A few more videos

This is from Mary's 13th birthday in March. She had a Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip cookie dough birthday "cake" and Mary and Josh were seeing how far she could throw a ball of cookie dough and him catch it in his mouth. I was very impressed! Click on the lower right hand corner to make the video full screen. You can do that for any of these videos. :)

For you Avatar/Legend of Kora fans! Here's Hazel as the avatar! She has some pretty awesome bending skills! April, 2012

Hazel's THREE!

Hazel wanted a Dinosaur Longneck birthday cake, and this is what I came up with. I tried making two mountains with cupcakes and covered them in brown frosting and green for the trees, but as Mary put it, they look more like dinosaur poops with flies on them! I agree with Mary, but Hazel absolutely loved it! She loves her dinosaurs and is always the first one in nursery to get to the dinosaur toys while all the other girls are fighting over the babies.

I love the way she sings her own happy birthday song! Just try and ignore my singing!

Hazel has always loved the movie Tangled, so we got her the complete set since she loves horses too! There's a cute doll bed from Grammy Jane and Grandpa Tim, and the Barbie car is from Grammy and Poppop. Jenna gave her four packs of gum which she's going through about a pack a day! I might need to put her into gum rehab when they're all gone!

I saw this dress at Costco and couldn't resist! All she wants to wear lately is dresses, even for jammies, and she absolutely loves it! Unfortunately she threw up on it on the way to Salt Lake the other day from car sickness. When we got to Primary Children's, I bought her a cute pink scrubs outfit at the gift shop that said "Nurse in Training" She got many cute stares from that too!

Talking on her new princess phone!

End of school stuff! May, 2012

Here is Lydia's Kindergarten graduation. She was so excited to sing for us and did an awesome job! And, yes, she is the tallest in her class! Check out her slightly toothless grin.

This is a woodpecker she drew that went with a song they did. What amazing drawing skills!

I love this song!

Joy represented her high honors group at a school wide assembly. Their teacher suggested them dressing as nerds and Joy decided to take it to the next level. She practiced this little routine, and even did a nerdy laugh. If you don't recognize the dance she did, it's the Sue Heck dance from the TV series The Middle. I don't know where she gets her motivation!

This is at an awards assembly where Joy was the only one in her Junior High of 1400 students to receive 4 awards! There were only a handful that received 3. We are so proud of her! If you click on the picture to enlarge it, you can read what each award was for. Mary was so close to getting a 4.0 award. She only had one A- all year, the rest straight A's making her grade point average 3.98. The only reason she got that A- is because she had pneumonia and missed school for a week. So not fair! There's always next year!

Adam received his Readyman and Citizen patches here and also his Webelos! We'd been working hard all winter with his leaders and he was very excited! It was the same day I had those nasty polyps taken out of my nose, so I wasn't able to go with him and David was oncall and stuck on a work call. So, Joy and Mary went with him and Joy acted as a parent for him (which she already has alot of practice with) He, He! Mary took the pictures, that's why they're a bit dark, but I'm so thankful they could get what they did.

Life with a dog!

April, 2012
These last few months have been fun and challenging with Thor. We love our "puppy" and feel he's a part of the family already! He's quite obedient and it's been so great for the kids to have him. Even when he's destroying shoes, toys, electronics, and many other things, I still haven't questioned our decision in getting him. We've had alot more opportunities to do family activities too. It's amazing how much a new dog motivates people to do fun things together.
Here we went on a walk on a path through hobble creek canyon. It was so beautiful and Thor and the kids loved it!

Over spring break we set up the tent in the back yard and the kids attempted to sleep in it. They felt more protected with Thor with them. But, Thor wanted to come in after a while (it was very cold) and then Mary and Joy couldn't fall asleep. Adam and Lydia had fallen asleep, but we didn't want to leave them out there alone, so we had to wake them up to bring them in. They were pretty mad, but still an adventure anyways. We left the tent up for the rest of spring break in which it rained a lot! So, it was a fun distraction and they read books, colored and even watched movies out there.

Thor absolutely adored David and we constantly find him carrying around David's shoes and sometimes his clothes. Here David had left for a few minutes to pick one of the kids up and Thor grabbed his jacket and laid down with it waiting for him to get home. It's very endearing!

Hazel has BIG MUSCLES!

Thor and his best friend Boots!! They have absolutely loved each other from the first sniff! Their first play date Boots had to teach Thor a few things about how to really play with another dog! He was quite a challenge for Thor. But, he caught on pretty quick after we dogsat Boots a few times, and now that he's over 80 pounds at 7 1/2 months  ( about 25 more pounds than Boots), he doesn't have any trouble.

Hazel's invention! She needed a little variety in her movie experience.

MAY, 2012
Our growing puppy at 6 1/2 months old

Adam and Lydia covered Hazel in tissues for a blanket after she fell asleep on the couch. Crazy kids!

David's new haircut, or should I say, nohaircut!  I actually love it, and he likes how intimidating he looks!

What a silly puppy! We cracked up for awhile when we found him sleeping like this! He has no shame!

Thor!

We added a new member to our family yesterday. He is a pure bread Rottweiler, he's 5 months old, he will be mostly an inside dog,and we named him Thor. Yes, we know he will grow to be about 150 pounds and that he will shed and drool and that his poops are already enormous. He is already 55 pounds! I'm sure many of you are thinking we're crazy and what are they thinking?! Especially, since for a long time I didn't like people wearing shoes in the house and am kind of a clean freak! But, I have definitely mellowed over the last few years and David had an experience that we just could not ignore. David had this very vivid dream that we had a Rottweiler named Thor and in that dream he was protecting our family from some unseen danger. Well, he kind of shrugged it off at first, and just out of curiosity  looked up the breed to see what they were like, having absolutely no desire to get a dog in the near future before this. But, it was after he had the same vivid dream  the very next night again that he felt like it was some kind of prompting. He told me about it and after the shock wore off that David even wanted a dog, I felt very impressed that we needed this dog too.
We found Thor in Salt Lake through the want adds, and even though we wanted a younger puppy, we just kept being drawn back to him. The price was right, so we decided to go meet him. David went up with Mary, Adam, and Lydia and right when David saw him, he knew this was Thor. Unfortunately while David was putting some things in the van, Mary witnessed the old owner kneeing him hard in the side because he had barked, and it made him yelp. When he came home he was very shy and timid and a little jumpy. Then this morning David caught him starting to pee inside and yelled to scare him into stopping and he yelped and flinched expecting David to hit him. We are sure he was abused at the last home and we are just so thankful that we were drawn to him to rescue him. We're pretty sure he wasn't exercised and he was on a very poor diet so his back legs are very weak, but the vet said he should be fine and able to recover. He's already had two play dates with Marby's dog and a neighbors puppy and he LOVES playing with other dogs. He's been so friendly toward everyone and is much more comfortable and happy today. He's a sweetheart and we all love him already. I can't even tell you how extremely excited the kids are! So without anymore delay here is our monster puppy!