Spring Snow

You read the title right, Spring Snow!  The weather has been so crazy lately all over the U.S.  There have been blizzards and snow in some of the areas that never get snow and no snow at all in areas that normally do have snow.  When we had Logan's birthday, we were all sweating from the sunshine and 75 degrees and now two weeks later, we wake up to this:

Snow at the end of February in St. George!  If you notice in the first picture, the bulbs and other Spring flowers had started to grow and bloom and now they are covered with snow.  It was so crazy! I sent a picture of this to Russell who was working up in Logan at the time.  I told him he should be the one in the snow not us!  He showed all the guys the picture and they laughed because Logan did not have any snow at all!  Well we had fun playing in it anyway:

The snow was perfect packing snow which made it perfect for building snowmen and snowballs.

Here are our two snowmen named "Olaf" and "Frosty the Snowman."  I guess this is good practice for winters in Logan...  The kids loved playing in the snow and were quite excited to finally use their "snow" hats.  

After playing, it was time to come inside and warm up with some nice hot chocolate!  Yum yum!

Larry

Happy 2nd Birthday Cole!  We had so much fun at Cole's birthday party this weekend.  

Jess did a great job on the party and I loved the Tractor cupcake cake she made for Cole.  

At the party we hit a pinata, opened presents and the best part of all for the kids was chasing the baby rabbits and trying to catch them.

Jess and Danny said that if you caught a rabbit, you got to keep it!  Well that got all of the kids cheering and trying even harder to catch the quick little rabbits.  But it got all of the parents booing and telling their kids not to catch one.  Well as you can see, Emily caught one...  Well actually Clint and Hayley caught it and then Emily claimed it.  So lucky us, we came home with a pet rabbit!!

Meet Larry our rabbit:

Okay, Okay, he is pretty cute and very soft and nice.  But still... I vowed to never get another pet after we got rid of Clifford but here we are with a new pet.  

The kids absolutely love him so I couldn't say no.  I know nothing about rabbits so it has been quite interesting.  Larry has lived in a cardboard box for the last few days but he keeps trying to jump out.  We have also had him in the house because it has been really cold at night lately and I didn't want the poor thing to freeze mostly because the kids would be devastated.  But I firmly believe that animals belong outside so we finally went to IFA and got a cage for it.  Yeah that was an interesting trip.  Like said before, I know nothing about rabbits so I am standing there in the rabbit aisle at IFA trying to wrestle three kids while texting Jess to see what to get, and just gaping at the prices on all of the stuff this "free" rabbit needs.  Finally the guy at IFA came and asked me if I needed help and I said "Yes, tell me everything you know about rabbits!"  He just laughed and started telling me what to get.  So $60 later, we walk out of IFA and go home to build a cage for Larry.  I ended up getting a build-it-yourself outdoor cage and a separate dump tray so that if we needed to bring it in we could.  Building the cage was fun too...  It required special pliers to build the cage but I didn't want to spend an extra $10 on a tool we would never use again so I just grabbed my little pocket sized Leatherman from Cabela's and went to work.  Yeah I probably should have bought the pliers because my hands killed afterward but I finally got a system down to bend the clips and after about the first 10 clips, the next 70 went much faster.  And finally the cage was built!  And Larry loved it. (Mostly I think he just loved being outside!)  

Emily has been quite responsibly about remembering to feed Larry and make sure he is okay.  We are thinking of putting her and Larry in 4-H to help her learn about raising animals.  We will see how it goes with moving.  So there you have it. The newest member of our family; Larry the rabbit. 

Max the Magician

As an incentive to read more, Sunset Elementary put on a special assembly for all of the kids that had read 2,000 minutes or more over the past few months.  Emily was one of the lucky kids that got to go to the assembly so we were lucky enough to be able to go with her!  

For the assembly, Max the Magician came and performed his magic show.

It was a pretty amazing show.  I am still wondering how he did some of the trick he did.  After the show, Emily and Colby were both asking us how he did all of his tricks.  All we could say was that he was magic!

As it turned out, Max the Magician is really Stan Pool and he used to be Russell's scout leader back when he was a scout.  After the show, we were able to go backstage and Russell introduced us to him.  This was really fun for the kids to meet the magician and talk to him.  They even got to pet his rabbit, Harry.  (I still don't know how he pulled that rabbit out of his handkerchief!)  This was such a fun show.  I am glad Emily read all of her minutes so that we could go.

