Conference Favorites

As if General Conference weekend isn't cool enough - a weekend twice a year (for our church)when you get to stay home and watch uplifting and faith promoting messages from the prophet, apostles and church leaders, from your couch, in your very own family room, on cable television, with your family. A Sunday without meetings, no rushing out the door so you won't be late, no high-heels that hurt your feet all day. I LOVE IT! But I love it even more because we have some family traditions that make the day even more special. Not only do I love these traditions, but my kids look forward to them for the 6 months inbetween and expect now every General Conference Saturday and Sunday. This year, I even added a new one! My sister sent me this idea from "Brown Paper Packages" website and I thought it was awesome. *Buckets with gospel words on them and filled with your kids favorite treats - as they listen to conference and hear the words on the buckets, they get to come up and take a goody* So I mostly copied, with changing a few things. I wanted to be able to change the words on the treat buckets. So instead of having gospel words written or stuck directly on the buckets, I painted some wooden rectangles with chalkboard paint and attached them to the front of each bucket. Then I just wrote the words with chalk - and now I can change them as often as I want! Also, as you can see, my buckets were green (I also have some smaller white ones, I liked them both) not because I painted them, only because that is what the $1 section of Target had (probably left over from St. Patrick's Day). But I thought they were more fun anyways! I left off the ribbons the the handles because...well, I have boys, and I didn't want the ribbon to obstruct the view of the TV.

The kids LOVED it. It really did work - for the bigs and littles! This one is a hit for all the ages. They listened and heard words even at times when I didn't!

They like to keep busy with work sheets too. Busy AND quiet are good. So I always print out Conference packets - you can find them on the internet. Sugardoodle.net had some great ones this Spring for all ages.

And of course - our traditional breakfast of homemade cinnamon rolls. I only make them twice a year -April and October (General Conference time!)

I love General Conference weekend. And I love having these simple family traditions to go along with it. I see that it fills my kids with feelings of love and excitement for these weekends and I hope that they will associate that love and excitement always with listening and following the Prophet.

A Bracket for Brothers

March Madness wasn't the only intense tournament going on in the month of March. The bracket sketched out neatly on the chalkboard at the front of the gym last Wed night had every cubscout (and their dad) nervously sweating as they waited their turn for a chance to make it into the Pinewood Derby Final four. Bart couldn't even get blamed for doing the cars for the boys this year. Since he has been traveling so much, it was up the our 2 cubscouts and good 'ol mom to put together some winning vehicles. Uncle Bill and his power tools helped with the cutting - but the sanding, painting, and and wheels were all them! (and yours truly) So, on March 30th, it was off to the races with the BYU Jimmer-mobile and the TrailBlazer car (would you expect anything different from my two boys?) Their motto: "We don't want them fancy...just fast." After the grueling round robin tournament where everyone's car raced each others, it was on to the bracket. Tyler was number 1 seed and Caden number 2! As the tournament played out and the bracket shrinked - soon it was only 2 remaining! Yep -the Dickson brothers!

Here they are at the end of the track, waiting for the final race - and their final fate-1st or 2nd place...(notice their positions - do they look like brothers of what?) And the TrailBlazer wins!!! Tyler took 1st, and big brother Cade lost only to his little bro. And he was an amazing sport about it too. I was really happy for them and proud of them both - and myself in fact!

The winners pose with papa.

The boys show off their prizes, Red Vines and DumDum pops - oh boy! What a fun night. Now I just have to figure out what we did, so we can do it again next year...and the next, and the next...only 11 more times!

Spring Break 2011

Our Spring Break wasn't warm or tropical or very "springy" but it was a getaway to our favorite place with some of our favorite people. We went to grammy and papa's house at Black Butte in Central, OR with our friends who have 3 boys of their own. What could be more fun than 8 little boys and a week with no real plans? (Just go with it, *wink *wink) The kids and I spent 10 days. Bart came and went for work throughout the week but that didn't keep us from all our playing, relaxing and enjoying the snow. We woke up to beautiful snow at the ranch most mornings, swam at the indoor pool, played a TON of board games (rummikub and banagrams were worn out by the end of the week), ate yummy food, hot tubbed, read, relaxed and of course watched a lot of March Madness basketball.

We even headed up to Hoodoo for an afternoon with our oldest 3 for skiing. I was amazed at how fast the kids picked it up. It was our 5 yr old's first time and he was hopping on the chair lift and whizzing down the bunny hill by the end of the afternoon. My sister, who now lives in Central OR was a doll and watched our littles for the day so both the hubby and I could be in on the fun!

The parents were tuckered out from a day on the slopes, but leave it to little boys to have boundless energy and enough grit to decide to climb the huge snow bank out at the parking lot.

This one must have climbed and slipped a dozen times before he made it to the top! But he kept smiling and trying. It proved to me how much growing-up he has been doing...he's now one of the big boys!

The all finally made it!

Crazy group up top.

Daddy got pulled into hottubbing with this motley crew...lucky for him since he had some sore skiing muscles that needed attention.

Another highlight of the week was taking the sleds to the snowpark. It was fast and furious down the hill ones the pathways were blazed. Only minor casualties were had. I still think there were more smiles than tears. It was so fun that it deserved a return trip before the week's end.

