My little singer(s)

I love hearing the boys sing, so I requested them to sing this evening.  They sang with the kids today at church during sacrament meeting.  I play the piano for the kids at church, so I couldn't see what was going on.  But apparently Weston was quite entertaining.  He was holding on to a toy dinosaur, playing around with it.  I did hear him yell something at the end of the singing.  It sounded like "all done!"  I'm not sure what he said, but it was a holler of delight that the singing was finished.  He waved his dinosaur as well.  Everyone laughed.  Silly boy.  

I think he was standing still at least during church.  Tonight he couldn't even sit still.

Enjoy Nathan and the boys singing "Mother, I Love You."  

If you missed their singing a couple of years ago, you might enjoy going back to hear them.  Pretty cute.

Happy Mom's Day!

The self-timer wasn't too bad... look at the blinking light...

I love these kids!  

I love being a mom, and I am thankful for all of the things my kids teach me.  I am also thankful for my mom and mother-in-law.  I appreciate their kind hearts and the way they love and serve their families.  And thank you to all of the other mothers out there, with or without kids of your own.  Your mother hearts are an example for me!

Alex let me sleep in, and he made me breakfast and dinner - eggs, bacon, and chocolate chunk muffins and then fajitas for dinner.  

Nathan and Jared made a couple of things at school.  Jared gave me a service coupon book.  I had to laugh at some of the coupons.  One of them was a coupon good for "letting us watch a movie" and another was for "making us play outside."   

Nathan wrote a poem, which was quite amusing.  

My Heart Soars

The beauty of your blue eyes

The softness of your red hair

The taste of your key lime pie

Speaks to me

The smell of you making a lovely dinner

The sound of you singing

The strength of your love

Speaks to me

The passion of your blogging

The fullness of the board games we played

The life of fun

They speak to me

My heart soars

My heart soars too.  

Garden time!

We participated in a community day of service (used to be "Mormon Helping Hands").  The project we helped with was planting a garden for one of the community centers.  Alex actually oversaw this particular project.  The boys were good helpers!

They also got to help with our own garden.  I thought it was cute that Jared wanted to dress just like Alex.  However, Owen threw a fit about the turtle shirt and Jared ended up letting Owen wear it.  

The most exciting part of gardening was "spreading the poop".  I couldn't believe how excited the boys were to spread the fertilizer.  

Savannah and I helped a little bit with the gardening... 

Our garden has tomatoes, onions, peppers, and beans, green leaf lettuce, kale, and corn.  I may have forgotten something...

  

They did a good job!

Other April happenings

Just some random things from April... 

I was on a strict diet for a few weeks - no gluten, no dairy, no egg, no soy, no corn, no peanuts.  I was supposed to eliminate those from my diet for 3 weeks and then introduce 4 of them one week at a time to see if I was intolerant to that food.  I did it for nearly 3 weeks and then Easter came around... and I failed... 

I just couldn't dedicate 7 weeks to this diet right now.  Maybe another time.  However, I did have "fun" experimenting with substitutes in recipes.  The "bread" pictured below was a fail.  I tried to make buns out of oat flour.  It wouldn't rise.  It didn't taste too bad - I didn't hate it... but I wouldn't do them again.  Hamburger just between lettuce tasted better than this strange oat concoction.  

The orange t-shirt picture was an attempt to take a picture of the FOOTPRINT on the bathroom mirror, the mirror above the sink.... HOW did a footprint get up there??  They had to be sitting in the sink!  No one would fess up - the size of it was either Nathan or Jared's.     

Cheerios was on sale!  I got 16 boxes.  Should last us maybe 16 weeks...

Last picture - just a funny one of Weston napping with his "skid" toy.  He thinks it's a squid.  Whatever.  I'm just glad he was resting.  

We had pneumonia go around - Jared, Alex, and Weston got that.  Jared, Owen, and Savannah got ear infections.  We spent quite a bit of time at the doctor in April...blah.

I spent about a month working on Savannah's 1st year scrapbook - it turned out to be 80 pages (12 x 12 size)!  I had to laugh at the unequal distribution of scrapbooks.  Savannah has 3 books, Owen and Weston got 2 books, and poor Jared only has one book.  (Nathan has 2 notebook size scrapbooks.)  I need to re-do Jared's.  With his, I was printing pictures and custom pages from the computer.  Those are already fading, so if you're starting traditional scrapbooking, don't print your pictures on cardstock.  Get actual pictures printed.

Some of my favorite pages from Savannah's books...  I think I have a pretty simple style as far as lay-out and such.  It may not have many fancy embellishments, but I like them.  And it's done.  That feels good.  (The blog books are caught up, baby scrapbooks done - well, maybe not Jared's...  I think my next project is the birthday scrapbooks).   

This one is pretty special - Savannah with her great grandma!

We've got a toddler!

Savannah's legs were getting all scrunched in her rear-facing carseat, so we went ahead and switched her to a forward-facing seat.  She got a few more months than her brothers.  We switched all of them right at one year old.  Savannah was about 15 months old.  She likes it!  

She is such a big "helper"...  

She is a climber!  She climbs on the table whenever she gets a chance.  Forget about flowers, food, homework, or anything extra left on the table... she'll get it!  (My sister ruined my homework...?)  She also climbs the ladder up to the top bunk.  Great...  

I love her climbing to try to get to my scrapbooking stuff.  A scrapbook turned into a little ramp for her.  

She likes to finish whatever food her brothers leave on the table.  One morning, she wanted to eat HER food at the table - such a big girl, feeding herself cereal.  She also loves to climb on the Lego table and sit right in the middle of everything.  She put the pirate hat on too.  As far as the Legos, she is pretty good with them as far as not putting them in her mouth.  Her favorite thing is to pull the heads off the Lego people and carry around the heads!  We now have a bunch of headless Lego people...and I keep finding heads everywhere.

She has been really slow on walking, but she did finally take several steps this week!  She is a really fast crawler though.  I have to laugh when I see her with things in her hands, scooting around really fast.

She has very few words.  One of them is cracker.  She also knows dada (won't say mama), ball, baby, and bear.  I think she's got the "B" sound - she says "buh" for bath and bird and book.  She refuses to say "more" or "yes" or "no", "down" or anything that would be helpful in knowing what she wants.  Insert tantrums...sigh.

  

These weren't her very first steps, but the first ones captured on video.  She took a few steps a couple of weeks ago, but had not done anymore until a couple of days ago (April 30).  Finally!  She had a whole cheering squad.  I love it!  These are painfully slow to watch, but these steps have been a long time coming.  These are great moments for us!  You think she's a bit cautious??

Celebration!

More Easter egg-citement!