Friday April 1

It's been a fun day, and still going.

It is gonna be a late night :)

Port had his first football game and he did so awesome...he's a speedy little devil!

And Madi has some friends over tonight...which makes me happy because I always tell her that she needs to invite her friends here!

And today was April Fools day, so there was a bit of fooling going around.
And dad got to get off a few hours of work so he could go and coach Port's game.
Port had so much fun and they did so good!
They won big time!

Madi tricked Port into holding a cup of water up with a broom....

This is what we had waiting for dad when he got home from work.....

Madi's little get together....

Love my boys.

I LOVE this shot!!!!!

Thursday March 31

 After school, Madi got to work at picking up the sticks around the place.

She was panning to mow the lawn, but that battery was dead.

So it is charging now.....

I picked up Cassi's track carpool, and then when I brought her home, she went out and helped Madi.

I have no idea if there was fighting, bossing around and yelling going on at this point, but it still made me happy to watch them working together :)

I took the little ones to S.T.E.M. night at the school.

It was a fun night and we didn't even get to half of all the stuff they had there!!!!!

I got home and got them into bed, and both of them had to have me go back in to read some more.

Maybe they were just so riled up and over stimulated :)

But it was fun.

 Rocket attempt #1......top blew off (I think they had it dialed up too high....)

 Rocket attempt #2, highly successful!

 They put balloons in a dry ice mixture and the balloon would shrink, then when you took it back out, it would go back to size.

Crazy!

 Marshmallow frozen in dry ice, cold and crunchy!

 This was a fav!

Draw a black line and that little blue robot would follow it.

Then you could put different color sequences and it would do different things, like go faster, spin, moonwalk :)

It was super cool!

 They are each holding two balls that are exactly the same size, weight and color.....

except one bounced high and the other fell flat.

Pretty cool!

They hit these two balls together to burn a tiny hole in the paper.

 Elsie is controlling that cute little robot to the right of the picture....she had fun with that.

 These are cubelets.

You put them together in certain orders and they do different things.

I made a flashlight and Port made a car and Elsie made her own invention.....and it moved crazy and we all thought it was pretty funny!

 Engineering a house and then seeing how strong it is by using a blow dryer (disguised as a wolf) to try and blow it over.

 All while eating a mouthful of cookies :)

Then again with a leaf blower wolf.

His house was successful!

It was a fun night :)

Wednesday March 30

Had a late night YW meeting....so too late to blog.

Will do it tomorrow :)

Tuesday March 29

I helped in Port's class for a little bit this morning.

They had a sub and she seemed super overwhelmed.....and they are a pretty good class.

But I could tell her high stress level seemed to rile them up :(

Anyway.....I noticed the other day that Port's pencil was all chewed up.

Then looking at all his pencils in his desk today......they are all chewed up!

I need to ask his teacher if maybe he can have some gum or something in class, because he is obviously needing some oral stimulation!!!!!

Crazy!

I can't believe his teeth aren't all chewed up......because he gnaws at the metal part until it rips off and then chews on the wood!

Crazy boy!

Anyway, i got home and Drew was and he brought the doors he had made for some more of the cabinets!

I am so excited!

The more I see of the doors on there, the more excited I get!

They are looking so good!

I just need to get them painted!!!!!!!

Oh man.....so much to do!

We tried to wait for Bubbles and Eldon to get back from their ride to Nampa....

But we headed over and got the tree finished up and I still had time to go for a run before the kiddos needed picked up :)

Then Elsie had speech therapy and we had fried rice for dinner, which was a big hit with everyone!

Monday March 28

After I dropped the kiddos off at school, I ran to say a quick hi to Jenni (maybe it was a little more than a quick hi :) and take her back some items that were at my house.

I was on my way to that part of town to do a swap for some of the Lularoe pants Madi got a little bit ago.

There was some holes.....and so they replaced it for her.

I also got these AMAZING buffalo pants that fit Elsie perfectly!

And I guarantee she will never take them off.

Jenni found them at a Lularoe party last week, and they saved them aside for me because they knew I needed to have them!!!!!

I was so excited to give them to her after she got home from school!!!!!

Yes, I may just have a slight obsession with Elsie's Buffalo obsession ;)

When I got home from that, I hung some more laundry on the indoor line......and Dad started trying to figure out what is wrong the dryer.

