five for friday

some random bits of life on this friday that feels like a saturday.

one. happy new year!

we welcomed the new year with good friends, yummy food, card games and of course, rock band!

at 12:15am, ethan walked up to me with a droopy face and his arms up, my signal for me to hold him. once i scooped him up he started snoring on my shoulder within three seconds. poor guy. new year's eve isn't really condusive with a toddler's sleep schedule.

two. i took a self portait with taylor the other day, only to find that he has to scrunch down quite a bit to get both of our faces in the shot.

i swear he grows in the middle of the night and i can't get over how lately he just seems like a giant - especially compared to me.

three. speaking of the teenagers, my boys have been begging me to have an xbox "all nighter" party with a couple of friends. we don't do sleep overs so i wrestled with this request for a while, but i finally caved and said yes. i knew they would end up with some fun christmas break memories and i loved stuff like this when i was a kid. rich got them all set up (multiple xboxes and tv screens) before we went to bed, and when i got up around 3:30 they were still playing strong.

(crappy photo taken in the pitch dark - james is also missing, he had to leave early)

they're determined to play all night, we'll see in the morning how long they actually lasted.

to be fair, allie headed to phil and lauri's for a harry potter movie-marathon with lauren.

update: at 9:30 this morning, they were STILL playing. crazy cats.

four. rich set up skype on my computer so we could chat with my grandpa in alaska on christmas. it was fun to see him, but i didn't think i would use it much outside of special occasions. last night while i was working on some photos, my screen started ringing, it was my mom calling to chat for no real reason. we skyped for almost an hour, it was so much fun.

it's especially entertaining when the video freezes in the middle of a word or great facial expression.

i love technology!

five. said good bye to the soldier brother in the middle of the night tonight, his flight leaves super early.

to be honest, i wish we'd had a bigger chunk of his time while he was here, he's a popular guy you know. still, it was reassuring to see him well and healthy and with his spirit still intact, and to spend christmas day with him. we will look forward to the beginning of summer when he's home again for a few weeks.

oh, and one more thing - a couple of days before christmas i went in to my hair dresser for some fresh color on my sad roots, and decided on a whim to chop all my hair off!

(photos taken at the salon which explains why my neck is all hairy)

i am liking the new style, but am missing lazy pony tail days and brrr, i can't go anywhere without a scarf!

have a great weekend!

jam-packed bitter sweetness

so put your feet up and grab a diet coke (i've already had two) because i'm behind and this is going to be one long catch-up post... the last week of school is a whole melting pot full of emotions which i am just now starting to get in touch with, mostly because i ran around like a mad chicken all week long with no time left over for feelings. that, and i've been repressing those feelings as best as i can by avoiding my blog and staying busy. now i have no excuse, so here we go.

last friday was spencer's last class play of the year and the best by far, there was george washington and disco dancing so you know it was at least entertaining. i know i've said this before but we LOVE spencer's teachers, he has had the best year and i'm so grateful.friday night the community council parents (a.k.a the blogger moms) all met up for the mccall clark fundraiser concert. we're smiling in this photo because we're glad it's finally OVER! mccall put on a fun show and was darling with the kids after the show and stayed to sign every paper that was pushed at her. it will be fun to say we knew her when. it was also patsy's anniversary but that didn't stop us from going to chili's to celebrate! i love these girls!

wednesday was field day! field day is definitely the funnest day of the year and our school's field day is the best! every year patsy and i, and several other moms do the face painting, and we always have sworms of kids for the entire three hours. there were some pretty hillarious requests this year, more than once i had to say, "no i can't paint 'i love basketball, basketball rocks, go jazz!' across your face, how much skin on your cheeks to you think you have? how about just 'go jazz!' " seriously, i kept getting the requests for the long sentences and i wanted to say, "how about a smiley face or a heart?" ethan was so good, he saw what was going on an decided to give it a try by painting his own cheeks. then he decided to let allie take over and was thrilled to see what she had drawn in the mirror. this year was especially fun because it was so nice and cool outside, usually we bake like potatoes out there!

wednesday night -as if i hadn't spent enough time painting on wednesday, i was also in charge of helping the young women learn to paint black and white photographs.a few weeks ago we went to temple square in salt lake to take photographs of the beautiful tulips, the girls really did a beautiful job. i developed all the photos and we met wednesday night to learn how to color them. the girls were so creative and such fast learners, i was so impressed with their artistic abilities.it also made me excited to go to camp and get to know these girls better.

