Cade’s Creations

Cade never stops creating.  So this blog post is dedicated to his amazing creations.  Many of them are not his original idea, but the amount of work he put into them is a pretty great tribute to his perseverance.  I would never have had the staying power to stick to it like he has with some of these projects.  Some of them took him weeks to complete!

The Ball

This one was in my last post, but I thought I’d include it since this is all about Cade’s creations.

The Firework

The Spinning Top

Cade has a whole zoo of animals he’s made.  This is only some.

The Peacock

The Cobra

The Rhino

The Lioness

The Scorpions

Cade continues to amaze me with his skill.  Every day there is something new with this kid. 

The Littles in Layton Part II

The second day of our trip to Utah we went to church with G & G and then spent the afternoon with Mason, Monica and Mike.

I had to run outside real quick to get something from the car Sunday morning and the kids watched me from the window of the hotel room.

The Purple Girls all ready for church.

Hanging out in Uncle Mason’s luxurious furniture.  Liberty loved the chair because she thinks anything with a flag on it is hers.

After dinner we went to Liberty Park in Salt Lake City to play.

Mike and Monica show the kids the ropes.

Liberty really liked being the TALLEST person in LIBERTY Park.

The next day we drove down to Provo to spend time with my sisters.  We couldn’t go to Provo without going to the BYU Creamery.

The spoon war-it was a draw.

The Hanging war-Levi won.

Picture in front of the Y.   I LOVE those mountains.

It was a fun trip!  Great to see everyone!  Thanks for making time to see us! 

The Littles in Layton Part I

Last week I took a trip to Utah to check out a new homeschooling option that may be coming to Idaho.  I took the Littles, Levi and Liberty, with me.  We visited with Grandma and Grandpa H and Alli and Sarin too!  We all had a blast.  Me, because I only had two children, and the Littles because they got to eat lots of junk food, swim in the hotel pool, and play lots of video games on the phone (my sanity on the drive).  Life doesn’t get any better for these little people. 

They thoroughly enjoyed the hotel room, as you cans see.

Things you should never let your children do.

They had just been in the car for five hours so I was more lenient than I usually would be.  Unfortunately, the Littles did not sleep well the first night in the hotel and kept me up half the night.  The next day we took our zombie selves to the most awesome children’s museum in Ogden, the Tree House Museum. 

This huge tree house is right in the middle of the museum. 

The kids rode horses,

Played in a teepee,

Dressed up like royalty,

And milked a cow!

They also played chess.

Liberty loved the school room.

Levi loved the tree house.
 

And Grandpa loved his little nap.

Is it just me, or are these three extremely stereotypical??

Just outside the museum was the very new and improved Ogden Temple.

We finished off the day with dinner at Levi’s favorite restaurant, Texas Roadhouse.  I thought the Boise Texas Roadhouse was busy, but I was wrong.  It was insanely busy and we waited a loooong time to get our seats.  We put Levi in charge of watching the buzzer and he took his job very seriously.  He did not take his eyes off that buzzer for forty minutes.

By the time we finally got our main course, Levi and Liberty had stuffed themselves so full of yummy rolls and peanuts, they didn’t even want their dinner.

I should note here that the reason Texas Roadhouse is Levi’s favorite restaurant is because of the peanuts.  I brought him here several months ago and he got to eat peanuts for the first time in his life.  He thought he’d died and gone to heaven.  When your brothers are allergic to peanuts, you don’t eat peanuts at home and you certainly don’t get to go to restaurants where every inch of floor space is covered with peanuts.  But Levi has found a new favorite food and he shovels those things down like you wouldn’t believe!  Grandpa did pretty good for himself too.

Stay tuned for Part II of The Littles in Layton!

Where Did February Go?

I seem to have totally lost a month, but here are some fun highlights from February.

We had the last of our winter snow and the kids tried to catch some of it.

This is Levi’s cute birthday gift from G & G Hymas.  He loves this thing!

Cade decorated his Blue and Gold Banquet Cake-Western themed.


That’s a lasso and some cacti.

Rock and I made Coxinha from Brazil for Valentine’s Day.  I absolutely LOVE these things!  It’s basically shredded chicken and cream cheese deep fried.  Yummy!  They turned out pretty good for our first time.   

Rock is getting very culinary in his old age and recently learned how to make Pão de Queijo (Brazilian cheesy bread) too.

Our Origami Wonder Boy has been at it again…

The Firework

A few weeks ago while I did my hair up for church, a very interested little girl watched in awe.  She then proclaimed that I looked JUST like Cinderella and that she wanted her hair done just like Mommy’s.  It was five minutes before church, but we did hers up too!

