Rice Krispie Treats

My kids have been begging to make these for the past week or so. I decided it would be the perfect thing to do together tonight. Derk is gone on a business trip to Phoenix until late Saturday, so we needed something fun to do. They all were great helpers and didn't fight at all when it was someone else's turn to help. We ate them while we watched Monsters, Inc. They got to say up late, and I'm quite surprised they went to bed at all considering how much sugar they consumed! ;-) I think it helped that I bribed them with saying goodnight to their dad. Whoever got in bed first got to be the one to call him, so that was definitely a motivator to run to bed. It was a nice night, and I'm hoping the rest of the nights until Daddy comes home are just as fun! We sure miss him, though.

Cambria gives herself a haircut!

I was busy making dinner yesterday and realized I hadn't heard from Bri in a while. I started calling for her, but she didn't answer. Then I noticed the door to the laundry room was shut, which worried me (we keep it open because the cats need to get into the pantry, which is through the laundry room, to get to their litter box and food). So I opened it, and there was Bri. With scissors to her head. Sitting on a PILE of hair. She didn't just snip a little off. She butchered her head. I nearly died. I don't even remember what happened, but I'm pretty sure I screamed. I kept telling myself it was just hair, only hair, but the site of her destroyed head was too much for me.

Luckily the salon was able to get her in today. There honestly wasn't much the stylist could do. Bri has very thin hair, so she had to be very careful not to take too much off, otherwise we'd have a bald child. And I didn't want her hair cut boy-short. So the stylist just blended it a bit and made the "bangs" more even. I did make a fabulous discovery, though. I decided to see if my mousse would help. And it does!! It doesn't hide the goofy, too-short bangs, but it does hide everything else. I just scrunch up her hair with the mousse while it's wet, and it makes it stay curly, which hides the choppy "layers." I don't have a picture of that, but I do have pictures of her at the salon. The first picture is before, the other two pictures are after.

Little stinker!!!!!!!!!!!!

T-ball practice

We just finished our second week of t-ball practice. At first, I was afraid it was going to be much the same as soccer, with Asher getting easily distracted and goofing off. The first day was similar to that, but he's doing much better! I've been too busy to blog about it before now, so the pictures are a jumble from all of the practices so far. The little boy in the red shirt behind Asher is our neighbor. They are best buds and are having a great time playing on the same team!


The best part about t-ball practice? How tired he is afterward! ;-)

And here's a little video I snapped on Tuesday.

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Asher's 5th birthday party

Today was Asher's birthday party. Poor guy had to wait almost a whole week after his actual birthday to have his party since we were out of town. But he was a trooper and was so patient. He told me he wanted a Spiderman party, but I talked him out of that since that's what we did last year. We were able to compromise on Batman instead. ;-)

His cake did NOT turn out the way I wanted. At all. The fondant gave me serious grief, and I ended up tossing the whole cake into the garbage out of frustration. Thank goodness Derk came to the rescue and whisked the kids off to Walmart to buy a cake while I finished the party prep. I salvaged a bit of fondant and made a Batman symbol to put on the store-bought cake. It wasn't even close to what I wanted, but the kids all commented on how COOL it was. That made me realize that I'm too much of a perfectionist and need to relax. Any tips on accomplishing that?! ;-)

It was a busy few hours, but he had such a fun time. We had 11 kids here (including mine). The kids all played while we waited until everyone showed up, then they watched a bit of a Superhero movie. After that, we did a Batman symbol hunt out in the backyard. Derk and I hid a bunch of bats around the yard for the kids to find. I just blew up a Batman symbol I'd found online, traced it onto black construction paper and cut them out. Super easy game, and the kids all had a blast. I had a couple other games planned, but the boys were having such a fun time just jumping on the trampoline and playing that they actually told me they didn't want to play any more games!

