hilarious little guys.
• St. Patricks day came and we had a green dinner. We had green omelets, green pancakes, hash browns and sausage, and green milk. Maren also cut her 3rd tooth.
• Ben and I were able to sneak away for a lunch date, thanks to my mom. We celebrated his birthday a few days early with lunch at Tucanos. Yummy!
• We celebrated Ben and his brother David's birthday with his family and had a yummy turkey dinner.
• Ben's birthday was on the 21st. We had a fabulous steak dinner with all the fixins and a carrot cake for dessert.
  
• On Monday the 22nd, it was my dad's birthday and my nephew Parker's birthday was on the 20th. We had a FHE dinner/party to celebrate the three birthday boys. It's always fun to get together with the family.
  
• Maren hit the 8 month mark. She can now go from laying to sitting quite well. She also learned to pull herself up to standing at the stairs. and now she can pull herself up to almost anything. I'm in trouble now!
• On the 27th we went to our ward's Easter egg hunt. It's starts at 12 noon on the dot, if you're late you miss the whole thing. This year we arrived 10 minutes early and before I could find Sydnee's age group, it was over. I tried to catch up to her group, but by the time we got to their designated area, all of the eggs were gone. One little boy who had more than he was supposed to shared a few, but she still only had a few in her basket. That was kind of a bummer. After the kids empty the candy from their eggs, they get an egg with names and addresses of people in the ward. The papers are for prize eggs. We went to houses in the ward and collected our prizes. The kids always love getting their prizes. I didn't get a single picture of the egg hunt this year, it was over way too quick.
• Maren cut her 4th tooth (they're all on the bottom) She also bit my finger and took a chunk of skin and made me bleed.
• Sunday the girls wore there new Easter dresses. I didn't get pictures of them, I should have taken pictures before church. By the time we got home, Maren had spit up on hers and was ready for a nap and the other two had gotten chocolate on theirs. Oh well, maybe next time they wear them, I'll get one.
• Tomorrow our Laurels will be running the YW activity. All of the leaders will be going to a session at the temple together. I'm really looking forward to this.
• Thursday, the last day of the month, we will be going to Salt Lake as a YW presidency for the workshops they host.

Well, there it is, March in a nutshell!

Has it already been 7 years?

How could this little thing turn into

This grown up girl?

Time keeps flying by around here. Addy turned 7 just two days ago. I remember the day she was born so clearly. It's hard to believe that she's been with us for 7 years. Addy is such a good kid. She is very kind and usually quite happy. She is very sensitive to others feelings. She can tell if I'm having a bad day and will try to cheer me up. She loves reading. She loves reading! (Yes, I know I repeated myself, Addy really loves to read) We can't keep enough books around for her. She is reading on a 3rd grade level and loves chapter books. She reads most books in one or two days. Addy is a great helper and just an all around great kid. Ben and I are so lucky to have her in our family. We only give the kids friend parties every other year starting at age 5, so Addy was thrilled to be able to have a party this year. She wanted a princess party with some of her friends from school. The girls came dressed up like princesses. They played games, ate pizza, went on a treasure hunt and ate cupcakes. I was amazed at how much noise six little girls can make. It was a great party and the girls had a lot of fun. I'm glad we get next year off though.

February Photos