Pinewood Derby

Friday night we attended another cub scout pack meeting. This time it was for the pinewood derby. Each scout and his dad was to make a wooden car that would be raced against the cars of other pack members. Don and Caden designed their car to look like Bumblebee from the Transformers movie. They had a lot of fun building and painting the car. They did a really good job and the car looks great. It wasn't the fastest car there (they lost), but they said at least the car looked "COOL!" Here they are with their Bumblebee.

What a COOL car!

The competition

The races

The activity was great fun. Building the car gave Don and Caden something to work on together and the rest of us had fun encouraging them and cheering on their little Bumblee.

Little Monsters

Last Thursday, the little boys and I made monster masks. We had fun wearing them and scaring the rest of the family. The boys wore them for a long time and enjoyed running around making monster noises. Here are some pictures of our fun, scary masks.

Carson's creation

Connor's creation

Here are the 3 of us with our monster masks.
Watch out! The monsters might get you!

Becca is getting Married!

After a long wait my sister, Becca, is getting married. I got to throw the bridal shower, or at least one of them. It turned out really well and was fun to do. Sierra and Morgan were very big helps in getting things ready. We served chicken salad, crackers, fruit, veggies and slushy punch. We did a few games. The one I liked best was seeing how much Becca knew about Jaren. I passed out 2 pieces of candy (all her favorites) to all the guests. Then each person got 2 questions to ask her. These were questions that I had previously asked Jaren and they were all about him, like what was his favorite book. When asked a question, Becca was supposed to tell us how Jaren would answer. If she got it right she could take the guest's candy. If she got the answer wrong the guest got to keep the candy. She did pretty well, but she also learned some things about Jaren. It was really fun.

We also served these strawberry shortcake trifles.

Not only did they look pretty they were super yummy.

Becca got lots of fun gifts

including a "naughty" honeymoon basket from me! =)

Also in helping Becca get ready for her wedding, I made Mary's bridesmaid's dress. Surprisingly, it only took me about 2 weeks to do (once I got focused on it). I finished this last Saturday which is 2 weeks before the wedding. Yay me! Mary came over Sunday for the final fitting and it fit pretty well and looks really good on her. I am very glad to be done with it. Now on to refinishing my bathroom cabinets. Here are the pictures of Mary in the dress.

Front view

Back view

Now Becca just needs to get married!

Connor Rocks!

Connor loves music and is always singing some song or another. This is one of his new favorites and we all have this song stuck in our heads permanently I think. I hope you enjoy it as much as we do.

Spring Break 2010

We had a great time during Spring Break this year. We spent a lot of time cleaning out the kids' bedrooms. The girls got a new bunk bed and we dejunked closets and drawers. Got a great idea from a friend and so we "filed" the kids clothes in the dresser drawer. This saved a lot of room and the kids can see all their clothes and pick what to wear without undoing the entire drawer. Here's a picture of "clothes filing". I love this!
All toys went into buckets and out to the shed. New rule: only one bucket of toys in the house at a time. The kids actually play with them and then it's not so hard to clean up. Really helps keep the house free of toy clutter.

We moved furniture, cleaned the carpets, and rearranged the bedrooms. Don even managed to get the kids outside to start cleaning up the garden. It was a very productive two weeks and we were quite pleased with all that we managed to get done.

To reward ourselves we spent a couple of days playing. On the first Friday, Grandma took the kids and Don and I went to Universal Studios for the day. It was great fun spending time together. In fact that was the best part of the day. The park was okay and held our interest for the day. We decided that it wasn't our favorite amusement park and we'd be fine not going back for several years. But it was fun for that day.

Don next to "Matt Damon" and props from his favorite movie.

Oh, no! Jen posing in front of "Jaws".

The next outing was a day at Sea World with the kids. We decided to get the fun cards this year so that we can take the kids there all year. We had such a good time and we are all very anxious to go back. Don, Sierra, and Caden rode the river raft ride and ended up very wet. They stayed that way most of the day. Later in the day we rode the Atlantis ride. Of course, not everyone could so we split up. I watched the kids while Don rode with Sierra and Caden. Then Don watched kids while Sierra and I rode it. Caden didn't really like it--it was a bit scary. He is not much of a dare devil and he said he doesn't want to ride it again. (However, just the other day he was talking about how he'd ride it because it wasn't so scary now. I guess we'll find out soon enough.) We enjoyed the shows we saw--Connor was rocking out to the music at the Shamu show. The kids did really well all day and we had a very enjoyable time. We were all tired by the end of the day. In fact, Carson and Connor both fell asleep in the stroller before we even got to the parking lot! We spent the next day "recovering" from the outing.

The dolphins were the biggest hit. We bought little fish and got to feed and pet the dolphins. I felt bad for Carson. The dolphin is his favorite animal and he looked forward to seeing and petting them. But when it came time to pet them, they opened their mouths and it scared him. He was afraid they were going to bite him. I think we might have gotten him to touch one, but it was for a very brief moment. Connor was the same way, but not nearly as frightened. Still they enjoyed watching them swim and jump. They are still his favorite animal.

One of the best views

The sea turtles were also a very big hit. Especially with Carson and Connor. They love turtles!

Holding starfish at the tidepool exhibit.

In the polar bear cave.

The shark exhibit was a total hit. We had to go through it twice!

In addition to all of the above activities we played volleyball with friends several times. We also had a couple of sick kids during the first week. Fortunately the "sick" did not hang around long and go through everyone. Jen's birthday was Saturday, April 3rd and since, Saturday was a bit busy we celebrated Friday night (April 2nd). We invited the Packer family over and had ice cream sundaes with fresh strawberries and banana and then played games until 11:30 pm. It was very fun. Saturday night we had ice cream again and the kids had to sing to me. Then we rocked out to my new Bon Jovi Cd that Don and the kids gave me for my birthday. The kids also gave me work coupons. I'm so excited to use them! :) Overall we had a great time together over spring break and we are now counting down the days until our friend Stefanie arrives from Germany (May 31st) and our summer vacation begins.