Mother's Day

I had a nice, relaxing Mother's Day this year which started with breakfast in bed. The kids all made things for me at school and at church that were so cute. I had to get a picture of them after church holding all the things they made.

I had decided that I wanted crepes for dinner that night, so I gave my order to the chef and we had quite a yummy spread (sorry Emily, this is not a great picture of you!)

All in all, a great day. Next year we will have one more family member to help celebrate Mother's Day since we are having a baby at the end of October. (Yes, I know, I have completely lost my mind.) We just told the kids this past week and they are ecstatic! They won't stop talking about it. Andrew says he doesn't want a brother or a sister, he wants BOTH! (Not gonna happen.) He's telling everyone it's twins. Anyway, we will find out next week if it's a boy or a girl, so stay tuned for sure! Any wagers or bets are welcome. We have no speculation here, but for the sake of our STILL 3-bedroom house, a boy would be a nice addition. Either way, we'll all be glad.

Foot bridge

The kids have a new favorite thing to do in the afternoon. There was a new foot bridge just finished about a month ago over a major highway pretty close to us. It starts at a high school (the one the kids will go to) and connects two cities. It's huge and so fun to walk or ride bikes across. The biggest part of the fun for them is getting to the other side where we discovered some quail statues at the bottom of the hill. There's a momma and a daddy and six little ones, so each of the kids decided they should each get to name two of them. For the life of me I can't remember the ones the girls named, but Andrew always talks about visiting his "Keepie" and "Tootie". They like to climb around the birds and make sure they're safe from the eagle statue perched high above. Pretty fun to hear their imaginations go wild as they spend time with those birds! Here is a glimpse.

Gilroy Gardens

During Spring Break in April one day, Ruel and I took the kids and a friend's kids to Gilroy Gardens which is a really fun amusement park for little ones. It's a good thing we were both there since we needed to split up a few times so the kids could go on different things because of height requirements. They had a really fun time, the weather was perfect, and we got season passes so we can go back all summer. Here are a few highlights.

Easter fun

Our ward had a fun Easter activity at Golfland where the kids got to find eggs and then go miniature golfing. Here's a quick re-cap of that and a few Easter morning pictures at our house. We also had an Easter egg hunt at my sister's the week before, but for some reason I can't get those pictures to download, so maybe I'll get them on later.

March Birthdays

Ruel and Andrew both celebrated their birthdays in March. Unfortunately, Ruel's celebration and cake weren't quite as exciting as Andrew's. Something about turning 37 compared with turning 3. I don't know, 37 just isn't as big of deal for some reason! We don't want to forget about him, though, so here's a picture and in case you can't tell, the cupcakes (chocolate with raspberries) are in the form of a 37. Ooooooo, so creative!

So, if you really want to hear about being creative, you have to see Andrew's cake. I asked a friend of mine, Sara, who is awesome at decorating cakes if she would decorate a Wall-E cake for me. I was just going to buy the pan from Michael's, make the cake, and have her do the rest. She said she would be happy to, and then she called me back later and said she'd been thinking about it and would rather do a 3-D standing Wall-E and wondered if that would be okay. WHAT? Okay?? Yeah, I thought that would be okay. So, check out this awesome cake.

Amazing, isn't it? Andrew was absolutely thrilled when he saw it! Much to Sara's relief, when she walked in with it, he said, "It's Loll-E!" (that's what he calls him). Don't I have talented friends??? You might not be able to tell from the picture, but that was a TON of cake! We had family over that night, friends the next night (including Sara and her kids) and it still took a week to finish the rest off! YUM! Oh, and Sara had asked me if I would make a few pans of rice krispy treats so she could use them for parts of Wall-E, so I did. When we had friends over to help eat the cake and celebrate, one of them (I won't use any names!) was eating his and whispered to me, since Sara was there, that the cake was really good but the rice krispy treats were kind of stale. I busted up laughing and said, "Thanks! That's the only part I did!" I think he felt terrible but I thought it was hilarious. And now you know why I asked Sara to do the cake!

One last picture...........Andrew opening presents. What a big boy!

