70 Years Young

We surprised Mona on her 70th birthday with an open house while we were in Utah. She was in complete awe of the evening , it was a huge success! She had a HUGE turnout with friends and family from all over-she has made such a huge impact in so many people's lives, everyone loved the opportunity to honor her. I took a zillion pictures, but since I know most of you don't know 90% of the people in those pictures I will just post the following of those you do know-my sweet young things partying!

Here is Bekah doing what she is normally doing...always something crafty!

This one was either eating m&m's or cake all night long, and of course making mischief of one kind or another... And finally this one-with bumps and bruises from trying to stand up and cruise along everything was still all smiles and flirting like crazy, gaining a whole new list of admirers! It was a great party, it was awesome that we were able to be there for it! I can't believe our cute little Mona is 70-that seemed so old to me until she turned 70-she is so young and full of life!

Happy Birthday Mona dear-we love your sweet, happy, smiling face!

3 is too big for me!

My little boy, my pal, my little man, my toot toot, my tough dude, my sweetie peetie and my silly little monkey bum just turned 3.

Slow down time!

These three years have flown by and he has gone from my little, yet chunky 9.5 lb helpless newborn to this little person, who has opinions and attitude-makes up stories, sings songs, goes potty, gets himself dressed, has friends and wants to do things all by himself because he's "not a baby anymore mom", thank you very much.

He had a great birthday...he woke up to decorations and his favorite breakfast-panacake a pederos,(pancakes). He had his party...and then got to open presents from the family, had lots of phone calls with birthday wishes from all of his grandma's and gave lots of hugs and thank you's-he was very polite and grateful for everything. I am so happy to be this little man's mommy.

Then we went over to the Appah's for dinner-is that a perfect day or what?

Monster Surprise

After all the excitement of a party, opening presents and being perfectly spoiled all day, he still had the surprise of his little 3 year old life coming.

An F150 Power Wheels with "monster traction" so he can ride it all over the grass, and gravel that we have an over abundance of. It even has an radio that works better than Chad's!

We really wanted to get him this, because we knew he would react just the way he did!

Grandma Julie helped us out so we could get it, thanks mom!

That is one excited kid!

This was the look he had on his face pretty much the whole time he was driving-we didn't have to ask him to smile at all!

He was very willing to share in his joy and gave his sister and brother rides all over the backyard much to their delight.

He was even willing to let Bekah drive for a bit...

What every boy looks like when he lets a girl drive his truck...

It was well worth the money! Don't ya think? Look at that face!

Bird Brains

Since we were all home on Saturday (for once-it's been crazy lately!) we decided we better get out and do something rather than waste the day away! We went out to the wildlife refuge and looked at birds. Chad brought binoculars and a field guide. Bekah loved looking at all the birds and then finding them in the book. I loved playing with my zoom lens I hadn't played with yet-I've had it since I got my camera and hadn't done anything with it. I forgot to take pictures of the birds though....

...oh well!

Oh Mr Sunshine

It was such a nice day out today. I took the kids out to play and realized this was the first time since Porter was a newborn that he had been outside longer than walking to the car or from the car. It has just been too cold-or not a good enough reason to go out.

He loved the fresh air! He also enjoyed the grass and the leaves.

He thought they were delicious!

He is not sad in this pic-just showing me his bottom lip. He is always pulling faces lately and this is one of his favorites. Have I mentioned I love this kidd-o?

Z's Birthday Gift

One of my favorite people that I have met in Klamath Falls (or anywhere for that matter), Suzanne just celebrated her 50th birthday and we went out with some of the girls for dessert at Applebee's last night. Such a great night of laughter and fun with some of the funniest people on this planet. I made her a birthday calendar, somewhat like the one's I made for my family for Christmas-but changed the pages and cut it in half. LOVED the end result. I will post the pages on my craft/scrap blog so you can see them all. I also made her some note cards with some 7gypsies music paper-because this woman is the most talented, musical person I have ever had the priviledge of knowing. Simply incredible. So Happy Birthday Z-have a great week in Utah!

