Monday, December 28, 2015

Passing time while dad is away...

Matt went away for about a month, the month of June.  While he was away we decided to pass the time.  We ended up going on a girls night to Wicked.  We left the boys home with a babysitter. It was awesome.  Still one of my favorite musicals!




Bonus, the Turners (and about half our ward. Hi Brother Rich!!) was there that night too!

We also went to the Circus.  Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey of course!  We realized that the last time we took the kids to the circus was before Matt was deployed.  The boys had never been.  So We decided to go, with our good friends the Turners again!
It was a blast!

The Girls Birthdays!

Our May birthday girls have birthdays 2 weeks apart.  So they often get lumped together, this post is no exception!
Hannah turned 13 this year, our second child to become a teenager!  Yikes!
For her birthday this year, we ended up going to Elitch Gardens.  It is an amusement park in Denver.  Hannah's school orchestra happened to be competing in the Denver Music in the Parks series.  So all her Orchestra friends, which happens to include her besties, were there too.  As a bonus, her orchestra did great and took 3rd place.  Not bad.
Hannah's Besties....
I love that she has such a great group of friends in Middle school!

This picture makes me laugh.  Hanna's cake, looks like some one is punching it into Anya.
We spoiled Hannah and got her, her very own violin.  She is a full size now, so we thought it was time.  She is in love with it, and we pulled off the surprise!

We bought it from a Luther her in Colorado Springs named Juan.  He owns Muejers. This is his violin shop where makes his own violins.  We didn't buy one of his, they are a fortune, but we did buy one that he hand selected and bought to sell in his shop.  It has a beautiful tone quality.  As we started talking to him we discovered that he is a BYU graduate, LDS (same religion as we are).  It was meant to be!


We found Hannah's violin on this rack.
Our youngest girl also had a birthday in May.
She is now in the double digits!

I love that she still makes wishes.
She got her flute...do you think she likes it?

oops!

So, I noticed that I haven't posted since Easter!  I guess that is what a going back to college at my age with 5 kiddos gets you.  I have a lot of catching up to do.  Unfortunately it won't be a lot of the little fun things I like to add for our family records.  It will just be the big stuff.  I will try not to neglect our family journal so badly again, but still in school so no guarantees!

Sunday, May 31, 2015

Easter!

 Easter!
Easter fell on conference weekend for our church, so it was pretty special.  We tried to not plan things that would take away time from our church services, that meant a Friday night egg dying session!


We tried a new tie die kit.  It sort of worked, but was pretty messy.  I don't think we will do that one again.  We all had stained fingers for a few days...
 We also did the traditional, good, old fashioned, food coloring method.
 Here are some of the eggs we ended up with.

 The next morning, in between conference sessions, we went to our communities egg hunt.  It was like a mosh pit gone wild.  I don't think we will go next year.  Most of my kids did ok, but my boys are used to more civilized egg hunts.  Like just our family.   They didn't understand the concept of "start running right away", "grab any egg you can find", "fight your way to the middle as fast as you can", it was madness.  Jack is pretty aggressive, so he ended up with a handful of eggs, but poor Hunter hesitated just a bit too long.  The pack got ahead of him and ravished everything in sight.  Luckily I (illegally) guarded an egg for him to find.  So he left with just one egg, but I made his sister's give him some.  Still, it was kind of sad.  I like our "just family" egg hunts much better!
 The Fire truck saved the day!
 Both boys got to sit in the drivers seat, and they even let Hunter push the siren switch.  He was so excited.  Now he wants to be "Chief Firefighter Hunter Sir" when he grows up.  He even has the fire station he wants to live at all picked out, it just happens to be up the street from our house ;)

 We went and watched the second session of Conference with our good friends.  We have known these guys for a good while now, and they have popped up here and there on my blog before I am sure.  After conference was over, we did a combined family egg hunt.  This was much more fun!  Hunter ended up with many more eggs this time!



 Our friends have a great back yard for hiding eggs in!




 Easter morning.

Our spoils!

I think they liked what they got!
Easter Sunday, we actually didn't have our official church meetings.  It was the last day of our General Conference, which we can watch on TV.  So, I took these pictures the week before, which is when we wore our new Easter clothes.  I also made my kids wear them the week after Easter too.
Some cute kiddos!
These handsome boys just can't let a beautiful, sunny afternoon pass without getting their "motorcycles" out and having a race.
Sneaky, sneaky.
good thing they are so cute!
It was a wonderful Easter!

Florissant Fossil Bed National Park

The last Saturday of Spring Break, we drove about an hour away to the Florissant Fossil Beds.  This was pretty cool.  I had no idea that Colorado used to have a RedWood forest like Oregon and Northern California.  A volcano erupted and covered the area with volcanic ash which preserved part of the Redwoods.  Now all that is left is about 15 to 20 petrified Redwood stumps.  It was still pretty cool to see. 

 Touching part of a petrified Redwood.


 The stumps are starting to disintegrate, so most we were not allowed to touch and are being held together by cording.

 This was one of the largest still preserved.

While there, the kids completed a booklet and scavenger hunt.  Afterwards, they were able to be sworn in as junior park rangers.
It was a very neat place to visit, and very informative.  I love learning about new things.