Memorial Day Parade

We kicked off our Memorial day weekend by going to a parade  in Erie. It was really big!  

 We went with our friends and sat together. Well at least for most of the time. The kids spent most of the time standing out in the street waiting for candy. It started at 1pm and went to 4pm.  It was a 3 hours parade. I have never been to a parade  that long. The only thing that comes close would be watching the Macy's day parade on Thanksgiving day. Not as near impressive, but fun all the same.

 There were lots of  balloon: Scoobydoo, Author, Uncle Sam, Flags, stars, tiger, bald eagle

 It was a little  chilly and we kept expecting it to get warmer. It never did. It stayed in the low 50's and lots of wind that made it even worse. I brought mine and Ethen's jacket, so we were okay. But the girls did not bring theirs and  by 2 1/2 hours into the parade they were done and too cold to continue, so we packed up and headed home and missed the last 15 minutes or so. They did really well. Especially Ethen. We was a trooper and didn't get cranky at all. In fact he wanted to stay.

 They had some pretty fun floats. All kinds of  sailing ships since we are on the bay, about 20 different marching bands and singing bands. Lots of business, political leaders, Miss Pennsylvania and a wonderful display of military personal with lots of vehicles and  gun power. There were so many difference old cars, new cars, and motorcycles.  Different animals groups like dogs, horses,  and llamas

 We expected to get a lot of candy since there were  so many floats, but there was hardly any. i think of the kids ended up with about 5 or 6 pieces. We were only half way down the 1.8 mile route, so not like they had run out by the time they got to us. Not like they need it anyway.

 It was a fun time.I enjoyed it and so did the kids.I  am glad that we decided to go.

Happy Memorial Day!

Blended Spirit Ranch

Jocelyn's preschool  had the opportunity to go on an equestrian field trip.  Jocelyn's friend, Kelsy, has a horse boarded at a near by ranch. Their family invited their whole class to come and rides some of the horses there. All the kids had a really fun time. It was a very good experience. The kids loved the horses!

 This was Jocelyn's second time on a horse, but the first time riding by herself.  She was a little nervouse, but did a great job.

The girls loved the little mini pony. His name was mini coup.

 I took Ethen and on the ride to the ranch he fell a sleep. After finally waking up he got to see the horses and play with the black dog who lives there with the horses.

 Joce's ride around the areana

 This boy needs a dog, he loved it more than the horses.  Some day bud, some day!

Another Year older

April 26th,  my birthday. I can't believe I have turned 34. Another years has slipped away so quickly.  It was wonderful to  get lots of birthday wishes on  facebook from friends and family. My Aunt Suzie wrote  on my  facebook , posting some questions to help reflect upon  my year.

"Birthdays are a joyous time, but the significance of one year to the next is something we often overlook. Reflecting about your year is an important exercise in acknowledging that life is sacred and that keeping yourself healthy, strong, and independent is the only way to be. Get out there & celebrate life! LoVe YoU MuCh! Aunt SuzieQ & Uncle Charlie Too! ;-) "

 1. What have been the high point and low point of the past year? 

Some high points of the were getting to see my parents when they helped us move up to Erie, pa from Greensburg, Pa. .  Being called as the Young Womens President in our new ward.  The low points have been and will continue to be  going through the emotional lows with my husband when he is stressed, overwhelmed, and  down with his medical school experiences. 

2. Where has the time gone? What have you spent most of your time doing?

We have  pretty set routine. Elizabeth goes to school at 9am, I get ready for the day. on nice days we go outside an play till it's time for Joce to go to school. Ethen goes down for a nap while spend  about 2 hours  doing all the things I need to do for Young Womens. The girls come home from school, and they all play while I cook dinner. Scott comes home, we eat dinner, read scriptures and back to playing until 8pm. Kids get ready for  bed and in bed at 9pm. Scott and i get to bed about 10:30pm.  It starts all over the next day. We run errands on Saturday and go the Church on Sunday.  Wednesday night is young womens activities. Seems like we are pretty busy.

