Leata Turns Eight!

Leata had a very special 8th birthday. She turned 8 on the day they were doing baptisms and chose to be baptized on her birthday.
We had family and friends there for the even and went and had lunch with everyone at the park afterwards.
We are so happy that she chose to be baptized and she is part of our family!
Leata love reading, playing with her brothers and sister and is especially good friends with Luke. She is very helpful and will help clean and prepare food and help with her younger siblings...when she is in the mood to do so anyway...
She loved going to Disney World but more than that she loved visiting her great nana and grandad in Florida and getting to spend a week with them and to know them better. She also loved meeting her Great Aunt Michele! More on that soon though. :)

Mark turns four!

What a difference four years makes!  Mark loves playing with his brother and sisters and he has really stared enjoying bothering his sister. It's what brother's are for! 

He had fun visiting Grandad in Florida. They were best buds!

He still looks just like his daddy and loves spending every minute he can with him!

He is as cute as can be and his sisters sure love him, even if he is a bother. And Luke looks up to him and is learning how to be a bother from the best! ;) We love you Mark!

Luke is Two

On February 2 my little groundhog turned two years old. And yes, Spring is supposed to be early this year... 

Anyway, Luke Peter turned two on a Saturday. To start the day we headed to BYU's Museum of Paleontology. We have a friend who works there and she decided she wants to open it on Saturdays. She posted on facebook that it was open that day and so we decided to go! We had fun looking at the exhibits out in the main part of the museum but the best part is when Laura took us into the back and showed us all sorts of coll stuff. We saw where they cleaned the bones and a bunch of the actual dinosaur bones. She also show use Jim Jensen's tools, notes, hat and many of the things there were discovered by him. If you don't know who Jim Jensen is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_A._Jensen

All smiles!

Jim Jensen's hat

Ice cream

Cheese!

That is cold!

After our amazing tour (I highly recommend going and if you can, set up a tour before you go) we went to the BYU Creamery on Ninth for a late lunch. Kendall and Casey joined us and we enjoyed kids meals and fun. 

On Sunday's the festivities continued as some of my family and A.J.'s parents came to celebrate. We had chili and rice and fresh fruit and cake, ice cream and cupcakes. the kids played and Luke opened all of his cool presents, most were trucks or books about trucks or trains and Luke and Mark were in heaven!

Luke is a very curious child! This leads to lots and lots of trouble. Don't leave anything on the counter because even if he is not tall enough to reach it, it will find a way! We have had cocoa powder, cupcakes, cookies and strawberries all over the floor and all over Luke, just to name a few. If he can hold it, it must be thrown on the floor and then stomped on. If it is paper he will scribble on it and then tear it up. He knows just how to push his sister's (and mommy's for that matter) buttons. He likes to get into the trash and search for treasure. He also loves pulling toilet paper off the roll, flusing the toilet and turning on the water and playing in it. Things that don't happen often but every once in a while he gets in the bathroom and has a ball.

He loves being read to and snuggled. He loves to play with his trucks and trains and his new aquadoodle pad that it 3'x3'. He also enjoys coloring on walls. He likes getting into the pantry and climbing the shelves to see how far up he can get and what goodies he can get at the top. That has lead to cereal, chips, and other assortments of things on the floor. 

He may be crazy but we love our crazy, cute, sweet Luke Peter! 

Catching Up

The biggest reason I haven't posted much on the blog lately is because my laptop died. I have another old laptop that I am using for now but it doesn't have a card reader and for some reason it won't read when the camera is connected directly to the computer. It means I have been storing pictures on different computers and hard drives so when I have access to those I will be able to start putting them on the blog.

Life has been busy but fun. The girls love school and Taylor thinks Kindergarten is the best! She's a pro now. She's fortunate to have fantastic teachers and she really does love each one of them. It's great when they love school so much and have so much enthusiasm for learning.

Leata is very independent. She loves her teacher. Her teacher is a first year teacher and very enthusiastic about teaching. She eats lunch with each scholar on the day they celebrate their birthday at school (she eats with the class that day and sits with the scholar). The girl's school is just great and we are so lucky to have the choice to send them there.

The boys and I are busy every day with carpool. We pick Taylor up at 1130 and Leata up 4 hours later. I am glad that they are pretty patient most of the time and are good at entertaining themselves. They do spend a lot of time in the car these days.  I am glad that I can do the driving most of the time so the girls can go to the school that we chose.

A.J. is busy with work and being Young Men's President. Those along with all of us keep him plenty busy though. We are grateful that he has had such a wonderful job for the last 10 years that has been so flexible and he loves, most of the time.

I will try and updates with photos soon!

Jack-O-Lanterns

We carved our pumpkins tonight for Family Home Evening.

Leata did not like taking the "guts" out. She said they were the grossest thing ever. At least she tried though. Taylor stayed as far away as she could!

Leata also said that she wanted to carve pumpkins for every FHE. I told her that pumpkins don't grow year round. She said that we needed a year supply of pumpkins. :-)

Luke went to bed while we were working on them. He was just way too much trouble! 

This was Mark's Thomas pumpkin. He kept saying "My daddy made this Thomas pumpkin for me!" He was SO happy!

Leata's Jack-O-Lantern. 

Taylor's zombie flower pumpkin. It's a zombie flower because it is "funky".