Then I ate lunch and went over to Eldon and Bubbles and we trimmed trees together.

Brent was going to come over too....then he got a migraine :(

Bummer.

He laid down and Bubbles fed me pie after we took a break from pruning.

I came home when kiddos started getting out of school.

Then when I was making dinner, we saw Eldon had gone out and started to burn our ditches.

So we ran out and chatted with them some more.

Port and Cassi helped pull the propane in a wagon.

Then they went to Bubbles house after and got a treat too :)

I don't know how we got so lucky to have them.

Such great people......so happy our little family gets to have them in our lives.

For FHE tonight, we did another one of Port's baptism lessons.

When we went to the Great to be 8 night, they gave each of the kids a folder with 4 FHE lessons to help prepare the month before their baptism.

But we plan to use them over and over :)

They are fun lessons.

Sunday March 27

Happy Easter!

It was a nice day today.

Dad got to get off a little early, so we could do the kids Easter egg hunt before church.

We did a little scavenger hunt, like we always do.

That is something that came from Grandma Ene......at least that is who started it with my kids :)

At the end they each had a gift and a framed picture of Christ,

Then we all got ready for church.

At church I received my Personal Progress Medallion :)

Yay.

It has been a lot of fun working on it, and I can't wait to delve back into it.....

Our lesson in Beehives was a great one.

Sister Reid had twelve eggs, and each of them had an object that symbolized the last week in Christ's life.

The girls each had an egg and read the paper inside telling about the object.

It was a really great lesson.

And Sydney made some cookies for me to give to the Beehives today....isn't she the greatest!

That's what fam is for!

(check last night's post if you don't get that ;)

After church we tried to get pictures......but my camera was acting up....still is.

So I got a picture, but it was really dark :(

I lightened it up a bit, so it's not too bad.

But the one of Dad and I had to be with the phone!

After pictures, we played a round of Phase 10.

We learned we need to start playing more games so that Port learns how to be a good sport.....

Every time he got skipped, he had a full on meltdown!!!!!

(Which of course encouraged more skipping......)

Then we started getting dinner ready and Bubble called to invite us to a little Easter egg hunt she had for Eldon's brother Bobby.

They take really good care of Bobby, and make sure he has time with family and lot's of fun.

Bobby has special needs, and has all his life.

He was so cute and showed us his medals he won in the Special Olympics a few weeks ago, for skiing.

He was so very proud!

The kids had fun.....and each egg had a coin of some kind in it!

Then we came home and had dinner.

Our home teachers came over and gave us a little message and a treat for the kids :)

After they left, we turned on some Mormon Channel videos.

They were so great to sit and watch and really feel the spirit and understand more of what Christ suffered and why he did what he did.

I just love Easter, and I am loving it more and more with each year.

The more I understand.....the more personal is becomes to me.

I am so thankful that Christ suffered for our sins.

So grateful we are able to repent of our sins so that we may be able to return to our Heavenly Father......and live with our families forever.

Something I learned last week from Sister Reid's lesson, that I hadn't ever thought of before.....

I always wondered why Christ had to suffer int he garden AND suffer on the cross.

Well with the fall of Adam, two things happened.

We were now mortal, and so physical death could now happen.

But Also, there was now spiritual death.

Spiritual death, meaning a separation from God.

Now when it came time for Christ to suffer for our sins, he needed to suffer for both our physical death, and our spiritual death.

The Garden of Gethsemane was the atonement for spiritual death.......

And being hung on the cross, for physical death.

Now maybe I have that all wrong, and I may have misinterpreted what she was telling us......

But it was so amazing to me......something new I had not really known.

And has helped me to be more grateful for the great and unimaginable sacrifice Christ made for us.

Anyway.......I just love this gospel and I am especially grateful for holidays like this where we get to really focus our attention on what has been done for us, so we may live again.

#hallelujah 

Madi was super excited about the Easter egg hunt this morning :)

Madi- watercolor book and watercolor pencils, and her favorite picture of Christ

Cassi- quote frame and guitar strap and a beautiful picture of Christ walking on the water

Elsie- Pattern blocks and crayons and a picture of Christ with little children....a personal favorite....

Port- Baseball bat and balls and a picture of the resurrected Christ outside the tomb