Cole performs "The Trick"

Bart always anxiously anticipates the day that our babies can do the stand up "trick". Cole rivals Caden at being the youngest of our boys (only 3 months old) to perform it. He is not a pro yet, but with a little more practice, he'll be doing it well and Bart will be up to old antics of showing him off this way to EVERYONE, EVERYWHERE!

Our Spring Break was Winter Wonderful!

I wasn't up for staying at home pent up inside for another year during a rainy week of spring break. So even though Bart couldn't miss the whole week of work...the boys and I packed up and headed off to our favorite place - Grammy and Papa's Black Butte house. My mom and sister (plus her crew) joined us the first part of the week and then Bart met up with us for the last part of the week. It was a cold and snowy good time!

Snow, snow and more snow. There was some left over when we arrived from past storms. Then we got more each day. Over 10 inches fell on Friday morning alone. The boys were loving it. Drew and Caden's carefully built an Ewok-looking snowman.

It became the karate chopping block later that afternoon.

Bo's favorite activity was playing tennis...in the garage! Not quite tennis weather but he found a "dry court"

Our new Black Butte tradition each time we go is to roast a meal in the fireplace. This time it was a wienie roast with marshmallows for lunch one afternoon.

Happy Easter

Lookin dapper in their Easter clothes

Sweeter than 4 chocolate bunnies!

Who wants to hunt for eggs? Bo and Brinley "hid" themselves in this plastic bin.

My turn with the Bag Tag

Warning: View contents at your own risk

Disclaimer: In all honesty, I was tempted to remove a few items...but I didn't.

Well, I guess there were a few gum wrappers and a dusting of crumbs in the bottom of the purse that didn't get included in the picture. But otherwise, here it is:

-wallet

-digital camera

-cell phone

-travel lotion

-hair gel (for doing little boys hair on the fly)

-red envelope with various gift certificates (I finally decided to

carry them on me so I remember to use them)

-tissues (for ever-runny noses)

-business cards (cool gift from my talented sister-in-law

for my "pseudo-painting business")

-make-up bag (mostly full of every kind of chapstick ever made

- don't ask...I had a "lip problem" for a while)

-gum

-breast pad!!

-pacifier (better known as "blue uh-oh"...yes, for Bo)

-yellow toy car

-spider man sunglasses (not mine!)

-library story time schedule

-reading material for "Merina" IUD (whoops - tmi!)

-2 tiny claw clips (to keep me from wanting to shave my hair every day!)

There you have it. Most of my "kid care" stuff is in a seperate diaper bag that I usually leave in the car. I stuff a diaper and wipes into my purse if I don't want to carry both.

Aubrey, Brooke, and Shana...now it's your turn - let's see it ladies!

Word Cloud

I saw this word cloud done on a friend's blog and thought I'd give it a try. This software program randomly picks words from your website. The words are arranged alphabetically and more frequently used words are in larger fonts. It looks kinda cool and amazingly represents my life pretty accurately - in a neat little box...

Notice right off the bat is "Baby, Bart & Boys". I also liked "fun god, good guy", "little love" and "cooler crew". With sick kids, "Night nurse" has been the story of my life the past 3 weeks. And it wraps up with "years young" - that will be a great way to remember how to refer my age in years to come! Pretty "sweet" huh? That was in there too. I wish life was really this square and straight forward :)! Click on the blue {word cloud} and try for yourself.

Our Home Teachers are Cooler than Your Home Teachers

We got new Home Teachers (For those of you who don't know - home teachers are 2 male ward members assigned to visit you in your home monthly to check on you and share a gospel message). So this great guy and his 12 year old son/companion made it over last week to visit. They started sharing the story of Aaron, throwing down his staff and having it turn into a serpent which ate all the serpents of the pharoa's magicians. He explained that the power to turn Aaron's staff to a serpent came from God. God did this to show that He is more powerful than magicians or anything for that matter. Cool message huh? He was about finished telling this great bible story and the boys were listening quite intently, when Sammy, the 12-yr old boy added, "plus, God must think serpents are cool" and he reached into his shirt and pulled out "Bubba" their pet corn snake. It was quite the object lesson - a bible story my boys will now NEVER forget! And now they will probably NEVER quit asking me for a pet snake (since I have heard about it almost every day since). Sorry boys, not going to happen - notice I'm not in any of the pictures...yep, I'm across the room using zoom on the camera so I don't have to get too close!We warned our home teachers that they have set the bar high now for their visits...they say next month they'll bring a llama! As for this night, it was all kinds of boy fun. Thanks Dean and Sammy.

Love Your Heart Night

The week before Valentine's Day, Cade and Ty's school had a "Love Your Heart Night". The boys informed me it was all the rave and "everyone" was going to be there. So after dinner, we headed back to the school for a little heart-healthy fun. The activity included exercise events stationed all around the school which were good for your heart.

I never knew my boys could climb the gym rope, jumprope and do so many sit-ups. Thanks goes to the unnoticed P.E. teacher who is obviously doing her job well. (Well, I don't know how unnoticed she really is...P.E. is the only thing at school I can get my boys to tell me about!)

Bart and Ty "speed walk" around the library. Cade shows off his jump-roping skills.

Our rope-climbing monkeys

Caden did 111 sit-ups - no joke~he had all these admiring girls counting each and every one!