thursday was the big day for allie, sixth grade graduation! funny skits, lots of singing and some tear-jerking videos made for a fantastic program! it was a little surreal, i'll be honest, to see allie up there all grown-up and ready for the second half of her schooling. she's so excited for jr. high and my level of anxiety about it is less with her because taylor has had such a good experience so far, i think she will be fine. after graduation they celebrate with a dance! only a few moms get to witness the fun, one of the perks of volunteering! i had to teach the kids the art of the electric slide but other than that tried to lay low and not embarrass allie too much - is it wrong that i just wanted to go out there and dance with them?! they were having so much fun and their energy was infectious!

thursday night we headed into rich's work for a little gaming. rich has been working crazy hours as the lead programmer for "ultimate band" for the wii. now that the game is more solid and on it's way, they invited the employees' kids to come eat pizza and play the game and to give feedback about what they thought. it was fun to get a little tour of rich's brand new office. (you know you're a computer nerd when you have more than one giant monitor on your desk.) a few months ago the building next door caught fire and so now rich has an interesting view out of his very high office window. (that's a tractor down there!) ethan loved seeing pixar action figures everywhere (rich works for disney) and sitting in rich's chair. what do you think - future computer nerd? the kids gave the game two thumbs up, spencer even played it on expert level - that kid has mad gaming skills. anyone know how we can channel those skills to his school work? on the drive home i started to feel the dreaded symptoms of a migraine coming on, oh the joy, and had to deal with that for the rest of the night. who invented these dabilitating headaches anyway? migraines suck, that's all there is to it.

friday morning i managed to get everyone out the door for the last day of school. i made some really cute movie themed gift baskets for spencer's teachers but never got a photo - that's how bad my head was hurting. then went back to bed with some ibuprophen and spent the rest of the day teetering on the brink of the migraine coming back full-blown. do you know this feeling? you still have migraine residue but it's managable as long as you don't look directly into too bright of a light, or raise your arms above your head, or sneeze, for fear it will slip back into the un-managable stage again? allie's school has a wonderful tradition on the last day, something i was really looking forward to documenting since it's our last year participating in it. a flag ceremony, the school song, the pledge of allegiance, hugs and yes, a ton of crying.patsy did a great job documenting and so i snuck these photos from her blog - thanks patsy. i decided that in my delicate migraine-residue-state that it would be best to skip the flag ceremony this year - the crying alone would send me right back to my darkened bedroom with no sound. i'm so sad i missed it but patsy did get a great photo of the puffy-eyed allie with her fabulous teacher. she was lucky enough to have her in the second grade also so we knew ahead of time that it was going to be a fabulous year and it was! as i picked allie up from school i thought to myself...wow, no more pulling up to this curb to pick up a load of kids. while i'm extactic to eliminate this errand from my daily routine, it's also sad to say good bye to this great school that we've loved and served and felt proud to be part of. bitter-sweet. the rest of the afternoon and evening came with each kid headed in a different direction for parties and pizza and movies. luckily rich showed up with a bajio salad so i didn't have to cook anything.

welcome summer! i can't wait to soak you in! - with sunscreen of course.

**phew! if you made it to the end of this post, you love me more than i thought! now do you know why i had no time to blog last week? sheesh.

strikes for all

Almost every year my side of the family goes bowling on New Year's Day, then we meet at someone's house and have Chinese food. Nothing super fancy, but we always have a good time. Maybe this year was better because it's been a few years since we've actually done the bowling part, but we had a ton of fun. Jake kicked everyone's hiney - twice but that may be because Jason's arm was injured - he can send a ball down the ally with some serious force man. I have to say that I was humbled because since Christmas I have been playing bowling on the Wii and have had some good success with it. Wow, real bowling is nothing like Wii bowling, I got schooled! So here are my favorite pics from the day...

Everyone got at least one strike, even the little girls! Brandon's hip action...Jake's strike streak...Cute little Laurel who kept saying, "I won!" every time she bowled, no matter how many pins she did (or didn't) knock down!...All of the celebrating...

Babies who were really good despite being bored, and they're so cute, what could be better than cute babies?...

Ethan thinking that everyone's turn was his turn and how Spencer fought off the other two older kids to be Ethan's helper when it really was his turn. Spencer is a great big brother.

Turning around every time we bowled to see this...Everyone cheering, clapping or saying, "oh you were robbed on that one!" Nothing beats family.

Later we met at our house for Chinese Food and games, we played Wii bowling of course. Taylor took on the uncles with boxing...It was Grandma and Grandpa's first time and the best part about that was mom exclaiming, "Mike, we are definitely getting a Wii for our house!" and my dad saying, "well that became evident about an hour ago". I think I have her talked into a little Guitar Hero, we'll see. Some day I'll blog about when we were little and bought our first Nintendo gaming system. Let's just say that we some times had to fight mom for our turn to play and she could really throw a turtle shell man.