Easter

Easter morning started early for us, since we have 9:00 church and had to search for baskets and eat candy and get cleaned up in time for a quick picture by 8:45. We got up at 6:00 to fit it all in. Chloe was not a happy camper by this point, but then she ended up sleeping through church (our first time back since she was born), so that was a blessing. It was so good to be back at church, enjoying the talks and music - especially on Easter Sunday.

The Easter bunny did things a little different this year. Instead of written clues to find the Easter baskets, the boys had to decipher picture clues.

Here are a few of them. Some were super easy, some were a little trickier, and one was so hard it even stumped Dave. That was fun!

The baskets were in Chloe's bassinet, which she wasn't sleeping in at the time. That whole hospital thing really threw off her sleep, but now she's sleeping at least half the night in her own bed.


We never know what the boys are going to be wearing in the morning when we've been out on a date the night before. Apparently Brennan slept in Spencer's Smee costume (from the Peter Pan play) inside out. We thought he looked like an egg.

Tyler CRACKS me up! Dave and the boys got on a roll of egg jokes the other morning that went on and on...

Levi slept in and had to eat his candy quick before getting ready for church.

Funny just-woke-up face!

I gave this cute dress to a friend's baby last year, and she held onto it in the off chance that I would have a girl and she could give it back to me. Chloe's also wearing a pearl bracelet from Kristen. Cute, cute!

Levi has been coming home with me and Chloe right after sacrament meeting for the past couple weeks to avoid getting sick in nursery. His nose is finally clear after about 3+ months of constant colds.

Sunday afternoon was our Easter egg hunt. We divided the yard into 3 sections and hid 75 eggs: 15 each.

The area around the playground was for Brennan and Levi.

The lower section was for Tyler and Dallin.

I guess I hid theirs a little too well, because even I couldn't find the last couple.

And the sides were for Spencer. Of course Dave made his the hardest, but I think he found most of them.

I spent the day making cream pies, eating chocolate, and enjoying a lovely ham dinner with family. For Family Home Evening the next day we did our Resurrection Eggs (a carton of plastic eggs with symbols of the Easter story in each one) and watched He Is Risen. All in all a very successful Easter!

Killing Eggs

Last week Dallin asked me, "Mom, when are we going to kill eggs?" It took me a second to realize that he was referring to dying them. Ha, ha!

We had one spill, so we don't have any yellow eggs this year. It's a good thing we don't have carpet under the table anymore.

Notice Spencer's new shark tooth necklace. He bought it in Morro Bay because his old one broke. Tyler bought one too.

They all wanted the cracked ones because they make a cool design on the inside. I guess I didn't need to be so careful putting them in the pot.

Dave offered to help by holding Chloe. Wasn't that thoughtful?

Levi refused to look at me when I took this picture. "No! Don't want picture!" So the other boys yelled and pointed at me to get him to look in my direction.

Classic Brennan smile.

They each got to "kill" 5 eggs, which seemed like a good amount. But we still have a bunch in the fridge, so perhaps I should have made deviled eggs.

So pretty! The aquamarine ones are my favorite.

Valentine's Day

I love Valentine's Day, and I especially like to make creative valentine cards with the boys. This year may be my favorite ones we've ever done. We got the idea from Family Fun, and they turned out so stinkin' cute!

We started out by taking a bunch of pictures of the boys holding an old mop handle. We did it in the dining room so we'd get the pretty red curtains in the background. I fit 2 images per 4x6 picture by doubling the canvas size on Photoshop and adding an identicle image to the blank side. Then I typed the words in white so they'd show up nicely against the dark red. I had them printed at Costco, and it only cost $8 for 60 prints to make 120 valentines. Not bad!

Then Tyler and Dallin finished the rest all by themselves (I mostly made Brennan's) this past weekend. They taped a lollipop to the back of the picture, taped the picture to some scrapbook paper I had, and wrote the names on the front. They were all very excited about their Valentine's Day parties today, except Spencer, who won't have any since he's in middle school now. Bummer.

Last night for our Family Home Evening treat I made the coconut cake that Marrisse posted on our family food blog. I tinted the frosting pink for V-day. It was very delicious. Then I broke the glass bowl I used to make the icing because it was so slippery, and in the process I sliced off the posterior DIP of my left index finger, i.e. the back of my last finger joint. I cannot begin to tell you how painful it is. A big chunk of my skin is gone, probably down the drain, exposing a very sensitive huge hole that bled forever last night. Dave spent 20 minutes cleaning out all the shards of glass from the garbage disposal. I was so worried he was going to cut himself. I woke up several times during the night with a horrible throbbing pain in my finger. Then I literally cried allegator tears when I peeled off the stuck bandaid this morning. Dave ran to the store before work to get me some lidocaine gel, telfa pads and a finger splint, and it is feeling much better now. So no fun heart-shaped pancakes for us this morning.

These are my favorite valentines of all. I love these people so much!

I especially LOVE Levi's face in this one!

They love it when dad reads books at night because he always makes them so silly and fun. I married Dave because he made me laugh. He married me because I laughed at his jokes. Now he makes our kids laugh too, and that makes me so happy.

Happy Valentine's Day to the best guy ever -- who cleans up my broken glass and takes care of my wounds and encourages my hobbies and lets me have as many children as I want and is such an awesome dad to them. I am so blessed to have you as my valentine!

New Years Eve

On New Year's Eve we went to the beach, stopping to see the elephant seals on the way. Josh and Megan had never been there, and they really enjoyed it. It's worth experiencing at least once, and it's always amazing to see so many huge animals on the beach.

We even got to see some mating in action, which is always a bit disturbing yet fascinating. We feel like we're somehow infringing on their privacy, but they don't seem to mind us. Actually the female really complains loudly about the whole thing, but the male doesn't get the hint and keeps chasing her all around the beach.

Then we headed down to our favorite beach and enjoyed hours of fun.

My parents had actually never been to this beach, since there were plenty of closer beaches where they used to live. But it's our favorite one, and we were so happy they came.

There was one lone elephant seal on our beach who must have taken the wrong turn at Albuqueque. He drew a lot of tourist attention - there was a huge crowd taking pictures of him. He was quite loud, probably wondering where everyone else was.

The kids buried Peter in the sand - he's actually standing in a big hole. This drew some tourists away from the elephant seals, and they started taking pictures of him also!

Jonathan provided the ambient beachy music. It was lovely.

Tyler was next to be buried.

We really didn't think we'd stay as long as we did, but it was so warm and beautiful and not windy (how often does that happen?!) that we couldn't pull ourselves away.

Several groups walked to the end of the pier.

Someone asked us if we were going to stay and watch the sunset. Dave said no, but then he realized that the sun was very close to setting. So we enjoyed the last sunset of 2011, and it was gorgeous.

After we went home, cleaned ourselves up and ate a quick dinner, we all met back at Kristen and Nathan's house for games and food

It's a good thing Dave and Nathan have each other to play games with, because Kristen and I would rather sit and visit and not play games.

We did our countdown to midnight at 10:00. We figured we were ushering in the new year with Jen and Uche and Ben and Barbara.

Then we left the party to put the little kids to bed. We let the oldest 3 stay up and watch a movie until the real midnight, but Dallin and I didn't quite make it.