April

I haven't done as good of a job as I wanted to in keeping up with my blog so here is a quick over- view of our April.



We started April with a quick trip to Idaho and Spring break. We had hoped to do something fun with the kids over spring break but it was raining and snowing the whole week. Their spring break was a week or so before most of the other districts spring break so it was just a cold week.



Next we had Easter. Here are some pictures of the kids dying eggs.



Here is the finished product- This year we made glitter eggs. They were really pretty but they were a big mess. I don't think we will do this kind again!



I realized after the easter egg hunt that I hadn't taken any pictures. I also remembered Sunday night that I didn't take any pictures of my kids in their Easter dresses. They had matching dresses this year. I thought they looked really cute but Savannah wasn't happy. Maybe it is the age. When Christena was 8 she didn't want to match her sisters either, this year Savannah was the only one who didn't want to match, so she got stuck in a matching dress so she wouldn't be the only one not the same.



Next in our month we had Olyvia's 6th birthday. We asked her what she wanted for her birthday and she said she wanted a MP3 player, her training wheels off her bike or roller skates.

She got the MP3 player. We also got her the Hannah Montana movie Soundtrack. The Saturday after her birthday Olyvia and I went to the Hannah Montana movie and out to dinner. We had planned on going before her birthday but the whole week before our house was filled with sick kids. We finally have all gotten well!

Olyvia wanted a flower birthday cake this year so we borrowed her Aunt Tonja's flower pan. It was one of the easiest cakes I have decorated for a while.On the 24th my niece Kirsten got married so we had fun getting together with all of my family and getting to see them. My kids always love getting together with their cousins. Again I didn't remember to take my camera, so I have no pictures of the cousins all dancing together.

On April 22, my grandpa Byington passed away. He was almost 88 years old and had Parkinson's disease, so our month ended with another trip to Idaho for the viewing and funeral.

Funerals are never fun but it was nice to see my cousins that I haven't seen for a while and my sister Doreen was able to come from South Carolina with her 18 month old daughter. It was nice to have all the family there.

Jake also finished his first semester back at school. He has a break now until the last week of May when he has to go to Logan for the week and then his Summer class starts in June. School was an adjustment but hopefully Jake is now back in the swing of things. He is still waiting for one of his grades, but overall it was a good semester!

Our Actress

Christena had her school play a couple of weeks ago and I wanted to post some pictures of her play. They put on "The Big, Bad Musical". It was trial of the big bad wolf and she played the part of the Fairy Godmother who was the attorney for the "good side" as she puts it. She did fantastic! She was the first one to start the play and she had several solo's she had to sing in the first song as well as a whole song that was her singing. She also had over 70 lines to memorize. It was alot of work but she did fantastic. Jake recorded the play with our ancient (7yr old) video camera, but because it isn't digital we can't hook it up to the computer or I would post a video from her play. Anyway when we watched the video the sound was awful but you could hear almost all of Christena's lines, which wasn't true for everyone in the play.

Here is Christena before the play started.


And interviewing the 3 little pigs-we couldn't get a very good picture because we were too far back and everytime Savannah tried to snap the picture Christena turned her head.
We are so proud of Christena and I think she has definatly gotten the acting bug- she had so much fun and was such a natural- (We always knew she was a drama queen). I'm sure this is just going to be the first of many plays for her. Thanks for everyone who could come and support her in the play!

On another note last week we went to Idaho to visit my family while the girls were on Spring Break. One of the days we were up there Savannah was playing with her 4 year old cousin and this is what she put together with the domino's. She has such patience and is so precise.

These are my brother's twin's names. I didn't get a picture of the tower that she built out of the dominos.

Anyway we have had a fun and busy last couple of weeks, the kids are back to school tomorrow-Thank Goodness- and hopefully everything back to normal. Jake has 3 weeks left of this semester and is ready for it to be done. It has been a big adjustment for him going back to school and all the work involved but he really has been enjoying it and all the new things he has been learning. He figured out the other night that he should be able to finish his program in about another year and a half so we aren't as far off as the 3 years I thought it was going to take. It's nice to see the end not to far off.

Savannah's Baptism

Last Saturday was Savannah's baptism. It was really nice and I want to say a big Thank You for everyone who came, brought food and helped out! It would not have been the same without everyone.
Here are some pictures from Savannah's big day.

Her and Jake before the baptism

The baptism girl!

It's always nice to get together, but I'm glad its over, and luckily I have 2 more years until we get to do it again!

Savannah's Birthday

Yesterday we had a birthday party for Savannah's 8th birthday (which is today). We had an Around the World birthday party and went to 5 different countries. First we went to Paris France and the girls got manicures, next we went to Beijing China and the girls had to pick up swedish fish out of a bowl of rice with chopsticks. After that we went to Australia and decorated boomerangs then to Hawaii and made Leis then finally to Mexico where they got to break open a pinata. It was a lot of fun but I'm glad it is over. 10 little girls can quickly wear you out, although my downstairs neighbor said we weren't as loud as she expected us to be. Anyway here are a few pictures of our birthday party fun!
I don't know why blogger isn't pulling my pictures up the way I put them in, and since I am almost computer illiterate and can't figure out how to move them I'll explain them for you.

