spring frolic

i'm so going to jinx myself by posting this but FINALLY, some decent weather! we celebrated spring by going to a park for play group. we have been cooped up and it was just such a beautiful day, not too cold, not at all hot, pleasant breeze but no wind. gloriously delicious weather. ethan just kept running around the park in big circles. i think he was just happy to be free from the house. here are a few things i found at the park today...spider man in a web a chocolate faced baby and a dad who was on his way out of town (but don't tell his boss, he was "working from home" today) a mom and her joey in a swing a scared little boy who finally went down the slide all by himself! two cheeky monkeys on the playground a little boy who would not hold still long enough to get a clear photograph and...blogger mom karrie playing tennis on the court next to the park! she didn't know i was taking pictures and my camera was so confused by the chain link fence that they didn't turn out to be great photos. she was having a ton of fun though and it was just so great to run into her at the park! i also found, but didn't photograph, a grandma bringing a tray of chocolate cupcakes for everyone to eat! we love when grandma comes to play group!

happy birthday eileen!

tonight we celebrated eileen's birthday at the mandarin, eileen's favorite restaurant. we decided after tonight that we don't go there enough, the food was excellent, i ate like a pig! we will definitely be doing this over christmas when we have the out-of-towners in town, it's practically a family tradition. hopefully though i will get there between now and then. yum. ok, so i am going to spare eileen (and the rest of my readers) a list of 62 things that i love about eileen, and choose ten instead. as a side note: the children are helping witht his list... here goes...

1. she is gentle, kind and patient - no one can recall ever hearing her raise her voice.

2. she loves her grand kids so much, she had a "family tree" painted on her kitchen wall just so she could see all their faces all the time (and show them off of course).

3. she has made hundreds of batches of her heavenly homemade rolls. i've tried to duplicate them several times, they're never the same.

4. she is very brave. she just came home from serving a mission in africa with grandpa - a place you will never find me because i'm too chicken to go there.

5. she signs her letters and emails 143 which means i love you.

6. she makes great buzz light year and lightning mcqueen pjs. (i'll post a picture tomorrow)

7. she's worked as many hours in our yard as she has in her own.

8. she loves to have our family over for cards and brownies.

9. she loves the 24th of july parade - we're excited to watch it with her this year.

10. she raised seven fantastic children who all grew up to be loving and hard working parents.

Happy Birthday Eileen!

We LOVE You!

**what is your favorite thing about mom?**

random bits of friday

taylor's love of sewing continues with these awesome pajama pants that he made in FACTS at school. he was so excited when we found this electric guitar fabric - so taylor. he got an 'A' on this project and can't wait to start the next one - a large "stuffed" electric guitar. no girlie sewing projects for this teenager. pictures are courtesy of allie who had way too much fun photographing him in all sorts of "punk rock" poses which will not be included in this post. we all know that allie loves to sew, so she was thrilled when grandma gave her a year's worth of sewing lessons and a joanne's gift card for christmas. she is very excited for the sewing projects to come but also because grandma is so fun and we always enjoying spending some time at her house. i'm glad for allie to have the one on one time with her, that's not easy to come by when there are 23 other grandkids to love!last week on our way home from sewing, we were talking about what we love about grandma. we came up with patient, kind and loving. allie said, "i just know grandma loves me." i agree! today was also a check up at the dentist for all the children, this was ethan's first time. he watched allie get her teeth cleaned and was more cooperative than i would've guessed. he didn't love having his teeth looked at, but really, does anyone? just about every friday this group of boys gets together to hang out which usually means a lot of pizza is consumed and somethng electronic is being played in the backround. but, after nate gave our family a bunch of really great board games for christmas, something amazing happened! they started playing settlers of catan and can officially be called settlers nerds. last week they had to end "one of the best games we've ever played" (taylor's words) before it was finished and so taylor actually photographed each player's cards and what the main board looked like so they could set things back up this week and it could be exactly the way it was and they could keep playing. yea, like i said, nerds. i really do love this group of boys that taylor hangs out with, they are good kids and you can't ask for more than that in the eighth grade right?

**are you a settler's nerd?

what is your favorite board game?

what's your favorite thing about your grandma?

