{Sock Hop}

Every Spring our school has a Sock Hop. In our 5 years at the school this was our first year going. We went mainly becuase E wanted to be in the Hula Hoop competition (at the back to school bbq he beat out the 4th graders so he was anxious to do that again).

We had the girls that night so they went with us and danced the night away. My boys are definatly boys standing on the edge being wallflowers, while the girls weren't shy at all and got right in there and danced away. One of my first graders took them in the middle with her and they all danced together as long as they wanted too. She was great and would bring them to me or C when they were done dancing. It was a fun night!

And E got first place in the hula hoop contest for 1st Grade!! Go E!!!

{A Bear}

This month in pack meeting K was awarded his Bear...which he earned in Decemebr but it has been so busy with everything this is the first pack meeting we have made it to since then....he was happy to get it and had his face painted as part of the ceremony.

{No Leprachaun's Caught}

So we continued with the second attempt to catch a leprachaun this year. And again they got away leaving a mess behind them....I really believe the cleaning fairies should come the day after the leprachaun's so that when you get home from work all is returned to it's proper place.

They made a big mess this year....all the kitchen cupboards were open, furniture was moved, cushions blocked the hallways, all the boys clothes were out of the closet and toliet paper was all over the bathroom alond with leprachaun dust all over everything. My favorite was the collection of random green items they found around the house and gathered on the kitchen table......

{Science Projects}

Well Friday was a big day at school. As a school we participate in Science Day. Every class moves from station to station doing science experiements all day long. It was something I always helped with as a parent and now as a teacher I get to enjoy with the scholars.

At the end of the day the winners of the science fair are announced. They are by grade level then for the top three of the entire school...

And here's our K.

2ND PLACE FOR 4TH GRADE

And then K again.......2ND PLACE IN THE ENTIRE SCHOOL!!!!

We are so proud of him and all the hard work he put into this project...it was his hardest project yet!

{Here we come!!!}

We got our Disneyland vouchers via email on Wednesday! We weren't expectig to get them for me too but the two boys and I all got them!! Now just C has to get his service done this next week and we are ready for a free day at Disney!!

{Springs Preserve}

We were able to spend a few hours at the Springs Preserve here in Vegas last Saturday (Thanks to our bank for giving us a free day to visit). K had been there with school when it first opened and E went with his preschool about 2 years ago but doesn't remember it at all.

It is so much fun. It is a hands on museum that is inside and out. It is built in the area where the springs used to be. There are a lot of things for the kids to interact with. It teaches about the people who used to live in Vegas, water conservation, desert life and animals. And has trails and gardens. We spent a good 3 hours there and could have been there longer.

{Service???}

So have you seen the commercials for a free ticket to disneyland if you do a day of service?

Well I did....A LOT....and ignored them. Then someone at school was talking to me about what thier kids were doing to earn their ticket, then another friend the next day told me what thier kids were doing and I thought "I really need to look into this"  I mean really we live 5 hours from Disneyland, our boys have NEVER been and an almost free vacation is better than NO vacation.

So I looked up the service we could give on the site and there was NOTHING for kids to do in Vegas, but it did show some to do in St George. So we signed them up.

All they had to do was collect 100 cans each and smash them and turn them in.....after two phone calls they had more than enough cans.

So when thier uncle and aunt showed up for the weekend they went in the backyard and got to smashing. I think this is the easiest service they could have given and it was a success. E decided he couldn't smach them with his foot so out came a hammer.....

Disneyland here we come sometime this summer!!

{That Time of Year}

It has now become one of the months I dread getting to each year.

March.....Science Fair Month......2 boys with big projects due the same day....working and trying to get it all done about does us in but somehow it always gets done.

This year we are a bit behind since I don't want to work on more school stuff when we get home in addition to the normal homework so we will be working on K's stuff this weekend so he can turn it in Tuesday morning. He has finsihed the experiement part, the research paper and the final paper. Now we just have his boards to make and his presentation to work on.

E turned his in today and it was great to have one done and finished.

A few pictures to add to the excitement of the Science Fair Month!

{What I Hear}

I'm "working" on the computer.....C is giving E a math lesson....K is supposed to be getting stuff ready for the morning. You can hear some smacking the wall noise coming from the room K is in (thier bedroom).

