Mothers Day

Had a great Mothers day.  Went to church and got to hear Scott talk about mothers. He did a wonderful job  and gave a wonderful tribute to his mom. Wish she was there to hear him talk.

The Elders quorum presidency handed out both flowers and tomatoes plants. We  brought home two tomatoes plants and potted them. They are almost ready to start producing tomatoes.

We were also able to skype with my parents that night too. We don't  skype often enough. We need to do that more. The kids and I really miss all our family back home. 

We are so grateful for our moms and they do for us, even living on the other side of the country. They are always thinking about us and  Praying for us all the time. We sure do miss them and spending time with our moms. We love you and happy Mothers Days.

Penguins

Ethen and I were able to go see Jocelyn perform a class play. It was about penguins. She brought home a script and had to memorize several lines as she was narrator number 1.  She did a wonderful job. She was one of the few who you could actually hear and understand.  They  were three acts and in between each act, the class would sing a song.

  

This is Kelsie, Jocelyns best friend.

 Mrs. Bransons first grade class

Friends stick together.

A B Honor Role

A few nights before the kids last day of school, Elizabeth was presented with a little trophy for her greades in school. She is on the A, B honor role. More B's than A's, but that's okay. We are just glad she is learning and loving school.  Here she is with her homeroom teacher Mrs. Garrison. She loved being in her class.  We are very proud of both girls and how wonderful they did in school. 

Sister Missionaries!

Our family has been so blessed with the  opportunity to know and work with these two awesome and amazing sister missionaries. They truly are some of the Lord's most valiant servants!  They are beautiful, fun, talented, silly, and so inspiring.   

Sister Bowie is from Australia and taught us much about her home country. Some of the tradition, customs, and food.   Her family would send candy and other  food items for her to share with companions and families that feed them. Which we did about once a week for  several months. She was so loving to our children,  so tender and playful with them.    The kids especially loved to listen to her talk. 

Sister Skillings is a Utah home grown girl with many wonderful talents. She wrote, sang, and played the guitar with grace and skill.  If they came to eat, she knew she had to sing and play for us. We are so grateful for this talent and the wonderful spirit it brought into our home. We could sit and listen to her for hours. 

We will miss both of them dearly and will be keeping contact with them for sure. Can't wait to see what life brings them when they get  home and the many wonderful things they will accomplish!

We love you girls! You're in our hearts forever!

Easter Blessings

Easter was wonderful this year. We were able to stay home with our family and watch General conference on TV. It was so nice not having anywhere to go. The kids were able to get up and have a great Easter morning, take their time going through their bucket of goodies, have an egg hunt and enjoy a  lovely breakfast un-rushed.  This was one of the best holidays we have enjoyed. Plus we were blessed to have the sister missionaries come over for the second conference and have dinner with us too.

I really wanted Easter to be special this year. I didn't want it to be all about the candy. So I poured over blog after blog in search for the perfect ideas. I found a wonderful blog  by: https://fhelessons.wordpress.com/2013/03/21/christ-centered-easter-baskets/  

Christ Centered Easter Baskets.

There were few a candy items, but each gift had something to do with Chirst  and the Resurrection. It gave a scripture or quote for each item.  Each item was something useful for them to have. I also put together a basket for each of the sister missionaries and they loved it. I was a great surprise for them.

As you can see there were items like a stuffed lamb, flashlight, flip flops, note book, hand soap, scarves, and then a few colored eggs for the candy. I think my favorite item was the scarf. I found a lovely story that talks about the folded linens and napkins found in the tomb  after Christ's resurrection.

Here they are checking out their goodies.  We got to sleep in a bit before having to get up.  Ethen slept up stair so that he would not catch the Easter Bunny leaving his eggs around the house. He loves camping out with the girls, too bad they don't really enjoy having him up there with  them.

The kids didn't seem to miss all the candy.  They enjoyed reading each of the scriptures or quotes to see what the item meant. I think they really had a better understanding of what this holiday means.

