Nate is 5

This cute fellow turn 5 today!!  I CAN NOT BELIEVE IT.  5 seems so old.  He's always been our baby, so to have him going to kindergarten next year is just too much.  He got his requested birthday breakfast of gatorade, go-gurt and a breakfast burrito. :)

We all sang and told him the many things we love about him in this video here.

 For his family dinner, he chose to go to Chuck E Cheese.  The other kids were happy about his choice and we had a great time for an over priced pizza dinner and fun! :) PS please notice Nate's new basketball shoes.  He wanted high tops for christmas and Taylor thought it wouldn't matter so we just got him some nice Nike tennis shoes.  WELL, we have been hearing about how we got the wrong shoes for 4 months.  I bought some $15 walmart basketball shoes and it was his favorite thing about his birthday!  I should have done that months ago... seriously! :)

 Nate wanted a planes birthday party.  The cake was not too exciting, but he loved it and it was SUPER easy to create so a WIN WIN there. :)

 This boy loves attention, so he had his smile on all day.  He started asking in January (at Sam's birthday) when his birthday was going to be... the day could not come SOON ENOUGH!

 Cake and Ice cream, Presents....

And a pinata and airplane games at the church made for one happy 5 year old! 

 

We love you Nate.  You bring a lot of sunshine into our home!  Hope you know how special you are!

Happy Easter and Spring Break

Easter is a fun one for me because I love hanging out with family and not having to plan much... Close second is Thanksgiving.  One swiss tradition is decorating easter eggs the REAL way.  Using flowers and dying them with onion skins.

 Here, my mom is helping the boys thread their eggs with flowers.

 So, you gather wild flowers and dip the egg in water, then stick the flowers to the egg.  You have to wrap thread around the flowers so they stay on.

 Taylor won for most pretty before being dyed.  In fact, his egg was so pretty, we didn't even put it in the onion skins, we just used it for a center piece.

Then, you put them in the pot with onion skins (Or blueberries, or red root, or any other natural dye) to boil for about 20 minutes or until hard.

 After they are boiled hard, you unwrap them and see how pretty they are...

 Nate is holding a decorated egg above, Mimi is eating one below.  you can see the carton of eggs on the ground behind Mimi.  They look so cool huh??

 Then the best part is the egg bust after.  You get your egg you decorated and hold it and hit another person's egg with yours.  If yours cracks they win, if theirs cracks you win.  It's a serious competition as you can see on Jake and Luke's faces!

 So, the Easter Bunny left us some eggs to find at Grandma's house.  It was fun to search around for them.  The all found way too much candy and everyone had a GOLD egg that had as many dollars as they are old in them.  Pretty exciting!

 Mimi is just happy to hang around and see all the commotion...

 Still looking for eggs......

 Mimi thought playing with the egg basket was almost as fun as finding eggs.

The Monday after Easter, we started our spring break.  We headed to the ranch for a quick trip while Dad and his brothers rode rangers and razors out to the rim.  We were glad the Lewises came and so the kids had a ball playing with cousins.

 Laura and Mimi on a 4-wheeler ride.

In fact, the boys had so much fun shooting quail and rabbits that they decided to go for larger targets and shoot Grandma!!! YES, it's true, but it was on accident.  You can see the x-ray below that showed that the pellet was lodged in her arm.

 After a night at the ER and a minor surgery, she was Lead Free!  Ugh... why does it always have to be my child to cause the Rucus?

 Aunt Stacy was in St. George too and the boys palled around with cousins at the pool for a day.

 Nate and Lily are the Best of Friends.  Dress ups are the best play around!  Love the little princess and water duck.

Then, I let the 3 big boys stay an extra 3 days and brand cows with all the BAR 10 crew. (Uncle Gavin, Uncle Kelly and Mom doing the spring branding)  They were in HEAVEN!!!