The first one is Savannah opening one of her presents. She got this really cool bag that was emboidered in China.
these are the presents she got from Christena and Juliana.

The girls getting their manicures.

Savannah's birthday cake- funny story about the cake-well it's funny now, not so much at the time- I usually make my kids birthday cakes, so this year Savannah wanted an ice cream cake. I figured it wouldn't be a big deal because I made one for Christena a few years ago. So Friday I put ice cream in a cake pan and stuck it in the freezer so it would be nice and hard and I baked the cake and put it in to the freezer. Saturday I got ready to frost the cake, got all of the frosting made and in the decorating bags and pulled the cake and icecream out of the freezer, got them all situated on the platter and started frosting. The frosting would not stick to the ice cream. We were trying to make her cake look like a world and it looked pretty good until I turned around to grab something and by the time I turned back around the continents had shifted and were sliding off the sides of the cake. So one hour before the party Savannah and I quickly went to Wal Mart in search of a new cake and some ice cream for the party. Here's what we found-

It does look beautiful.

So Savannah is now 8 and getting ready to be baptized next week. Time has sure flown by and she is quickly growing up and becoming more beautiful everyday. These are a few of the pictures we had taken of her in her baptism dress. Isn't she so grown up!

kids!

kids say the funniest things- and mine have been hilarious!

Christena has been into cooking lately and yesterday she was asking for a cookbook. Jake innocently asked her if she wanted to go to culinary school when she is older. Christena's reply- "No! I don't want to look at colons all day!"
Jake and I almost died laughing.

Then, since we were talking about school and where the kids wanted to go to college, Jake told Christena and Savannah that if they wanted to go to BYU they had to do good in school and get good grades. Savannah said she wanted to go to BYU- Idaho. Jake said why do you want to go there, the football team and basketball team are both at BYU Provo and that's where all the cute boys are- she quickly and emphatically answered, "Then I want to go to Provo!" I have to admit that left me a little worried, she is only almost 8!

My kids always amaze me and make me laugh everyday- They are great!

still here!

okay so we really are still alive, we haven't dropped off the face of the earth. I wish I had a great excuse to explain my 5 month absence, and while I have a few, I won't bother you with all of them. I will quickly give you our 5 month update. I added a few pictures but it didn't upload them in the order I wanted it to, so they are a little scrambled- I will do my best to explain them.
This picture is shortly after Christmas- we got a pretty big storm and the kids convinced Jake to help them build a snow sculpture. This is their snow turtle. My contribution was the green and yellow colored water for the shell. Isn't it cute!

In January my kids had crazy hair day at school- This was Savannah's crazy hair.

Christmas morning breakfast- we had cinnamon rolls, bacon and orange smiles!

I also got new dishes-finally after being married for 10 years I have enough matching plate for our whole family!

In september Christena got her hair cut. She looks so grown up with her short hair!

this was Olyvia's first day of Kindergarten, the other girls had been to school for a week already.
so that is a very quick rundown of our last 5 months- a couple of things that are going on right now. We are looking forward to Savannah's 8th birthday in a couple of weeks- and then her baptism. I can't believe she is almost 8. She is so excited about her baptism. she is getting so grown up and is such a big help at home. Christena entered a poem into the school's reflection contest and it moved on to the district level of judging where it received an excellence award and now it is at the state level of judging. She also tried out for a part in their school play- A Big Bad Musical and got the part of the fairy godmother. The play is a trial of the big bad wolf and the fairy godmother is the attorney for the good fairy tale characters. She has a bunch of lines she is learning and even has a couple of solo's and one song that is pretty much her with some backup singers. She is working really hard to learn it all and she is doing great! Olyvia is doing great in school and is reading really good, unfortunatly the work is not very challenging for her so she is often bored. On Saturday she is going to be taking a class for a special pull out program for next year. It would be a 1st and 2nd grade classroom. It is not at the school she is at right now so she has already told me she is not going to pass the test so she will be at her same school. She is smart enough she probably could figure out how not to pass the test too. Juliana is now a sunbeam and it is alot of fun having her in primary- although I usually feel like I've run a marathon by the time she heads to class. She is not getting the concept of sitting reverently with her teacher or even sitting with her teacher during primary. She tends to wander around the primary room, either sitting by me at the piano or with Christena or just making a break for the door. Of course it is usually during singing time when I am trying to play the piano that she tries to run! Jake has gone back to school and it slowly getting back into the rhythm of studying and doing homework. He is doing on-line classes through Utah State University to earn a Masters in Rehabilitation Counseling. I am still sewing my hats which takes most of my time and trying to balance childcare, housekeeping and all of the other usual jobs a mother gets to do, while maintaining some sanity. I don't know how well the sanity part is going though. We also are in the middle of house hunting. In January we thought we had a house in Sandy, but it fell through and then went under litigation so we had to move back to the looking stage. Our realtor is very patient with us and has been working hard to help us find something in our price range. Jake tells me I am too picky but for this amount of money I think I have a right to be.

Anyway that's what's been going on for the last few months in our busy corner of Utah- I will try to do better in keeping everything updated!