Firefighter Dad

It is kind of cool having a dad that is a Fireman because it make you pretty popular!  Jen, Rick and the kids came down to St. George yesterday for a really quick visit.  We decided to meet up at the Vernon Worthen park to let the kids play and have fun together while the adults enjoyed the warm weather.  Russell was working at the Fire Department so he couldn't join us.  Then just before we were getting ready to leave, he called me and said he was coming to the park in the fire truck to say hi really quick.  When he pulled up with his fire guys in the fire truck, we walked down to him not thinking anything of it.  Next thing we know, every kid in the whole park starts running down to the fire truck after us.  Russell was just showing Paul, Alex, Emily and Colby the fire truck and all of the other kids from the park thought it was a free tour too!  The kids were climbing in the fire truck and their moms were taking pictures.  It was so funny!

FF Dansie and FF Tyrone just smiled and grabbed a bunch of coloring books and started handing them out to all of the kids like it really was just a fun tour day.  After all of the other kids from the park had left, we all just started laughing!  I guess you can't really hide a big red fire engine!

It is fun to have a fire fighter for a dad or uncle!

St. Patty's Day

Happy St. Patrick's Day!  So does anyone really know why we celebrate St. Patrick's Day?  Well as sad as this sounds, I didn't so I looked it up.  According to the Internet (which of course is never wrong *sarcasm*) and Wikipedia (even more reliable!), St. Patrick's Day celebrates the patron saint of Ireland, St. Patrick, and the arrival of Christianity into Ireland as well as celebrating Irish heritage and culture in general.  The shamrock is the symbol of St. Patrick's Day because St. Patrick used the three-leaved plant to explain the Trinity.  We wear green to remember the Emerald Isle and the Shamrock.  And, we celebrate this day on March 17 because that is the day St. Patrick died in 461 AD.  OK enough of the history lesson but I learned something new.  Anyway it is always fun to have a holiday and a reason to celebrate, right?  My ancestors are from Ireland and Scotland so I am part Irish so why not celebrate! 

This year was fun.  We began our St. Patty's Day festivities on Saturday the 16th.  First, the kids and I travelled up to Springdale with my parents and the Hughes'.  We participated in the Intermountian Health Care's LIVE walk.  It was fun to walk with so many people for the great cause of promoting healthy living.  We walked down the main road in Springdale then along the river and back to the start.  We walked about 2.3 miles I believe.  During the walk, I saw Brady White, a guy from our ward and our friend and said "Hi" to him.  He is over the publicity and marketing for the hospital so he was there taking video and pictures of the walkers.  My mom had him video Emily and Tyrel skipping down the road.  Then he asked me if he could interview me after the walk.  I very hesitantly said sure.  If I would have know he was going to interview me I never would have said hi to him!  So I got interviewed and talked about my experience on the walk for his video.  Brady said they were going to submit the footage to KSL so we might be on the news.  We will have to see! 

After the walk and the interview, we drove to the park in Springdale and had a picnic.  The weather was so nice, in fact we were wishing we wore shorts!  After we ate lunch, my dad and the Hughes' headed home while I took my mom into town in Springdale to get some shoes.  Emily heard there was a St. Patrick's Day Parade starting at 2:00 and she wanted to see it.  We were just going to head home but she and Colby  insisted we watch the parade and OK I wanted to see it too.  So we fought the crowds and found a parking spot and even a seat in the shade to watch the parade.

This parade was quite interesting but what did I expect from Springdale.  There were the Green Jello Queens, Belly Dancers (my eyes will never be the same), Leprechauns, Hippies and Homosexuals, green beads, and lots of candy. Oh and I can't forget the invitations to beer parties afterward!  Like I said it was very interesting.  Also my mom and I were feeling quite left out because we didn't have any tattoos or body piercings.  How could we forget that...  Anyway, Emily and Colby loved the parade because of all of the candy that was thrown so that made it worth watching.  After the parade we finally got on our way home after wading through the millions of people there to celebrate St Patrick's Day.

On March 17, we had our own St. Patrick's Day celebrations.  We started the day out with green shamrock pancakes and green eggs and ham:

The food might look a little strange but it was quite good.  The kids loved it.  OK Emily wasn't quite sure about the green eggs and ham but she finally did taste a little bite and said it was good.

After church, I made a traditional Irish dish of Corned Beef and Cabbage.  Now this dish was a first for me.  I have never made Corned Beef and Cabbage mostly because when I was growing up, whenever my mom made this, I had to gag down the Corned Beef.  Don't get me wrong my mom is an awesome cook and I can only dream of being as good as she is but there was something about Corned Beef.  I decided this year I was going to overcome my fear of the Corned Beef and give it a try again.  So I bought a package of Corned Beef and a head of cabbage at Lin's and started looking up different ways to cook it.  I finally just followed the instructions on the Corned Beef package and boiled it with the seasoning package it came with.  While the meat was cooking, I added potatoes and carrots and finally the cabbage.  When it was time to eat, I was really worried it would be bad and I didn't want to have to pretend to like it so Emily would eat (she will only eat something if she sees me eat it).  But to my surprise, the meal was actually quite good!!!  I was so glad!  I don't know what I did differently from when I was growing up (maybe my taste buds have just evolved) but I actually liked it and had seconds.  The even better part is that Emily ate all of her plate without complaining and Colby even ate the meat and he is a vegetarian.  So we just might have to have this meal again. 