C: "K what are you doing?"

K: "Smacking the wall with a sticky frog."

(now I'm trying not to laugh too loudly)

C: "Thanks for being honest, but stop!"

30 seconds later

C: (to me) "The laughing isn't helping."


I mean really....first of all he knows he is smacking the wall....secondly I hate those sticky things you throw at the walls b/c either they get permentaly stuck on the ceiling until someone gets a ladder to tear it done (usually my brother from utah when he comes to visit) or they leave marks on the wall.

But really I love the things we have to say as parents and the straight honesty of children.

I mean really what else would you do with a sticky frog?

{Valetine's Weekend}

It was great how Valentine's also happened to be on a "long weekend" so my brother and his wife came to visit.

We decided to have Family Dinner on Sunday with us and my other brothers' family who live here in town too.

Our usual "pile on uncle time"

Outside the bowling alley where we always go with out uncle and auntie. Picture taken by K.

Since it was Valentines Day I did a chocolate fondue for dessert. It is so easy and so sun and VERY YUMMY!  Everyone seemed to love it!!

{............................}

Really, honestly, truthfully.....I just can't keep up.

Every weekend I tell myself "this is the weekend. I will sit down and blog and get our lives caught up in this makeshift blog family journal thing here".....and then it is Monday and school is the next day and I still haven't gotten to the blog.

So you'll have to keep waiting....to see what exciting things have been happening over here...or if anything exciting at all has really happened. 

So keep watching and one day I will surprise you all and the blog will be back in all it's glory!

{nothing to do with us}

But I think this is fun and it has been around awhile so if you have seen it...enjoy it again...



The dancer inside of me couldn't resist putting this here for all to see.

{The way we welcome in a new year}

So New Year's Eve came and went. We had late night taco bell with K on New Year's Eve and then watched a movie while the boys slept. Nothing too excting.

But I think that everyday since Christmas brought more inventions of how to shot nerf darts at one another.

Then I went to work to "catch up" on everything I didn't do before Christmas and C sent me this picture after I text him asking how things were going.....

Happy New Year to All 12 days late!

{The Big Black Thing}

So every Christmas we unpack all our holiday stuff--decorations, pictures, albums everything. This everything includes Christmas movies and books. I think that if we hide them away they are more special and loved even more when they are around. So when the movies come out we have some oldies but goodies that are of the VHS variety.

This year the boys pull it all out stick the movies in the handy Christmas basket and the books under the trees and on we go.

Until one day E comes in, with nothing in his hands while I am wrting lesson plans to ask "What do you we do the the big black thing?"

Me: "What?"

E: "In the movie bucket, the big black thing?"

Me: (i still have no clue what he is talking about and am just straing at him)

E: "You know it goes in the big black box but it isn't doing anything"

Me: (Still confused and having no clue)

E: "It was in with the movies so we can watch Home Alone 3"

Me: (finally I got it...the VHS tape of Home Alone 3 and the VCR!) and I start laughing and explain how it works and what to do.

My 7 year old has no clue what a VCR is or that at one time it was all we had to watch movies

Then tonight....

the 9 year old comes in and yes I was working on lesson plans again

K: "you know that V thing?"

Me: (looking at him wierd I am sure)

K: "We want to watch Home Alone 3" (followed by an eye roll by him)

Me: " the VCR you mean?"

K: "Yeah. How do we get it to go?"

Me: "You push play like I showed you before."

K: "but it is at the end and we need to get it to the start."

My child did not know how to rewind a movie or even thought that was a possibility that he would have to do that.....what have dvd players done to our thinking???

So we talk about how to rewind the movie and he goes to do it.....

From the other room I hear this conversation:

E:"Are we going to watch the movie?"

K: "We have to get it to the start first. Mom said to re---wind, re--wond, reee....to push that button."

E: "But the numbers are going backward."

K: "Well they must go forward when we watch so this is how it works....just wait Mom said it would work."

My poor babies....can't remember that it is called rewind and have no patience to see what will happen...I wonder if I should show them fast forward to get through the previews??

Maybe next year we should find all those old movies on dvd so they don't have to have this convsersation again next year.

