Sunny Days: April 2013

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Ryan's Space Station

Ryan created this cool space station for a 6th grade project. I thought he was particularly creative with his use of legos.

Izzy's Cup Stacking

Izzy made these creations with hundreds of cups in our garage. Unfortunately, the car had to come back in, so the creations had to be destroyed. They were pretty cool though.

We've had lots of friends come into our lives because of where we live. It's kind of a transitory neighborhood. While there are disadvantages to living in a place like this, there are also benefits. I'm thankful to have made lots of amazing friends over the years. Unfortunately, I'm going to have to dig for pictures of them, so currently I'll only post about the latest two to leave.

Eric and Camille have been in our ward for several years. We have loved being their friends. We have journeyed through fertility issues together and our delightful little sons were born about 5 weeks apart. They moved to Seattle recently (and were so excited about it) much to our chagrin. Best wishes to Eric and Camille! (Incidentally, we had just gotten home from camping, I'm super cute.)

Garrison and Valeri moved in just a year ago but we quickly became great friends and were very caught off guard when they told us they were moving in March and moved out the next day. (Although one might wonder if we chased them off considering the fact that they kind of snuck out, one would be wrong.)
Scott and Garrison still work out in the mornings at the church and they still come over to visit, but still, I hate when people leave.

Be careful of asking Garrison to take any pictures with your camera, inevitably, you'll end up with this self-portrait.

The Beautiful Bayli

Monday, April 22, 2013

Bread Helper

Ashley loves to be my little helper when it's time to make bread (or she'd really prefer cookies so she can snitch dough). I love to have her help. She loves to do the flour and doesn't mind at all if we need to refill the container because then she gets to scoop even more. I love this little princess. (She chose her hair accessories today, isn't she lovely?)

Sunday, April 21, 2013

Ashley and Midnight

For some reason, sleeping next to Ashley on top of the bunkbed is one of Midnights favorite places. Unfortunately for Ashley, he only comes up once she is asleep, so she never even knows how much he loves to snuggle her.

Cinderella and Prince Charming

Forgive me for allowing myself to dream of these two loving each other even when they are grown. But you can't possibly blame me when I catch them in moments like these. Ashley's boot fell off and Micah very sweetly put it back on for her. Love it.
(February)

Tommy and Bayli

I have more pictures somewhere of these two little sweethearts, but alas, this is all you get for now.

This is Bayli our sweet little friend whom we love. As you can see, Tommy loves her enough to share his church treats with her. Shortly after these pictures were taken they moved out of our ward...Boo. Luckily for us, they like Tommy enough to come back to visit us.

Ryan's Jamboree Activity

Ryan is excited to be going to the Boy Scout National Jamboree this summer. He'll turn 12 while he is there and will be gone for 2 weeks and 2 days. He is ecstatic, I'm stressed :)

To help them get excited about the church history and American History they would be experiencing they had an activity with the man from "American Ride". Scott went with Ryan and they said it was a really interesting evening.

This is his jamboree troup. I think most of these boys are from our stake. Six of them are from our ward! Ryan is excited to be going with his best friend Sean Moses.

Monday, April 15, 2013

Lego Art

We kept hearing about a cool Lego exhibit up in Park City, so this weekend we headed up. We took Hannah and Christian Fairbanks with us and left right after lunch. The exhibit wasn't large but it was really cool.

Izzy and Hannah wished they could spend the one hundred dollar bill.

Ashley didn't want to be in any pictures but she recognized this from a Curious George book.

Spooky!

There was a fun colorful painting outside the Art Center. Izzy played "Heart and Soul" and Ryan wanted to play one of his Pirates of the Caribbean songs but couldn't remember it under pressure.

I liked the castle, It was coming out of the book and the story of the castle was written in the book. My kind of artwork.

After leaving Park City we stopped in Heber City for ice cream cones and French fries. Yum.

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Angry Birds

Scott brought home a few balloons that were left at the church after a scout activity. Tommy quickly removed the angry bird face and decided to become one himself.

Tommy and a blankie

Some days Tommy just needs to be snuggled in a blankie. It doesn't really matter which blankie, as long as he can hold it and be cozy he is content.

Monday, April 8, 2013

Tommy's new favorite past time

Tommy is sneaky.

Tommy likes markers.

Tommy throws the lids down the stairs so they get lost.

Tommy likes to color on himself.

(Currently he has green hair but it's on the other side so you can't see it)

Tommy is sometimes faster than his mother.

Tommy doesn't like to color on paper.

Tommy likes to color on the wall, the table, his sisters' art, the cupboards, etc.

Tommy is learning to clean up his messes.

(I still love Tommy even though he tries my patience.)

Tommy's joke

You know the banana knock-knock joke? Tommy has his own version.

Tommy: Izzy! (or Grandpa, or Dad, or Ryan, etc)
Izzy: What?
Tommy: Izzy!
Izzy: What?
Tommy: Izzy!
Izzy: What Tommy?
Tommy: (pause) um...Light!!!

Ok, so it's not really a knock-knock joke, more of just an irritating and common occurrence. Except that I think it's funny and delightful, it's mostly just the kids who find it irritating.

Funny Ashley

Playing in the snow is exhausting business. I just found this picture that I took back in November. She played in the snow and came in and was out before she could even get un-bundled. Funny girl.

Spring Break in Moab

We spent the first three days of Spring Break in Moab with some friends from our ward. We visited Canyonlands the first afternoon to see some Indian Ruins. Afterwards we ate at the Moab Diner which was yummy and Tommy occupied himself nearly the whole meal by playing with his ice water. We nearly made it through the meal without any spills...nearly.

We stayed at a campground in a little cabin. It had a full size bunk bed where Izzy slept on the top (to her delight) and I slept on the bottom with Thomas (I use the term slept loosely). Scott, Ryan and Ashley slept on the floor in sleeping bags. (I intended for the girls to share a bed but Ash insisted on sleeping next to Scott and in reality she probably did better there than she would have next to Izzy. Unfortunately, Tommy didn't sleep well, but that is a separate story.

The next day we hiked to Delicate Arch (which was fun but a smidge terrifying for me as I clutched tightly to Ashley's hand). It was beautiful but a little chilly. After lunch the boys went to Fiery Furnace and the girls (and Tommy) went to Sand Dune Arch. The sand was fun to play in except that it was windy so we ended up with sand in our eyes, mouths, noses, etc. That evening we did a little shopping in Moab then had a late dutch oven dinner of barbeque chicken, corn on the cob, hand churned ice cream and cherry chocolate cake (all prepared by our friends, the Martin's). Yum.

It was quite cold (colder than I had planned on, but fortunately, the cabin had a little heater so we were pretty snug. Everyone slept well that night which was a relief.

After breakfast and packing up camp we headed to a steep dune just of the side of the road where we climb and ran and played (and lost treasures) until I was done and we hit the road.

It was a great trip and Scott can't wait until we can head back down.

Many of these pictures were taken by our friend Chris Lau who emailed them to us, so they are small, but we're thankful he had his camera to document our trip!