Utah Trip

We drove out to Utah mid-March for some family events. The best part of the trip was seeing my two new nieces (both born last July). That was also Hannah and Emily's favorite part. They just loved seeing and holding those two little girls.

First is a picture of cousin Caleb with Hannah and Emily. Can't believe he's almost 16!

Then Hannah with baby Ellie (Brent and Rebecca's little girl they adopted last summer) and Emily holding Ellie while Andrew kisses her hand. So cute.

We drove up to Logan to celebrate Grandpa Parent's 80th birthday and saw more cousins there. This is the only picture I got of baby Dylan. What a cutie.

Here's Andrew with cousin Michael and Andrew playing in the snow, which of course he thought was the greatest thing on earth!

We actually had a pinata in honor of Grandpa's birthday and all the kids got a chance to whack it. I guess I don't have any good action shots of it, but that's okay. I think they were lining up here waiting their turn!

And last but not least, two favorite cousins together again..........

My girls

Since I did a post on Andrew, of course I have to do a quick update on the girls. I don't have as many pictures of them in the last few months (because they don't do as many silly things), but here are a few.

I went on a 2nd grade field trip in April to the Don Edwards Wildlife Refuge. It was a rainy day but the kids had a great time. The top picture is Hannah with her owl "pellet" (what they cough up and it has little bones and things in it) that she got to dissect. She absolutely loved it, especially when she found a mouse skull in hers. Ooohhhh, gross! The picture below is of her fishing for phytoplankton. She learned a lot, and so did I!

Hannah's also been playing Spring soccer and just has one game left. I think they've only lost one. Anyway, here's a picture of her in action.

Helping to plant the garden:

First top tooth lost:

Second top tooth lost (just last Sunday):

Both girls are in a Daddy/Daughter group with Ruel called Y-Guides (used to be called Indian princesses but that's not PC anymore!). They're each with their own age group and go on fun outings together. In April, Emily got to go with Ruel to the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco and they had a great time. Hannah had to miss that one because she had a soccer game. I'm not quite sure what this background is, but I thought it was a cute picture of Ruel and Emily together.

Can you believe these zebras aren't real? They had me fooled from the picture!

This next picture is when we did our annual April Fools' Dinner. We always have stroganoff (a family favorite) with rice and then French bread, butter, jam, etc. We write the names of everything you need on pieces of paper (i.e. knife, fork, cup, water, sauce, rice, etc.). Everyone has a baggie of 12 slips of paper with these things written on them but you only get to pick 3 at a time, so you might be stuck with butter, water (with no cup, hence drinking out of the pitcher), and sauce. Then after a few minutes we move onto the next round. It's pretty funny watching people eat their food off their tray with no utensils. Oh, and some lucky people get dessert first! Emily had a lot of fun doing it. The kids look forward to it every year.

Emily gardening in this one. I'll have to take some pictures of our garden now because things are really growing tall and Emily is the one who waters it and keeps it going the most. She is a good little gardener.

Andrew's Antics

It's been so long since I've posted anything that I've got to condense a lot into one post. I've found that I have a lot of pictures of Andrew over the last three months doing a lot of silly things, so I'll start with that!

Ruel & Andrew at the "Thomas & His Friends" show

Play time at home. (Keep those hands off the walls, mister!)

Andrew wouldn't go to bed one night and I kept hearing him playing in his room. I just left him alone and finally went in to check on him later. This is what I found when I went in!

Poor Andrew had to have a nuclear scan in March (his third one) where he has to have an IV and lay still for about an hour for imaging. Not so hard at 5 months but difficult at 3 years. He was born with a kidney problem (hydronephrosis) that has to be monitored by regular ultrasounds and sometimes this scan. In a nutshell, he has a blockage in his left kidney (between the kidney and ureter) that makes it more difficult for the fluid to drain. He has been totally stable since he was about 6 months, but we still have to do this stuff and we may have to have it surgically corrected at some point. Poor little buddy. He did NOT like it, especially the IV part. That was pretty traumatic.


Andrew's chocolate face after a night of fondue at home!

Playing with "Oreo", Hannah's class hamster she got to bring home for the weekend. Andrew would squeal with delight while watching Oreo play in his ball.

Goin' for a ride on his bike! What a big boy!