Spring Break and Easter

I guess our school district wanted Spring Break to coincide with Easter this year, but boy was it late! And since it was so late, we weren't able to do too much since the baby will be here in just a couple of weeks, so we stayed close to home and had a pretty low-key break. Lots of cousin, friend, and family time, a little swimming, and a little surgery. Poor Jonah - he had a cyst removed last year that didn't heal right and had to have the procedure done again last week. He is seriously one of the bravest kids I know and didn't even make a peep during the procedure. 9 stitches and it already looks so much better!

The girl's Easter started early with an egg hunt with their preschool class. I loved the picture I got of them starting their run toward the eggs. Such great faces!

Nana took the kids for a sleepover Friday night and they got to have a night-time egg hunt with flashlights and find all sorts of goodies. These were some silly glasses they got that cracked me up.

Sunday morning the kids woke up to Easter baskets and a quick egg hunt before church. I really wanted a picture of the kids in their Easter clothes, but with being late for church already and posing them in the sun, we didn't get a good pic, oh well...

After church, we dyed eggs for our annual Hilbus Easter Egg Beauty Pageant and Egg Wars. Stoddard's came away victorious this year with Elle winning the Grand Champion of the beauty pageant and me winning the Egg Wars! Some people will tell you the wars were a little lax this year, but pay no attention, it doesn't matter that I had to beat my 9-year-old son and 13-year-old niece. What matters is I did what needed to be done and won. (Just joking!)

The kids each got their own thing of "Flarp" in their baskets and that's really been the hit this year. I took a little video you can check out on YouTube if you want: http://www.youtube.com/user/lkstoddard5?feature=mhum#p/a/u/0/LhCgcUYGsas

9-Year-Olds

How is it possible that I have 9-year-old boys? I remember the first two years of their life and thinking, "this is going by very slowly." Then somewhere it sped up and never stopped. They are truly two of the most amazing kids. They've overcome so much and continue to keep impressing me everyday with their good choices, sense of humor, and intelligence. Their birthday stretched out for days, as they all seem to do, and was filled with Cub Scouts and celebrations. On Saturday, after wrapping up four days of Cub Scout Day Camp early because of SNOW (yes, you read that right, snow in Vegas in April!) they went to the movies with a couple friends. Then we took them to Grimaldi's for pizza and Nielsen's for custard (Bud had a little influence in that decision, but we all enjoyed it). Sunday (their actual birthday) they had breakfast in bed, presents, and a family dinner. Monday I brought in 4 dozen donuts (2 for each classroom - I really miss the days they were in the same class) and then after school they got to go on their "Nana date" for frozen yogurt and shopping. They still have one more "Grandma date" to go on with my mom, but that will have to wait a week or so until she comes back from Hawaii. Then last night, they wrapped it all up with the Pinewood Derby. Bud, his dad, and the boys, worked really hard on their cars. I even helped a little bit too with the paint jobs. Last year was a little dissapointing seeing as we only had a couple days to build the cars and didn't really know what we were doing. But this year we took a little more time and it paid off with silver and bronze medals. The boys had a great time (including Bud), and it was fun to watch them all get so into it. Now the next birthday we have to look forward to is this new baby!

Torn

It's about 7am on Friday morning. I've been up for three hours. I only slept for three hours. This is the second night I've done this. My skin itches, I'm uncomfortable, hungry, fat, thirsty, can't breathe, can't stay still. Yet, I love feeling this baby inside me. I love the bond that only she and I know right now. I love knowing how safe she is. I love eating whatever I want. I'm so excited to see her, but don't want to go through labor. I'm so sad to think about probably not be pregnant ever again. I'm so happy to think about probably not being pregnant ever again. I'm torn.

The Black Hole

For the past few days we've been looking for Elle's DS that she got for her birthday in February. For the past few weeks we've been looking for the remote to our upstairs TV. For the past 6 months we've been looking for a missing phone. And for over a year we've been looking for a missing IPod. Yesterday they were ALL found in one location. Under the framing of our couch, hidden between the wood and the stapled lining. The girls had made a fort and while putting the cushions back, I decided to check in the cracks once more. I noticed I could reach my hand in a lot farther than I had previously thought, and so I flipped the couch and ripped off a portion of the bottom lining. Viola! Jackpot! So black holes kind of do exist, and anything you've ever been looking for might be found in one place if you have an old, crappy couch that eats everything. Check yours out!

Girls Weekend!

This is a little late, but in March my great gals, Dana and Megan and I headed to SLC for a quick girls trip. It was really low-key with just good eats and lots of shopping, but we got to be together which is always a good thing. We're all in different cities now, but pick up right where we left off every time we see eachother. Dana brought her sweet baby Brock, who is seriously the best baby ever and was such a trooper. I'm so grateful for good friends who rejuvenate me and great husbands who support us every year!

Red Iguana!

Gorgeous Hotel Monaco

This one's for you Meg...

Going Green

Not really talking about the enviroment here, I'm about as un-enviromentally friendly as you can get (I do recycle, I just love disposable diapers, paper plates, and bottled water), but we've seen a lot of green over the past week. Our St. Patrick's Day traditions carried on this year with our little leprechaun friend leaving green M&M "poop" or trails, as well as tiny footprints all over some of the furniture and the kids faces. We also set up our leprechaun trap which was made out of a metal box this year so he couldn't punch through and was set on the floor so he couldn't push it to the edge of a table and escape, but somehow, we STILL didn't catch him, but we did get his hat! Elle felt bad that we had it, so she wrote him a note. I'm a little surprised the twins are still into this, but I'll take it as long as I can get it.

We've also seen a lot of green in the backyard. Bud takes a lot of pride in his yard and the grass has been looking especially nice lately (I'm sure we're overwatering, sorry again enviroment :)). Over the winter, Bud also planted our first "test garden". We lost the Siberian tomatoes, weird since they should've been able to handle MUCH colder temps, but we got to harvest some beautiful beets, some small carrots, and green onions. It was really fun for us to be able to pick the food and the kids even wanted to try some of it. Bud's hooked and the same day we harvested, he planted more tomatoes, corn, strawberries, and squash.
Hopefully we'll have even better results with our summer garden.

March Madness

I'm only a little into college basketball, but the March madness I'm referring to is my nesting period. I find it hilarious that I'm taking on projects right now that have no real purpose (I should be concentrating on the nursery), but I get an idea in my head and have to finish it. The past few weeks has been the downstairs guest bath. It started as light blue when we moved in, but then I went with more of a teal/metallic theme and wanted to change the bathroom. We had it painted a dark teal, but something was still missing. So I decided to try a stencil. I've never stenciled before in my life and the one's sold at JoAnnes and Michaels are small and only one kind of went with what I was thinking of. I got it home and realized it was way too small, but being too cheap and impatient to get another stencil, I decided to quadruple and invert it to make a new design. It took a lot longer and a lot more work than I thought (as does everything I start), but the bathroom's done, I love the outcome, but won't stencil anything else ever again. : )