Stayin' Alive...Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Stayin' ALLLLLLLLLIVE!

It is March. Here is what we have been doing...

1)First, Clyde (Matthew's school pet) came to visit. It was lovely to see him...he visits so seldom.

He is such a smart, sweet, sassy little lizard. We're just so grateful Matthew is making good friends at school.

2)  Jake's Birthday Party...3 weeks late.

I have to admit I was kind of hoping he would just forget about that birthday party he wanted...because that was so realistic...lots of 9 year olds forget that they want to have a Harry Potter birthday party. Chris made the invitations and Jacob labelled all the envelopes with the "Cupboard Under the Stairs" address. They were very clever and visually delightful!

The happy birthday boy!

The party guests.

Golden snitch cupcakes...courtesy of our master cake maker Chris!

We made wands and played a rousing game of quidditch and dementor tag, made potions to drink, ate golden snitch cupcakes, and had a fabulous (and exhausting) time! Nine year old boys have lots of energy...

3) The Scorpion King

I got home one day from the gym and received a frantic call from Emma Jo telling me that Abigail Jean was trying to find her family because sweet Cubby was in the hospital due to Lucifer, the evil scorpion. Hannah and I threw some stuff in a bag, ran to the school to say good bye to the boys, and raced as quickly as we could to Vegas. We found one very sick but brave little boy, one very worried but grateful pregnant lady, a doting father, and a darling, darling Boo. We scoured for evil scorpions, moved the kid's beds upstairs, vacuumed and Clorox wiped, and ate lots of Cafe Rio and Thin Mint ice-cream. For the entire harrowing account and a picture of the world's most wicked scorpion, click here.

 The Brave Knight and the Scorpion King

This is one of my favorite people making me banana pancakes while wearing a diaper on her head...or you could say she remembered to take her good manners out of the underwear drawer.

The natural lighting in that kitchen in the morning is unreal!

Sweet cousins. Everyone needs a little girl cousin to love and adore...

and a boy cousin to share all his cool toys with you.

4) Lots of time in the car. School, Scouts, track club, play practice, preschool, Young Women's, elder's quorum, volunteering at the school, etc. I happened to have my camera in the car one day...here is what I see in my rear view mirror every day. LOVE these faces!

5) Catching Tricky Leprachauns

My children are absolutely obsessed with holidays...any holiday. Hannah has a calendar hanging in her room. Every day she gets out of bed and marks the day off. A few days ago she woke me up to ask me if we had any "Ash Wednesday" decorations. She wanted to know what we were going to do for Ash Wednesday!? So if Ash Wednesday is a day worth celebrating, you can imagine what St. Patrick's Day is like. The children start a week ahead of time by getting shoe boxes and building leprachaun traps. There is lots of tape, string, green, and dollhouse furniture. But they very carefully set them by the front door on St. Patty's Eve...

and even though they have never actually "caught" a leprachaun, they usually get a taunting note and a treat from them. I know some people really love their kids and mess up the kitchen but I don't love my kids that much. I don't need to pretend that naughty little men have snuck in my house at night and made a mess. I get too much of that during the day!

But they did get cool green sunglasses this year...

6) Enjoying amazing spring weather.

7)  And last, but certainly not least, the debut of the fabulous play "The Hysterical History of the Trojan War" where Jacob did a fabulous job as Percalus (Achille's best friend and cousin). He fought in the Trojan War and even took an arrow for Achilles...he had a very dramatic death scene and then played a fantastic corpse. We could not be more proud.

I loved the blow up plastic swords.

Fighting the Trojans...we were rooting for the Spartans of course.

Action shot...the death scene...taking one for the team.

My absolute favorite part of the play was the presentation of the horse to the Trojans with the Kindergarteners/1st graders crouched on the cart. This is first rate entertainment folks!

8) And Hannah and I enjoyed a fabulous day at the Aquarium with a darling new friend.

Running away from the hammerhead shark that is about to attack her!

9) We are now getting ready for the big trip to the Motherland. 9 days and counting!

The Day Clyde Came To Play

*(Our guest bloggers tonight are  MATTHEW and CLYDE. They are the authors and the photographers of the following tale.)

Clyde, my class pet, came home with me Monday night. We had lots of fun.