By our second trip up, the snow was REALLY deep! Here's our oldest waist deep taking a break to eat some snow.

Me with my neice (just in case you wondered how a girl got in our family photos - my sister and her kids joined us the last part of the week. Fun, fun and more fun!)

Bart and I made a pact that we would do no more boring, wet, spring breaks at home. For me, it means a week to spend with the kids and to just get away somewhere. This beautiful place ALWAYS does the trick. Thanks Black Butte for the break!

Livin' off ALOHA!

The hubby and I are only getting through the past 2 weeks of cold, wet weather, sick kids, and a disastrously (is that a word?) busy schedule because we are still living off the memory of our recent trip to paradise. We pulled off the near-impossible! We actually cleared 10 days from our calendar, convinced my mom to stay with our 5 crazies, dug out some shorts and swim-suits from the drawers and hopped on a plane to Hawaii. We literally felt guilty traveling - just the two of us. We kept feeling like we were "sneaking away" and going to get caught at any minute and returned to reality. But we escaped successfully and arrived in the warm, sweet smelling Big Island and enjoyed 9 kid-free days - pure heaven!

My parents have an amazing condo on the Kohala Coast - it's pretty hard not to enjoy yourself. Our first day there included a long walk around A-bay - it was beautiful and private, except for a lot of sea turtles on the shore along the way.

I'm not sure what this pose is, but is was amazing standing on the rocks while the waves crashed in. We even thought of our boys at home (just for a minute) and sent them a little picture message...

Our hike ended at a lone palm tree out in the middle of a bed of lava - literally nothing but lava rock as far as the eye can see. And not a sole in sight. At the base of the lone palm tree was this treasure! A natural fresh water pool. Yep, fresh, cool, crystal clear spring water coming up out of the middle of a lava field! Hawaii amazes me. We might have swam in it.

We enjoyed an afternoon whale watching cruise. We were just lying in the beach, and looked up as they were boarding for the cruise and said to each other, "Hey - that sounds fun! Let's go grab tickets and get on!" One of the millions of things that are possible when you're not toting little ones along.

Humpback whales galore - no zoom!

We rented long boards one afternoon and gave ourselves lessons. Just a note - its harder than it looks. We like to say that the bay was especially choppy that day :) And I like to remind Bart that I did better than he did staying upright!

Our good friends from home joined us on day 4 and together, we booked an afternoon helicopter ride around the island. Definitely the BEST and ONLY way to see everything. It was beyond incredible. We flew from the dry side of the island to the rainforest, around the rim of the volcano, and through the Kohala Coast valleys and waterfalls. Breathtaking!

A still shot of the fire red lava literally flowing from a vent.

I didn't get many other pictures with my camera, because I was busy getting sick - yeah, embarassing, I know. Especially since I was in the cockpit next to the pilot. Next time I'll remember the dramamine . It was still worth every minute!

My favorite though - had to be the Zip Line tour. We took a military 6 wheeler through the wilderness, which was probably the scariest part of the tour, stopping a time or two to let wild cattle move out of our way. Then, 8 zip lines through the rainforest canopy - past waterfalls, and over valleys with ocean views. It was beyond cool!

We spent a TON of time getting R&R at the beach or by the pool. We enjoyed a couples oceanside massage, daily morning smoothies, yummy restaraunts in the evenings, and warm nights playing bananagrams with our friends on the lanai. I read 2 1/2 books. Exercising even felt relaxing.

My mom did AMAZING with my kids (I had no doubts - just worries that she would make me looks bad!) and we found all well when we returned home. A testament to the whole idea of couples needing to just get away once and a while. Reality hits like a cold bucket of water - I think we were home all of 20 minutes before Coley threw up all over the bathroom floor and someone's homework got spilled on. But it all felt fun again in some un-normal way - it's what a good vacation does to you.

So until next time, this image will be engraved in my memory. The tan is already fading away - but the experiences and memories won't if I can help it. I'll stay livin' off ALOHA as long as possible.

Loving Love Day

Sometimes I love the simple holidays like Valentines Day best, because you can do some fun things without all the pressure and stress that Christmas can bring. My creativity for this year was more like copying...but when you have creative friends, why not? My friend, who by the way has an amazing blog you can check out here (who you may already know, becuase she is getting quite famous in the crafty-blog world) sometimes posts about her homemade lollipops. I gave them a try last year and they were pretty "fool-proof" so this year was round two.
I love this kid. While craftiness is usually lost on boys, this kid is always up for helping me with my newest project. The older boys wouldn't hear of having any other valentines treats besides store-bought NBA cards with store-bought sour licorice sticks attached. But this boy is always ready to humor me and go along with my ideas. So while the little two nap - he's my helper and we have a blast.

We wrapped them up in small plastic treat bags and tied 'em up with a ribbon.

Then for the cards...I remembered a different friend doing a cute thing last year. So, since I'm a creative copier, I started pulling all the ideas together...and...

He was even willing to go along with this next part, which involved a silly photo shoot holding out his fist in front of him.

Then using photoshop to crop and add the lettering, and $.13 cent 4x6 prints at Costco - we added the homemade lollipops and had our preschool Valentine's Day cards.

He was pretty happy with them - can't you tell by the half-smile he had while holding it up? Thanks Bode for always wanting to hang with mom and your help making Love Day lovely!