The next door neighbors...

One of my favorite things growing up was spending time with our cousins the Fishbein's. We were so lucky to have it where each of the kids in our family had a cousin counterpart in their family. Lucky for us, we have that in our neighbors next door to us. There is one kid for each of our kids. And even more rare than that is the fact that they get along so well. Above is Spencer and Jacob, they are both into video games and electronics. Both play soccer, but it isn't their favorite thing.
This is Jenna and Grace, they are in the same dance class, and play together all the time. They like playing Barbies, Polly Pockets and Dress-ups.
Here's Melissa and Erin. They can be quite goofy sometimes. They also are in the same dance class. They mostly like to do crafts and bake things together. They have this thing where they like to make up recipes. Some have been great, but most...well...
They got carried away playing with pipe cleaners one day.
Doing the 4th of July Bike Parade.
Melissa and Erin
Jenna and Grace
Jacob and Spencer
They even have a little boy Luke for Jayden although they are not old enough to play together yet. Jayden is a year older, but they most likely will be buddies since all the others play together so much.
The really great thing is they live right next door. It is so convenient for our kids to play together. Let's just hope one of us never moves!

4th of July Bike Parade

On the 4th of July last year, our Home Owners Association started doing a pancake breakfast and bike parade. They have a pretty good turn out for the occassion and our kids really like decorating their bikes for the parade. The kids each decorated their own bike except I did the crepe paper in the wheels.
The highlight of the breakfast is the chocolate chip pancakes with vanilla syrup. They also have a rootbeer syrup, but I don't want to give up the vanilla syrup to try it. They have each family bring either a side dish or drink to share and bring your own plates, forks, etc. Last year it seemed like their were a lot of sides and not enough drink and so this year I brought OJ, and I guess everyone had the same thought. We had a ton of drinks and not much sides. Oh, well though the pancakes were great enough!
As you can see, the kids had a great time riding around the commons area in the parade. There are actually a lot of kids in our neighborhood and everyone seemed to have decorated a bike. Surprisingly though, there aren't usually many injuries. Especially with the pack of kids that they have.
Jayden thought he would get in on the action. He started off by walking around with the bikers, but then Melissa put him in the stroller and walked him around.

Melissa's Birthday

The kids and I were just looking back at past blogs and I realized that in my busy March month I didn't blog Melissa's birthday. This is one of my more prouder moments as a parent and it needs to be documented. Kind of silly, but being able to pull off Melissa's birthday was a momentous occasion. We did a surprise party for her... In our family we have set the rule that they get a friend party on their odd birthdays and a family party on their even birthdays. This year Melissa was turning ten which meant family party. Michelle and Brett were supposed to come to Utah for General Conference and I can't quite remember why they didn't, but we were planning on doing something for Melissa when they were here so that Rebecca could be there.

Anyway, when we found out they weren't coming and realized that fitting a birthday party in would be tricky, I came up with the idea to surprise her. So, we told Melissa that since Rebecca wasn't coming we would just do a family party on Saturday after the Priesthood session of conference. Melissa's actual birthday was the Sunday before conference. So, I decided to do it on the day after her birthday after her dance class. I had made her an icecream cake while she was at school and so it was in the freezer out of sight. We did have a close call though when she asked me after school if she could have something out of the freezer, but I told her no because there wasn't enough for Jenna and Spencer to have some too. Whew...

We told everyone to come at about ten to seven so that they would all be here before she got home from dance. Everyone was very nice to park down the street and hoof it to our house. We carpool with our next door neighbor, so when they dropped her off at home, we were all there waiting to surprise her! And boy was she surprised! I didn't get a picture of her actually coming in the door, I was doing the video camera at the time, but she had a look of complete surprise. She was a little embarassed to be in her dance clothes, so went and changed before she opened presents and ate cake.

I don't think she stopped smiling the entire party...
I didn't have enough candles for ten, so we improvised and put a four and a six on the cake and you can kind of see the plus sign we fashioned between them out of toothpicks. What can I say, I'm a math freak! It was a very fun party and everyone was so nice to come and make the evening special for Melissa.

