The "Road" Blanket

This blanket has been dubbed the boy's road/car blanket. I've been LOVING it!!

I had this quilt on my bed in my room. Well, the boys one day, decided it was a road for their cars. They haven't been off it since. & I've since decided it can't stay on my bed anymore, otherwise it'd be a constant battle. So I switched and put this one in the living room, easily accessible for the boys to use.

See all the red boarders? Those are the roads. We also like to make hills by putting pillows or blankets underneath in different places. This blanket material was picked out by me, and made by Mary Jo for Travis & my wedding present. Never thought it'd have more than one purpose!! :)
This is the Monday playgroup in our building. One of the mothers brought paper baskets & eggs filled with goodies for everyone to have an Easter egg hunt.
I couldn't resist taking pictures of them all in a row waiting to get their bags & then go hunt.

There's the boys. I think mine are the cutest... :)

Here's a larger picture of all of them, but there's more to the right. There were a lot of kids that day. 19 to be exact!!

Can't wait for Easter this Sunday, and General Conference. :)

Ezra's birthday cake was chocolate cupcakes filled with chocolate cream covered with chocolate frosting in the shape of a Hershey's Kiss.
Mom and Ezra went to the Wild Animal Park for his special day.

Mormon Batallion foot soldier Jack (Dad/Grampa)

We had so much fun at the 'Mormon Battalion'. It is way awesome with interactive pictures - movies in different rooms with different settings, picture taking with an old camera to print out and/or e-mail, panning for gold,brick making . It was like Disneyland but everything was free. All fourth graders in CA get to go because of it's historical information.Elder L Tom perry visited it while here and told the sisters to tell the people "the church members follow Jesus Christ' Loved it...Loved it..Loved it

Lizzie's birthday

We celebrated Elizabeth's birthday on Saturday with our friends here in the neighborhood, and had a barbecue, cake and ice cream. I couldn't find the camera then, so I wasn't able to take pictures. We had a brownie "cake" for her on Sunday for her actual birthday. Our neighbor got out their water slides and the kids all ran around having fun. I still can't believe Lizzie is three already.

Who needs a fork when you have hands?

Happiness is chicken!

Here is the kitchen that Jacob and I made for Lizzie (and the other kids) for her birthday. I'm not done with it yet, but I really didn't want to work on it anymore before Saturday. I still need to put up the window and make curtains, and the towel rack and rack for the serving spoons need to be added. We made it out of an old entertainment center we found on Craigslist.

Peace out man

March maddness

Ok, I did it! I finally sat down with Kathy and showed her how to use the sowing machine. And she finished her first project. It was a doll size pillow. woo hoo. I taught her how to thread the machine too. She was really happy and very appreciative!
This is Matthew ready for his first time at church! Isn't he just so cute!?
I just thought this was cute!
This picture is silly, but I thought is really depicted the moment. Samuel was very over stimulated at this point of his birthday party. He couldn't sit still long enough to open a present. Henry had to direct him to each present and keep him concentrated on it long enough to open it. He kept wanting to go back to already opened presents, and or runing back and forth between unopened ones.
This is Samuel cutting his cake and making a wish! He loves cake!

The 2 Youngest babies...for now

Mom took this cute pic with my phone at plasr today. I love plasr! It is such a great opportunity to visit and make goals together!

St. Patrick's Day Parade

Here's what we did today to celebrate St. Patty's. I actually completely forgot that it was St. Pat's, but we were able to get into some green by 2pm.

Here's Trayton & his friend Abraham Henderson, that he loves. This is before the parade started.

Here's Tustin. The sun was shining right in his eyes, but he's still got a big smile. Oh, do you notice the bandanas they're wearing? Reunion!!

And here is a real leprachaun, handing out candy.
I guess we're kind of weird here in Alaska, but we always do parades even with snow & rain. And they pretty much consist of candy throwing, people or animals walking, and cars driving by with decorations on the side. The kids like it. And that's what matters. :)

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

Happy Saint Patrick's everyone. Hope you're all having a wonderful day. It's raining and dreary here, but where there's rain there are rainbows right? Well, here are our rainbows for today to go along with our pot 'o gold.

