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!

Car Crazy Kayden is 9!

Kayden turned 9!! It's so crazy how time is flying by and our little train-toting toddler has turned into a responsible boy who still loves to delve into his favorite subjects with every fiber he has. He has taught our family all about trains, oceans, dinosaurs, dragons and now we are learning about cars.

Lucky us, the Utah Auto Expo came to town on his birthday exactly. We found discount tickets and didn't tell him what we were doing until we walked up to the door. On the way there, a commercial was advertising the show and he got all excited, but we just flipped it off and told him we'd look it up on the internet when we got home. Needless to say, he was an excited 9 year old!!

Jeep course that Chad, Kayden and Boston rode on.

They had ride on Jeeps for the little ones. Lucky Boston fit in both categories.

After getting home and resting up, we had the cousins over for cake and ice cream and presents.

Chad and I created a Lamborghini cake for him the night before the big day. I did all the baking of cake and frosting and fondant. Chad shaped the car and did the main fondant decorating and I helped with details. It was a fun 3 hour date night after the kids were in bed.