May and the End of School

May and the end of school always brings busy and fun times.  Shaylee had her 2nd grade music program toward the beginning of the month.  She got to dress up like a beetle.  The costume wasn’t fancy but I think she made a pretty cute bug.  The program was as cute as can be.  It is always fun the see the kids in these programs.
She also had her track meet.  She participated in the ball bounce, jump rope and sack race.  I was proud of her for getting out there and doing her best even when some of the events didn’t come easy for her.
For the sack race they had to hop 50 yards in their sacks.  This wasn’t easy for her but I was so proud of her for finishing.
Around the middle of the month the girls started T-ball and softball.  It has been so much fun to watch them play this year.  I sure hope they have enjoyed it because I know have.  I hope they decide to play again next year.
Here they are in their uniforms.  Courtney was having a blast posing.  I should have only posted one but I couldn’t resist.

Fashion

Sweet

                                  

Egyptian

Sprinkler

         


















We didn’t get pictures of Kelsi and Shaylee before the game but here are a few during and after shots.
Kelsi, my 10 year old who has never played softball before, was recruited on the first game to be the catcher.  She has been the catcher for almost every game since.  She is doing pretty good, in my opinion, for never having played before.  It does make be a little nervous at times to have her so close to the batters.  Thank goodness for the protection provided by her helmet and pads.  So far so good.
Shaylee is also doing great.  This is also her first real year of playing.  She was going to play last year but see only made it to one practice and then we had to pull her.  (She broke her collar bone at school.)  This year has gone much better. 
Here are a couple of after shots.    
Go Rockies and Royals!  We have just a few more games and the season is over.  It has been great fun!  I hope they decide to play again next year.      
We also got to celebrate a couple of birthdays this month.  My dear husband turned 35.  I love him and am grateful for all he does for our family.  He does a great job providing for us and showing such love for us in all he does and says.  We had a fun time celebrating with him.
Courtney also had a birthday. She turned 4.  It is crazy to think my baby is getting so big.  We got to celebrate her birthday at CG and Gramps house.  It was lots of fun to celebrate with some of our family.  She was so super excited.   She had been asking for weeks how much longer until her birthday.  Birthdays are a lot more exciting when you are a kid.  You actually look forward to getting older.  I am so happy to have her in our family.  She is so much fun and brings so many smiles to our faces. 
The weekend that we went to CG and Gramps house and celebrated Courtney’s birthday we also got to go shopping for Shaylee’s baptism dress.  This is always a fun time.  We took her to the same little shop that we bought Kelsi’s at two years ago.  I love this little boutique.  There are so many beautiful dresses to choose from.  It is called Crismons.  If you are looking for a baptism dress or blessing dress or suit this is a great place to go.  There are lots of beautiful dresses in many sizes.  There are also other beautiful dresses as well as baby furniture. 
Here are some of the dresses that she tried on in her efforts to find the right one.  She had so much fun and liked so many of them.  I am sure she felt like a little princess trying them all on.  They are actually pretty reasonably priced also.  I think the one she ended up getting was right around $45.    

Option #1

Option # 2

                    

Option#3

                  
  

Option #4

Option #5

                                                 

Option # 6

Option #7

The one she finally ended up picking was option #3.  She had so many to choose from so it wasn’t an easy task.  I think she picked out a beautiful one.  Thanks CG and Grani for helping us to get this dress for her!  
I am so proud of her choice to be baptized. She is such a sweet girl and a blessing in our lives.
While we were out and about we also took the opportunity to stop by Pop-o’s grave site.    It is hard to believe that he has been gone for over a year now.  Pop-o is truly loved and missed.
    

We had a great weekend at Cg and Gramp’s house.  We had a blast swimming, shopping, partying and spending time with family.  It was also wonderful to see Grani.  We love you Grani!  Thanks for all you do and the wonderful example you are.
The next weekend we had some family fun for memorial day.  We have taken to having breakfast picnics.  Especially in the summer.  We decided this time to take our breakfast  to the EAC campus.  It is a beautiful campus and one of our favorite places to walk around and play at.
We had a blast playing Frisbee, soccer, racquetball and riding bikes.  There is just so many things to do on campus.  We love taking our family there.           
We also discovered this wreath the college had on display by the clock tower in honor of the many men and women who have served our country and fallen in battle.  I am so grateful for their sacrifices.  It is such a blessing to live in this country.  There are so many wonderful people who serve in our armed forces.  Thank you!  Thank you! Thanks also to their families who sacrifice so much during their service to our country. 
We had a busy and fun month full of exciting adventures.  One more picture and I promise I am done for this post.  I just had to throw this one in because it was too cute.  Daddy had to do some work from home one morning so Courtney decided to join him.  What a sweetheart!   

