Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Easter

Easter morning we got up early and got ready for church. We survived Sacrament meeting... BARELY. Avonelle wanted badly to go to nursery so she kept screaming until we took her out of the meeting and she'd head there as fast as she could. Ugh.

Traegan had to got to give the prayer in Primary Opening Exercises and he did a lovely job. We left right after and headed to Logan. We would have just skipped our church, but Trae was so excited to give the prayer.  He's a sweetheart!

My bestest buddy since forever was blessing her new little one and so we went and watched. We left shortly after the Sacrament because the kids just couldn’t hack two Sacrament Meetings in one day. :) And truthfully, neither could Josh or I. :)

So we went to Stacy’s house and hung out and played on the grass for a while. The kids had so much fun running with daddy. And when Josh put Av on his shoulders she really had a blast!


Oh how I love my people!


After a lovely lunch and some lovely visiting we had lunch and then headed home to a long and wonderful nap!  I love naps!

After the naps we finally had our little egg hunt.  Dang, my kids are adorable!



Avonelle would just set her basket in one place and scoop up as many eggs as she could and run them back over.  :)


And neither of the kids could figure out what to do with their bigger prizes that didn't fit in the bucket.


Avonelle was throughly excited by every egg she saw!


As was Traegan!


And that was our awesome Easter.  I love holidays.  I love my family and I love spending time with them on holidays!  Smile!

Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Pre-Easter Festivities

Saturday, April 19th after the soccer game we ran home and changed and then headed to Great Grandma and Grandpa’s or “Grandma Dixie’s” for Easter festivities. The kids were so excited. Dixie had told them all about it at the Baptism the week before and they were thrilled it was finally time to go!

When we got there the kids could see the millions of eggs all over the yard and it was all we could do to keep them from grabbing all of them. So once we all arrived we began the hunt… after some instructions from Grandma Dixie and Grandpa Kent. :)


GO!



I didn't get many good pictures of Traegan hunting eggs.  He's just far too fast for my big waddling/limping butt these days.


Some of Josh's older cousins helped the littles reach the eggs that were hidden in the trees.  They have the COOLEST backyard ever for an egg hunt!


After the hunt we all gathered all the loot for dividing.  I stole this picture from Kathy and if you look closely, you can see a rare, great white whale sighting!  I don't take many pictures of me these days.  :)  (I was 32 1/2 weeks pregnant).


Avy waiting not so patiently for her candy and loot!


She was pretty thrilled with her cash!  (Yes, Grandma Dixie gives the kids money on Easter and they love it).


Then we ate and shortly after we moved onto kite flying!


Traegan was pretty darn fascinated with the whole thing.


Josh kept moving closer and closer to the trees to avoid the power lines... I told him what was about to happen about 30 seconds before it did.  He said I jinxed it, I said he should have listened to me.  :)


Then we moved into the big field and the kite flying went much better.


This is Owen and Traegan running as fast as they can chasing after Uncle Jason who was chasing after a kite that Owen forgot he had to hold onto.  :)


Avonelle just kind of tramped around in the field and it was the cutest thing ever.  And then she just sat and watched the kite and then that was the cutest thing ever!


Heart = Broken


And just because she is Miss Belle... she can go from completely adorable to covered in dirt and ice cream in just seconds.  :)  I love her!


After much, much, much fun we eventually headed home.

We were excited to find a box on our porch from Aunt Janece.  The kids LOVED everything in there and could hardly contain themselves long enough for me to take a Thank You video.  (Sorry it took so long to finish Janece).


And that was round one of Easter!  Fun!

Monday, April 28, 2014

Smiles and Soccer

Last Saturday, April 19th we had a busy day ahead of us, but that didn't stop Avonelle from cuddling with mom for a few minutes in the morning.  :)


Oh how happy she makes me.

Then it was off to soccer.  Grandma and Grandpa Prize brought Easter prizes for the kids and they were super excited for them.  They gave each of the kids $5 and Traegan who loves to hoard his cash was thrilled to death!

Anyway, soccer.  Here is Traegan standing near the ball and watching Angel run right past him with it.  ;)


I got like zero pictures of the game because about two minutes into the first quarter, Traegan got PUMMELED!  He was actually doing much better that game, he was in the scrum of it and going for the ball!  And then he got pushed down... and then he got ran over by like four kids.  Poor dude.

He spent most of the game on my lap crying and even though he did return for the last quarter, I was busy keeping track of the time and chasing Av.  So yeah, no good pictures.

But here's the team running to give high fives after the cheer.  I love them... they are all just so small.


And then we ran home and got changed for an Easter Egg hunt and Great Grandma Jones... coming up next.  :)

Two Lips

So I’m fully aware that probably no one gives a rats bum about my flowers. But guess what? I don’t care. :)

I LOVE Spring! Really truly love Spring. I mean winter blows all day everyday for far too long and then Spring comes and life is better again. And to me, nothing says “Spring” quite like tulips. Therefore, I LOVE tulips! WAY MUCHO!!!

Last summer, we went to Thanksgiving Point Gardens on our way home from missionary shopping for Brandon. (Link: http://jhjonze.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-gardens.html) Oh how I miss my Brandon… Anyway, they had just finished ripping out all the tulip bulbs from Tulip Festival and they were selling them for what seemed to me to be a steal of a deal… We were in the thick of the yard process back home (Link: http://jhjonze.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-yard-saga.html) and I wanted more than anything to have a pretty yard. So I bought myself some bulbs and then I actually REMEMBERED to plant them in the fall. Big deal for me.

