Spring = Baseball

Both boys wanted to play baseball this year. Our community has a really good and organized program. The best part is that since all the kids live close, the practices and games are close too! At least until you get older.

Since this is Jacob's first year playing baseball he is on the coach pitch team (6-8 yr. olds), not the minors where the kid's pitch. 8 yr. olds can play on either kind of team depending on their skill level. Bryson also plays coach pitch, so they get to be on the same team! It's fun for them and sooooooo convenient for us - especially since they have either a practice or game 3 times a week!

These pics were taken from their first game and both boys got a turn to play catcher. They look so cute, I mean tough, in all that get up!

This is Jacob in his catcher's gear. Bryson is looking up at him.

All ready!
Bryson was so excited to get a turn too! Fun stuff!
We just got video of them hitting, but will post more pictures later. Baseball is pretty much going to consume most of the next 7 or 8 weeks, so there will be plenty more opportunity for pictures!

Easter Morning

The kids have to have their beds made before they get go downstairs to see what the Easter Bunny left. We know that they'll never make it back up to make them later and it's quite the motivator. Travis always says, "Oh, our bed isn't made. I guess we can't go down." The kids always hurry in to make it fast. It's pretty funny.

We put the gate up to remind everyone not to just go down and see what they got. Here they all are waiting. The get to come down youngest to oldest, so that the little ones don't get trampled or left too far behind.
After checking out their baskets, they started looking for eggs. We have made a deal w/ the Easter Bunny. We put empty eggs the color of each kid's basket in their basket before they go to bed. Of course everyone has the exact same amount of eggs. Then when the Easter Bunny comes, he puts candy in the eggs and hides them according to each child's ability to find them. ie. Maddy's eggs are purple and Ally's eggs are pink. The purple eggs get hidden much higher and are more difficult to find than the pink eggs are. This has worked out so well the last couple of years. The older kids love the challenge and the younger kids don't get stuck trying to find eggs that are too high or hard for them to find.
Travis got a great action shot of Ally. She was so excited to find her eggs!
This was Bryson's trickiest egg to find.
This was Jacob's hardest egg. It was totally camouflaged w/the vase and was even more difficult to notice when the door was closed.
This was Maddy's last egg. It was pretty well hidden in the plant.

All the kids enjoyed seeing all the fun candy the Easter Bunny brought them. It made for a nice snack during General Conference.

The kids also got new sand toys and silly spill proof bubbles from the Easter Bunny. Of course Ally's bubbles were pink. They all loved the crazy hair dippers in the top.

We had such a nice Easter. I wish every Easter fell on General Conference. The kids had their candy and we printed off some Conference activities from the Internet to keep them busy during the sessions. They especially love the Conference Bingo where you listen for the speakers to say the things on your card and then you can color it in. It's always a competition to see who gets Bingo first and to see if anyone can get blackout. Because of the activities, we found out that Bryson can do word searches....little smarty pants. I think the kids were more quiet than they are during sacrament meeting on a regular Sunday. Way to go kids! Travis and I actually got to hear most of it!

We hope you all had a wonderful Easter too!

Easter festivities

Our town usually puts on a huge Easter Egg hunt, but due to budget cuts they cancelled it this year. Our community association decided to put one on. I don't think they anticipated such a huge turn out when they decided to do it. You had to get free tickets to participate, so they soon found out just how many kids would be there.

Here is Ally looking for eggs. Yes, those are empty eggs on the grass too and no, the kids did not just take the candy.

Here is Ally happy after finding some eggs. A few minutes later she's sad when she realizes that only 2 of her eggs have candy in them. At least she got 6 jelly beans.
Here is Bryson eagerly awaiting the hunt.
Here he is after the hunt. First he is sad that he only got a couple of eggs. Then, since he can open his own eggs, he realized right away that most of the eggs were empty. :( I guess the community association didn't have the budget for so many kids. I wish they would have asked for donations rather than putting out mostly empty eggs. I think the disappointment was so strong because the kids used to come home w/ their basket overflowing w/ eggs that each had a toy or candy in it. We had to remind Bryson that the Easter Bunny was coming that night and would leave him lots of good stuff.
Here are Maddy and Jacob waiting for their turn. I warned them ahead of time about the empty eggs so they wouldn't get disappointed too.

After lunch we dyed Easter eggs. Everyone was smiles once again. ;) Ally was taking a nap when we started, which was probably for the best. She didn't take very long dying hers since she can't dip them in multiple colors and she needed a lot of help.

Here is Bryson's favorite egg.

This is Jacob's favorite egg.

Here are Maddy's 2 favorites.