 3. What kind of maturity or experience have you gained throughout the year?

Often times I look at myself and don't feel like I am as mature as I ought to be. I see some of the other women in at church who are about the same age and they  come across as mature, refined, experienced and knowledgeable.  I am always wishing I were more knowledge and could speak  with elegance.  There are always opportunities to grow in these ways, but I find excuses  or get lazy in taking those chances.  
But since being called as the Young Womens president in the Young Womens origination  I have been put in a unique position which compels me to  live in a more mature manner. My action and words are always being noted and judged. I have an obligation to the Lord, myself, and the youth to learn more and know more so that I can teach them who them are and how to live , good, joyful, and righteous lives. I am still far from  where I want to be and know I can be, but I am getting closer through this calling and I think the Lord  put me here to help me  get to where I want to be.  

 4. Make sure you’re living up to your potential.
Potential: capable of becoming something.  what am trying to become? I think there are many things I am trying to become. In last year, I have been working towards becoming a better cook and baker. Become more in tuned with the wisperings of the spirit. Becoming more soft spoken  to my children. Trying to  become more inspired to  try new things, develop new skills, and get out my comfort zone. Because most days are so much of a routine, I don't have much time to develop skills and talents.  I am so busy doing life's daily duties, my self developments gets put on hold. It's trying to find those moments each day or setting time aside to improve who I am.  I can become someone better if i just had the time. But since time is not a lecturer,  I am improving and developing just a little  at a time, a little here and a little there.


 5. How does another year sound? 
Another year sounds  great!  This year, Scott and I will be celebrating our 14th anniversary! My oldest daughter will be Baptized.  We will get to spend our summer with family back in Utah.  I will have 2 kids in school all day  come September!  My husband will be starting his second year of medical school.  Have the opportunities to meet new people when other medical student families move here for school. Many things to look forward to!

The best thing about my day, the unexpected gift from my husband. I woke up to find a beautiful bouquet of yellow roses. They were awesome and last for about a week on my kitchen table. Along with the roses there was  bag of chocolate covered  pomegranate  from Sam's club. They were so good and the next time we get over to Sam's we will be  picking up another bag and maybe try one of the other flavors as well. In the midst of the flowers I found a wonderful letter from Scott.  For him to take time off from study  and go and get these things is a huge deal. It is a very big sacrifice for him to do something like this. So It really means a lot to me that he thought about me and took that time. I am very grateful to him, it made me feel very loved!  so here is to another year of learning, growing,  doing, laughing, crying, and getting older some more.  Cheers!

8 is Great!

Happy birthday Elizabeth! She turned 8 and had a wonderful time celebrating her birthday.

Presents came in the mail  and  they were opened pretty quickly. 

 Here is grandma Pam's birthday card. 

 

I think she loves it. Now if i can get her to  save it, or spend it on something reasonable and not squander it away like she always seems to do. 

She was finally able to open her other gift from nana, but not without the help of Ethen. Her first cookbook. she is very excited to start making  some of these recipes  I need to look through it and find something really easy for  her to do. 

 On April 2nd we were able to have her birthday party at the roller skating rink. It was a Tuesday night and we had  the whole place to our selves for the most part. She had 9 friends come and they had a really fun time. This is Elizabeth's 3rd time skating.  she goes pretty slow and hangs on to the wall most of the time.

Elizabeth asked her dad for a special present.

 Scott- " What do you want me to get you Elizabeth?"

Elizabeth-" I just want you to come to my birthday party!"

Scott was able to come that night and it was a wonderful time for all of us to spend with him.

He even put on some skates and went out on the floor with the girls. Too bad my camera battery died  during the party. I didn't get any of him with Elizabeth or Joce. 

 This was Jocelyn's 2nd time skating and she too had a great time. Only a few falls, but got back up and kept going.  She  doesn't use the wall and ventures right out onto the floor. she's pretty brave.

This is Connor, the only boy that was invited to her party. He is in our ward and they are both in the 2nd grade together at the same school. They are pals to say the least.  He is a really cute kid and  wants to marry Elizabeth when they grow up. He tells him mom all the time that he will go on his mission and come home and marry her. 

Here are the girls from school and from church.  They were a lot of fun and very silly. I'm glad she was able to have her friends come.  It made for a great evening.