First, he borrowed the cell phone to try and call Ms. Fender...but she didn't answer. He was a little scared.

He helped my dad cook dinner.

But I don't think he liked what we ate. I caught him getting out the steel cut oats a little later.

After dinner, Clyde did his 20 minute reading.

Then we played Mario Kart on the Wii.

After alot of playing and climbing on the furniture (Matt's mom doesn't like lizards climbing on the furniture)....

I was exhausted. It was time for bed.

I had a great time! Thanks for inviting me.

Winter Party

It is absolutely no secret that Winter and I have never, ever been BFFs.

I hate Winter. Don't get me wrong...Winter always starts out charming and sweet and somewhat romantic...snowflakes look fantastic with Christmas finery. And all those Christmas songs would seem a little lost without some of the white stuff. But you strip away all that fancy when the holidays are done and what do you have left? Big, gray, disgusting piles of snow sitting in parking lots until April. It is cold and miserable...and I live in Utah. See the problem?

So this year I decided to change it up...embrace, so to speak. If I was going to live in a state where a good chunk of the year is spent with Winter, then by golly, we needed to at least be amicable. I made a plan...and here is where we started.

The ice castles in Midway, UT.

*(I am waiting for the Townsend Family to adopt me. They are this amazing family that put all the other families to shame by taking their children out to do things like ice fish and see grizzly bears and boat and explore ice castles in Midway. Until they agree to my adoption, I'm just going to hope they understand that imitation is the highest form of flattery. They found these ice castles...but I'm so glad we followed. They were amazing.)

This is evidence of a man who decided if you couldn't beat the living daylights out of winter, you might as well call a truce and embrace it. He makes these out of sprinkler thingies and actually grows icicles in little farms. They are huge and blue and very impressive!

Then we headed across the street so my children could stare at the hot springs in the crater at The Homestead. It really is fascinating to walk into a cave like place that is all misty and foggy and watch people scuba dive while you are standing on the side dressed for winter.

While MC and HB were absolutely fascinated by the big hole with water in a cave like structure, JC was anything but enthralled. He booked it out of there as fast as he could. He doesn't like deep water where you can't see the bottom and rickety wood structures floating in the aforementioned deep water that people stand on to look at the deep water. Hmm...go figure!

But as we were wandering around The Homestead, we discovered a frog statue that enthralled us all. Everyone insisted on having their picture taken next to Mr. Frog...

then things got carried away and HB actually kissed him...

She was a little disappointed that all you get when you kiss a frog in Midway are 2 brothers that can't stop wrestling long enough to take a picture. Sigh.

Well, it quite an adventure...and like any good adventure, it ended with fabulous refreshments at a local bakery.

Any place that serves cookies, cinnamon rolls and muffins as big as your head with hot chocolate decked out with whipped cream, chocolate sauce and a darling red straw gets a big A+ in my book of life! It was delicious.

Well, we'd had success. While I still wasn't "in love" with Winter, I was starting to appreciate some of her fine points. It wasn't all bad. So I decided we needed one more little intervention...

a trip to the Winter Festival at Ruby's Inn outside of Bryce Canyon National Park. It will become an annual family tradition that I will eagerly look forward to each year. And we expect everyone to come join the party. It was so, so, so amazing!

We started the adventure celebrating JC's 9th birthday! Happy birthday sweet boy!

We snowshoed through a fairy tale forest of brilliant, green evergreens and snow that sparkled. HB asked if the snow had diamonds in it...and we discovered that MC has a passion for snowshoeing. He took off and left us in the dust.

We climbed mounds and mounds of snow, threw snowballs, climbed trees, and played in the snow until we literally were worn out and sunburned.

Then we watched a little cable TV, swam in the pool and the kids even took a watercolor class! (A little random...but it was free! We love free!)

We explored Bryce Canyon. It was breathtaking! The red rock with the white snow...the trees and hoodoos and trails were beautiful! We started hiking down Navajo Trail...and then we just sat down and slid to the bottom!

We celebrated Valentine's Day with chocolate...lots of chocolate and love. Just the way it should be.

And then we went cross country skiing...

It was a fantastic winter adventure.

Winter and I may become BFFs after all.