Ally mostly just wanted to put stickers on her eggs. There were 96 little stickers and she didn't stop until they were all gone. The older kids did take a few, when she was willing to share, but she used most of them! She LOVES pink, so the pink egg was her favorite.

Now we were ready for Easter!

The Kindergartners go hunting

The Kindergarten classes at Bryson's school had an Easter Egg hunt on the Fri. before Easter. Ally and I went to help "hide" eggs.

Here's Bryson starting to find eggs with the cute bunny bag his class had made.

Ally helped Bryson find a cow shaped egg. I don't know if you'd really call it an egg, but it had candy inside and Bryson thought it was really funny! The kids were only supposed to find 10 eggs. Bryson wanted to make sure that he wasn't missing any. I let Ally find eggs after the Kindergartners had found their 10 eggs. She was a little disappointed that she couldn't find any eggs w/ pictures on them, but was still pretty pleased.

Ally turns 3!

Ally turned 3 last month! Didn't I just have her? How could she be so big already?!

Here are some highlights from her birthday. Ally doesn't always look happy or into the camera because she really didn't want to be bothered w/ pictures. She just wanted to open presents and play w/ toys. She really did have a good time.

Bryson got her a Polly Pocket sized Sleeping Beauty doll. Surprisingly, she can change her clothes all by herself and loves it!

Maddy got Ally a little monkey and a little puppy that moves its head and wags its tail when you rub its back.
Jacob got Ally a big fluffy dog that she named "Fuzzy", but now calls "Roofus". She sleeps with it quite often. My mom got Ally some clothes, a Littlest Pet Shop toy, and a Zhu Zhu pet. She is happy to have her own Zhu Zhu pet (now named Cutie) instead of having to borrow the other kids'.
Ally LOVES the music cards that Travis' parents usually send. She will play them over and over and over and over ...... etc. ;) This happened to be a Sleeping Beauty card and went perfectly w/ her party. She would open it and dance around the room.
Travis' parents got her this remote control My Little Pony that rides a scooter. She loves driving it around!
You can't really tell how cute these clothes are in the picture, but trust me they are super cute! The jean capris have little tulips on them that match the shirt, hair clips and socks. What girly girl wouldn't love to be totally coordinated?!
We got Ally a baby Sleeping Beauty that moves, plays music, and giggles.
Here is the cake that I made Ally. It turned out alright. I didn't spend as much time on it as I would have normally and I didn't cut a hole in the cake for the doll. She ended up going in crooked. Oh well. From the front you can't tell how much she is leaning back. Wait for the blowing out the candles shot. Travis just joked that she was falling asleep ... she is "Sleeping Beauty" after all.
Ally loved her cake even though even she was concerned that she was tipping over.
Maddy had to help blow out the side candles.
All in all it was a fun birthday. For days after Ally kept asking me if she was still 3. She is proud to be "catching up" to the bigger kids. I don't think she realizes yet that she'll never really catch up. Oh well - she is enjoying being 3 for now.


Happy Birthday Ally!

Sad news

I went to the Dr. last Friday for a routine check up and discovered that we lost both babies. The Dr. could not find either baby's heart beat. Neither baby was moving and they were measuring several weeks too small.

This came as a complete shock since I had no indication that anything was wrong. I still feel tired, like I need to eat every couple of hours, smells still bother me, etc. I haven't had any cramping or spotting at all.

To lose the babies this far along is very hard. Brooke and Jason were so excited and so looking forward to the twins. They have already had so much heartache and struggle trying to expand their family that this seems completely unfair. I feel sad, confused, and disappointed and wish things were different, but they're not.

I want to thank everyone for all the love and support you have given me throughout all of this. I really have an amazing network of support and am truly grateful!

Jacob's Special Day

Jacob chose to go to a Monster Truck rally for his special day. I forgot to take a picture before they left, but here he is with his souvenir before it started. He brought Bryson's Blue Thunder monster truck hoping he'd be there and the purple things in the truck are his ear plugs. They were really glad they'd thought to bring them!

Here are some action shots from the night.

The Ninja Turtle Truck was one of the hits and ended up winning the competition! Notice all the donut rings on the ground. Jacob thought it was awesome how they did donuts and filled the whole place w/ smoke from burning rubber!

Grave Digger was definitely a crowd favorite! Too bad he had some mechanical problems and missed one of the events or he might have won the whole thing.
During the breaks they had other fun stuff to watch. Here are some motorcycles getting ready to ride around inside the cage together.
They had quad races.

They also had a silly guy running around doing funny things for comic relief.

Here is a pick up that is part of the Blue Thunder team, but that was as close as Jacob got. Too bad he didn't come to this one. Jacob still loved every min!

Glad you had a fun special day Jacob!