She's Here

Our new baby is here. Megan Kristine was born a week ago. She came 15 days early. She weighed 7 lbs 8 oz. and was 20 1/4 inches long.

Grace was so excited to see the new baby but since she hasn't been getting naps lately, she fell asleep in the car on the way to the hospital.
She did wake up right before they were going to leave.
The kids are all excited to have a new baby.

When we got home from the hospital, Kade started getting everything ready for the baby. I had a bunch of baby items in my bedroom so he was assembling everything.

More Awards

All the boys did well in school this year. They all received straight A's for the year. Way to go!

Awards

We had our end of the year awards ceremony yesterday for Jack. I can't believe that it's that time of year again. Time just seems to fly. Jack made all As this year. Good job Jack! He also had 510 AR points for reading for the year. He should have gotten 2nd place for that but they gave the award to another kid who had less points. Tom told Jack to tell one of his teachers but I know he won't do it. I guess it doesn't matter - it just would have been nice for him to be recognized.

He did not want me taking his picture. Can you tell?
This is the cake that Jack made for the Boy Scout Chili Cook-off and cake auction this year. Last year he made a dragon cake. I found this recipe on-line and told him that I thought people would pay money for it. It was a chocolate peanut butter cup cake. His cake and my chocolate mousse cake were the two highest selling cakes of the night - around $60 each.
Here is the last award we received. I entered my same chili recipe that I make every time we have to bring chili to a function. This year I won. Can you believe it? Shocking. I am now the proud owner of a chili trophy for the year.

Happy Birthday Grace

I can't believe that Grace is 3. When I asked her what she wanted for her birthday, I was expecting all kinds of toy ideas. Her response every time was a pink cake. That is all she cared about.

I made my Aunt Karen's strawberry cake for Grace. I had forgotten why I never make this cake - the frosting never turns out right for me. She still loved her cake.

Grace loved her little kitchen set she got for her birthday. She put her apron and hat on right away and didn't want to take them off for any reason.

Easter 2011

We always take a family picture on Easter, but we didn't get it this year. At least there's one of the kids.

Tom dressed Grace for church. I had planned on her wearing a green dress so when he told me he got her dressed he said it was the new dress. I said what new dress? He said the one with the tags still on it. He had picked out last year's easter dress. She didn't wear it last year because it was too big. This year - too small, but she loved her princess dress.

Decorating Eggs
The boys were a little disappointed this year that there were only 4 dozen eggs to color. The funny thing is - they ate all the eggs within a week.


Grace only did a couple eggs but they were very bright colors - just like her hands.



Easter Dinner

So I cooked a ham for dinner. We were supposed to eat at 4 p.m. It was after 7 p.m. before we ate because the dumb ham took forever to cook. I must have found the only non precooked ham they sell. Perhaps it was frozen in the middle. I don't know. All I do know is that it cooked for 4 hours and it was perfect when we finally ate it. I worried that it was going to not be done to worrying that it was going to be super dry. It turned out fine in the end. This is why I shouldn't entertain.

Since we don't have any family close by this year, we invited a few families over for dinner. Here are most of the kids before the egg hunt. There were four gold eggs that had money in them. Kade tried to hard to find one. He purposely passed up all kinds of eggs in his search for the golden egg. He didn't end up finding one and cried when he realized he wasn't going to get one. Jack took his egg and re-hid it for Kade without being asked. Jack is such a good boy.


Easter baskets

The kids had to figure out clues to find their baskets. Tricky bunny.

Can we say crazy hair. Grace's hair looks like this every morning.

I tried being crafty this year. I saw this idea for wheat grass on a blog and decided to try it. The first try didn't work. I guess old wheat from my food storage won't grow. I should have known this. After I bought new wheat, it worked great. The kids gave the grass a haircut.

Ward Luau - Southern Style

Our ward had a luau for an activity right before Easter. It was a lot of fun. The kids ran around, found a bale of hay to destroy, played football, chased chickens, had an egg hunt and just had fun. Little different than our luau's in California. Here we are cooking a pig in a backyard. Like I said, this is the southern version of a luau. We had pork sandwiches with coleslaw for dinner.

This hay was so tall when the kids started climbing all over it that Grace couldn't get up. By the end, she had no problem climbing up the hay. I think this was the hit of the night. All the kids were climbing on it, jumping off it, pushing each other off and sliding down it. So all you need at a ward function is one large hay roll. I have discovered that I am allergic to hay.
Grace is playing with her friend, Randon. Below, Grace loved to cover herself in the hay. Yuck.
We did an egg hunt as well. Jack wasn't allowed to get eggs this year because they said he was too old. He was pretty upset but I think it had to do more with the fact that he wasn't going to get any candy. Luckily, his brothers and sister shared their candy.


Jack got to help Grace find eggs, but she really doesn't need help. She's got the hunting part down. She knows there is a lot of candy in those eggs.
This is hard work. She needs a break. Here she is with her buddy, Kebryl. Have you noticed that there aren't any girls her age?

Egg Hunt at the Park

We went to an egg hunt at the park with the mom's club in town. Grace had fun finding eggs. She was only supposed to collect 10 eggs but she found way more than that and we had to put a lot back.

Here she is swinging with her buddy, Brady. She loves to swing. I think she would spend all her time letting me push her if I let her.