After dinner here we are in our green treating ourselves to a homemade Shamrock Shake:

These shakes were sooooo good!  It tasted just like Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream (without the chocolate chips).  We all loved them and as you can see Russell even licked the last drops out of the blender. 

We had a great St. Patrick's Day.

Swans

With the weather getting warmer and spring right around the corner, we have been going to the park a lot more lately.  Lacie and I decided we needed to do a park day once a week so the kids could play together.  This has been a lot of fun because Emily and Colby are always asking me if they can go to Tyrel and Jack's house or to the park.  Now we can do both!  We decided to go on Thursdays but it usually end up going on Fridays.  This week we went to the Tonaquint Park and had lunch and played.  Because it was Spring Break, Jacee, Becca & Taylor came too.  After playing, we walked over to the pond to see the ducks.  When we got there, we were surprised to see three swans there too:

I had never seen swans at this pond before.  In fact I don't think I have ever seen swans this close before!  They were so much bigger than the ducks.  It was cool to see and fun to teach the kids what swans were.  We had a good time feeding the swans.  It was interesting to see the ducks stay away from the big swans.  This was a fun trip to the park.

One Month

One month old already!  Logan is growing up too fast.  He is really a good baby.  He is a happy baby too and is already smiling at us. 

He is also getting really chunky!  I love his double chin.  Logan is also a really good sleeper!  He will sleep for 6 hours at night which is so much better than Emily or Colby did.  He can also sleep through anything!  He has to because Emily and Colby are not quiet during the day. 

Logan loves his sister a lot.  We call Emily the baby whisperer because she can make Logan stop crying and smile anytime she talks to him.  She loves talking to Logan and playing with him.  She also loves holding him and singing him to sleep.  Colby loves Logan too but sometimes a little too much loving.  I have to tell him to be careful because he wants to play with him all the time.

Happy Birthday Colby!

Happy Birthday Colby!

We celebrated Colby's second birthday on Sunday after Logan's blessing.  We had all of our family over for a luncheon so we figured it was the perfect time for a birthday party.  

After we ate, it was present time.  Colby loved opening presents.  All of his cousins liked helping him open the presents too.  Colby got a lot of fun new toys.  I think his favorite was his new guns.  In fact on Monday morning when he woke up, he came walking into our room carrying his two new guns! 

I had fun making Colby's birthday cake this year:

Colby loves digging and playing in the dirt so we did a dirt theme.  He also loves Bob the Builder so I put in construction trucks too.  I came up with this awesome digging in the dirt Construction Cake.  I also made cupcakes with crushed Oreo's as dirt and candy rocks.  I love how it turned out.  Everyone said it was perfect for Colby, too.

By the time it was time to blow out the candles on his cake, Colby was getting really tired because he had missed his nap.  He didn't really care to blow out the candles so the wind ended up doing that for him.  Then we all enjoyed cake and Cookies & Cream ice cream.  I also made Oreo cookie truffles which were sooooo goooood!  Russell and I almost didn't want to share them with anyone but we also thought it would be bad to keep them.  Colby loved his chocolate Bob the Builder cake and was happy to finally get to eat some with his cousins.

Colby had so much fun at his birthday that after everyone had gone home, he just crashed on the floor and fell asleep.  We thought it was so funny but we just left him there and let him sleep.

On Colby's actual birthday (March 4), we went out for ice cream at Cold Stone.

It was fun to have a small celebration as a family and we all love ice cream. 

Happy birthday, Colby!  You are getting to be such a fun little man.  We love your cute personality.  We also love having you in our family

Logan's Blessing

Logan received his name and blessing on Sunday March 3.  He looked so handsome in his little tux:

Russell gave an awesome blessing and even though Logan was crying the whole time, you could really feel the spirit. 

Both sides of our family made it to the blessing so our family pretty much doubled our ward!  (This was great because March is a count month for the ward budget. Ha ha.) Any way, it was great to have all of our family there supporting us in this important meeting. 

Here are two handsome guys.  Logan and Russell on the blessing day.

We also took a lot of pictures on the blessing day of our family including grandparents and great-grandparents.

After sacrament meeting, our family headed back to our house to get ready for a luncheon.  I stayed at church for the second hour to get Primary stuff all situated.  My poor 1st counselor had to brave the whole primary by herself this week because the 2nd counselor was at a wedding out of town and our secretary moved a couple weeks ago.  It has been interesting going back to church after having a month off. 

When I finally got home, we took pictures and ate lunch. We also had a fun birthday party for Colby too.

Home Depot Day

The grandkids had a fun sleepover at Grandma & Grandpa Morwood's house last night.  Come to find out, it was a night full of giggling, talking, bathroom breaks, and anything but sleep!  But Emily and Colby had a blast sleeping over with the Hughes' and Bassetts. I had forgotten how much easier it is to only have to get one kid ready in the morning rather than three! This morning we went to the Kid's Workshop at Home Depot to make a craft.

Emily got a lot of help from Grandpa building her car.  Then she put the stickers on by herself.  Colby also had a good time building his car.

I helped him put the car together.  He loved hammering the nails into the wood.  My fingers didn't like it so much because I got hit a few times as I was holding the car as he hammered.

These two had a great time building their cars and then driving them all over the store.  After building their cars, they each got a certificate and a pin to put on their aprons.  These Kid's Workshops are pretty fun so we will have to go more often.

Emily and Colby had a blast spending time with Grandma, Grandpa, and cousins today.  They keep asking me when they can have another sleepover at Grandma's.