We spent a fun morning celebrating Spencer's 5th birthday at Classic Skating.  It was a great way to wear out a group of kids.  They loved jumping, bouncing, riding their scooters, and having fun with cousins. 

 Happy birthday Spencer!

Lizzie is cute as ever eating breakfast decked out in her princess costume.  This is an outfit she borrowed from our neighbor and she is completely obsessed with it!
She wore it three days in a row. 
Emily and her cute friends, she loves having lots of girls to play with in the neighborhood.

We had the pinewood derby race this week for Cub Scouts.
Taylor and Danny worked very little on this car
(Danny has been super busy at work) 
but they had great results.

Taylor's car gor 1st place in his age group, and 2nd place overall.

Our stake does Cub Scouts on a stake level, so there were 46 cars in the race.
He was happy, and excited about his car!

There were lots of creative cars, it was fun to see how differernt every car was.

Thanks to Danny for being naturally good at building and working on cars etc.. He's awesome at this stuff!

He's faking a frown, because he hates getting his picture taken.

Tay with his best buddy, Ryan.

Now we just need to save that car for 3 years until Isaac is in cub scouts!

This week was full of lots of cousins!  On Tuesday we had Spencer and Milly over to play, which was fun! These girls were playing babies, and wanted to get in the crib, so we loaded them in with all their toys.  They thought it was great, and played for a long time in Lizzie's crib.  Lizzie and Milly really think it's funny to kiss each other on the lips, everyone laughs and they love it.

Then on Wednesday we had Becca and Allison over all day.  Mono and Dave were in NY, and they played hard all day.  I took them to Mcdonalds to play, and they ran around hard.  Lizzie loves her cousin Alli, and they love to play with all their junk.  These girls haul around their dolls, play phone, stuffed animals, jewelry, plastic shoes, blankets etc... It's hilarious to see them try to haul this stuff all around the house.  They demand to carry their stuff downstairs, and then want to bring it back up the stairs only 2 mintues later.  It's a funny thing to see. 

We love cousins!

We had a family dinner after General Conference last week and walked over to the park. Everyone had a fun time playing and hanging out at the park. 
Isaac asked me the other day, 
"Mom, how old do you have to be when you get a girlfriend?"  Then he started thinking of who his girlfriend could be, and he listed a whole bunch of girls.  It was so serious about it, and funny!

Elizabeth is really into her dressups lately, she gets into the bin of clothes and destroys the place in no time at all! At least she sings the clean up song, while she cleans up her mess. Ha Ha! 

Lizzie has been obsessed with wearing a hat, or a hood lately. If her coat doesn't a hood she yells " I need a helmet!"  She gets confused about whether it's a hood or the helmet. She's hilarious!

We bundled up and had a picnic on the deck on day this week with the cousins.  It was a fun lunch!

We had our street cleanup this week, it was good entertainment for the kids to watch. They loved sitting out front, and watching the big equipment. 

We went to Hannah's blessing, it was a great day to spend with family.  She is such a beautiful day!

We got a beta fish on Saturday, his name is "Bluedart".  Isaac picked him out and named him, all the kids are thrilled.

Lizzie is obsessed with holding her newest cousin, Henry.  She adores babies, and loves to hold, and rub them. She is pretty sweet with babies, but doesn't really understand that they are a real person.

Utah still has really cold weather, we are so ready for Spring and warmer weather. 

Spring Break 2013

This year for Spring break we went to southern California.  We normally stay home during spring break, so this was a very exciting and big event for our family!

It was a fabulous trip including; seeing aunts & uncles, swimming, surfing, relaxing, playing in the sand, gorgeous views,

 time at the beach, warm weather, yummy food.  

All the kids had a good week, and came home tired, sandy and a little sunburned.  There are tons of pictures in this post, but I didn't want to leave any pictures out of the blog.  This blog is my journal, family history and scrapbooking- so it's picture overload!