 We went to Wal-mart and picked out a Barbie cake for the party. We had cake, ice cream, and lemonade  before opening presents

  Some of the present she received where books, Barbies, jewelry, and a pair of craft color your own flip flops (which turned out pretty cool). the only thing she didn't get were a pair of roller skates. But maybe she can start saving her money up to buy a pair.

Now that Elizabeth is 8 she can attend "Activity days" at church.  All the primary age girls ages 8 to 11 get together twice a month to have fun activities. Her first one was last week and she loved it. They  learned about being healthy. they learned some yoga, did sit-up and ran in the gym. After they  made smoothies for refreshments  They each made a goal for the month. Elizabeth's goal was no sugar for a month.  That lasted for about 4 days!      That's a hard goal. maybe we should start with something a little smaller like cut out fruit snacks or only one glass of juice a day.    8 is going to be a great year!

Easter Day

Happy Easter!

This Easter we made the kids go to church first before getting their Easter baskets and egg hunt. I wrote a note to the Easter bunny to hide the baskets in my room so that we could have them for later. they were all tucked away in my room until after church.  some of my pictures  disappeared so i don't  have the one of Scott and the kids on the couch and kids all in their Easter clothes. 

They found coloring books, pencils, stickers, notebooks, hot wheels and  two little chocolate bunnies.

 The girls also  received some things that they needed. Joce got some hello Kitty socks and Elizabeth got some new hair bands.

 I love Elizabeth's new birthday dress we found at Kohls. So springy!   It was 30% off to start with, then I had a $10 Kohl's cash and while we were in line a really nice lady handed us another $10 off on children's clothing. Making her dress only $4.oo   That's a $50.00 saving, Awesome!!  It looks great on her.

 Ethen found his candy and ate that first things. This kids loves chocolate and will  devour it in seconds.  Then we found his cars. He really likes these little cars.

We did our own Easter Dinner this year. we did  get an invite, but   Scott  wanted to study and we also wanted to have some leftovers for the rest of the week.    

We had a brown sugar ham, mashed potatoes, green beans, deviled eggs,  olives, broccoli and cauliflower.

For dessert we had raspberry crunch.   It's so good, but it has soo much sugar. Raspberries in jello on a layer of cream cheese and cool whip, over a layer of crunchy pretzels   And I made way too much. We'll  be having that for days!   It was a great day to spend some time Scott.  He took a break and really didn't do much studying. Crossing our fingers he does okay on his big test this Tuesday!

We hope all our family and friends were able to enjoy their Easter. We miss you and love you all very much.

Happy Easter

Here are the girls dying eggs for our ward Easter party. The girls wanted Ethen to help makes some  eggs with them, but there was no way that was going to happen.  They had to wait till he went down for a nap to get started. Dye looked great, but we didn't get the really bright colors that we were hoping for. But they worked.

 We went with a monster type  kit. They made some pretty crazy looking charactors. Elizabeth even made one to look like the Lorax. got to love the stache!

  The kids were very excited for the  party and getting to hunt for eggs. We were hoping  to hunt for eggs outside. It was a beautiful sunny day and almost 60 degrees  But all the snow had melted and made the grass really muddy and mucky so we were stuck with an indoor egg hunt.  We were one of the first to arrive. Each table had coloring pages to keep busy  them while members arrived.  I brought Almond Flavored Sinckerdoodles  and they were so good.  There were a lot of other cookies, mostly store bought, mine didn't last very long. Scott was disappointed that we didn't have any left for him.

 all of the eggs were gathered by the missionaries, we have 3 sets, and they littered the hallways and classrooms with all sorts of colored, plastic, candy filled eggs. Each family had to bring 10 filled eggs per child. So we brought 30 and brought  30 back home.    Once everyone was there we had a prayer and then we're off on the hunt. Ethen took his time gathering eggs. Mostly because he wold find one and then open it and eat the candy before moving on to find the next one.  Jocelyn was quick to find her 10 eggs and came to show me her findings. Elizabeth was gone and on the run with the other girls in her class and I didn't see her till we were all back in the gym for lunch.

