Easter

I quickly snapped a few shots of the kids Easter morning.  Jer is at meetings, so Sunday mornings are quite hectic but I got a few shots.  I sure love these cute kids, and they clean up pretty well.  It was a beautiful sunny day to celebrate Easter.  (For a minute there I thought we had really missed the point when one of the kids asked if we "had to go to church on Easter"--like it was a church holiday.  Seriously?)  We did have some good discussion of the Savior though, and we were all touched by the new church video "Because of Him."  The kids also celebrated two Sundays in a row at each grandma's house with egg hunts and egg rolls--none of which I took pictures of. Oops.

 

 

 

 

Ian's Party Weekend

Ian turned five in April, and he partied all weekend.  I truly can't believe he's five.  He is my little buddy, and I am going to miss him so much when he goes to kindergarten next year.  In some ways he's so ready--he's a social butterfly, but in other ways he doesn't seem ready to start school.  We definitely need to work on things a bit this summer.  He is such a loving kid and always gives me big hugs and tells me I'm his "best mom".  He is also hilarious.  On Thursday he insisted that his sub in preschool was named "Nipley".  He didn't even know why that was funny, but he said it about five times in two sentences.  Ian is so curious and asks the most thoughtful, in depth questions.  Future scientist?

Ian started off the weekend with cousins and grandparents on Sunday evening.  We ate dessert and colored Easter eggs.

 

The next day was Ian's "real birthday," and he had his first friend's party.  The theme was dinosaurs.  I was a bit nervous because he wanted to invite a lot of kids and I don't know most of them or their parents that well, but it actually worked out great and was lots of fun.

The whole gang hunting for "dinosaur" eggs.

They excavated baby dinosaurs from ice.

The two lone girls at the party.  Ian's cute friend Hattie from Primary and our next door neighbor Addi.  We also had a volcano and ate cupcakes and ice cream.  It was easy and all the kids seemed to have lots of fun.

That night we celebrated one more time with my parents in honor of my dad's 70th and Ian's 5th.  It's pretty neat that they share a birthday.

   

 Ian shares his love (and our dirty laundry--he's the kid sharing everything at preschool, primary...) with everyone.  You can always count on him for a big kiss and a kind word.  Love this kid!

Boo! Goblin Valley

Luke has been begging to go back to Goblin Valley ever since our last trip there almost four years ago, so this year we headed there with the Snyders for our annual Spring Break desert adventure.  It was so fun.  They now have yurts at the campground and I must say that is an awesome way to "camp" with kids.  You still have to rough it in terms of cooking, etc., but it's nice to be up out of the dirt.  We took lots of pictures, so I'll let most of them speak for themselves.  It was chilly but dry with one windy day but it beat the snow and rain they got at home!  We hit the road with a stop at Scheel's on the way.  We rode the ferris wheel there, ate at In 'N Out, and had a great ride down.  We went into Goblin Valley by headlamp with the kids that first night and then hit the slot canyon the next day.
 

One item we did forget was the backpack we intended to carry Leah in a lot.  She was a trooper though and hiked a lot on those little bird legs.  She's quite the trooper and doesn't want to be left out of anything!

 

 

 

 We caught Ian with his pants down at one point!

 

 

 We did have one slight mishap when Miles ran ahead on the way out of the slot canyon and instead of going to the trailhead turned and went up a different one.  Jer and Spencer ran about a mile up the other canyon before they found him, and he was pretty scared.

 Luke's perch at our campground.

 

Whenever we were at camp the kids were climbing and running around on the mountains right by us.  They did lots of vertical feet each day!

 The whole family in Goblin Valley with me wearing my cat scat pants!

 One of the nights we made tinfoil dinners but didn't start the fire early enough.  We attempted, rather unsuccessfully, to speed up the cooking of them which resulted in some burnt carrots.  Ian got us all laughing when he opened his up and said, "I don't want to eat tomatoes (they were potatoes) and burned up carrots!"  Oh come on, sounds delicious.

 Kids get so filthy when camping.  They do not care.  Leah was covered in dirt from head to toe and added some Cheetos and marshmallows in to the mix too.

Some last minute bike riding before we hit the ride for home.  It was of course the sunniest, nicest day!

  
 Way fun.  I can't wait until next year!

Sad side note:  Luke's lizard had a parasite (we think) and had been sick for a while, and we warned him that he may not make it through the trip.  Well, we came home to find the lizard very sickly but still alive but Seth's hamster Fuzzy was dead!  I sent him down to clean the cage and he came back up saying he wasn't moving.  We took care of him and consoled Seth and then the story takes a turn for the weird.  Jer got online researching the cause of death for Fuzzy and there were tons of posts that said hamsters could hibernate for up to 12 hours and seem dead but not be.  I hate to say this but Jer actually went out and thoroughly reinspected Fuzzy for signs of life (while wearing a respirator), but he was indeed dead.  The next day we decided to take Spot to the doctor to prevent another untimely death.  At this point he was skeletal.  The vet visit cost more than he did.  She gave us some suggestions but not a lot of hope.  We were supposed to force feed him with a syringe.  Jer tried it, but he didn't survive the procedure.  He died in Jer's hands while receiving a warm bath.  Yes, that happened.  It was a sad couple of days around here.  I'm not sure we should be allowed to have pets.  Good thing we're better with small humans.