A Little Catch Up - April 2012

April showers are suppose to bring May flowers.  Well, we didn’t get much rain but we tried to have some fun with our three little flowers.

Easter was fun.  We had a visit from the Easter Bunny.  Who comes to our house on Saturday so that we can spend Sunday celebrating the real meaning of Easter.  The resurrection of  our Savior Jesus Christ.  What a blessing He is!  He lives!

After Easter baskets, we headed to a picnic in Pomerene at Grandma Barney’s pond.  It was great to see so many family members.  We fished, went in the boat on the pond, played with cousins, ate and had an Easter egg hunt.  We were all tired and dirty from head to toe when it was all said and done but we had a great time.  Sad to say I didn’t get any pictures.  I was busy just trying to keep track of my three little flowers around the water.

We had a great day Sunday worshipping and spending time together as a family.  I decided to make the girls Easter dresses this year.  I used the same fabric but made each girl’s dress or skirt different .  It was kind of fun trying to come up with different ways to make their dresses. 

We also enjoyed a nice dinner and dessert.

  The kids enjoyed the dessert.  We had a chocolate and a pumpkin pie.  It had been a while since I had made either.

 

Since we were gone most of Saturday we also decided to let them color eggs that evening.  Always a fun messy event.  They never can get enough of the eggs to color. I usually limit them because I don’t want to have dozens of hard boiled eggs just sitting in my refrigerator.  Some get eaten but most of them don’t. 

Most of the rest of the month was spent doing every day things; homework, school, housework, work, etc. 

Toward the end of the month Kelsi had her fourth grade track meet.  Sad to say that was a rough day around here.  Courtney was feeling pretty lousy and had been up throughout the night.  She had a fever and was throwing up.   So we didn’t get to see most of it.  I did sneak there for a little while after taking Courtney to the Dr.  Luckily we had a friend that was able to get a picture of Kelsi at the track meet during the softball throw and be a support for her when I couldn’t. I did get to see her in the sack race. I felt so bad not being able to be there for the whole thing. I had never missed one before.

Courtney was tested for strep, the flu and a UTI, upon my suggestion, and all were negative except the UTI.  She has had at least three that have been diagnosed in here short little life. Poor girl! 

Spring Break

We had a great spring break week. Too bad it had to end.

The week started out with a surprise snow day. In most peoples opinion it may not be a snow worth mentioning but in our house we made the most of it. It came down pretty good at times and almost looked like it was going to, at least, cover the ground. We all enjoyed playing in what little snow we did have. It was especially fun for Courtney because this was her first real chance to play in the snow.

We even made a snowman. He lasted longer than the rest of the snow but eventually met his demise when it started to rain. After we warmed up a bit we decided to make a fun T-shirt craft that I found on Pinterest that linked to the blog http://theartgirljackie-tutorials.blogspot.com/2011/10/tie-dye-t-shirts-with-sharpie-markers.html. We had lots of fun with this but discovered a few things that we will need to do different next time.

They turned out pretty good for a first try. It has some great fun potential for future projects.

The second day we decided to head to Tucson for some fun activities. But before we did Kelsi decided to see if she could get our broom to stand up all by itself. I know we are a little slow on the whole phenomenon of getting the broom to do this. People posted about it on Facebook weeks ago. We can now say it actually works! It was really kind of cool. It stayed up for about a half hour and would have stayed up longer but a certain little miss, who happens to be three, decided she needed the broom.

We had lots of fun in Tucson. It was a quick over and back trip, but we tried to have as much fun as we could in one day. First we headed to the mall where the kids got to go to Build a Bear Workshop. This is probably there most favorite store in the mall. It is a good thing we don’t go there very often. Because it can add up quick.

After Build a Bear, the Puppy Place, a Jamba Juice and a few other random stores we headed to Golf n’ Stuff. This was the girls first experience with miniature golf. It was lots of fun. We didn’t keep score and we really didn’t follow the rules. We just had fun.

After working up an appetite playing golf and arcade games, we headed to the Texas Roadhouse for dinner. This was a great place to eat. We shared some ribs and chicken crisps, and tried fried pickles for the first time. That were actually really good. We may just have to attempt to make them at home sometime.

