Music critic

Ikey loves music. We were discussing the "Fossil" song from Saint Saens Carnival of Animals which has a little piece of  "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" in the middle of it. A few days later he told me that "Flight of the Bumblebee" has "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard" in the middle of it.

Spring round up

This is one of Ikey's sick days: sleeping on the deck to get some fresh air.

Jovie requested a "heart cake with rainbows" and Aunt Nikki delivered! This cake had colored sprinkles inside and she served it with rainbow sprinkled ice cream. It was perfect! Unfortunately, the little birthday girl had an eye infection at this Easter/Birthday party, so she looks a little sickly in all the pictures. The Easter egg hunt was epic though. There were over 200 eggs in Grandma & Grandpa's back yard for six little kids and one teenager.

Ikey partied hard at Jovie's birthday party at McDonald's. The kids loved the Playland and the food (!) and cake, and the moms loved walking away from the huge mess.

The little lady had a great birthday. Gummy shoes (jelly shoes?) were the highlight!

This is how you can find the boys in the family every morning. The boys get up before the girls and get dressed up in robes and make coffee and milk. TB tries to read the paper while Ikey holds his ear or climbs on him.

The kids are taking dance class from Miss Kim and they absolutely love it. Miss Kim is a beautiful dancer and a wonderful teacher and the kids are well-behaved and excited and are learning a lot.

The class is full of cute little dancer friends.

We had a super fun Easter Egg hunt at TB's 10th annual Easter breakfast party with his mom and his brother's family.

Running like crazy

The kids have "Make 'Em Laugh" runs which they like to use when they are in trouble with me so I'll just crack up instead of get mad. Check these out!

 Isaac has been sick for a month. Today at the doctor's office for Jovie's 2 year check up, I noticed these huge bumps on his neck. I genuinely freaked out and started crying, and luckily the doctor was there to tell me to calm down quickly. This is just Ikey's immune system working on getting rid of this illness. I've never actually seen lymph nodes swollen, so it was obviously disturbing to me. Ikey was nice enough to pose for these photos to freak you out too.

This is the latest weird sleeping place for Jovie - in the closet on a shelf. What a weirdo!

 

April

Cousin Stormy performed in the Wind Ensemble at the high school and we went to cheer her on. They didn't need quite so much cheering so we wandered around the hall with her and climbed in her locker before the show started.

Jovie is kind of a trouble-maker during nap time. She usually empties all of her drawers and her closet and pulls out all the wipes. In one week, we found her in three crazy situations. The first day, Grandma Rainey was watching the kids during naps. Sounds easy, right? Rainey takes it more seriously than anyone else and actually checked on Jovie and found her sleeping on the changing table with her head cradled by an (empty) wipe box. Rainey sat in the room for about an hour to make sure she didn't fall off until I came home.

The next day, I found Jovie had put five skirts on top of her stretch pants during nap time.

The next day, she slept the whole time on Nikki's rocking chair.

I heard voices from Ikey's room during nap time and I found him asleep on his rocking chair while she was reading him a book.

 Nap time is exhausting for all of us.

Honesty is the best policy...

Ikey has been getting in trouble for stealing chocolate chips and baking chocolate out of the refrigerator. By "trouble", I mean that when we catch him in the act, we chase him around the kitchen and living room while he sticks one big last handful into his mouth and then we tell him not to do that any more and move the chocolate to the top shelf. This morning, I noticed that he was missing from our play time upstairs so I snuck down the stairs to the kitchen as quietly as I could and listened for any incriminating evidence. I didn't hear anything, but I found the refrigerator door open, and the little boy sitting innocently on the couch. I asked him why the refrigerator was open. He said, "I was reaching for some chocolate chips and I grabbed the bag but I didn't eat any." I was hoping he'd say that he remembered all my warnings to knock it off and he'd decided to be obedient, but he said, "I didn't want any chocolate because I heard your feet." That sneaky little honest monster!

Happy President's Day!

This is the first time that TB plowed the driveway this season, so we're so happy it is finally snowy at our house. We pulled the kids around in a sled and made snow angels, but no snowmen or snowballs with our not-sticky-just-powdery Utah snow.

Just to make a ridiculous point (the same motivation of too many of our legislature's actions), Utah State calls it Lincoln and Washington Day instead of President's Day. We want to make a point to celebrate and thank ALL the Presidents, past and present, of our truly outstanding country. Maybe one of these adorable and genius children will be president one day...

News about everybody

Jovie talks like crazy. She's so funny and kind of insightful. You can see a video of Jovie's January  interview http://youtu.be/Qo7l-JM-Pc8. She's almost potty trained too. She'll be totally trained by her birthday. Yay!


Isaac is a very talented singer and dancer. He is not so great at following the gymnastic coach's directions, but he's in a class of 6 three-year-old boys and they all are a little wild. He's very cautious and hesitant to jump off of things. My guy is the one in the tie-dyed heart shirt.

The coach called off the last ten minutes of class last week because the boys kept falling on their butts like this. They're crazy.

TB just received news of his big promotion at work. He's an Executive Sales Rep now and we're so proud of him! He's just good at everything. He went to an estate sale/giveaway and picked up this great painting by Cornelius Salisbury dated 1936:

We googled the artist and found that he's an important Utah artist who was born in 1882. There's an article about him at this address: http://www.artistsofutah.org/15bytes/09oct/page1.html

The author of that article told us that Todd's new treasure is worth $1500. Amazing right? So it will get a place of prominence in our home art collection and TB gets another thumbs up!