There was an egg  decorating contest and the girls brought their monster eggs.  I too decorated some blown out eggs.  I wanted to do something black and white and hand drawn.  I have always loved the Hennah tattoo's, so I found some really awesome patterns to copy on my eggs. They were a lot of work, but they turned out really great.   I enjoyed the challenge of drawing on a curved and bumpy surface.  There were 3 winners and i was one of them.  They gave us this over sized chocolate rabbit as our award.  Should be tasty.

Easter is almost here and the kids will get their baskets for Easter and have another egg hunt. But this year is a non- candy basket year.  They eat too much sugar stuff as it is.

Play date Birthday

Happy Birthday Ethen! I invited some friends over from our ward to have a play date birthday. It was a Thomas the Train themed day. I had a lot of fun planning it,  but spent one whole day and almost all night throwing it together. Why I waited two days before to do it I'll never know.

 Ethen loves trains and we watch Thomas the Train or the "Little engine that Can" almost every day, so it was a perfect theme. I found lots of great ideas on pintrest and put many of the ideas together for one party. It was a great time.   The other mom's really enjoyed it too. Elizabeth even talked me into letting her stay home from school so that she could  be there for the party. I am glad she was there. It was a big help. But she had to go to school when we were done.

 As friends arrived, they each had to get a ticket and put their names on it. They had to keep their ticket the whole party because they would need to have their ticket punched to ride the train to each  activity station.
Here was our schedule for the day.  We kept pretty close to the schedule.

 Here are some of the decorations i made for the party. I tried to get the Thomas blue color with silver. It turned out pretty good I think.  A few buntings,  a  banner, Crossing signs, and very cool railroad track.

 A few days before the party  Ethen had a card in the mail from his great grandma and grandpa Staley.  I loved the card and since it was  Thomas the train, it was just perfect to use as part of my decorating.

 After all our friends had arrived and spent some time watching a movie and playing it was time to ride the train to our first destination: the Color A Train Station. Elizabeth was my conductor. I wish I had gotten a picture of her doing all this for me. She blow the train whistle and call all a board. the kids lined up on th tracks behind her. She  punched each ticket and took them around the track a time or two.Then they would end up at the dinning room table for the activity. they colored first and then when finished went back into the living.

 I would quickly clean up the station while Elizabeth would start  again. blow the whistle, line up the kids, punch their ticket and take around a time or two and arrive at the table for the next activity i had set out.
The second destination was the Build a Train station.  The kids did a great job on this one. using lots of shapes I had cut out and made a train. Glued it and used lots of stickers to decorate it.

He is a good shot of our train tracks. The kids loved marching around our house in a big cirle along the tracks and saying choo, choo. They were all so very cute.

 Our third destination was the Thomas play station. We played several games. Pin the funnel on Thomas, Sir Topham Hat Says, and  pass the train (hot potatoe)

   Color a Train Station

Build A Train Station

 Thomas Play Station 

 Ethen was the first to play pin the funnel on Thomas. Every child peaked under the mask to see. Ethen kept pulling all the funnels off that were not in the right spot and putting them where they should go. all the kids were able to  get some small candy items and Thomas tattoos for playing the games.

 After we played all the games it was time for cake and ice cream. 

The last destination was the Cake Station

 I ordered the cake from Giant Eagle and it was a wonderful cake! A marble Chocolate and vanilla with whipped cream frosting. I don't care much for frosting, but this one was really good. The mom's were impressed with it too. They all asked if I made the cake. They figured I was crafty so i must have made the cake too. Nope, no cake decorating for me. Not one of my talents.

 Ethen finally snatched the trains from off the cake. He was eyeing it since I first showed him the cake. They all ate cake and ice cream before lunch.  Dessert first is the way to go, right?!? When all the kids were done with cake and ice cream we headed into the living to open present.

 He received a nightlight puppy pillow pet. So cool. Now he can give his sisters back and have his own. He's been using Elizabeth's since she got it at Christmas. He loves it. 3 balls and some  bubbles. We'll have to wait for warmer weather to go use the bubbles. And now Ethen can have his own  bouncy balls to play with and not fight with his sisters over  their two pink and red ones.

  It was a really great play date. I am glad that friends were able to come over and join the fun. The weather was not very good, lots of snow, and soo cold, so I am grateful these gals were still willing to venture out and  be with us. Thank You to our friends for the fun morning!