Also this week the kids had their dentist appointments.  These kids are crazy in that they look forward to going to the dentist!  Probably because they get to pick a prize out of the prize box when they are done.  Any way, this was Logan's first dentist appointment and he did amazing!

He waited for his turn and then when Emily and Colby were done, he said, "My turn!" and climbed right up onto the chair and laid down.  He held so still while the hygienist and dentist cleaned and looked at his teeth.  They were so impressed and said that he should teach some of their 10 year old patients how to hold still for the dentist.  He did so well.  We did find out that Emily is missing two of her adult teeth.  The dentist said her two teeth next to her two front teeth never formed.  He said this was common and there are things we can do to fix it but that won't be for a while probably teenage years.  I guess we will start saving for braces...  Other than that we had a good visit.  

Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day!  We had fun this Valentine's Day.  We started our celebrations on Friday the 13th with a Valentine party at Emily's kindergarten class.

We played three different Valentine themed "Minute-to-Win-It" games. The first one was transferring Valentine candy from one heart to another heart using chopsticks.  The kids were really funny with this game because they couldn't quite figure out how to use the chopsticks finally they just slid the candy using the sticks rather than picking them up. I called them cheaters and they just laughed at me.

The next game we played was called "Cupids Arrows."  Russell was in charge of this game and said the kids had fun.  What they had to do was shoot Q-Tips out of straws and try and get as many as they could into the basket on the floor.

Finally the last game was called "Heart-A-Stack"  They kids had to stack candy hearts as high as they could in one minute.  There were some pretty high towers.

After the games, we made heart leis while Russell dished up the treats.  We had Valentine Floats for our treat.  It was like root beer floats but with Cherry 7up and a Red Vine licorice for a straw.  The kids loved it.  The only bad thing was that one of the girls in the class is diabetic and after the party her blood sugar was pretty high.  Sorry...  She was fine though.

After the party, we came home and made our Valentines for our friends and family.

Colby has been doing so well at writing his own name.  He is learning so much!  So I had him write his own name on his Valentine's.  I think he did pretty well for a three year old!

Here are all of our Valentines!  Russell and the kids got me some roses and chocolate covered strawberries as well as some love notes they each wrote.  We gave Russell a heart shaped ice cream cake and he was kind enough to share it with us.  Each of the kids got their own bags of candy and were so happy.  

After getting ready, we decided to head up to Enterprise for the day.  Since it was also President's Day weekend, my parents were camping up there so we joined them for Saturday.  We had a nice relaxing day of fishing and four-wheeler riding.  It was so nice to get away for a bit.  The weather was awesome too.  It wasn't even cold in fact we got little sunburns.  Summer is on its way!  That night, while we were making dinner, Russell and the kids went on a hike up the rocks.

They got clear to the top almost and then yelled down to us and we waved and took their picture.  

We had such a fun weekend and it was nice to spend time with Russell before he headed up to Logan to start his new job.  As of February 12, he had quit all of his jobs in St. George and so he is currently unemployed for the first time!  Don't worry, he starts work with Logan City Fire and Rescue on February 17.  He is so excited and so are we.  This will be a new adventure for us.

Goodbye Training Wheels...Again!

This is one happy boy as you can tell from the pictures. Colby watched his sister learn how to ride her bike with out training wheels and ever since then he kept asking me, "Dad you need to teach me to ride my bike with no training wheels." So that is what exactly what I did. We took him out one afternoon and gave him the the low down on what to do and what to not do. I told him on the count of three and off we went. I told him to peddle, peddle, peddle and keep your handle bars straight. After about 15 minutes he was off on his own with no help from anyone. He was so funny, he said, "Look Dad, no training wheels!" I was so proud of him. He did not even have any big wrecks or fall off and get hurt. Not like his dad when I decided to run into the back of my dad's stucco mixer and get a huge black eye. 

"Look at me mom and dad no training wheels."  He is a very happy boy now that he gets to ride around the neighborhood like the rest of the big kids with no training wheels. Now that he has had them off for a few days he can get up and go really fast and is not afraid of going on the side walk and jumping off the little curbs. 

