Celebrating Easter

I know not that many people get that big into Easter..but in my family it's always been a big deal. My grandma used to do a big Easter egg hunt for all the grandkids and now that she has passed on we have decided to keep that tradition. Of course we all need to remember the real reason for Easter..Our Savior, Jesus Christ. Which I am so grateful that Easter is on a Sunday so we can be thinking of Christ and what an amazing man he was.
On Saturday night we colored eggs, we have been doing this with Ty ever since he was a baby so this was his 3rd year. This time he managed to crack an egg open and peel it, when he got to the yoke he was so excited he thought he found a ball! It was the funniest thing, we told him to eat it, but he said "No.. it's a ball." When we woke up Easter morning, the Easter Bunny had left baskets for us, and hid our eggs around the house. Tyler loved finding all the eggs, but he wasn't to happy with the Easter Bunny, because he put his basket in his basketball hoop, he was very concerned about this. Then we had to hurry and get ready for church. We have to apologize again to the Darlings (and anyone else that was around us as well) who unfortunately got to sit by us and Tyler was being so crazy..he had a little too much candy before church. After church we headed up to Kev's parents house for dinner and an egg hunt for the kids. We had over 125 eggs, and the kids had a ball. But of course Ty picked up one egg and then found candy inside so he didn't need anymore. I got a few more for him, but I think he only ended up with about 6, silly kid. He was also having way too much fun throwing the ball around the back yard with daddy to care about picking up eggs. After awhile we headed out to my family, for another Easter egg hunt.. yeah, if anyone needs candy we have plenty! Again, Tyler didn't care about getting eggs, he found a few then daddy had to do the rest. He was more interested in the trampoline. He's never been on one before. It was pretty funny to watch him. We had great Easter, and are so grateful that we get to celebrate Our Savior. We are so blessed with everything in our lives and it's always good to have things to remind us of our importance of being here and our Heavenly Father, and Heavenly Brother that love us dearly. We hope you all enjoyed your Easter too.

Happy St Patrick's Day

I hope you all remembered to wear green! I don't usually do much for St Patrick's day, but I thought we would make it a little fun. So we had some leftover mint brownies from yesterday, and I made green eggs, green pancakes, and bacon. I was half tempted to turn the milk green, but I didn't know if Kev would drink it or not. Then we had family night, and hate brownies for dessert.

We have really tried to make Family Night a routine over the last few weeks. We subscribed to The Friend, which has been a great help for ideas for little ones. We make it really short (like less than 5 min, that's including both prayers.) Then we have treats and get Ty ready for bed. It's kind of hard to make it much more than that, especially since Kev gets home so late, but it has been working really well for us. I am really surprised at how fast Tyler has picked up on the routine. We usually read him a story before bedtime anyway, and the other night I asked him if he wanted to get a story for bed, his reply was, (in the cutest little voice possible) "Yeah, mom I want to have Family Night." I was so happy that our efforts are actually doing some good. Another thing that has been helping is this church book we got Tyler for Christmas, and it's his favorite book by far. But it talks about how to be reverent, it's really great for church. The reason we thinks he likes it so much, is there is a picture of the prophet in there, and it talks about watching conference on TV. Well Tyler is absolutely convinced that it is his Papa Shipp. (I think it's because of the glasses.) But it always cracks us up, we are still working on that it's the prophet and not Papa Shipp. In the meantime, we are grateful for the book. The picture with the hat is from Tara's house last night, but I couldn't resist putting it on here, especially since it's St Patty's, and it makes me laugh.

I love my family...

Weekend Re-Cap

I've decide to do a sum up of our weekend, though it may not be that exciting to most of you.

Friday: We watched Aria, so Antz and Gina could go out to dinner. The kids had so much fun together. We spent the evening racing cars across the kitchen floor, and playing basketball. I'm sure this is very different from what Aria is used to, but they seemed to enjoy themselves.

Saturday: We went to the temple in the morning, which was long over due, and Gina watched Ty for us. It's so great to have someone to swap babysitting with. The temple was nice and I'm glad we were finally able to get there. Later that afternoon my Mom and Jodi came over and we scrapbooked until 11pm. It was fabulous, I got to work on my cruise pictures and almost finished it completly. It really made me want to go back, I'm so glad we took that trip it really was amazing.

Sunday: We went to church, did I mention how much I love to be done by noon. So we came home had lunch and then we all had naps, I love when I get to take a nap. Of course Tyler didn't sleep that long, but it was enough to give me a boost. In the afternoon we all usually read the paper, Kev reads the sports, and I of course look through all the ads. Well Tyler decided he was going to read too, so I caught him looking at the sports section, and saying out loud, "basketball game." It was pretty funny. We were invited to dinner at the Dobson's house so I made yummy mint brownies for dessert. The dinner was fabulous, thanks guys, and we stayed and played games for a little while.

