Spring Break 2011

How was your spring break? Ours was great. We stayed in town and didn't have much of anything planned, but we ended up having a fun week. We went to a couple of movies, read books, went to the park a couple of times, played in the yard, practiced piano, and had fancy St. Patrick's Day hair,

(which I unfortunately didn't take a picture of until the next morning; it looked pretty cool before she slept on it).


One night we played Just Dance -- don't you love Zoe's face of concentration and pretty princess skirt. And in the photo below, why aren't we all doing the same thing here? It looks like Lucy & Molly are doing it right, while me & Zoze are clueless :)
There were of course daily chores; Lucy was unloading the dishwasher and wanted me to take a picture of this monstrous stack of cups! And her cute leotard (unitard?)
One day we had cousins come to play.

Paige and Lucy, sorting fruit snacks.

Molly, Sam, & Zoe playing Sorry while enjoying the weather.

Tyson & Noah didn't have much interest in enjoying the weather, but they definitely enjoyed each other's company and they did take time for some piano duets too.

We had a friend's dog here all week (Juno's BFF, a goldendoodle named Dudley) and when Kate's crew came over they brought my mom's dog to play, Pete (a Vizsla) who they were watching for the week. I thought the three dogs' colors looked so pretty together so I took a few pictures.

Looks like they're scheming something here... or maybe just comparing notes.

We heard news helicopters overhead one afternoon and drove around to find the "excitement" -- finally found this accident about a mile away; where due to a strong sneeze (supposedly), a man lost control of his car and crash through a house! He went through the exterior and two interior walls before the car stopped. Fortunately nobody was home. We drove by a few times to get a good look, and Noah snapped this photo out the window (yeah, we were being pretty obvious rubberneckers but we didn't hold up traffic!)

We finally filled our front flower beds, which had been empty for the past couple of months ever since our old flowers froze during the several cold nights we had in January. The kids helped pick out some marigolds, petunias, and snap dragons, and they had fun helping me get the beds ready & planting the new flowers.

And we saved one planter for herbs, which I'm SO excited about! I've never grown fresh herbs before. We have Italian parsley, basil, mint, chives, and cilantro. I used some cilantro in our dinner last night and it was so tasty.

And Aaron painted the front door, the color of which I just love. It has been several months since we painted the house; now that the door is done it makes the whole thing look complete. Hmm, this picture is pretty washed-out; the main house color and door color look darker in real life.

Hmm, a painted door isn't the *most* exciting thing to end a post, but oh well! It was a great week; I always love when the kids are home and we can spend more time together.

Spring Break, Part 4

I spent last Friday getting ready for our big Cub Scouts annual fundraiser (which I volunteered to be in charge of; what's wrong with me!), selling tickets for this year's Jamborama scouting fair in April. Our boys (including Noah) spent Friday night and all day Saturday outside a grocery store selling $5 tickets to the store's customers. In case you wonder what the rate of return is, after we'd been there a while on Friday I started keeping track of all of Noah's rejections. In the three hours that followed, he had over 150 "no's" and only about 13 "yes's." So as you can see, it's not an easy job for these little boys but they do SUCH a great job! Most of them are able to walk right up to total strangers and deliver their sales pitch. It's pretty cute to see... but after those statistics I can see why a few of them can get discouraged! I started a new program for Noah; I told him that I would buy him a full-size candy bar for every 100 people he talked to, whether they said yes or no to buying a ticket. Amazing how candy can motivate! Noah ended up earning 3 full-size candy bars by the end of Saturday; he worked four hours on Friday and three or four hours on Saturday; he & I went back & forth to the store several times on Saturday, making sure all the shifts were covered, and working a few short shifts ourselves.

The money the boys' earn goes toward paying for their summer daycamp, pinewood derby racing, awards/pins/badges, and other fun stuff. We have had several new cubs join our Pack in the past few months so we are really in need of this money! Also, the boys earn prizes according to how many tickets they sell. We will be working at a grocery store this weekend again, Friday night and Saturday... if you want to stop by and see us, email me and I'll let you know what time(s) we'll be there!

Anyone wanna buy a $5 ticket from Noah? It comes with $12 worth of grocery store coupons!

We have until Easter weekend to sell as many as we can! Thanks!

Spring Break, Part 3

The Thursday of Spring Break we were invited by some friends to go to Jumpstreet. I had heard of it, and driven by it, but none of us had been there. Wow, what a place! The main area (all indoors) features a bunch of long rectangular trampolines all together, which go up on each end... hard to explain but there's a picture if you click on the link. There's also a dodgeball trampoline area, and a younger kids' area which had a room of slightly smaller long rectangular trampolines, and a room with about 5 of those HUGE inflatable slides/bouncers, which were all in a row and connecting so the kids could just jump from one to the next. The age cut-off between the older kids' areas and younger kids' areas is 8, and since my three girls are all under 8 and Noah's 9, they let Noah get a "little kids" pass so he could be with his sisters. He didn't like that idea at first, and really wanted to jump in the big kids' area, but after a while he was glad he could be with his sisters and not all by himself in the other areas with a bunch of strangers! We got tickets for two hours and boy, those kids really got a workout! They jumped and played for the entire two hours and they just loved it. I took a few pictures but the lighting was awful and the kids wouldn't hold still for me... but hopefully these will give you an idea of all the fun.

Spring Break, Part 2

The Wednesday of Spring Break was St. Patrick's Day. A group of friends from church met at a park for lunch; the weather was absolutely gorgeous and we all stayed for at least two hours! It was really fun too having the 7 or 8 moms and the 20+ kids ALL wearing green! I really should've taken a group picture, but oh well. I did photograph the lunch I brought for my kids, since I was kinda proud of my all-green fruit salad, and mini shamrock sandwich bites. The fruit was really pretty sour and my kids had a hard time eating it, but I'm mean and made them eat it anyway (since there were green cupcakes to be had afterwards).

After lunch we went to Yodipity, which I had promised the kids as a reward for memorizing all 13 Articles of Faith. All four kids know them all! Hooray! To cap off an already-fun day, we went out to eat as a family at Jason's Deli, where they have free kids' meals on Wednesdays. There are always lots of families there on Wednesdays and we always run into somebody we know. This time it was one of Aaron's old mission buddies and his wife & kids. You know what else? At least 80% of the people eating that night were wearing green for St. Patrick's Day... I guess Gilbert is a pretty Irish town!

Spring Break, Part 1

On our first day of spring break, it was Aaron's birthday. It was fun having the kids home so we could spend some time making cards and putting together a little gifts/cards display for Aaron to find when he got home from work. It wasn't too much but we had fun. We ate chicken burritos for dinner (at the birthday boy's request), and after dinner had present-opening and still had time for a little family Rockband. After the kids went to bed Aaron & I watched a movie. My "big" gift to Aaron was tickets to see Muse, in April. We're excited about that.

How many of you are familiar with "Code Ocho?" I'm guessing very few! This is a secret code invented by Aaron and his brother Josh when they were kids. Aaron recently taught it to our kids and they LOVE making up secret messages now. I think they came up with the name Code Ocho. All four of them included Code Ocho messages on Aaron's birthday; here's Molly's:

Noah is a pretty funny kid; he presented Aaron with this gift, which he called "a handful of candy." Silly.

It was a great day & a good start to spring break!