We wish we could have been able to see family. We miss having all those family dinner and egg hunts with the cousins.

Happy spring! Spring has finally come and the flowers are out and the leaves are coming on the trees. The weather is warming up and  we will be able to spend more time outside. We have lots of yard work to do, raking leaves, burning piles of down sticks and branches, planting new flowers to spruce things up.  

I bought the kids some rain boots and they have had so much fun tromping around in the creek.  I  have been looking for some boots too to do yard work in and finally found these really cute ones.  I am excited to get out there and get some work done and look cute doing it!

Spring is Here

We are so excited that spring is finally here. That means we are finally done with snow. It has been pretty cold, but we have had a few days here and there that reached up into the high 50's. So there is hope for warmer days to come. It's raining more now and that means mud  and all things wet. So  I decided to get the kids some rain boots. Being able to go play in the creek, despite the frigged temps, has been a highlight of any warm or almost warm day. They love wearing them.  

I just had to get a picture of Jocelyn outside in her boots. 

Got to love this girl's style.    She is our free spirit.   

We can't wait for the warmer weather and get outside to play more. 

So glad Spring has sprung.

It's a Minion Party

This year Elizabeth decided  her birthday theme was Minions from the movie "Despicable Me".

I was a little surprised because I thought it was more of a boy theme.  But she didn't care.  I  was able to find some really fun idea for decorating, but there were not a lot of ideas for activities or games.

She invited all the girls from her school class and some from church.  About half came. We had 8 total partiers. It was a good number to handle, not too many.

We decorated in Blue, Yellow, and purple. I love having a "Party City" in town. It always has some fun stuff for parties, but I also  really enjoying making a lot of my own decor too. I did a little of both. I love the 5 foot tall minion background wall hanging. It was really cool. Kind of makes you believe there lots of these guys running around.

We blew up balloons and drew minion faces on them, stuck them to the ceiling. 

This is the only time static cling is a good things.

                                      

I really wanted to have a full scale minion, so I found some cardboard and went to work in drawing and painting my own. I love the ones with one eye. They are my favorite. 

We bought a cake from Krogers.  It's a fun design, and the only one they, or anyone else, had for minions. Jocelyn  decided it should say happy birthday Liz instead of Elizabeth. I think that's what most of her friends at school call her. It was to be a vanilla and chocolate marble cake, but I think they forgot the chocolate. 

Ethen named this little square Minion Joe Joe.  I had some random boxes from Sam's club, so I made him into a minion. I love this one since he has a sparkly goggle. He was my main center piece for the table.

Elizabeth and I had a tuff time coming up with party ideas. First she  wanted a Hollywoood red carpet theme.  (LAME) Then she wanted  a movie  night, and a 3 direction theme. Not sure how we got to minions, but it was a lot better than most of the others she thought about.

I came up the idea of minute to win it games. Older kids  seem to enjoy playing those games and it would keep us really busy. I had to find as many games as I could with the supplies I had on hand: cups, marbles, tissue boxes, tape, nerf gun. I was able to get 15 games pulled together with all these items and only had to buy  some ping pong balls and candy.  We were able to do about 9 or 10 of the games.  I wish I  had some  pictures of the girls playing games. They did a good job and looks pretty silly.

After games we had lunch. We did a Mexican theme from the Despicable Me 2 movie. The have a restaurant called "Salsa & Salsa". We had taquitos, chips and salsa, cheese quesadillas, and loaded nachos. I think I was the only one who ate the nachos. The girls loved the taquitos and quesadillas. We were running short on time and had to go quickly to cake and presents. 

She received little pet shops, a gift card, nail polish kit, and some legos. 

For favors I put together a bag full of minion goodies. Minion Twinkies, fruit snacks, and graham cracker. I also found these awesome minion kites for $1.30. 

I love this background! It is so fun and colorful. Side not: I found Elizabeth's shirt at Walmart for $4.00. Party City was asking $10.   She looks so cute.

Happy Birthday to you my  beautiful girl. I love you more every day!

Aren't we cute!?!