Fast forward to recently. I’m pretty miserable most all the time. These freaking tulips are like the one thing that gives me joy these days. (Yes, obviously my children too! Obviously!) But I have truly become obsessed with them. I walk outside everyday and look at them… inspect any new blooms I may have and say goodbye to the ones on their way out. I’m like an old man puttering around the yard, only I just care about the tulips. :)

The most fun part about them was because of how they sell the bulbs at Thanksgiving Point I had literally NO clue what colors I had. None. We did our best to get a variety, but we had no idea what was going to come out of the ground. SO much fun!

So without further ado…

This little cluster was the first to bloom.  I was so excited!


Such pretty variety!


Because nothing makes me smile quite like hot pink!



Hailie, if you're reading this, this one always reminds me of you.  :)


And just one of Av because she can't see a camera without saying cheese!  (Also, she looks a tad like she is motherless, but really I'm just a super lazy mom who didn't change her after Josh put her in this super matchy outfit and we'd been weeding for like two hours.  Don't judge).  :)


And there are some of my favorite things!  :)

Thursday, April 24, 2014

Fishing

I’m behind… and SUPER unmotivated. So I better just get started or it will never get done. Plus I have TONS of pictures to share.

So last week on Monday and Tuesday (April 14th and 15th) I killed myself trying to get all my work done. Story?  In case you care… I have a small little stay-at-home job working for a friend who runs a newborn photography prop company. She is having a baby any day now and so she will likely want to start working again about the time I have a baby. So we decided I should stock up for her and then she’ll have what she needs and I can take a maternity leave too. So yeah, I was busting my butt trying to get her stocked up before I got worse and she had a baby. Plus I knew I had a ride down on Wednesday so I decided I wanted to take the rest of it then!

So anyway, Monday and Tuesday were bad and I was in a lot of pain. But I got all I wanted to done which was a HUGE accomplishment.

Wednesday was a good day. The first good day I have had in a LONG time. Not because I wasn’t in horrible pain all day, because I totally was, but I had three wonderful things happen so it outweighed the depression for once. It was really nice.

My wonderful mom came down to be my chauffer. She drove me down to the doctor and we all got to take a peek at baby Gareth. And wonderful thing #1… I GOT SCHEDULED FOR MY C-SECTION!!! Having an end date makes it all seem so much more doable. It just feels different knowing I have a date to make it to. So that helped a lot!

Then we drove down to Clearfield and I dropped off all of the rest of the big stock up order and I officially am now on maternity leave! Wahoo! Wonderful Thing #2 baby! It feels so nice to not have to be constantly thinking about getting those done. I really do love having this little job and the extra income it provides, but it has just been a little hard with me feeling so crappy. I can’t wait to get started again when I can bend over my not so big belly anymore. :)

So after all that I was actually in a good mood for once!

After Josh got home that night we all went to Pioneer Park and went fishing. (Good thing #3- some good family fun).  We’d been talking about it for a while and the weather was good so we went. (After a quick trip to Walmart to get the princess a princess fishing pole).

Traegan got his pole in the water first and he was quite excited about it.


Not as much as when Avonelle got her pole in the water!  She thought it was the coolest thing ever!



Avy was having all sorts of fun.


Now to say the park was crowded would be an understatement.  There were several scout troops and the Brigham City youth fishing club there too.  The fish had been throughly caught and released and were having none of getting caught again.  Plus there were like a million unsupervised children just running around with fishing poles.  One of them caught Avy's sweater and just kept going.  I kind of wanted to slap him... but I didn't.

Anyway, we moved several times trying to avoid the crowds.  At this location, Av decided to sit to fish.  My kind of girl!


Oh my heart!


Because she says "fishing" so darn cute!


After a bit I made Avy come sit on the grass with me as she was getting in everybody's way.


Josh was a rocking that princess fishing pole.  :)


We moved again, this time to the bridge.


I tried all night to get a good picture of Avy reeling.  Her dainty little fingers with the chipped fingernail polish trying to turn the thing was just the cutest ever.  She eventually got really good at it!



Traegan and daddy caught two or three fish from the bridge once everyone had left and the mosquitos came out for the fish to eat.

Unfortunately we weren't able to reel any of them all the way up the bridge because Traegan isn't super fast and the fish were super small and our hooks were too big.  At least that's what Josh says, I clearly have NO idea what anything is or what is happening when it comes to fishing.  :)


Ahem... husband don't get any crazy ideas... I helped Avy cast for a minute there at the end once Josh taught me how to use a push button reel.  Yes I'm quite talented.  And I didn't mind it.  It's possible that I could one day enjoy fishing.  (Calm down Josh!)  As long as I NEVER have to touch a fish or bait a hook and we continue to follow the rule of a fish can NEVER come into my house...

Anyway, I tried to get one of those cuties as we left.  It worked really well.  Sarcasm.


And that was that.  Thursday and Friday were back to the long and very painful days that I'm used to. So it was nice to have at least one good day!  And I'm glad we got to do something as a family while it was good.  :)

Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Easter Pictures!

On April 5th we had the kids Easter pictures taken! Oh my goodness! I'm so in love with them I can hardly stand it! So yeah. Enjoy!

All pictures by Shelby Berchtold Photography.
She does such a great job and runs awesome specials. You should follow her! https://www.facebook.com/ShelbyBerchtoldPhotography



Oh my Traegan the stud!



I love his happy little face!  It makes my day every day!



And then there was Avonelle.  Who hardly ever cooperates for a picture...  But she was extra cute this time!



Oh I love this one with all of me!


So yeah, I'm officially excited for Easter now...

All pictures by Shelby Berchtold Photography.
https://www.facebook.com/ShelbyBerchtoldPhotography