{Christmas in Pictures}

{A Nerf Gun Christmas}

This year was all about the Nerf Gun. All boys, including C, got a gun for Christmas. Our house is constantly covered in the nerf darts and people are running shooting hiding and sneak attacking each other.

The only rule...no shooting in the kitchen when food is cooking and no shooting the mom.

{Christmas Eve}

It seems each year our traditions evolve and change. We add new ones, take out the ones that didn't work, and remember ones from years past.

This year we remembered a treasured tradition we had when we would go home to Canada for Christmas. We only did this twice in Canada but the kids loved it and it gave us all something to do Christmas Eve day as a family. Now we try to recreate that in Vegas, but we were missing snow and a cold cold cabin but it was just as fun.

So we re-introduced the roasting hot dogs and marshmellows over the fire pit this year. C dug out a hole in the backyard, I did the shopping, K did some roasting, and E was the freezing cold flashlight holding hating the smoke of the fire person.

We also did our painting this year. Last year's theme (picked by me) was snowmen, this year was K's pick which was Christmas Trees. It is a quiet tradition with everyone at the table together will all the paints I can find. It is relaxing and different from all the other stuff we do.

We also read the Christmas story before taking the traditional kids in their jammies picture in front of the tree. The night ends with the boys opening the presents they purchased for one another. It is a fun day and a great start to our Christmas day.

{Christmas Treats}

It seems that every other year my parents are able to come to visit sometime in the month of December. So we have a lot of Vegas Christmas memories, as opposed to going out of town to make extended family memories.

This year Grandma was able to help all the kids make treats to take to school for thier classmates. Even our cousings A & L were here for the fun! K. didn't want to give "hearts" to everyone so he went with the classic candy cane, but E and L were happy to make each of thier classmates a candy cane heart. Grandma did the dangerous hot gluing and the kids punched out circles, cut ribbon and signed all thier tags while I stamped and helped out.

{Hope, Faith, Endurance}

I have followed the story of this family since the day after the accident. I read this mom's blog before the accident and continued to all these years, following her recovery and faith. She is amazing.

Her story and the story of her family has been written beautifully in an Arizona paper and is in a two piece series.

It is a great story of love hope endurance faith and family.

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/stephanie-nielson-intro-120609.html

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/stephanie-nielson-intro-120609.html



p.s. one of these days I will get caught up on our lives here in blog land and i am hoping that is before Christmas!

{thanksgiving}

For Thanksgiving I pretty much force everyone into the kitchen to help. After they are in there all is well it's getting them in to help that is the hardest. I do a lot of prep the night before so we all spend a good hour or two together cooking and getting ready for the morning.

The next day after a movie at home, and dinner we do gingerbread houses that evening. This way we get our first taste of Christmas decor in our house early. This was the first year the boys were able to do all the decoratinog themselves. C still puts the houses together and we watched the boys decorate. We might need to buy one for each of us next year so C and I have something to do too!

{THe Fall Flood}

So the morning of Thanksgiving we woke up to water all over the boys bathroom, down the hallway and in the front room of our house. We started soaking up water but it seemed that as fast as we could soak it up the faster it was running out. Finally C turned the water off to the house and thus began our fun experience of turning the water on and off at the street so we could use it.

This was after they dug up our front yard to stop that leak, and replacing our water heater 2 days before...to say the least we were not happy campers.

We found out the next day after tons of phone calls to get someone out here that there was a major leak in the pipes in our house and all the plumbing would have to be replaced. And there we were for 6 days with virutally no water to the house and plumbers everywhere.

They cut holes in almost every wall in the house, turned our garage into a plumbing store and became friends with us for those days.

I think the boys counted 18 holes in all through the house. Here are a few pictures of that holiday fun.

{The Last Game of the Fall And Awards}

It was E's last game. It got warmer so we weren't all freezing (remember we are in Vegas so freezing is below 60 degrees). It was a great season and E had a great time. It was his first season the "big field" so it was a challenge but he figured out how helpful it is to play the position you are put in so you don't run yourself ragged chasing the ball on the big field.

And the picture is horrible and my battery died so it was the only one I got that day.

Then the next Tuesday was his season closing party. E got another trophy and his coach, who we love, talked about how hard he worked and how for being the smallest on the team he did a great job. We had a really young team this year and I think they only lost 2 games all season...They did a great job!