Wesley enjoys karate

Here is a video I snapped of Wes doing his kick.
At the end he says... "I kicked it" before he runs off.

Hoppy Easter!

Yesterday was a good day. It was so nice to have a day off where I wasn't working on Saturday. We spent the morning looking at cabinets for our remodel and then we took the kids to the Easter Egg hunt at Ella's Karate school. They put together a really nice activity. They gathered the kids together into age groups, (6 and under for my kids) and then took them outside to "hunt" eggs. Wes was sososososososo excited to participate. he walked around going "one-two-three eggs!" as he gathered them into his basket. He told me "Wesley LOVE eggs!" Ella ran off with the other bigger kids and she managed to snag quite a few eggs, including 3 special prize eggs. She gave one to Wes, and one to a little boy from her class who didn't get one. Ella pulled out a fantastic prize from the prize bag, a free party! Wes pulled out a free T-shirt. They both had a fantastic time. After the egg hunt, they went back inside for some karate activities, Wes was so excited to FINALLY get to go on the mats with Sissy. He stood in line with her for his turn to kick the punching bag, and was soso cute doing it. After a few turns he got tired of waiting so he went and found an unoccupied bag to kick. All the parents thought it was A-dorable! After the hunt we talked about the real purpose of Easter and what Jesus did for us.

Today is Easter, and we while talked about the resurrection and the reason we celebrate Easter, but the kids were more interested in the Easter bunny and what he brought. The kids were excited to see their baskets and find the eggs the bunny hid. I am so going to be eating the kids candy today!

Easter Egg Hunt

Tonight I took Ella to a Flashlight Easter Egg hunt at Palmer park. There were a bazillion kids there, and they separated the kids from the parents so I was kinda nervous. but Ella did great and managed to snag 7 eggs. She didn't get a "special" egg, but she was very proud of herself and happy with her haul. She is now super excited about getting to go on another "hunt" (is it really a hunt when all the eggs are just sitting on the ground?) tomorrow at her Karate school.

SPY KIDS party!

Yesterday was Ella's Spy Kids birthday party. We had a BLAST! When I asked Ella what kind of cake she wanted, she asked for a "Fancy cake with strawberry and orange topping" I wasn't sure what to make of that, but I suggested a fruit pizza and she loved the idea. Friday night I baked the giant sugar cookie and made the cream cheese frosting and sliced the fruit. Then I left it in the freezer overnight. Saturday morning, Ella and I placed the fruit on in the pattern she wanted. Jon and I gave her a few of our gifts early, (her spy gear) then we headed over to Mom and Dads house to set up for the party. Ella was so excited for her party! Once everyone arrived, I played the opening video and we went outside for our spy training camp. Not all of the games were successful, the water balloons exploded on contact, so we couldn't do the balloon toss, and it was so windy that we couldn't do the ball game I had planned, but the kids loved the eat-a-doughnut-off-a-string game and the obstacle course. After training, we headed inside to watch the next video, which happned to also be the first clue in our treasure hunt style spy kids rescue mission. After following all the clues, defeating the guard donkey and saving the day we went inside for cake and ice cream and presents. It turned out fantastic and all the kids had fun. After cleaning up we headed home for naptime and I made a video of our spy mission. I think it was a success!
















and here is a link to my video of the day!

old stuff I forgot to post

On Mom's birthday, she asked me to make her a very lemony-lemon cake. I made a lemon box cake with lemon juice substituted for 1/3 of the water, lemon jello mixed in with a lemon glaze and candied lemon peel. It was very.... lemony. It was also delish and mom loved it! Score 1 for Shannon.




Monday was Free Cheese Fondue day at "the Melting pot" so Mom and I went to celebrate out birthdays together. (they are 11 days apart) We had an awesome waiter, Chris and had a great time. At dessert, chris brought us a special birthday plate!

It was written in sparkly icing and had two rice crispie treats with candles. So cool.

Rainbows

I love rainbows, I know that I have posted about that before, but it is still true. Yesterday, shortly after Jon came home from work we had a thunderstorm. Right in the middle of it it stopped for just a few minutes and a beautiful rainbow came out. It was very bright and intense. We took the kids out to see it, and I braved the drizzle with my camera to get a picture of it.
pretty!

Spy Kids are gonna save the world!

Ella loves the Movies, "Spy Kids" and "Spy Kids 2". She likes to play spy and have pretend missions. So we decided to throw her a Spy Kids birthday party. I am ridiculously excited about this party! I am letting her invite 4 friends to the party and today we made the invitations! I love the way they came out. We are going to start the party with a "Spy training camp" and once they have passed the training, we are going to send them on a Spy mission, treasure hunt style. We will have recorded and visual clues (since none of them read well yet) and lead them on a mission to save Ella's favorite doll. I can't wait to do this! I have a lot of planning left to do, like getting the clues ready and the training games figured out but I think Ella and the kids are going to have a BLAST!

Here are the invitations I made today. Shhhhhh this project is TOP SECRET!

For Laura

My Mother-in-law served a Mission for our church in Virginia a few years ago. She has always told us that Dogwoods remind her of her mission, and how much she loved them. I suppose they don't have many dogwood trees in Utah. She usually comes out to visit us here in Alabama once a year in the spring time. By the hand of cruel fate, it usually ends up being right before the full blooming of the dogwoods, or at the bedraggled end of their blooming. I don't think she has managed to be here during the best part yet! Well, this year I wanted to do something special for her birthday, so I decided to take some pictures of the dogwood blossoms in full bloom. Well, I can't decide which ones I like best, so I thought I would post them here for you, Laura, and let you pick.
Laura, Let me know which ones you like the best, and what size you would prefer to have them in and I will get them printed up for you. There is no quantity or size limit, so just tell me what you want the most!