Then it was time for cake and ice cream. Everyone said the cake was SO good, so I guess there's no reason for me to bother making a homemade cake in the future. ;-) After that, it was time for presents! All the kids were so super excited for Asher to open their gifts, and I barely got them to move out of the way long enough to snap a few pictures. :-)

Enough rambling. Here's the video and pictures!

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A package from Nana

My mom's birthday package for Asher arrived today. I tried to convince him to wait to open the gifts until his party tomorrow, but he was WAY too excited. :) I got it all on video for you, Mom. Enjoy!! :)

For some reason, it won't upload the whole video. I guess it's too long or something. But you get the idea. :)

**FYI-- It sounds like Asher says a bad word in the video, which is why I kinda yell at him. But he didn't say what I thought he said. He just had his mouth full of gum, so it sounded like something different. Whew. :)

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Asher's 5th birthday

Unfortunately, we spent Asher's whole birthday traveling back from St. George. But Derk and I had a little surprise up our sleeves for Asher when we got home. :)

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A week full of family!

Jessica (Derk's sister) and her fiance, Mike, came for a visit last weekend. He's moving up to Coeur d'Alene, so she flew down to get him, and then they made the long drive back up to Idaho. We're so glad they stopped to see us on their way! It is a huge understatement when I say my kids LOVE Mike. :) We watched some movies, played Risk, Jessica painted the girls' nails, we did some hiking, Mike tortured Kyrie with riddles and amazed the kids with magic tricks (he can take out his eyeball AND remove his thumb!) ;-) , and we had fun just hanging out together. I only got one picture while they were here. We stopped at the top of our hike to check out the view, and I snapped a quick picture of everyone.

They left our house late Sunday night. Derk's cousin, Grant, was getting married and sent us an invitation. When we found out Jessica and Mike were going over for the wedding, we decided it would be a fun excuse for a weekend getaway since we'd get to spend more time with them at the same time. We packed the kids up and left for St. George on Friday afternoon. It's about 7 hours away. The kids were SO awesome in the car! We were extremely impressed and told them over and over how proud we were of them.

We got to St. George around 8pm on Friday night. Derk's grandma really wanted us to stay with her, so we decided we'd do that for 2 nights and then spend the 3rd night at a hotel so the kids could swim. I'm so glad we chose to stay with Grandma those nights. She really loved the company, and it saved us a good amount of money, too. Jessica and Mike stayed there also, so that made it extra fun. The sealing was first thing on Saturday morning, so we woke up, got ready and headed to the temple. We didn't go to the actual sealing, but we had a great time on the temple grounds as we waited for everyone.

Asher wanted a turn with the camera, so we let him snap a few. The photographer at the wedding thought he was the cutest thing ever and got pictures of him taking pictures of her. :) Here are some of the pictures he took. He did a pretty great job!

After the sealing, we went to the cemetery where Grandpa Dean is buried. This was per Cambria's request. She still talks about Grandpa Dean daily and asked if we could go visit him. I love how close to Heavenly Father children are. We had a really nice talk about how he's in Heaven and how we'll see him again someday. Right by the cemetery there was a wildlife refuge type of place with a pond and ducks. And then right near that was a farm with a lot of horses. So we took a little walk after visiting the grave site.

This next picture is hilarious. As the kids were checking out the horses, Kyrie made an observation that one of the horses was most definitely a boy horse. You can see by Bri's face that she thought it was gross, but what you can't see is that Asher is laughing his head off. It was really funny!

While there, we also took the opportunity to go on some hikes at Snow Canyon. We took lots of pictures there!


On the way back to Yuma, we decided to stop at Hoover Dam and check that out. It was pretty amazing. We really wanted to take a tour, but they were between $11 and $30 per person.

And I got some cute ones of Jess and Mike throughout the weekend. Here are my favorites.

Living so far from family sure makes you appreciate them that much more when you do get to see them. It was a really fun week! Thanks for all the fun, Jess and Mike! Can't wait to see you guys again soon! :)