Springtime Festivities

I say Springtime Festivities, but it was more like Extended Winter Festivities. It has been so cold. The last few months have been really busy with the kids wrapping up school and all their lessons and sports and what have you. The following is going to be a pretty long post capping what we have been up to for the past few months.

You can tell spring is here when the dandelions start coming out. They are bad this year and they are everywhere on the lawn. The kids were super excited to pick me some beautiful flowers. It was a nice thought, they didn't know they were nasty, noxious, weeds.


Ally and Ashlynn had a couple dance recitals. They performed once at the Royal Review and then their spring recital. Ally really enjoyed her dance class. They were called the Tiny Tapz. She did a great job.




We got this really fun box in the mail. It kept Javan and the kids entertained for over an hour. They slid in and out, stood up, laid down, cut some eye holes...


....then some arm holes too. It was really fun until one of them tripped and fell flat on their face cause they didn't have arms to catch themselves. We even put Ryan all the way down in the box, he didn't like the box at all.


We took an afternoon and headed up to the Fourth Reservoir to go fishing. But the kids had more fun catching lady bugs and throwing rocks in the water. Ryan was a big helper with the fishing pole. We did catch one fish at least.


We took the training wheels off Ally's bike and Javan helped her practice riding. She thinks it's too hard and still doesn't have it figured out yet. (And I don't know why she's wearing her jacket backwards.)


Ethan caught a couple new pets. First, we caught a horny toad in our drive way. We kept it for a few days. Ethan even caught some ants to feed him but he wouldn't eat them and we finally talked him into letting the poor thing go. He also found this salamander in our backyard. We only had him for 1 day before he escaped.


Ethan and Ally started tumbling in the fall. They had a little program to show off what they had learned. Ethan wasn't really a fan of the class but he did great and it got him out of the house during the cold winter months.

Getting ready for a round-off.


Handstand.


Ally loved gymnastics. She especially loves doing back bends, and handstands.


Balance beam. Concentrating hard.


Somersault.


Javan bought Ethan tickets to the Motocross races for his birthday. So on May 1st Javan, Ethan, and I went up to Rice Eccles Stadium to watch the race. It was a cold and rainy day. It was pretty calm when we first got there but right as the races were about to start it started raining. After the first race Ethan was ready to go, he would whine and pout until the next race started and then he was all excited and all smiles. It was really cool to see, we were on the 4th row so we were really close to the bikes.


They were going so fast when they went by I couldn't get a decent picture. It was fun, and we were glad we had our ponchos to keep us dry.


One Saturday morning when we were excited to sleep in, we were rudely awakened by a bird flapping around in the attic. When we added the garage on last year one of the eaves was still open on the end and this bird decided to investigate the hole. It went the whole length of the house and was making a ruckus right above our bedroom. So Javan crawled up in the attic with his flashlight and pellet gun and took care of the problem.


The poor little bird covered in insulation.


We went down to the Bluff Fort to have a cookout with Grandpa Glade's sisters that were there volunteering. The kids had a great time pulling each other around in the little handcarts. And it was fun to look through the little cabins and see all my ancestors that came through Hole-in-the-Rock.


Ryan is absolutely in love with the outdoors. He would spend all day, every day outside playing if I would let him. I have to trick him to get him to come inside to eat and play. I told him we had to leave the stroller in the house, but he snuck it out the first chance he got. Little stinker.


Ally got to play T-ball this year. She started out a little shy, but got a hang of it really quick and had a good time. She could really smack the ball off the tee too. She did great.


Running fast around the bases.


Ally and her T-Ball team.


Ethan got to play machine pitch this year. Javan practiced pitching the ball to him and he was doing great hitting in the backyard. When we got to his first game and I saw how fast the ball was coming out of the machine I was a little nervous for Ethan. He did well though. He didn't get a hit every game but he enjoyed playing.


Ethan and his Machine Pitch Baseball team.


Ryan playing and getting dirty at the park.


We got to have a few of our cousins come and stay at our house for a few days. The kids all had a great time together. They were some dirty, stinky kids at the end of the day. Look at that brown bath water. Nasty. Don't think we could fit anyone else? We even squeezed one more in there with them.