They had a balloon artist going around making balloon animals for the children. She did an amazing job. She made Kelsi and Shaylee penguins and Courtney a horse. The girls started asking her about how she learned to be a balloon artist and she said she has gone to a lot of conventions. She said at one she won a prize for making a balloon dress that her friend wore the whole day at the convention and was even able to sit down in without it popping. That is pretty impressive in my opinion.

The next few days were spent relaxing and hanging out at home. (We had to recover a little from our trip to Tucson.)

On Saturday we celebrated Kelsi’s 10th birthday. It is amazing how fast time has gone by. My girls are growing up way to fast. We tried to make it a special day. She had an ice cream pie instead of a cake, which is just fine with me. She opened presents and we just spent time together as a family. It was such a beautiful evening that we headed to the park to play a little baseball. She seemed to have a great day. We sure love her and are proud of the young lady she is turning into. Just not too fast alright.

Old Faithful

   So, I had a very interesting and scary experience this week.  I got a bunch of chicken for a great deal and decided I would try to bottle some of it.  I have done it before but it has always been with someone else and it was at least a year ago when I did it last.  I attempted to pressure can the bottles in a pressure cooker that I recently purchased at Wal-mart.  Well this cooker was a little different than some I have used before so I was trying to figure it out as I went using the manual that came with it.  The instructions said for the 15lb weight to be gently rocking for about 75 min.  I discovered that their idea of “gentle rocking” is different than mine.  This is what happened all over my kitchen…

   There was a little black plug, the overpressure plug, that popped out and “Old Faithful” sprayed everywhere.  I had never seen so much water all over my kitchen before.  The ceiling was dripping and there was about a 1/2 inch worth of water on the floor.  I didn’t even realize there was enough water in the pot to make such a mess. 

   The mess took quite a while to clean up.  I was truly grateful for the help of my husband in this endeavor.  He helped to dry the ceiling and cabinets while I was on low cabinets and floor duty.  What a mess!

  Overall it was an experience I don’t want to do again.  Ever! I am extremely grateful that the Lord was watching out for us and no one was hurt. 

Please Vote for Kelly

I know that my blog doesn’t reach a lot of people but for those of you who read please consider voting for my sister-in-law Kelly Edington for a contest hosted by Impact Photography Group.  She has been through a lot this last year and this would be a well deserved prize for her and her family.  Find out more about her on her blog and then consider voting for her on the Impact Photography Group blog.  Thanks!

Marching Forth

Here we are, all the way into March.  It always amazes me how fast time flies.  I don’t ever remember time going this fast as a child.  It always seemed like it took forever for Christmas and other fun things to come around.  Now, day after day and year after year seem to be slipping away.  All the more reason to find the joy in the everyday things.

January and February were filled with the everyday things of life.  We did try to find some joy in the little things though.  On the 14th of February we decided to have a birthday celebration for the 100th birthday of Arizona.  I am not a cake making expert  but tried to make a fun one for our celebration.

We had an Arizona flag cake.  We also invited my Grandma Edington over to have dinner and cake and ice cream with us.  We didn’t want her to be alone on Valentine”s day now that her sweetheart has been gone for almost eight years. 

We all enjoyed the time together.  We love our family time. 

Over President’s day weekend we got to go see CG and Gramps in Glendale.  They have recently moved and we got to see their new house.  We were all excited for this little trip.  It had been about six months since the last time we made it over that way. 

We had a great time visiting with everyone.  We just had a low key weekend hanging out and letting the kids play with their cousin.  We even got to see Gramps’ horses and cows.  The girls always love doing that. We also really enjoyed our visit with Grani on our way home.  Love you Grani!

Just this last week the Elementary school celebrated Dr. Seuss’ Birthday.  They got to dress up like characters from Dr. Seuss’ stories.  Kelsi decided to dress like Cindy Lou Who.  It was a fun challenge to figure out how to get her hair to stick up like that.  Thank goodness for the internet and the ideas that people share on there.  I found one website where they used a floral cone for the top and pipe cleaners for the braids.  Kelsi’s hair is so long that it made the top really high.  She had lots of fun with this one. 

Today is mine and my husbands 12th anniversary.  We are so grateful for the years we have had together.  We have come closer and closer over  the years.  We have learned a lot and appreciate everyday. 

We actually didn’t end up doing much today.  Mostly because our whole family ended up getting sick.  We think it might have been something we ate.  I guess we will never know though.  We have tried here and there just to take a few moments to be together enjoying each others company.