He is so proud of himself too.  He tells everyone he sees that he can ride his bike with no training wheels.  That's my Boy. Love ya Colby.

Happy Birthday, Logan!

Happy Birthday, Logan!! I can't believe you are already two years old!

Look how big he is getting!  And to cute too!  Logan has such a fun personality and is such a charmer.  He has a smile that will melt your heart and just has a way about him that makes it hard for you to resist him. Logan loves giving hugs and will just go up and hug everyone he sees.  He is also a total flirt and has won the hearts of all of the little old ladies in our ward.  In fact when we told everyone we were moving, I had multiple ladies in our ward come up to me and say, "You're going to take away our little Logan?..."  It seems people are more sad to see him go than us...  

Logan's favorite things to do are play with his Thomas the Train toys and visit Great Grandma.  He will run over to her house. (He runs everywhere.) Then he will bang on her front door until she opens it for him.  When she opens the door, he will give her the biggest grin and say "Hi Gama!"  Then he will go inside, grab a handful of candy and a cookie and climb up on Grandma's lap and they will watch cartoons together.  He loves it there and never wants to come home.  Grandma loves these visits too.  That will be one hard thing about moving; we will not be close to family.

Logan is definitely a fun little boy but he also has a mind of his own and likes to do his own thing.  I saw these funny t-shirts the other day that really explain our family.    

It is so true for us.  Emily makes the rules, Colby is why we have rules, and Logan believes the rules don't apply to him!  

Since we were up north for James' baby blessing on Logan's birthday, we decided to have his birthday party the next weekend.  

First he got to open one present from mom and dad.  He was so excited to find a new Thomas the Train shirt.  Logan loves Thomas the Train and plays with his trains all the time. 

 Because of this we decided to had a Thomas the Train themed birthday party.  Even though you can't tell from this picture, Logan was so excited!

I really like how the Thomas cake turned out.  I was glad Lacie had a train cake pan I could use.

These are some of the fun decorations we had around.  All of these decorations were made with things we had around the house like boxes, oatmeal canisters, and poster board.  They were really fun to make.  Logan would get so excited every time he saw them.  

For activities, we had train tracks set up to play with. This was a big hit.

When the kids first arrived, we had them make their own trains.  Well okay it was mostly Russell and I building the box trains for the kids...  Anyway they had fun wearing their train costumes and decorating them when we were done.  Here are all of the party guests in their trains.

After making the trains, we had train races all over the back yard starting at Tidmouth Sheds and going to the Blue Mountain Quarry.  Cole was so funny because he found Logan's bike and refused to get off of it for fear someone would snatch it from him.  He rode that bike all over and even played the games while sitting on the bike.

Our next game took place at the Blue Mountain Quarry.  The Troublesome Trucks had dumped their load and we needed to put it back in the Truck.  We played bean bag toss into the truck.  Each of the kids got a chance to toss four bean bags into the truck.

Next we headed to Brendam Docks to play Pin the "1" on Thomas.  It was fun to watch the kids try and put the "1" in the right spot.  I think our blindfold was not very good though because all of the kids seemed to get the "1" in the right place on Thomas.  There Cole is again playing the game on the bike.

Finally it was present time.  Logan loved opening presents and got almost everything Thomas.  His favorite was the little wooden trains and the train cars that hook onto his little Thomas train.  He also got a lot of other fun toys and outfits. 

I loved how our little train photo booth turned out.  The kids had fun pretending to drive the train and ride in the cars as well.  It looks like we should have made one more car though because the kids were kind of squished in there.

Then it was cake time.  Logan loved his Thomas cake.  He was so happy went he saw it.  He did have a little bit of a hard time blowing the candle out though.  

After eating cake and ice cream, we just let the kids play while the adults just sat and enjoyed the sunshine.

Even Russell got into the train racing spirit.  He just had to try on one of the box trains and race around.

Logan loved playing with his new trains and watched them drive all over the front yard.  He would even make tunnels with his legs and watch the train go under.  

That night, the Farnsworth clan came over for dinner.  They were unable to make it to the birthday party but still wanted to celebrate with us and spend time with Logan.  It was fun having them over.

Happy Birthday, Logan!  You are growing up so fast!