After a long, hard day of playing outside I found Ethan, Ally, and Carter asleep like this. All 3 totally sideways in the bed.

Ryan Jabbering

I took this video a few months ago in a rare moment when Ryan would actually "talk" to me on camera. Many of you have already seen it, but I thought I would post the link on here for anyone else who wants to see how cute Ryan is. It was too big to upload to blogger. It starts out sideways but I fix it after a second.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5xzqJtME88

Easter 2010

Wow, so Easter was only 2 months ago. I'm only slightly behind in my posting. We had a pretty fun Easter weekend. What could be better than a making a mess with food coloring, a yummy cookout, and eating as much candy as you want. It's every kids dream.

Ethan and Ally LOVE decorating Easter eggs. Every time I boil eggs for some other dish or just to eat they ask if we can color them. They were pretty disappointed that I only boiled 18 for them to color. Then after they were done and I was making some deviled eggs we about had another come apart because I was using ALL the eggs. I guess next year I'll have to give them each a dozen eggs of their own.

Ally showing off her beautiful egg.


Ethan working on a multicolored masterpiece.


Ally making sure Ethan is okay with her color choice. She consults him on everything. (BTW she didn't get her hair fixed that day, I know she looks orphan-like.)


Proud of their finished eggs.


And now it's time to eat them. Yummy!


I was rainy and cold all week and all I wanted to do was find somewhere warm to have a cookout and play outside. On Saturday we headed all the way down to Red Canyon (almost to Lake Powell) for our picnic. It was a lot warmer than Blanding but still a little chilly and windy. We still had a good time.

Ethan and Ally taking a ride on Ally's 4-wheeler.


Ethan taking Ryan for a ride. This is one of Ryan's favorite things to do in the whole world. It's pretty cute to hear him say "ride it",and "rhino".


Uncle Daniel taking the little kids for a ride in the Rhino.


Now it's Grandpa Glade's turn. I'm serious, Ryan won't get out once we've started, unless you bribe him with candy, his other favorite. (Good thing there was plenty of it.)


Since we have mostly little kids we have to hide the eggs in pretty obvious places in one small area. The picture doesn't show it very good, but that little wash was plastered with cute, colorful, little Easter eggs. There were plenty to go around.


The kids on the hunt. I didn't get any really good pictures because I was trying to help Ryan fill his basket. He wanted to stop and open each one and eat what was inside before moving on to the next egg.


All the kids with their baskets after the Easter egg hunt. Ryan was ticked about sitting on the trailer.


Ethan and Ashlynn crashed out after a fun day.


The kids on Sunday morning with their Easter baskets. It was nice to stay home and watch General Conference on Sunday, we certainly had plenty of treats, and enjoyed all the wonderful talks.

Spring Break

This is our first year to have a real spring break and Ethan thought it was the greatest thing ever. On Monday morning we got up and the kids were watching cartoons while I had a shower. After awhile Ethan said, "Mom, you forgot........never mind." I knew exactly what he was thinking but didn't say anything. Then later on in the day he said, "Mom, you forgot to take me to school today." And was super excited that he had gotten away with it. I explained that he didn't have school cause it was spring break. Then everyday he would ask if it was still spring break and he still didn't have to go to school. At the end of the week he said he loved spring break and wished we could have it every week. Isn't that every kids dream.

Javan and I had to work for most of the week but decided to head up to Salt Lake to go car shopping on the weekend. So on Thursday I packed up the kids and we headed to Moab for a sleepover at Dad's house. (Which was totally weird to say. For those that don't know, and to clear up any confusion, Javan is working on a new hospital build in Moab and he and his crew rent a house and live there during the week.) The kids thought it was the greatest thing in the world, Dad has his own house with everything in it, even bunk beds.

They were so excited all week to sleep on the top bunks of the bunk beds, until we got there and saw there weren't any rails on them. I decided it probably wasn't such a good idea after that. But they still had fun climbing up and down and watching some TV perched atop the bunk beds.


