A three year old's explanation of thunder and lightening

Hayden's Lego animation film

Sunny Summer Days

Summer break is drawing to a close. The kids begin school in one week, so we are going to try to pack in as many fun activities as possible in the next seven days.  We've had a lot of fun the past couple months visiting family in Washington, going jet skiing with Allie's family, attending a family reunion in Mt. Pleasant and celebrating two birthdays.

I made a slideshow of pictures from all of our excursions and put it to one of my favorite summer songs, "Sunny Summer Days" which is written and sung by my Uncle, Bruce Bybee.  Please enjoy my hours of hard work : )

Dripping Rock Trail

This is a slideshow of our adventures hiking Dripping Rock Trail in Spanish Fork

I Have a Teenager!

We celebrated Brianna's 13th birthday today. I don't feel like I should be old enough to have a teenager, but alas I am getting old : )  If I didn't have 4 rambunctious boys, I would totally have made a cake like this. Luckily Brianna was excited to get cupcakes from our favorite shop, The Sweet Tooth Fairy, in lieu of a cake.

Everyone enjoyed the delicious cupcakes!

Brianna received a cupcake cook book and is excited to start baking her own tasty concoctions.

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Now to reminisce a bit. Here is a picture of Brianna at 11 months with her Grandma Burt

This is a copy of a scrap book page of Brianna at 2 years and 10 months

All I can say is, I love my Brianna!

School's Out For the Summer!

I have mixed feelings about summer break. I am relieved to not be carpooling 3 times a day, which took an hour and a half out of my day.  Before we moved I was only putting about 10 miles on our van a week and after we moved, 250 miles a week!  Luckily our van, or as we often refer to it, "The garbage can on wheels", has really served us well. Besides it numerous flaws, it is still running, so being the frugal person that I am, I can't justify buying a newer family vehicle.  To get back on track, summer break has begun and already my kids are complaining that there's nothing to do : (  We recently bought a bigger trampoline that will accommodate our growing children, since we left our "small" 12 footer at our old/rental house.  For our End of school party this year, I bought a bunch of beach balls courtesy of the Dollar Tree, and the kids had a blast playing with them on the trampoline.  I also bought some water squirters and we filled up a few 5 gallon buckets with water and the kids and their friends were entertained for hours.

Extreme Yeti

Today our family participated in our city's Yeti winter games.  It's an event hosted by the city to raise money for the volunteer fire department.  Hayden and Tucker entered the junior sled racing and as a family we participated in the snow sculpture contest... and won!  We had a lot of fun and plan on doing it again next year.  You can click on the link if you want to see more in depth details of the events. http://www.yetiextremegames.com/

 The little boys staying warm by the heater while enjoying their chocolate yeti pops.

Gage unfortunately burned his fingers on the heater, but fast thinking mom

ran him outside and stuck his hand in the snow.

 Little boys and Mom taking a break from building the snow sculpture 

This is our medal winning snow sculpture!

This is a video of the boys participating in the sled racing (I missed Hayden taking his turn)

Settling In

We have been in our new home a month now and we are still working on unpacking boxes. My goal is to be done by my birthday, as a present to myself : ) Today we went by our old house and retrieved sand toys and other items from the backyard that had been buried in snow until this week. Down in Spanish Fork the snow has vanished, where up in Woodland Hills we still have 2 feet in our yard. If we want to have grass to play on before May, we'll probably have to shovel it into the neighbors yard (j/k).

The kids are still going to school in Spanish Fork, so I go back and forth 3 times a day, which makes for a lot of carpooling. I am looking forward to next year when all the kids will be riding the bus.

We love our new neighborhood. The houses are all on an acre of land, so we have lots of room and privacy.  The first week after our move, Mason had a hard time understanding that he couldn't just walk around knocking on doors asking if he could play. There isn't a lot of spontaneous play, but rather you have to set up play dates.

The people here are wonderful. When Gabe came to unload the moving truck, 6 men showed up to help. Then they all followed him back to S.F. to help load up the truck again and then back to Woodland Hills to unload it.

There are 4 families here that are originally from Upland and who were good friends with Dick and Deon's family. So it has been fun meeting them and hearing about old connections.

Today we had our warmest day in months, 60 degrees. We were able to spend some time outside together and get some winter yard work done.

Many blessings

We officially closed on our "new" house a week ago. We have been excited but also apprehensive because we will be renting out our current home. We have heard many "horror" stories about renters and have had many people give us advice about hiring a company to handle everything for us. We decided to try it on our own at first, hoping that we could find just the right family to take care of our home. I haven't been worried or stressed about it because I've had a peaceful feeling that everything would work itself out. I posted an add a few days ago and we've had many people come and look at our house. Yesterday a family came to look at our home, non-members, but very nice and friendly people. They have 4 young children, one of which is a boy named Mason who is in kindergarten. My Mason instantly befriended him and told his new friend that they were cousins : )  This great family signed a lease with us for 3 years and we are sooooooo happy and relieved!

Many people have asked to see pictures of our new house, which was actually built in 1975, so not really "new". It is on 1.2 acres of land and has beautiful views. This video was made by the realtor, so it shows the house still furnished by the previous owners.

In your opinion, what is the the best toy to have in your collection?

Like many parents we have bought our kids toys that they "just had to have" knowing that a few weeks or may be even days later, it would become forgotten. Over the past few years we have tried to steer clear of those kinds of toys. However if our kids want to save their own money and purchase that 'must have toy' themselves, then that is their choice. Growing up, the favorite toys in our house were wooden building blocks, tinker toys and legos.  But the most often used were the wooden blocks. Now 25 years later, the true can be said for my kids. They are the toy that gets pulled out the most, are always scattered across the boys bedroom, and are the one toy that we can never put in the temporary storage rotation.

For Christmas this year, Gage's Santa gift was a set of 96 large jumbo blocks, that are a mix of lego and block. The older kids asked for electronic gadgets or bikes, toys that don't necessarily require a lot of imagination. While they all loved their gifts, it has been Gage's mega blocks that have been the most played with toy, even with mom and dad.

Gage's Castle 

The boys sharing the double throne mom made