 Some good 'ol cowboy fun.  They did get a little blood sprayed on them, but they said, "it wasn't too bad this year." I love my heritage.  Where the West stays Wild.

 Traveling home with Nate... He's pretty tuckered out from playing so hard.  I just love his sunglasses.

 And another month for Baby girl.  She is 8 months old and still the best thing around!  Getting close to crawling, but not yet.  She did get 2 bottom teeth this month.  Yay.

 She pushes herself backwards and always ends up stuck somewhere.  She also hates bows on her head, but loves blankets and baskets on it!

 It's rare when Mimi will fall asleep in our arms.  Taylor has probably succeeded a few more times than me (which is none).  He loves his girl and loves when she will cuddle with him!

Feels like Spring

 

It's been so warm I feel like we missed winter and have had a beautiful SPRING!  I started the month of March off with my Lake to Lake girls.  We have done this 4 years in a row now and I SURE LOVE my running buddies.  They are fun and cute and smart and cute and fun and FAST!  we were 5 on fire this year and came in third place.

 

I left the boys with Taylor, but My mom and Heather to the rescue again took care of Mimi for me.  They brought her around to cheer us on and it was SUPER fun.  She's kind of like our team mascot. (People are so nice to let me drag her along to everything)

Speaking of my little buddy, little Miss is 8 months old... still the sweetest thing around! 2 bottom teeth this month and sitting up from laying down position. NOT QUITE CRAWLING.

We hadn't seen the Dehners for a long time and fortunately, a family party brought them down our way and we got some good friend time in with them.  I think their family is just the CUTEST!

 We found Nate and Meg hitting it off playing with the computer.  Such cute faces!

 A couple pics of the Girls vs. Boys.  We are still a little boy heavy, but soon to add one more Dehner girl this June.  I wouldn't mind adding another girl too. :)

So, we just LOVE having Breckon up here at school.  He has the coolest apartment ever.  He took the boys this Wednesday and got them a drink (So cool, cuz that's what college kids do).  They watched a movie and put up his hammock and just chilled all afternoon!  His place even has a pool, but they'll have to do that next time.

 St. Patty's day doesn't bring a little leprechaun to our house, but it always brings green food!  We had green eggs in our breakfast burritos and green smoothies to wash it all down with.  We worked hard to find 4 green shirts, and in the end I think we were covered.  We don't wear that much green around here! Watch out for the pinches.

We had a few school functions this month.  Jake had a choir concert he is in the middle row next to the boy in the orange shirt.  He looks like a shrimp.  I swear, he's not that small. :)

 Sam had the Kindy Indy and he made his own pick up truck.  It turned out pretty cool.... and then we saw Brydger's tank!  But we were pretty happy about the whole day.  Super fun and although I was dreading it... The kids LOVED IT!

 A few Pictures of the kids parading around the school.  Above Sam and Beckam.  Below, the actual parade, and a shot of Gage and his diesel.

 This little cutie has decided to sleep through the night!  I am loving it.  I seriously think she is the best baby I have had yet.  And we are enjoying every second of her.

I can't remember why I took this picture, but I do remember thinking she looked so sweet and I think I just never get enough of this sweet baby. BOY OR GIRL I have loved having an angel baby around.

 Taylor's work always has a Christmas party in April.  It's a fabulous idea because it gets so crazy around the holidays that this is so much more enjoyable.  They invite current and retired staff, so it was fun to have the evening to hang out with Taylor's parents.  I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but Taylor's office is the exact office Steve used to use.  And Taylor teaches the exact class that his dad taught.

 I love having connections, and going to Womens conference with Margaret was pretty sweet.  We had 4th row seats right in the center. The flowers up front were beautiful and the speakers were inspirational (as always.)  Thanks for the tickets M.

And we better not forget our piano boys. I'll try to upload a youtube video of their songs.  They have done really well this year.  So glad to finally have a consistent teacher and lessons for them.

This one is LUKE click here
This one is JAKE click here