These Days...

Just FYI:  Maybe I'm going a bit overboard on this, but to make sure I am keeping my family as safe as possible I am taking our names off the blog.  I'll use initials or nicknames so those of you who know us will get the idea.  It's sad that its even an issue, but this world we live in can get a little crazy. No, nothing happened, I just read some ideas about online/blog safety and decided I'd up it a notch.  So this post is just to explain why I refer to everyone in nicknames or initials.  

Trying to be a Good Mom

K (see "Current Obsessions") is now back into Bob the Builder. On Saturday he saw a picture of cupcakes with Bob the Builder machines toppers and begged me to make cupcakes with different colored frosting for each of the machines.  I said yes.  Three days, no cupcakes and a very disappointed son later I decided I better be a good mom and follow through with what I said I would do. Here are our cupcake shots (notice each frosting color has a matching bowl and (almost) matching knife).

Several member of S's family (and mine too, actually), make funny faces with their mouths when they are concentrating on things. It's become a family joke.  When they catch someone making the face, they say "You're holding your mouth wrong!"  H has it bad.  I tried to get a shot of him "holding his mouth wrong";  I call it his working tongue.

K had a different issue.  Here is his working tongue (it seems to be working quite well, too.)

The finished masterpieces.  For all you Bob the Builder fans there is green for Roley, Orange for Dizzy, Yellow for Scoop, and Blue for Scrambler (or for Lofty, in case you like Lofty better).  They taste even better than they look.  They are a new recipe I tried from my America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook (I highly recommend it).  It was easy and better tasting than any cake mix I've made.  (And besides my favorite scratch chocolate cake, that's a first for me). Yeah!

M didn't get to help make or frost them, but he had a few good ideas of how else he could help with them.

Speaking of trying to be a good mom, I decided to try on my own and get some cute shots of M.  Here are 3 of my favorites. I am fairly proud of them, given my limited photography experience.  But I would love advice from all you experienced photography moms (or not) out there.

H was feeling left out and informed me that it was his turn. So he got his buddy and we took some of him too.  Here's one of the best.  Classic H.

Spring Break

I am terribly late on this, but I have been trying to not spend so much time on the computer.  More on that later, but following are pictures of what we did for spring break.  Well actually first is a picture of one my favorite parts of spring at my house.  I am not sure what this bush is called, but it blooms right at the beginning of spring and I love it!  It is so full and colorful, I had to take a picture of it because I knew it wouldn't last forever (in fact the snow last weekend- yes, I said SNOW for all of you that aren't in WA - already killed a lot of the flowers).

So, on to Spring break:  On Monday we just went shopping and got stuff done.  On Tuesday my mom came over and we went out to lunch, and then to the park to fly some airplanes she got the boys.  It was a beautiful day and fun to see her.  S had the day to himself.  He spent most of the day cutting back some HUGE "shrubberies" in our backyard, it was quite the project.  We had so much stuff we cut off we filled ours and 3 other neighbors yard waste bins full (they even jumped in them to pack them in and the garbage guys wouldn't take one of them - sorry Jessica!)  On Wednesday we sat around and did research for a bigger car - no results yet, we're still looking. Then finally decided to get off our fannies and go out for dinner and get K some new shoes, it was fun in the end.  On Thursday we took the boys to Whirligig in Seattle.  I had never been there before but they fill the Seattle Center House with big slides and bouncy houses and a bunch of other fun stuff.  It was fun, but crowded.  Luckily we ran into S's cousin and her family and they invited us to go with them to the Seattle Children's Museum downstairs. It was fun; I tried to get some good pictures.

After the Children's Museum we took the boys for a ride on the monorail.  They loved riding in a train up high above the roads.

Then we took the boys to see the fountain. K had a blast running up to see and touch it.  H wouldn't hardly get near it.

On Friday we took the boys to the Everett Children's Museum.

Friday night S and H had a jam session.  It was quite the concert!

On Saturday and Sunday was our church's general conference.  Saturday night all the girls did the usual banana splits for dinner at S's parents while the guys went to the priesthood session.  Then the guys went to S's brother's house for a Wii (did I spell that right?) boxing match.  I forgot who won.  

Sunday we went to S's parents house for the afternoon session and stayed for the evening.  The boys took full advantage of having Grandma all to themselves.

That was the big pieces of our week, and it was fun and busy.  A little more than H could take I guess.  

Batman

I will post all about my Spring Break last week later, but something funny happened today I thought I'd share.  The boys were running around crazy downstairs and I had already asked H at least 2 times to clean up his play food.  So I went down again and told him (firmly) to clean up his food.  He looked at me and replied (even more firmly) "Batman's don't clean!" (apparently they were playing super heroes which made him exempt from cleaning).

I then started counting "1.... 2...."  He very quickly got up and started picking up his food.  

(I guess while super heroes may not clean, they still have to listen to their moms.)

H is so funny sometimes.