We ordered some pizza and rented a movie from a Red Box (another totally amazing thing we don't have in Blanding) and invited some cousins over to hang out.


Ally and Kamron got a hold of my camera and decided to have a little fashion show. When I finally got my camera back there were about 100 pictures of the two of them in lovely poses. These were a few of the best ones.
Kamron's tricky pose.


Ally's beautiful pose.


The next day we headed up to Salt Lake to do some car shopping. We were in and out of car dealerships all day. The kids were being really good but were starting to get a little restless. So I was feeding Ryan some candies, which he was doing really good with until he got sick of that kind and started playing with it. He was covered in chocolate.


We didn't find a car that we wanted to buy on Friday and the kids had had quite enough of the shopping so we headed to our motel so the kids could go swimming. We stayed at a place called Staybridge Suites in West Valley that has a little waterpark in it. This brightened them up and wore them out for the rest of the evening. I didn't get any pictures of it and the website won't let me steal any from it either. Here's a link if you want to see it.

The next day, the first dealership we went to, Salt Lake Valley GMC, we found the car we wanted. Then we had to start on all the paper work. They had a little play place for the kids, which helped keep them entertained. All the guys at the dealership were really great, Greg, our salesman even played with the kids while we filled out all the papers.

Javan and the kids playing in the funny mirror at the car dealership.


Ethan, Ally, and Ryan smashed behind the clock.


For some reason the car dealership had this stuffed musk ox. Ryan didn't like it at all.


Here's our new car. A GMC Yukon. It seats 9, wahoo! I love having lots of room. We let the kids pick the color. It's fun and the kids are loving it too. We have threaten their lives with spilling food and getting it dirty inside. Which Ethan tried to test out when he got sick on Saturday night and was throwing up. Luckily we had a bag that we caught it in. Oh, you can see the water slide in the back ground.

The kids were telling all the guys at the dealership that we had gone to too many car stores and our trip wasn't even fun. So we decided to go do some fun stuff for the kids. First we went to Cabela's. Who doesn't love that? We checked out all the fish and animals and did some shooting in the shooting range then ate lunch.

Then we went to The Living Planet Aquarium in Sandy. We all love aquariums, they are so fascinating and it's fun to watch the kids get so excited about seeing all the different things. Ryan was loving it too!

Javan and the kids petting the sting rays.

As soon as we got the new car Javan said "Great, now I'm going to have to ride home by myself." Ethan felt bad for him and said he would ride with him, but when it came right down to it Ethan wanted to come with me in the new car. So Ally decided to ride with Javan for awhile. Then when we stopped for lunch she decided that she wanted to ride in the new car too. But then I let Javan drive it for awhile, and we basically played musical cars the whole way home.

It turned out to be a pretty fun spring break for the kids (and me too!). They were so good, and now they love the trip in the new car.

Girls Trip 2010

Last month me and my "life-long" friends had our 3rd annual GIRLS TRIP 2010! Because we were all coming from different places we met in Salt Lake. It's always such a great time. It's our tradition to eat at Olive Garden the first night. Then we did a little shopping and headed back to the motel where the real fun begins. It's so fun to reminisce the good ol' days and catch up on what everyone has been doing. We're not as young as we used to be, but we did manage to stay up until 3 am the first night. By saturday afternoon we were all dragging. Nothing a little Cafe Rio and some more hot tubbin' can't fix.

We sat in the hot tub. Me, Cyndi, Lisa, Nicole, and Heather (forgot her swimming suit :( ).


Nicole got some new lip stain and let Heather test it out on her.


Don't they look beautiful!


The next day we headed to the spa for some pampering ;). Nicole needed some moral support.


So did Lisa. It's girls trip, you have to do everything together. I mean EVERYTHING!


After the spa we headed up to Abravanel Hall to see Brian Regan. He is a comedian, hilarious.


Brian Regan in the act.


Heather, Nicole, and Lisa had to wear their glasses so they could see Brian.


Cyndi and Tamia, looking cute on the bed. Trying not to fall asleep too early.


All the girls! (Look at my long arms, I can reach around all of them.)


Thanks girls for such a fun weekend, can't wait until next year!