Piano Recital

This is for both sets of grandparents. Kayden's piano recital!

Here's a video of him playing. It's starts after he's started the first song. The quality is not that great, because I wanted it to save quickly, but the sound is all there. Enjoy!

Link to video:

http://www.blogger.com/video-play.mp4?contentId=e49104152950817f&type=video/mp4

Ice Hockey is all BOY!

We won free tickets to a Grizzlies gam a while ago (ice hockey). However, the date that it fell on was right when Chad was gone overnight for training for scouts/young men. I didn't let that stop us though, we had a BLAST!!

Ice Hockey is constantly moving, so the boys were always enthralled AND they are bashing each other into the walls and getting a few jabs in whenever they can, which my boys thought was pretty awesome. We had 4th row seats right next to where the Zamboni gets to the ice, so we were set!

Random Funness

Here are just a few fun pictures to show some things we've been up to.

Kayden swimming the 100 Freestyle at a swim meet.

He improved his time SO MUCH!!

Gma and Gpa Hutchings came for a short visit and we had a great time. They took pictures, but this picture of Kayden in one of Grandma's wigs was the only one we snapped. (I was so sad when I realized that! Please send us some of your copies!)

Boston and McCoy took swim lessons for a few weeks that coincided with swim team practice. This is Boston doing backstroke.

Waiting for Kayden to finish swim practice. Azure found that he fit

perfectly in a locker and the others thought they'd try as well.

Azure and McCoy emptied both of their dressers. McCoy's side wasn't as bad when I grabbed the camera as he was quickly trying to put it all back in. Azure calls this picture, "Bad baby."

Vacation Weekend - Go CU Buffs!

School was out on Friday and Monday. Besides the playing of Skylanders (Boston's addiction since Christmas) we did some fun things together.

Friday - Trampoline Park

Kaysville has a fun new attraction. Overpriced, but we had a coupon. The kids loved it so much!!

Super-short video of Boston jumping into the foam pit.

http://www.blogger.com/video-play.mp4?contentId=a69a148855097c8e&type=video/mp4

Saturday - University of Colorado vs University of Utah Basketball

We went to cheer on Chad's alumni, CU, and Kayden's birthplace when they played the U of U in basketball on Saturday. Colorado beat Utah with their second string in almost the entire game. We cheered loud and had a lot of fun!

Valentine's Surprise

I was excited for Valentine's Day. The night before for Family Home Evening, all 6 of us made Valentine's for each other and tucked them away in a paper heart for the next day.

I had set the table with a nice red tablecloth and planned a candlelight dinner for the whole family complete with Valentine's goblets for the kids. Each plate had the heart filled with Valentine's on it and I was excited to spend the night expressing my love to my husband as well as my kids.

Rewind a week or so before. Chad and I had a conversation (or many) with him telling me that Valentine's is about romantic love and that we can show love to the kids yes, but that he and I needed to celebrate the night with just us. I told him we'd have many Valentine's Day to spend without runny noses and hyper-squeals, but that this was our 'season' for that now and we should enjoy it. Plus, a babysitter is expensive for 4 kids!

Fast forward back to my nice dinner setup and ready to spend a night with the entire family when in walks Chad from work. He gives me as a gift a new pair of cute sandals with flowers on them and tells me to get ready to leave because the babysitter will be coming soon.

I was excited, but kind of sad for the boys. Well, apparently Kayden was in on this scheme too and had done some things for his dad to get things ready and so within 10 minutes, the babysitter arrived and we were off. While in the car, he played a cd he had made me of some love songs and track 3 is my favorite... a recorded song of him singing a medley of two songs while playing his ukelele. LOVED IT!!

We did have a Romantic Valentine's. :-) Chad got us free tickets to a pre-screening of Titanic 3D. Yes, I was one of those who saw Titanic 6 times in the theater and Chad was on his mission when it came out, so we were both excited. I enjoyed it and he wrote up his review of it on his blog.

He had planned out the new shoes, personally recorded song, dinner, movie and babysitter all for his surprise date. I lack spontaneity and I'm grateful he doesn't! He keeps the romance in Valentine's Day!

Side note: We did the nice dinner the next night with the kids. :-)

McCoy-Joy is 4!

McCoy is our adventurous jokester. He loves to take things apart or run many scientific tests to see at which point it will break, spill or come crashing down. He is full of energy and this can be both good energy running around like crazy or the energy it takes to throw an amazing tantrum. Nonetheless, he can always make me laugh and smile. He is very intelligent and has great timing in his one-liner jokes. And he loves to say "I love you mom" out of the blue and HAS to be touching as we drift off to sleep for nap time. He turned 4 on January 31!

For his actual birthday, we went to Boondocks with Azure and played some mini-bowling, played on the playground and rode the mini-carousel and had fun winning tickets. Since we went during school, there was no one playing laser tag, so he got to play against one of the workers. He LOVED it.

That night we had cupcakes and he opened presents from family.

It's was McCoy's turn this year to have a friend birthday party. After some deciding, he finally settled on a carnival theme! Perfect for 4 year olds!!!

Chad and I made a roller coaster cake - per request from McCoy.

Here's the party crew - one was a bit late, so he didn't get in this shot.

We had setup about 6 carnival type games for them to play: bucket toss, ring toss, tower knockdown, ball pit, pin drop, and the squirt gallery where they used a squirt gun to knock down rubber duckies. They got prizes after each game and collected them in plastic popcorn buckets. Chad's siblings attending BYU were here to help run some games and it was so nice!!

While cake eating, each person had a chance to get their face painted. Chad had some energetic 4 year olds as his canvas, but he did well. :-) The kids were so serious when I took their pictures.

Happy Birthday to McCoy! May you never stop exploring and discovering!!

Strummin' Azure turned Two!

Azure, our baby turned 2 on the 25th!!! Wow, it has really flown by with him! He is our LITTLE baby still only weighing in at 21 pounds, but is talking up a storm and catching us by surprise with his feistiness.

We struggled on what to do for his cake as he is obsessed with wearing Elmo pajamas nearly every night and reading Elmo books. He also spends every second with his almost 4 year old brother who demands we listen to The Nightmare Before Christmas soundtrack when we get into the van. Thus, there have been some fights over who gets to sleep with the stuffed Jack Skellington at night. Weird, but true.

However, even given these loves of "Elmo" and Jack, whom he calls "La," he is above and beyond addicted to his dad's guitar, his dad's two ukeleles, Boston's play guitar, and his own ukelele which we bought in Hawaii for him. And I'm gonna brag - he's plays better than I do!!

A MUST watch video of his ukelele skills - the beginning shows some of that feistiness too!

Here's the link if this isn't playing:

http://www.blogger.com/video-play.mp4?contentId=6283075299c30a68&type=video/mp4

So we celebrated his 2nd birthday with a ukelele cake!

We had the local cousins over to help us eat it and help him celebrate his big day.

He also got showered with some amazing Elmo gifts, which he LOVED.

And here he is with his first electric guitar. (And a new Elmo shirt!)

Happy 2nd birthday to our snuggly, funny, loving, little Azure!