Open House

Wednesday night was open house at school. That's the time the parents are invited to visit all the classrooms to see projects and visit with teachers. My kids love this night. They're so excited to show us their artwork and such. Plus some rooms serve cookies. Here's Tyler with his teacher, Mrs. Yarborough.

Spencer came straight from a hockey game (they lost, but Spencer got 3 goals!); here he is with his teacher, Mrs. Skinner.

He was very happy to see that his invention won first place in his class! All the 5th graders have to invent something, and they have judges come in during the day to talk to all the students about their projects. That's the highlight of open house night. We always love to walk around all the 5th grade classes to check out the inventions. Anyway, Spencer invented this thing that stops the spread of oil spills until they can be cleaned up. It's a series of buoys that surround an oil spill and pump soap into the center to prevent the oil from spreading. (Thank-you for helping him, Troy. The irrigation soakers worked great!) He got extra credit for inventing something that helps the environment. His majorly environmental teacher was very pleased.

I always like to get pictures of my boys with their teachers at open house, but Dallin's teacher Mrs. Young has been gone for a month because her son was recently diagnosed with juvenile diabetes. We hope she can come back soon; Dallin misses her so much, and he prays for her and her son at every prayer. Here's our wonderful principal, Mr. Yee. We LOVE him!! He knows all the families at the school by name, and he even subs when needed. His favorite subject to teach is math.

As we were leaving they had to show us what they do every day after school. This explains why they come home soaking wet every day.

Zoo trips

We went on a field trip to the zoo with Brennan's preschool. It's a very small zoo, but it's just the right size for this age. Afterwards we had a picnic lunch and played at the park.

Levi is really into animals these days. He likes to make roaring noises for all of them. He was especially excited about seeing the meercats.

He also loved the birds. I didn't actually get any pictures of the animals this time. Just us looking at the animals.

Then a week later we went to the same zoo for Dallin's class field trip. Levi was obsessed with the water fountain. We spent a lot of time here.

My camera was on the wrong ISO setting, so these pictures are pretty grainy. I didn't know it until I downloaded my pictures. Oh well, I'm learning.

Here's one of Dallin's best friends, Ronan. There were so many parents there that we each only had 2-3 kids in our group. I just had the 2 of them. I've never seen a class with so many involved parents.

Magical day at Disneyland

We had the most wonderful trip to Disneyland a couple weeks ago. Why was it so great, you ask?

1. It's Disneyland. I love that place. And we hadn't been there in 3 1/2 years, so we'd been itching to go. I was excited all week (we decided to go just 1 week ahead of time), and didn't tell our kids until the day we left. That was fun.

2. We didn't take Levi. It was our first time there without a baby or toddler, and it was so easy. We didn't even need a stroller! Thank-you Kristen and Emily Z!

3. We used Ridemax, which minimized our wait time for all the rides. Aaron and Marrisse introduced us to it, and it worked great. We typed in all the rides we wanted to go on and what day we were going, and then we printed out our itinerary for the day. It was definitely worth the $15.

4. We took the boys out of school and went on a Friday, so nothing was too crowded. Plus the weather was gorgeous.

This was a great time to go because the boys are all old enough to go on everything (there were just a few rides Brennan wasn't tall enough for) yet young enough to love the magic of Disney.

Brennan doesn't look too happy here, but it's one of the few pictures I'm in.

The Matterhorn bobsled ride was a favorite for everyone. We even did it twice.


Another favorite is Buzz Lightyear.

Such concentration.

The ride kept breaking down while we were on it, which was awesome because we got really high scores.

Sometimes we would wait while Dave ran to get Fastpasses. That worked out well.

I love Small World, especially in the afternoon when it's hot and sunny outside.

Brennan loved it too.

Brennan wasn't tall enough for Indiana Jones, so we did the trade-off thing. He climbed the treehouse and tried on hats while we were waiting. He was a little disappointed he couldn't go on 3 of the rides, since he wasn't afraid of anything. He's just like Spencer.

The boys liked it when we did that because they got to go twice in a row. Dallin was a little nervous beforehand (which made me worry he'd have another middle-of-the-line-change-of-mind, like he did for Space Mountain), but he LOVED it. It ended up being one of his favorite rides of the day.

So often Brennan won't look at the camera or smile for pictures. Everyone else does great every time.

One of Dallin's only memories from last time was the train ride. Once again, Brennan is not looking at the camera.

We ate dinner while watching the Jedi training. Too bad our boys didn't get chosen.

But we got a visit from Darth Maul, so that was cool.

Hat stores are the best.

The longest line of the day was definitely Finding Nemo. It wasn't even on our itinerary because we knew it would take awhile and didn't think it was worth it last time. But the kids really wanted to do it, and we had plenty of time before fireworks. It took 25 minutes, which I guess isn't too bad; but it felt like forever.

The last couple of times we've been to Disneyland they didn't have fireworks, since we went off season. They really have the best fireworks show - the perfect end to a perfect day.

Easter

We told the kids they couldn't wake us up until 7:00 Easter morning. Apparently it was a long wait for them.

As usual they had clues around the house to find their baskets, but this year the clues were riddles that they had to figure out. That was way more fun for the Easter bunny, and I think the boys liked it too.

Easter morning pictures always have to include funny bedhead hair.

And chocolatey toothy grins.

Dallin and a scary egg.

Levi can't believe he's allowed to have candy for breakfast.

Spencer's Easter egg set-up.

Brennan got a fun frog umbrella in his basket.

I always get Levi ready for church before his morning nap. He looked so cute I had to take a couple of pictures of him.

But all he wanted to do was eat candy, so that didn't work out too well.

Then we did our Easter egg hunt. Dave divided the yard into quadrants again this year, and each kid had their own section. This works out well because everyone gets the same amount with their own level of difficulty.

I don't think Spencer found all his eggs, but he did find a couple puffles left over from Tyler's party.

It started to sprinkle towards the end, so we had to finish finding the eggs quick. Brennan was happy to use his new umbrella.

My super handsome boys, right before church. Levi had just woken up, and he was pretty cranky. So I pretended to trip over a soccer ball, and that made him smile. We hosted Easter dinner for my family that night so we could show off our new floors. Oh, and we also celebrated my birthday that night. Then we enjoyed leftover ham all week - a perk of hosting Easter dinner. One interesting note about church: Dave conducted sacrament meeting, and all four speakers were finished with 25 minutes left. That meant that Dave got to speak. Thankfully he keeps his high council talks in his scripture case, and he gave the most amazing talk on the atonement. He said he was less nervous than usual because he didn't have time to get nervous. He's so awesome!