New Furniture

It's finally arrived. We ordered the furniture at the end of March and it has taken about three months for us to get it. It seems strange having new furniture when Steve doesn't have a job, but such is life, we ordered it when he had a job and it's paid for so...
This chair (the one above) is the same style as my parents, but obviously different fabric. The pillow is the same fabric as what the drapes will be, but they are not done yet. The bottom chair is by far my and Steve's favorite piece in the whole room. It really looks good with the entry table that has a similar finish.
We moved our old living room furniture to the family room and the old family room furniture to the basement so it was kind of like new furniture everywhere which is a nice change after three years of the the same look. It does make me want to paint the living room, but you know how we are. It took us forever to decide on the furniture, paint will take at least that long. I am tempted to choose two colors and just paint them in a corner and look at them everyday on the wall until I decide which I like better.

We'll see...

This is how you know when you are done (having kids that is)...

You have a kid like Jayden... Jayden is by far our most challenging kid. He takes a lot of energy. I have to say that things are calming down, but we have to keep a constant eye on him. For example, if the pantry is left open, he will go help himself to whatever. Here he is with a whole wad of bread. He has also been known to dump out the bag of sugar, bust a can of soda because he was throwing it around, and hide toys in the flour.

I added these two in because he does do some cute things too. However, the picture of him with the binky (for the record we got rid of the binky a while ago, this picture was taken in Febrary) he is doing his "scowl". Which is like him saying "Yeah, whatever mom." If Jayden can't reach it, doesn't matter, he will find some way of getting it. Whether it is a tipped over toy bucket or a chair, or whatever...
Leaving anything on the table is an absolute no-no too. Here he is taking some of Jenna's cereal while she is busy looking at the TV. His cereal is in the pink bowl and he decided he liked Jenna's better, so he climbed up on the table and took hers instead.
He is a pretty cute kid, which makes it hard for you to get mad, but boy is he ever a climber, a runner and a mover. He is just always on the go. In trying to find pictures for this blog, I realized I don't take as much pictures of him as I should. But perhaps it is because I am just too tired...

Dance Recital!

Melissa and Jenna had their Spring Dance Recital last night. This is Melissa performing her solo "Dirty Little Secret". She did it for competitions in April and placed second at both competitions. She is now in the Intermediate category, so second was a pretty big deal for her. Last year she did a solo in the beginner category and won, so she had to move up to the next category this year.
Jenna has just been so excited to finally be up on stage she doesn't seem to have any fear. She seems to get up there and just smile the entire time and can be pretty animated with some of her facial expressions.
Both girls got a trophy for participating and Melissa got a medal for going the extra mile during class. It doesn't surprise me, she has always taken dance very serious and really wants to do a good job. She sometimes gets frustrated when the other girls mess around during class. Jenna on the other hand I think gets wound up with the other girls in class and sometimes when I pick her up from class she'll tell me she didn't get a treat after class because she was being naughty.

Jayden didn't cooperate so well during the recital. I spent most of my time in the back of the auditorium with him running around. I missed seeing Jenna, but I had seen most of Melissa's dances at competition. I did get to see Jenna this morning on the video camera and she did really well. I wish I knew how to add video to these blogs, if I did I would include a snip of Jenna and Melissa. I guess I will have to get Lisa to show me how some time.

Happy Easter

I don't know what my problem was this year, but the pictures for Easter this year stink. Yep, this is somehow the best one. I got a few good pictures of the kids doing the easter egg hunt with Steve's family, but when it actually came time for Easter morning, nada. Not even pictures of the kids in their church clothes. I think it is probably because the more pictures you take the more you have to scrapbook and the further I fall behind.

Anyway, the kids got Webkinz for Easter. When they woke up, their animals were in their basket and the Easter bunny left a list of the candy for them to find. They were mostly excited about the Webkinz. Except for Jayden, he was thrilled when he found out that there was candy inside the eggs.