We left SLC after school on Friday and drove part way to Las Vegas and stayed in a motel that night.  Lizzie did horrible on the drive there and didn't sleep at all!  I thought she would take a nap on the way, but she just yelled and cried.
Saturday we continued to CA and headed straight to the beach.  We played there and then went and bought all our groceries and checked in at the Newport Coast Villas around 3:00. 
These villas are super nice, it's a two bedroom place, with a big kitchen, dining room,  washer/dryer and a balcony with ocean views. I love having a kitchen so we can make meals, and relax.  

Sunday was Easter, we went to church with Jennifer and Chandler.  They brought tons of eggs over and the kids did an easter egg hunt.  We barbequed tri tip for dinner, went on a walk to the beach and had a nice evening with them. 

We had so much fun at the beach! The kids loved looking for shells, exploring in the sand looking for sea creatures, and making sand castles etc...  Lizzie was in heaven and she was a hot, sandy mess every day.  She got sand in her hair, mouth, ears and more.

Monday we went to huntington beach and met up with Jennifer and uncle Derek.  Taylor and Danny surfed, while the rest of the kids boogie boarded and buried themselves in the sand.

Every night after being at the beach we would come back to our place and go swimming and sit in the hot tub.  Lizzie loved the hot tub, and was fearless around the water.

Monday night after the beach, Derek came to our place and we had dinner, and hot tubbed with him. It was great to see him as well as Jenn and Chandler. We miss all of them and wish they lived closer to us. 
Newport was so beautiful and we had a wonderful time!
Tuesday we headed up to Santa Barbara to stay with Katie & Adam.  We stopped at the wharf that day.  It was a gorgeous day in SB, perfect for fresh crab for lunch. Taylor wanted to try crab, so we did and he liked it. 

After lunch we went to the aquarium on the wharf. The kids loved seeing all the sea animals, and touching star fish etc..They spent some of their hard earned money in the gift shop buying random toys etc..
 After that we got yummy ice cream cones.

Elizabeth thought being on vacation was awesome, she didn't take a nap at all.  She was usually happy most of the day and then around 5:00 would get so grumpy, mean and tired!  She loved being outside so much -especially at the beach.

The rest of our time in Santa Barbara was spent at the beach.  Danny and Taylor surfed a lot, we boogie boarded, went on walks, played in the sand, looked for crabs, went tide pooling and more. The beach really entertained our kids for hours.  We would eat breakfast before we left, pack a lunch in the cooler and stay at the beach all day. 

Everyone loved heading back to Katie's apt. in the late afternoon to sit in the hot tub and go swimming.  We had delcicious, amazing Mexican food every night we were in SB, it tasted so good.

Santa Barbara is such a beautiful place! Danny really misses living by the ocean, we need to take beach trips more often.

Taylor did really good at surfing, he got cold in the icy water, but would keep going out.  Danny helped him learn how to stand up and he loved it!
We had so much fun spending time with Adam & Katie. They were so nice to let us stay in their apartment.  We really appreciated it!



The last night in SB we got ice cream at "Thrifty's"- it's a childhood memory of Danny and Katie.  It was delcious and the perferct way to end our trip. 
Lizzie did so much better on the drive home. She napped, read her books, watched a movie, drew, and sang to us.  I was relieved, because I was afraid she would cry all the way home for 12 hours!

Now back to cold, rainy weather in SLC.
All we want is summer!



Danny took the kids to the Airplane museum at the Hill Airforce Base, a couple Saturdays ago.  They had a great time seeing all the airplanes, helicopters and doing the simulators.

Brett & Teresa had their new baby two weeks ago. His name is Brett Henry Shields.  I went to the hospital to see him and visit Teresa.  He is such a cute baby, so sweet!
It's wonderful to have  Monica and Teresa just having their babies, I love holding them. It's fun being an aunt.

Lizzie continues to dress in crazy outfits, complete with hats, shoes etc... She keeps us laughing everyday.

In the morning, when she wakes up she asks for Emily and says
"Emi, I want a pwincess dwess".  Then Emily will take her downstairs to look through the dressup box to choose a gown to wear. It cracks me up and reminds of just how Em used to be.

I love her smile and her laugh. She is really into singing lately, and is always singing a little song.