I ended up using blueberry wheat muffin mix instead of white cake mix, so they weren't as bright and evenly layered as I wanted. But it still turned out ok. The rainbows have a few berry spots in them, but it just makes it more tasty!

Valentines

This is what is left of my Valentine's flowers from Jacob. Can you believe that I still have some and they still look nice! Once a week I've taken out the ones that haven't survived. Jacob picked some good ones this year!

Hannah is 2!

So I got creative with my cake this time inspired by Tiffany and her super-cute cakes and by our R.S. cooking group cupcake night. Hannah loves Elmo. This cupcake cake was actually pretty simple and it was nice just pickiing up a cupcake instead of having to slice a cake. As for the video: you may remember me torturing Hannah last time trying toget her to blow out the candles. Well, to avoid that she had some practice with Gramma Nancy and was so excited she blew itout before we finished singing. Oh yeah, about the candle. I really thought we had a "2" but we didn't so we used a "5" uspsidedown with another candle behind it to light.

So far today

This morning has been great. With the time change I was able to wake up a few hours before the kids and get things done. Hooray!

So far Sariah and Lizzie have found the camera and had lots of fun. Jacob helped me put another coat of paint on Lizzie's birthday present, I finished Lizzie's Easter outfit, and it's only 11:3o!

This is the best picture Sariah took out of 90 that she put on the camera this morning. She took very detailed pictures of their bathroom. I'll spare you from looking through those! 80 pictures of a very outdated bathroom that is mostly brown tile is something I'm sure you can live without.

Lizzie actually managed to get a decent picture of Joseph and Sariah. No heads chopped off, and it's practically in focus!

And here is where I found Simeon this morning. He LOVES the bathtub!

Our bucket garden

We were given buckets from someone, and don't have any need for food storage buckets right now. So I decided to make them into a bucket garden. Since we don't know when we are going to move this summer it works out well. If we move far away we can just give them to our friends and neighbors, and if we have to move if they demolish our house we can take it with us. Win-win situation all around! We didn't plant much since if they need to be moved squash plants won't be able to move easily, they're too big. We planted tomatoes, jalapenos, and bell peppers. It's already warm enough here that we can leave them out without worrying about frost at night. In fact the kids are outside in their bathing suits with the little pool filled up. That is one nice thing about Alabama!

Filling up their buckets

Simeon loves to shrug his shoulders and say "Cheese!"

Here he is filling up his bucket. They all had lots of fun playing with dirt.

Here's the best picture with all the kids in it. Sariah had her eyes closed in every picture we took.

Looks tasty!

The Rocking Chair

So, here's the rocking chair, before. I've been feeling motivated to do some reupholstering of a rocking chair in our home. It's not actually ours, but at least I'll be returning it (not for a long time I hope) better than when it was given to us. It's taken probably 2 weeks, maybe less total. I'm so very proud that I was able to do this, it's amazing.

Here's the back. The material is a bit outdated, and the bottom cushion had a hole in the front, that's mainly why I decided to do this. The paint is white, and a bit chipped.

Now here's the back after it's all done. I'm sad you can't tell, but the paint is now "almond" and no longer chipped (and painted to Travis' perfection). I also made the ties at the top & bottom. The color of the cushion is a beautiful checkered green.

And here's the front with buttons to hold the material to the cushion. I think I may still add two more buttons on the bottom, it looks a little loose to me. I also haven't actually sewed the top cushion closed on the bottom, so I'm not quite finished.
I also put in a zipper on the bottom so that I can easily clean the cover. Yay!!

No more chipped paint, and the almond is nice & warm, compared to the white. Although you can't really tell, sorry.

Hope you all enjoy. And I like to thank Tiff, Travis, and my friend Nikiesha for your help, support & advice. :)

It's a blackhawk

Today Jacob went to aircraft selection after finishing his primary helicopter training in the army. He was happy to find that he was able to select the aircraft he had been hoping for, that is the aircraft you see above, the UH-60 (Blackhawk) helicopter made by Sikorsky helicopters.
Shown above is something Jacob will be likely doing shortly, that is flying in formation and doing cool army maneuvers. Jacob will start his training in the Blackhawk near the end of April and will be done with training in Alabama near the end of August and ready to go where the Army sends him, maybe even Alaska.