Jenna's Birthday

That's right, Jenna turned 4 this year. When I asked her what she wanted for her birthday, she said she wanted cake. Chocolate cake to be exact. So, I think that if we just got her the cake she would have been excited. However, a couple of days before her birthday she saw a commercial for a cabbage patch doll that licks ice cream and decided that was what she wanted. Melissa and I drove all over looking for a "cute" cabbage patch doll that licks ice cream. We found some cabbage patch dolls at one Walmart, but they were ugly (that's a little harsh, I guess they were just odd looking). So we drove to Toys R Us, Target, Shopko and Kmart, and everyone was all out. Then at about 8 at night Melissa had a great idea to try a different Walmart since they had them, but they weren't cute. So we had a store clerk (we had gone back to Walmart to see if any of the "not so cute" ones would work) look up in the computer if any of the other Walmarts had any. And they did, so we drove to another Walmart, where they had a ton, but they were all on the top shelf. So, we found a guy to get a ladder and help us, and went through every single one, looking for the perfect doll. And as you can see from the next picture, we found it!

I know, where have I been?

Pretty sad that it has been since November that I have blogged. I need to repent and get on with it! March is a busy month for us. First of all, we went Disneyland! It was kind of a lst minute thing. Steve usually is deep into busy season until at least April, but this year it has been pretty light. We were planning on going sometime this spring and when we started trying to figure out when would work, it was either go now, or wait until later when it starts getting crowded. So, we went now.



March 2nd we hopped in the car, drove to Lehi and picked up Steve's brother and his family and drove to California. We made pretty good time. Spencer and Jayden were sick (flu-stuff) before we left and both threw up once in the car on the way home. We were pretty fortunate though because Jayden had a cup of cereal in front of him and got most of it in the cup, and it happened right as we were getting off the freeway to let the kids go potty! Spencer was able to make it into the bucket we had in the car just in case something like that happened.





We made pretty good time traveling down, and so we decided to stop by my parents old home. Sad, but it doesn't look much like I remember it. The bushes and trees are all gone. If they only knew how much time my dad had spent in the yard working to get it the way it was, maybe they would have thought twice before yanking everything out. The only improvement they have made to it was changing the front door color (sorry dad, purple wasn't my favorite).

After seeing the house, we went and visited Grandpa. Was nice to see him and let the kids out. I am so sad though I didn't take pictures of him and the kids. That was not one of my better moments. However, when he moves up here, I will have to take the kids down to see him and take pictures. Melissa was worried as we got in the car though that she forgot to tell him she loved him and was afraid she may never get the chance again, so she ran back in to do it, and it was a vey cute moment.



When we finally got to Disneyland, the kids were a little disappointed because from the outside it doesn't look like much. Melissa has been before and she was trying to tell the others that you have to get inside to see. But Jenna just thought it was a boring hotel room.

Monday morning we got up and headed over to the park. The longest line I stood in all day was the line to get a stroller. While I was in line getting a stroller, the others went in and started going on rides. When I caught up with them, Spencer told me he wasn't feeling good and that he needed to throw up, so I took him to the bathroom and thought that maybe we shouldn't have hurried the trip if Spencer was going to be sick all day. After he threw up though and we went back with the others, I asked them what rides they went on while I was in line for the strollers and they said that they went on the teacups. No wonder Spencer threw up! Anyway, the rest of the day went great. Poor Jayden though, he went from being in a car all day, to a stroller the next day. There were times that he was able to get out and run around and he did get to go on some rides, so he was a good sport about it all.

On Tuesday we went to the beach which was by far Jayden's favorite thing. Melissa and Spencer braved the ice-cold water and had a great time. Jenna and Jayden just dug in the sand and enjoyed that. The out-side temp was great. We had been having really cold weather here, so the seventies was perfect. It was sad though to come back and have cold weather again. The warm temps certainly gave us spring fever!

After the beach we drove to Las Vegas, saw the fountains at the Belagio and then went to bed. The next day we drove home. It was a quick and fun trip, and the kids were all good sports about the car ride. It sure helps with the modern conveniences of a DVD player and Video games!

It's out!!!

Spencer is a proud kid. His tooth came out and he did it all himself. He was wiggling his tooth and said that it seemed like half of it was hanging on. So I said, "Good, pull the other half." And he did. And it took two tugs, but it came out.