do you enjoy your time at the dentist**

fun day

to celebrate eileen's upcoming birthday, jenny, andrea, eileen and i (and all the playgroup kids) headed to the mall to shop! we were looking primarily for a new suit for mom, but we found such a great deal we also found a new outfit to get her ready for spring. we entertained ourselves pointing out all the hideous clothing in the stores available for purchase - at really expensive prices too. i did not think to photograph any of the previous pieces which were real doozies, but jenny was kind enough to pose with this beauty! jenny, it's definitely you! :) ethan has been such a struggle to take anywhere lately but today at the mall he just sat and chilled in his stroller as long as dory, nemo and blanket are present, not to mention cheerios.before i left for the outing this morning, i checked the batteries of my p.o.s. (point and shoot - or piece of crap which ever) so that i could take a self portait of the four of us shopping, but, you guessed it, i FORGOT - crap! i'm so mad at myself, what a cute picture it would've been! so jenny and i took drew, joey and ethan to play at the mall "playground", i loved being able to chat with jenny and let the kids just play! it was making me think of how fun playgroup at the park was in the fall. i can't wait for warmer weather! after the mall we went to visit brandon at jason's deli and have some yummy lunch. poor brandon is sick with the flu and looked miserable. luckily he's on the downside and is heavily medicated but he just wasn't his normal bear-hugging self. one of our favorite parts about a visit to jason's deli is the FREE soft serve ice cream at the end. after lunch ethan and i went to toys r us to try and find a rocking horse, no luck, but ethan did find the isle with all of the ride in cars and trucks. he loved the corvette best but had to try them all on for size anyway. it's also not a complete trip to toys r us without a ride on elmo and pumba. which ethan reminds me of every few seconds that we're in the store by pointing in their direction and grunting. rich has been pulling some long hours trying to meet some deadlines so tonight after the kids and i whip our crazy house back into shape, i'm spending some of my christmas money on a date with my kids. whoo-hoo.

**do you love to shop with your sisters?

what's your best trick for getting a toddler to behave in public?**

seemingly ugly apples contd.again

You may remember way back in October, Ann and Jenny and I began working on an apple project that I couldn't talk too much about because the recipient of the apples may have been lurking on my blog. Well, the project is finished and the secret is no longer, so here goes my apple project story...A few years ago Eileen, my mother-in-law had this beautiful picture in her head of a large family tree painted on her wall and apples with her family's pictures hanging all throughout the branches. She was nervous about this project, but I was so proud of her for actually doing it, it's kind of gutsy! After she commissioned the artist to paint the tree, she had a difficult time finding the right apples for the pictures and ended up using a die cut and no offense, but it looked a litte like kindergarten class, and the pictures were not so great either, all very different from each other. So, the girls thought it would be fun to put new apples on mom's tree to surprise her on her homecoming. Robert's had these great wooden apples and since decoupage is so in right now, we thought they would make great frames. So, we painted, and sanded and used modge podge for the various pattern papers we'd scouted and ended up with some really cute apples. We also had everyone send in pictures and I turned them all sepia in photoshop and printed them into wallets. The brown photograph looked great with the brown "rustic" look of the apples and it helped to make them all consistent and uniform looking. This was our end result, sorry about the glare, I'm going to have to go take another picture during the day when I don't need my flash. Eileen LOVED the apple tree, hopefully it was much closer to the beautiful family tree she originally invisioned.

homecoming

We have been counting down the days to something very special around here. Tonight we finally welcomed home Grandma and Grandpa from their mission in Africa. It has been a long 18 months, longer it seems than their other two missions and it was an exciting time for all of us. There was a long line at the door, grand kids came sworming, but only after Ann got her hugs in first out in the driveway! :) P.S. my pictures are terrible because I realized later I was in the wrong mode, but at least they're something.They look a little thinner but no worse for the wear and we are certainly glad to have them back! Thanksgiving will be especially fun this year, we are looking forward to spending the day with them. Welcome home mom and dad!

grandma's company party

Last weekend my mom's company had a summer party at a ranch and my mom invited us all to come along, (she just wants to show off the grand kids I know it has nothing to do with me).

It was bloody hot outside but the kids had a blast at all of the different activities.

Taylor especially loved the velcro wall. First you adorn this ridiculous suit made completely out of velcro material. Only Taylor could pull off not looking fat in a suit like this!

After you're dressed, it goes like this...

JUMP... JUMP... STICK...WEDGY!

Pretty funny, but it didn't stop him from doing it several more times.

All of them enjoyed rock climbing, and the big slide.The kids took Ethan down the big slide a few times but he wasn't super interested. In fact, the only thing he wanted to do was look at, and touch, the Holiday Inn stock car that was there on display. We looked at it and then left to go do something else and then every time I turned my head, all I had to do was look toward the car and there was Ethan. I thought maybe his obsession with the Disney movie "Cars" was because of the movie, but maybe it really is because he loves cars. It was like a real life Lightning McQueen, only green. At least he had a good time.

I mentioned the heat right? Well, the kids didn't get to swim, we arrived a little too late and so they decided to take advantage of the giant metal trough that was filled with ice and bottled water. Let's just say, a water fight broke out and so my whole reasoning for not wanting to let them swim because I didn't want to drive all the way home with wet children, went right out the window. They might as well have jumped in the pool fully clothed. At least they're cool now. Spencer did not appreciate the water fight as much as Taylor and Allie, but they didn't seem to hold that against him, they seemed to fine with helping him get wet just the same. What a good brother and sister he has, considering his feelings like that.All in all, it was a fun day. I appreciated the time with my mom, we don't hang out as much as we should. We've been lucky this summer to have family in from out of town that we played together a lot more than usual which is of course great. Allie had fun trying to pose us for these pictures. Ethan was grandpa's shadow this whole day, but I will post about that later. I need to get to bed.