Easter 2011

We spent Easter this year in California. It was lovely. Hence the beautiful weather :). I really love these people.

take me out to the ball game

BYU Baseball Game! It was so so fun.

They play get-up-and-dance or hit-a-home-run type music between plays and our kids loved grooving out. Miranda was our loudest fan. She takes her contribution as a fan to the Cougars winning VERY seriously.

Big Stuff.

The boys.

Meeting Cosmo was the highlight of the experience for 2/3 of our children, as you can see. Sammy called him Cos-i-mo instead of just Cosmo. I like it. I will call him that from now on.

Go Cougars!

the Amelia Bedelia theory

I had an idea inspired by this gal. Incidentally I love when my children love the same books I loved as a kid. I can barely read Amelia Bedelia without laughing.

What makes her funny is that she takes idioms and figures of speech literally and also needs VERY clear pronoun references(one of my favorite things to pick on as an English teacher) (yes I am a nerd).

So she ends up doing cukoo things like dusting the furniture (putting dust ON it), and taking a nap herself when the list says "time for a nap" instead of putting the baby down for a nap. I should try that one. But that isn't the Amelia Bedelia theory.

After reading a few of these books lately with Mimi I realized that Amelia messes up ROYALLY every single day and does her entire list of things to do WRONG. And so do I sometimes!

But guess what? She makes a ridiculously delicious dessert at the end of the day and it somehow makes the world right. No matter where she fell short the rest of the day! Even if she is showing no real signs of improvement!

So I've come up with the Amelia Bedelia theory. I think if I make a delicious food item every day all shortcomings and blatant errors of the day will vanish with one taste.

Think it'll work?!

fly me to the moon

NO those are not pullups (CLEAN!) on their heads! They are space helmets for these three astronauts. Of course.

Sammy was the mastermind here, I might add.

Why do we ever buy them toys?

bwothers

Boys will be boys.

And we have a couple of those in our house. Three actually.

Here's one in his ultramanly gear of safety goggles and popgun. VERY intimidating I know.

The other day Mimi found out that a future cousin will be a boy and she broke down into tears. And she even tried NOT to cry. She dreams of having more girls around, specifically sisters or cousins. If she didn't have The Soph I don't know what we'd do.

We know some GREAT gals who had all brothers and we always point to them to give her hope of turning out OK if she happens to have all brothers.

The boys have lots of fun together. My brother was the only son so I can see he really put up with a lot just having sisters. I love watching these brothers play together. They usually laugh and laugh and have so much simple fun. Like bucket rides:

And they get to wear matching jammies...

I read an article the other day about Jimmer. (Please pretend you know who he is so my husband can still be your friend. Just kidding. Kinda.) Anyway the article centered on how Jimmer was driven to greatness by having an older brother. Something like that. So although I know they might be competitive and roughish in the distant and non-distant future, it's nice to think they will compel one another to greatness. I have that hope for them.

But I also have the hope that having a sister to think about will teach them things too. And vice versa. Miranda has already learned to discern in her young experience with males between the ones who "respect women" --her words-- and those who don't. Interesting...

She and Sammy love to play together. They love to disagree sometimes too, but lots of times they are great to each other and they defend each other like crazy. One of miniman's first words was "manda," and all she has to do is touch a finger to the piano and he practically transports himself to the bench next to her and plays with her, a big grin slapped across his mug.

One day they fell asleep on the couch and I found them like this! Ha ha ha!!!!

So cute. Toxic, but cute.

Anyway, I guess the point of this post is that I feel blessed to watch these three interact. I like to see the lessons they learn from their natural interactions and the interplay between masculine and feminine thought and interest. Fernando once did a research paper about how siblings play a part in future marital success skills and there was a connection there. So if you have skills thank your siblings, right?

Fernando also has reminded me a few times how our siblings are the people in life we know the longest, who are with us for the longest amount of time here on earth. Whenever I am with mine or Fernando is with his, we notice in each other laughter and personality that ONLY our siblings bring out.

So I guess the best gifts we've given these three is each other.

Miniman actually did have a birthday

It's true! After being scolded by more than one family member I figured I better get out of the antiblog funk and post something. And the truth is I haven't blogged about a lot of really important stuff with pictures of cute kids that go with the tales.

One of these is Miniman's birthday. It started out by me taking him to the dr. to get shots!!!! How cruel. Poor guy. I don't know what I was thinking when I scheduled that. Anyway, moving on.

We went to McDonald's of course, and ate super nutritious happy meals :) and the kids played.

Miniman ate F R I E S...he hearts fries.

Then we proceeded to go home and get ready for some sledding! His first for his first birthday!
We were joined by our faves XY and Lucas.

I've included several pictures of them just to torture myself since I cried on Saturday because they are across this globe. I would seriously dig a hole to China some days.

XY and Sammyboy in the minivan. I think this picture really brings out what a hip, happening, family fun vehicle the minivan is. Someday if the minivan dies I will include pictures like this in its memorial.


The baaaybees. Rear and front facing was working well for mutual entertainment in those days!

At Murray Park, loving the snow!

Unable to properly move but happy! Good birthday!

XY and Woocas.

The twins.

This is a really tortuous picture. The cousins all together. Sniff. I love pictures. These guys will be saying different words, liking different toys and cartoons, be really different little people when they see each other next time, but we have this moment captured and can remember all the fun things we laughed about and loved when they were at these stages together.

Everybody but me (behind camera) showing what a fun time we had. Yes we did actually sled, but it was pretty dark so I don't have great pictures of it.

Then another day we had a family birthday party at Gma and Pa's.

Jungle animal theme.

Getting ready to blow out the candle plus proof that I acually do participate in these family activities.

Trying...

XY and Lucas with birthday viddles.

Oooh. Spinny light up ball...

Kind of a dazed look here but happy with the Pa and with the birthday!

He has been learning stuff like crazy since 1 yr old hit. Even before then I guess but it is so fun. He has such a fun sense of humor and great faces to go along with it. We LOVE this little smush like crazy.

puppies

Anyone who read my post about how our children are dog-deprived will be happy to see that we took a little field trip over to our neighbor's house to see their NINE puppies! So cute. They are selling them so we wanted to catch a glimpse before they are all gone. It was fun. And educational.

Mateo loves dogs the most, I think, but he was a bit wary.

He actually loved the BIG PARENT dogs but the little nippy guys made him a bit nervous.

Here he is with the daddy doggie. He calls every animal a doggie which sounds like dah dah, so maybe he doesn't like dogs the best after all. He does call ducks some sort of quack sound. So there's progress at least.

This was his position most of the time when the puppies were out. Attached to my knees. Hee.

Miranda was the least afraid and most comfortable with the doggies. Yesterday she made up a song called, "Why can't I live on a farm." It was a melancholy song. Moving.

I told her we are going to live somewhere as soon as we can where we can have chickens, and a big garden, and maybe a goat if we're lucky.

She said that's not a real farm. A real farm includes cows and horses, of course, and a big, big barn.

I'd like the big, big barn but I told her all about what her morning routine would be if we owned a real farm.

I though, ha, that'd show her.

Didn't phase her. A girl after my own heart. A girl who dreams of pioneer, simple, do-it-yourself living but in actuality would rather not axe a chicken head off nor use an outhouse regularly.

Look at this little cute guy. I meant Sammy but the little puppy is cute too. A bunch of kids and puppies? So fun. Thank you thank you Owens for the visit!