Goodbye Joe Bum

While looking at my previous post 'Munchkin Love' Chad pointed out to me that Bekah is always, as he put it 'Barbie picture perfect' and Topher always looks like 'Joe Bum'. I know. It is my own selfish reasons that my kid looks like Joe Bum-I LOVE his long hair, and I know it is not the most flattering to his perfect cuteness, but when he gets his hair cut, he looks so much older and less like my baby, and I love how soft it is. Well I knew once again it was time to cut the cord, I mean hair. BEFORE: I had to bribe him with a cookie to sit still for me while I cut it-whatever works! AFTER: Yes I know it is a huge improvement. Maybe now he will look more 'Ken doll picture perfect'.

Warning! Walking, Talking, Hormonal imbalance living here!

Being busy is not the main reason I have not blogged in the last couple weeks.......It's mostly because this kid has had his adolescent butt parked in front of the screen with face book on for the last month, Chad is at work tonight so I got a turn on my computer while he is using Chad's lap top.My baby brother who is now almost 16 (yikes!) has moved in with us and will be staying until the end of the school year. There are pro's to having him here;

• Free babysitting-heck yes!
• Him sitting in the car with the kids while I run into the store-double heck yes!
• A night off from dishes once in awhile (even though it is like pulling teeth to get him to do it)
• Endless hours of fun tormenting him about anything and everything
• Endless hours of fun for my friends who have caught on to the fun of tormenting him
• Endless hours of fun for my daughter who loves to torment him with plans for his 16th dinosaur themed birthday party, complete with a visit from Barney. (You can't tell me she's not an evil little genius-she hasn't broke character with it-saying if he doesn't have a dinosaur party-his birthday will be canceled! Ha ha!)

The cons are few and far between;

• He got an old truck to fix up with Chad-so that means even more talk in this house about things like timing belts, radiators, spark plugs and other completely boring items that make my eyes glaze over
• His general teenager-ness that makes him believe that he is always right, we are always dumb and his life is on the verge of falling apart if things don't work out exactly the way he has planned
• His constant need to be connected to technology of any sort-if it's not my computer, he has either an i-pod or phone attached to his head-come on read a book, and get the heck off my computer!

Love ya little bro!

Mr. Charming

This little boy has not only his mama smitten, but every person he comes in contact with! It might be the huge blue twinkling eyes, or the big dimply grin he gives you when you say hi, or maybe it's the perfect little boy hair with the swirl in the back. Whatever it is, people LOVE this baby. What he's doing now:

• He is now scooting around the house and getting into everything.
• He gets up on all fours and pushes off until he gets what he wants.
• He is eating anything and everything and is very good at it.
• He has the pincer grasp down-(you know thumb and forefinger together to pick stuff up).
• He gives kisses when you ask for them and pucker up-while very wet and open mouthed-still pretty dang great. (Then there are the times when he just attacks my face and I get small hickeys on my chin-so it looks like I've been beat).
• Sleeping in his own bed at naptimes and at night, which is something I hadn't done with my other kids until they were older. (He usually comes into our room between 5:30-6:30 and then sleeps till about 9-heavenly little creature!)

Sweet Sweet Day

Valentines Day was so much fun this year.

We went out to dinner with the Appah's and then went back to their house to play games with them and the Stewarts.

We ate delicious chocolate cake, and ice cream had a lot of laughs playing Cranium.

I am really grateful to have such fun friends where we can all be ourselves and have so much fun together.

It was a crazy week. We (Suzanne Stewart, April, Rachel (April's sister) and I) were in charge of the Adults only Valentines dinner for our ward.

We made it so cool and romantic-loved it-but so much work!

We did a formal Chinese restaraunt and the night before we spent about 5 hours hanging fishing line with paper lanterns and twinkling lights.

All the tables were decorated formally with china, stemware, tablecloths, cloth napkins, centerpieces-the whole nine yards.

We made all the food for it, I made this delicious angel food cake that Suzanne's aunt gave her the recipe for that I will have to make again-soooo much better than store bought! I also made the Thai lettuce wraps for the appetizers, yum!

 

The young men were all dressed up with long aprons like waiters and seated and served everyone-it was like the real deal.

 

Suzanne's acapella group sang and were just fantastic.

These pics I stole off April's blog-it was awesome-by far the best church function I had ever attended or even heard about!

Saturday morning we had a primary activity-and although it was pretty low key-it was still a stress hanging over me until it was done and over. Love the primary!

 

SO when Valentines evening was finally here-we were able to celebrate for more than just being in love-which of course is enough of a reason, but it was so nice to have had such a busy, hard and yet so successful weekend over and finish it off with such a great night.