A Big Thanks to Our Mom's

We have been able to get a lot of the house decorated because of our wonderful mothers! Dee loves garage sales and has had a garage full of stuff that we were happy to put to use.
Most of our books for our library, a huge rug, a mirror and a beautiful rod iron decorative piece in our formal living room, most of our picture frames in our family room, our dinning room table and chairs and our large puzzle play mats in our playroom are all from Dee.
I know she's given us or should I say Danny has taken more, but those are the bigger items that come to mind. We use to say things about her garage sale addiction, but for now on we'll be much more thankful for it!

My mom is an amazing seamstress and thanks to her we now have beautiful curtains in our family room and dinning room. She also bought and made all our bathroom towels; she made them more fancy by sewing fringe on the ends of them and also made a duvet cover for Hanna's bed. My mom has had to come out a lot to do all the work she has done and we are so grateful for her talented skills!
Also a big thanks to craigslist, we have found almost all the other items from there. We're still not finished decorating, we still need a kitchen table, love seat and chair for our formal living room a desk for our library/office, the master bedroom and Hanna's room both need attention but, we will be taking a break for now unless we find more great deals on craigslist that we just can't pass up! Speaking of great deals, last weekend we found rope lights that go in the master bedroom and family room all for only $20. and we even have a couple extra strands, (if you haven't shopped for rope lights before FYI it's $25. a strand and we got about 10 stands). I would have to say we are huge craigslist fans!

You Know It's Time to Potty Train When...

you find your 2 year old has taken off his clean diaper to poop (all over your bed)! I was actually a little impressed that Van tried to clean it up with the wipes. YUCK!

Kids Speak

I did this fun little quiz on Facebook and I thought it was so funny I just had to post it to my blog...

The first answers are from Hanna my 4 year old and the second are from Max my 5 year old, they weren’t together when they answered.

1. What is something mom always says to you?
"get dress"/”clean up”

2. What makes mom happy?
"when I clean up the play room"/”when I help her”

3. What makes mom sad?
both said, "when I don’t help”

4. How does your mom make you laugh?
"when she tickles me"/”during the quiet game”

5. What did your mom like to do as a child?
"play dollies”/”play”

6. How old is your mom?
"18”/”19”

7. How tall is your mom?
"5 lbs"/”16 inches”

8. What is mom's favorite thing to watch on TV?
"Conference”/”Joseph Smith” (I’m really not this spiritual, I just don’t have a T.V. and I don’t watch when my kids are awake so they don’t know.)

9. What does your mom do when you're not around?
" help the babies”/”play with the kids”

10. If your mom becomes famous, what will it be for?
"famous?”/”a talent show”

11. What is your mom really good at?
"playing basketball at Chuck E Cheese”/”helping dad”

12. What is your mom not very good at?
"holding me and Max”/”counting to 150,000”

13. What does your mom do for her job?
"clean the table"/”clean the bathrooms”

14. What is your mom's favorite food?
"spaghetti”/”chili”

15. What makes you proud of your mom?
"----“/”because she’s so nice”

16. If your mom were a cartoon character, who would she be?
"Barbie"/”Minnie Mouse”

17. What do you and your mom do together?
"date night”/"dates”

18. How are you and your mom the same?
"same skin"/”same hair”

19. How are you and your mom different?
“we weren’t born at the same time”/"cause she’s a girl and I’m a boy"

20. How do you know your mom loves you?
"because I’m your child"/”because she gave birth to me”

21. What does your mom like most about your dad?
"going on date night together”/”to kiss him”

22. Where is your mom's favorite place to go?
"all you can eat”/”the library”

Camping

Our family loves camping (especially Max and especially if his cousin Zachary is going too). I even enjoy camping, but with two 6 month old babies that's a whole other story. Also, with a bigger family it's a lot more work to pack and unpack just for one night of camping. We wanted to camp at the Valley of Fire, but sadly it was all full. The same thing happened last year so we found another campground not too much further past Valley of Fire by Lake Mead called Echo Bay.
The kids were just happy to get to a campground even the babies had a great time camping during the day, nighttime was a different story. I was nervous for the night because I know that with one baby and camping I usually nurse all night, but with two I wouldn't be able to do so. Danny and I didn't get much sleep, Walt wanted to nurse all night, Daisy did pretty good but still wanted to be held so Danny got a little taste of my camping trips with a baby. Hopefully, they'll be better at our next camping trip in August at the beach because that one is a whole week.
The kids had a fun time playing at the lake before we headed back home.

