30 Things I Love About You...

So much has happened, and I hate to admit that I am almost as bad at this blogging thing than I am at my journal.  One good thing though: I did take a lot of great pictures, thinking I would post them on my blog, that I otherwise probably wouldn't have.  

S's 30th birthday came and went, and so did father's day. So, in honor of those holidays, I want to publicly declare that I am madly in love with my husband, and that he is the best man for me in the world, ever.  And, since he's 30, here are 30 things that I love about him:

1.  He's loves food as much (and maybe more) than I do.

2.  He does the dishes, laundry, vacuums, mops, even toilets sometimes - often without me asking or nagging first.

3.  The way he looks when he comes home from a run when his hair is all wet and curly and he is totally energized.

4.  He is dang handsome.

5.  He always strives do what he feels is right.

6.  His obsession with writing utensils and things Made in the USA.

7.  He has a great sense of humor.

8.  He loves music.

9.  He is always very supportive of me and my personal endeavors.

10.  He has taught me how to laugh at myself.

11.  He has great teeth and a great smile.

12.  He is honest with me about his opinions; I never have to guess if what he is saying is how he really feels.

13.  He is very logical and can explains things to me in a logical way that my otherwise artistic/emotional brain wouldn't be able to comprehend.

14.  He loves our boys.

15.  He treats me like he thinks I am amazing.

16.  He looks hot with a mustache (that is saying something!).

17.  He makes our family a priority.

18.  He doesn't have expensive taste; and he has taught me to realize that sometimes there is a justifiable reason to pay more.

19.  He is ticklish (even though he would never let me get away with trying to tickle him).

20.  He is teaching the boys to respect me and women in general by treating me with respect and sticking up for and supporting me.

21.  He is very passionate about the things he cares about.

22.  I could make any combination of beans, rice, and cheese in a tortilla (quesadilla, burrito, taco, nachos, etc.) for dinner and he would be ecstatic.

23.  He loves fruit, he considers it dessert  (I have a very different definition of dessert, but I love that about him).

24.  He holds very high standards and expectations for himself (he is probably too hard on himself at times).

25.  How much fun he and the boys have playing and dancing and wrestling together.

26.  I love that he taught me to notice and appreciate a great scream in a song.

27.  His to-do lists.

28.  His massive t-shirt collection.

29.  How hard he tries to understand me and all my illogical emotions, even when I don't understand myself.

30.  That he makes me feel like he is as madly in love with me as I am with him.

Team Sports

I have been a bit preoccupied lately, but I decided to post about our newest adventure: team sports!  K started t-ball last week and is loving it.  Big S volunteered as his teams coach (hence the nickname "coach")  and is having fun and doing a great job.  I think the idea was a bit intimidating at first: he is not a huge sports guy and not really a team sports person at all, but when he heard that it was no scores, no outs, they each run one base no matter how hard/where they hit, and he gets a free t-shirt out of the deal, it sounded a lot more manageable.  We are team #27 (they picked a name at practice yesterday, I haven't heard what it is yet - it must be terribly dynamic).  I was thinking something "Electric" given the dynamic color of our shirts (they told us we were sage green - someone is either misinformed, color-blind, or both).  See K in all his electric green home-run glory below: 

There was a team for 3-4 year olds, but we opted not to sign H up this year.  However, he has done almost nothing but play t-ball since the first practice.  I felt bad at first for not signing him up, but he is having so much fun playing in the backyard, and sneaking out on the field whenever I'm not looking that he doesn't know he's not on the team.  Oh the joy of obliviousness! (obliviousness is a word, right?)

Little M has no clue about any of this, he just likes to sit around, make noise and eat.  Come to think of it, that's all anybody in our house likes to do, really.

Mother's Day has just come and gone and Coach S asked me at the end of the day what was my favorite part of Mother's Day.  You know what I said?  "When you made me sit down and eat lunch as soon as we got home from church while you and the boys cleaned up the house."  Am I sounding like a mom or what?!  I guess it means a lot when they realize that what would mean the most to you is recognizing all the work you do and giving you a little break from it.  Happy Mothers Day to all you wonderful women out there who have shown me what it means to be a strong, capable, happy woman and mother.  To my friends, sisters, sisters-in-law, grandmas, and especially my wonderful and amazing mother and mother-in-law. You ladies are the best!  Can I just say I love my boys and I love being a mom?

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.

Easter Week in Pictures

I know I'm a bit late on this, but I am finally (for the third time) trying to get my Easter weekend pictures posted.  (If you're reading this it means I was finally successful, yea!)  We started our Easter celebration Friday night coloring Easter eggs.

Can you guess whose egg is whose?  (Hints:  2 are K's and his 2 favorite trains of the week were Molly- a yellow train and Diesel 10- a brown train. H likes to copy K (his name is written on one of them, it's probably too hard to see), and my favorite color is green.  In case you care, H and I made the the two-toned ones and S made the orange polka-dotted one.)  We have serious talent in our family! 

Saturday morning we went to our community Easter egg hunt.  H took a while to catch on to the idea so he only got 4 eggs (man, there were some over-zealous "helpful" parents on the "parents encouraged to stay off" field.  Did someone forget to tell them they only had Hershey's kisses and imitation flavored Tootsie rolls in them?) but he was happy.

K's field went on the count down for the 2 and under field and H and I had the camera at his field so I missed seeing him or getting any pictures.  But he had fun and got some eggs too.

After the egg hunts the boys got to jump in a bouncy house.

While we were waiting in line for the bouncy house my friend came by to say hi and offered to take a family picture.  This is one of a handful of family pictures ever taken of the 5 of us.  (Thanks Kandy!)

The Easter bunny was there and H wanted to go say hi and get his picture taken with him. K shyly declined and went to the playground and watched us from afar.

Sunday morning began with the traditional "mad-dash to get everyone fed, clean, dressed and presentable for church while not completely destroying the house or losing any tempers."  Oh, I mean the traditional "Easter basket and egg hunt."  FYI: The Easter bunny is not totally lame at our house, the multi grain Cheerios are for M because he is now starting to eat finger foods and can't have candy yet.  Although H has already managed to sneak him some.

Another cold and rainy Easter in Seattle!  

(Notice H is wearing his swimming shorts, of course)

After church we went to my parents and ate bacon and waffles with fresh strawberries! (Yum, I hardly ever get bacon).  My parents did an Easter egg hunt with the boys and their cousin.  They got started too quick for me to get pictures.  They each got a pair of PJ's along with some candy.  (In case you can't tell, M's pj's have a crab on the shirt front and it says "Crabby."  How fitting.)

After my parents we went to S's brother's house for dinner and another egg hunt.  I made this rainbow layer jell-o thing that took me forever and looked beautiful.  I should have taken a picture.  Yes, it was just a jell-o dish, but there were 7 different colored layers and each had to set for at least 45 minutes before you could lay the next so it took me a LONG time to make it.  Although I was flattered it got eaten as quickly as it did, I almost had to remind myself not to be sad as it was quickly cut into and mashed around and no one even stopped to look at the beauty that was my jell-o salad.  

This is a picture of the boys and some of their cousins just before the egg hunt.

I had every intention of making a better effort this year to take more opportunity's to teach my children the true meaning and significance of Easter.  I think we will do another Family Home Evening about it.  But let me just say now that I know that Christ lived and died and lived (and lives) again for all of us so that we could all live again as well.  As fun as candy and dinners and egg hunts and family parties are, there is nothing that tops the significance and wonder that is the real celebration of Easter.