Persuasive Writing & More...

Reece has brought home a few letters from school recently... here are my favorite two.

Dear mom,
I want an extra hour of staying up. Because I would help you at night. And get more time for homework. So please make me stay up longer than I'm suposed to stay up.
from Reece
(I'm amazed at just one misspelling here.)

Dear mom and dad,
I realy want a hamster or rat. I will take responce for it. So can I? please! Like everyone has a pet they are fun!
from Reece
(Like, everyone.... seriously everyone has a pet;)

A picture of Reece break dancing at 8am.... it's really no fair to see so much energy in one tiny human. Wish I had a fraction of it....

My silly boys.

Riley... looking awfully grown up!

Overall, life has been pretty uneventful. Reece is almost done with soccer, and as far as we can tell, he is still enjoying it. 

We had more ice/snow this past Monday...LAME! But, I truly believe we've turned that corner and we will hopefully have an amazing month of May! 

Speaking of MAY...we officially have 17.5 days of school until SUMMER break! Yay! It's the time of year things at school/work get so crazy and busy, yet time slows down just enough to make this the longest 17.5 days ever! 

Birthday Bash

We had our first Birthday Bash last Saturday. 

We made it a bowling party to celebrate Colby, Camryn, Cole, Brendon and Sydney... the last 3 live in Utah, so we send them gifts and leave it up to my sister to entertain them.

Hannah, Jack, Alex, Riley and Will ready to get this party started.

Camryn, Aidan and Colby.
Strike a pose, Aidan!

Britton and Ariana!

Owen was too cute! He wasn't quite sure what to think of bowling, and he started from a couple yards back to begin with. It didn't take him too long to get brave enough get closer to the line. He even got one strike! Go, Owen!

A proud kiddo!

Ugh... my glowing eyes made an appearance. Just my boys and I.

Uncle Phil, Aunt Leah and Ariana... I believe Britton did something to get these reactions...

Will and Alex waiting patiently.

This is just a funny story.
Earlier in the day, Reece had a soccer game. One of the other moms commented on how Reece has a bounce in his step/run.... I agreed. It's Reece, my ball of energy. She then referred to him as Tigger.  That night, Tigger and Eeyore showed up to the bowling alley. I embarrassed Reece so badly, by making him pose with Tigger, but it was just too coincidental to not document.
Tigger #1 and Tigger #2.

Owen and Alex... the two "babies" of the family.
Until August...

All 12 grandkids.

And the birthday kiddos... Colby and Camryn.
They are brother and sister, and this picture makes me laugh, because it looks like Colby is  torturing Camryn. Don't worry, they played nice!

April Ice

Just when you thought you'd officially turned that corner from the dreadful winter we've been having to the much anticipated spring....

BAM!!! An amazing thunderstorm, turns into an awful ice storm.

We lost 4 large limbs and many small ones, but this one decided to take out the street light cable with it. 

It took us 4 trips to the dump to clean this mess up... (we helped a few neighbors which made our trip count higher.) Thankfully, we pay monthly for the dump and can go as many times as we want.

My poor flowers... frozen in ice.

Our lovely flag froze like this as well.
Stinkin' April ice....

M. I. A.

Another bowling season has come and gone. 

This year he made it out with an award.

Most Improved Average!

His average was 87.

Good job, Riley!

Mini Project

I've had this project on my to-do list for quite a while, and I finally did it!

My art wall was a little boring with art just hanging on the curtain rod, so I made an easy sign with a perfect quote I saw on Pinterest. I just painted over sticker letters and peeled the stickers off when it dried. It's not perfect, I eyed it all instead of measuring and lining it all up, but I'm happy with it!

Now I need to make a lot of money to start framing the huge stack of art I have piling up. The boys bring home amazing work. These two aren't even my favorite but they were the smallest/easiest/cheapest ones to start with.... And so the project continues!

Easter

Here is a quick recap of what I actually took pictures of on Easter weekend!

Boys having fun trying a new way of dying eggs. Shaving cream and food coloring and swirling the egg around in it. 

The tongs didn't work real well, so we had some colorful finger tips for a while...

The eggs looked cool while we were letting them sit....

But out of 2 dozen eggs, we only had these 2 turn out cool. Tip, only use blues and reds/pinks.

Our "Easter Bunny" left a trail for the boys.

EB hid 123 eggs in our house.

It's blurry, but it says "READY, SET, GO!"

Baskets filled with all our favorite Easter candy... that bunny sure knows us well!

We went to my Aunt Peggy's for our annual tradition. She had over 500 eggs hid for about 16(ish) kids. Thankfully the weather was amazing! Here is my adorable nephew, Owen, ready to hunt the eggs!

It's so hard to get good shots of older kids hunting... they move way too fast! Got this of Reece, though.

Got ya, too, Riley!

Riley again!

All the kids lined up!

Time to count...

Reece got them most eggs, so he got to choose a prize from the prize table first!

Aidan, Owen and Jody.

I was the last to leave our shindig, so I got stuck with all the cookies.... Oh, Darn! ;)