Over all I think it was a pretty productive weekend. I hope you all had a great one too. Keep checking back because it's spring break for the U, which means Kev has No school. So hopfully we will get to do more fun things this week.

Picnic anyone?

My very cute Mother-in-law, dropped this awesome basket off to us the other night. She said it was a thank you for scrapbooking her entire Nauvoo Trip (which by the way she took over 1,000 pics, although I didn't scrap that many.) And I told her not to worry about it, because I actually really enjoyed doing her trip. But I thought it was the sweetest thing. It was so beautiful, completely full of everything you need to have a picnic with your family, including treats and a drink. Too bad the weather is going to be crappy this weekend or we would totally be going on a picnic. I guess we will just have to pretend and do it inside. So I just wanted to say thank you and show off what an amazing thing she did. (FYI: She didn't make the basket, she got it at an auction. But it was still very sweet of her, and what a cute idea for a gift for someone.)

SPRING..?

Spring is coming and I am so excited...I know the weather is only in the 40's and 50's but hey that beats the 20's any day. I just love love love spring. We have been stuck in the house far too long this winter and both Tyler and I are dying to get out! I'm sure we will be hitting a lot of parks this spring and summer. If anyone is interested in starting a playgroup at the park let me know. I know we had a great time in the fall.

Ok to admit the truth..their is one thing I don't like about spring and that is..Spring CLEANING. I don't dread anything more. But I have decided since we are trying to sell our house (hopefully not to soon), that I need to get serious about doing a deep cleaning. If anyone has any suggestions to make it easier let me know. I have already somewhat started by painting the shelves we put up in the closets, months ago. But that is now finished and all put back together in an organized fashion. I do love that part, I will organize anything. Gina likes to tease me because she thinks I'm too organized, but I think she just jealous. love ya G! The next step I'm sure will be washing base boards and blinds..oh so much fun. I just need to get the ambition to get started. Well hope all is well with all, and hopefully I will have a good start the next time I post.

Best Friends

Tyler and Aria have been around each other since birth. You might say they are like siblings..because hey they fight like ones. But all in all they love each other. Tyler is constantly talking about Aria, and Aria is always excited to see Ty Ty. They are often yelling each others names in sacrament meeting. And love it when they get to play together. But most of all I think Gina and I love it more, because it gives us a break..for the most part. The only down side is they still like to hurt each other. Well it's usually Aria attacking Tyler, and Ty comes and tells on her. But they are getting better about it. Aria's new favorite thing is to give him a big hug and kiss afterwords, it's very sweet. Hopefully as they get older they will continue to be good friends even though ones a boy and the other a girl. Because we all no that their friendship right now is something we all treasure. These are a few random shots of them over the past few weeks, when Aria has come over to play. They get pretty crazy together.

Birthday Week...

We were joking with some friends about how when it's your birthday it should be for the whole week. Well this year it really was for me. On Monday we went to dinner with 5 couples from our ward to celebrate Mine, Tara, and Anthony's birthday's all of which are on the same exact day. How crazy is that. We had an awesome time, getting to know new people and celebrating with no kids. It really was great thanks so much Chris and Tara, we really owe you.

Then on Tuesday we celebrated at work, which is for all the birthdays that month, and we had delicious Marie Calendar's pies...you can't beat that. Thanks so much to my work, you guys are great and I'm so glad that I still get to see you all once a week. And thank you Pattie and Steph for the wonderful gifts.

On my actual birthday...it was pretty much an ordinary day, I watch my 4 year old niece on Thursdays so I had her, but then I dropped her off at preschool, and my mother in law offered to watch Tyler so I could go shopping kid free. I didn't really have anything to shop for, but I got some cute new shoes, and what more could a girl ask for. Kev got me a fossil watch which I absolutely love, thank you babe. And then we went to dinner that night with Anthony and Gina. We love you guys thanks for putting up with us and for being such great friends, and thank you Gina for the wonderful gift. We we got home Kev had gotten me a banana cream pie, which is my favorite, but we were so full from dinner that we didn't eat it until the next day. But it was delicious.

Believe it or not the week isn't over yet. On Sunday we went out to my parents house for dinner and to celebrate mine and my little brother's birthday (yep he's the black kid, I know that caused confusion before, but he was adopted). Our birthdays are 3 days apart so we are used to combining them. My parents got me a scrap booking tote that I love and will come in handy for all of the stamps I am collecting these days. Well that pretty much sums it all up. And it was a great week, thank you everyone for making it that way. And baby I love you, Thank you for all you do for me and for making my birthday a memorable one.