Creative Kids

I tried posting this one with my post yesterday, but I ran out of time.
Thanks to Danny and the missionaries our play structure is up, yea! Yesterday, I found the kids doing this activity... Van would bring toys from the shed to Max and Max would tie them to a rope from the ground and Hanna would pull the rope with the toy up to the top of the structure. If you look close enough you can see the scooter hanging form the rope. I thought this was so creative, (even if I didn't want all those toys up there).

Last Weekend Events

Max was the cuttest "little" skunk in the Cummunity Play last Saturday. This is another wonderful thing about small towns everyone gets a part in the community play. I grew up being a part of the Chino Community Plays and had a lot of fun doing so even if my parts were never a main one like my Sister Rebecca or Brother Michael's.
Me and the kids cooking some bread that Hanna got as a birthday gift. As you can see Van did not want any help mixing.

Hanna Turns 4 Years Old

Hanna turned 4 years old Saturday March 7th. We had two very busy days. We had a birthday party for her on Friday with her friends from Pahrump and on Saturday we had an early morning pancake birthday breakfast with our friends from Vegas. Her party on Friday I had asked the few people I new to tell all their friends to come as well because I wanted to get to know more people. I wasn't sure how many would be coming so I made a big pot of spaghetti and made cupcakes for the kids to decorate and a cake just in case there wasn't enough cupcakes. We had a big turn out (about 30 kids), it was a lot of fun, but a little bit crazy too! Luckily, I had a sweet mom ask if she could take pictures for me, good thing she did or I would have completely forgotten.
Friday night there was a small circus in town so we had Hanna's cousins Ruby and Zachary come with us to that and spend the night too. While at the circus Danny and I kept talking and saying that we felt we were in another country. It was a little strange but the kids really enjoyed it.
On Saturday we had planned for our friends from Vegas to come out to see the house and so we were going to have one big party for Hanna in the day, but then sadly Danny's cousin passed away and his funeral was then planned for that same day. So I decided to have our Vegas friends come out early and have a pancake birthday breakfast for Hanna instead. It was so great seeing all of our friends especially the Risenmay's who now live in UT and were in town visiting our friends the Blackwell's new baby girl. I wish I had had more time to visit with them all, but I had a funeral to go to at 11:00 and a funeral luncheon at my house. So I was busy cleaning up the breakfast and getting ready for the luncheon while they were all over. It was a very busy two days!
Hanna we are so lucky to have you in our family. We love you and Happy Birthday!

The Kids

Daisy and Walt are officially 6 months old and they are growing so big! Well, Walt is; Daisy just a little thing. People get so confuse because they are such different sizes they’re not sure if they’re twins or not. Walt is in 6-12 month clothes and wearing size 3 diapers and Daisy is in 3-6 month clothes and her pants still fall off and in size 2 diapers. Daisy has her 2 bottom teeth already and Walt dosen't have any teeth yet. They both roll over, but neither of them is sitting up yet. We feel so blessed to have these two precious spirits in our family. OK, enough about the babies yes, they do have other siblings…

Hanna went with Grandma Susan to CA last weekend and she got to go with Aunt Rebecca and her cousin Baxter to the San Diego children’s museum, she had such a fun time. I hear that it’s so much fun, the next time we’re in town I've gotta go! Aunt Rebecca got Hanna this cute dress for her birthday; I think she looks so cute in it. We all missed Hanna so much, but I think Max and Hanna missed each other the most. They just talked and played so well when she got back, it’s so nice to see them getting to be such great friends. (Oh, and by the way, Hanna is not short her brother just keeps growing! These are size 7 pants he's in (thanks to adjustable waist bands)and he's already growing out of them).

Max and Hanna are off with Grandma Susan to St. George this weekend. They went to my cousin’s little girl’s baptism, so we just have our 3 littler ones. Yesterday, I was able to give Van a lot of attention and spend some good quality time with him. I made us popcorn, went to the park, took him to McDonald's and gave him his own bath. He had a fun day! Whenever I make popcorn I can’t decide if I should make butter popcorn or caramel, so I half it and do both. When I placed these two bowls in front of him with no siblings there to share it with he raised his hands up and let out a little giggle/scream and then kept giggling while eating, it was so cute!