She is SO much fun!

Brotherly Love

Tonight I went in to check on Liberty and Levi who are now sharing a room.  BTW, that is one of the best parenting decisions we have EVER made.  Everyone goes to sleep earlier and with less goofing off.  It’s great!  Well, tonight when I went in to check on L and L before I went to bed, I noticed that Liberty was sleeping with Levi’s dog and Levi had no stuffed animal.  I couldn’t figure out why until I walked back out into the hall and noticed their stuffed animals on the floor outside their door. Lately, the consequence du jour is that they lose their stuffed animal if they are talking or goofing around after lights out.  Apparently, Rock had taken their animals and there on the floor lay Liberty’s little pink pig which she NEVER sleeps without and Levi’s fox, also never slept without.  At that moment I realized why Liberty was sleeping with Levi’s dog.  He had given it to her so she would have something to sleep with after Daddy took her piggy.  Levi had no animal to snuggle with tonight because he’d given his remaining stuffed animal to his sister. 

 

Thanks for teaching us all how to love, Levi.

Thirty-what?????

When I was a kid there was a tv show called “Thirty Something”.  Thirty something sounded really old to me then.  Sunday was my birthday and it’s really weird to be nearing the end of those thirty something years.  I still have a few years yet before they put up black balloons on my birthday, but for those who don’t know how old I am, let’s just say I’m at the farther end of thirty, ok?  And as I told my mom, yes, I’m old, but that just makes her even older!   

It was a good birthday. On Friday Rock took me to my annual free dinner at Tucanos.  They really should advertise as the only restaurant where you truly save money because you are so full when you’re done, you don’t need to eat for a week!  After dinner we went to a movie.  We had planned to see the new Jack Ryan movie, Shadow Recruit, which I admit I was apprehensive about seeing.  I’m a big wimp when it comes to rock em up, shoot em up, everyone dies but the main character kind of movies.  But who am I to resist Chris Pine, so I agreed to go.  Well, we walked into the theater, Rock bought the tickets at the automated booth, and we went in and sat down.  I am also a big wimp when it comes to rock em up, shoot em up, how crude can you be trailers, so I was bracing myself for the onslaught when instead of the usual PG13 trailers, they showed Disney trailers.  It took me a minute to realize this was odd in such a movie as we were about to see, but it was not until Mickey Mouse showed up on the screen that I knew I was not in the new Chris Pine movie.  We were in Frozen!  Once I got over my brief (very brief) loss, I laughed out loud and turned to Rock who said, “Surprise!”  You have to understand, the first time Rock took me out for my birthday he took me to dinner and a movie I had no desire to see.  He says he was just trying to avoid that mistake again.  Thus the movie switch.  By the way,  Rock is looking for someone he can re-watch that movie with.  Anyone want to see Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon with him this weekend?  I’ll be doing other things. 

My favorite part of Frozen, besides listening to Idina Menzel sing anything,  is where they pronounce ‘Weselton’ as ‘Weaselton’ and the silly little duke has to correct them over and over.  Oh, that was funny.  I was the only one laughing in the theater, but I so felt his pain. 

The morning of my birthday my children let me sleep in instead of waking up at 6:00 in the morning to “surprise” me with breakfast in bed.  This of course never works because it just becomes a big fight downstairs that I either have to deal with myself, thereby ruining the surprise, or Rock has to deal with it but I am awakened by the raucous just enough, that I can’t go back to sleep.  Sleeping in was awesome!!

About 10:00 AM this nice looking French waiter dressed in his jammies come into my room.

He handed me this menu:
and then said in a fabulous French/German/Italian accent, “Velcome to thee Hymas Keeds Café.  Please-a’ choose from z menu vut you vould like to have for-a’ breakfast.”

My food was prepared by the head chef, Reagan Dean

and when it was ready, a little assistant waiter named Levi came up to tell me my food was ready.  It was very yummy. 

Rock stood outside in below freezing temperatures to grill me some steak for dinner and it was also very yummy.  For dessert I wanted “Better Than Sex Chocolate Cake”.  Reagan really wanted to make it- until he found out what the name of the cake was.  He then begged me (in between gagging sounds) to call it something different and since I love that cake and all my kids will be going through this “sex is gross stage”, we decided to rename it. I suggested we call it “The cake which shall not be named” or maybe “The Voldemort cake”, but we settled on “Chocolate Toffee Cake”  It was delish! 

To finish off a wonderful birthday I went to bed on my new heated mattress pad with dual controls.  Life is good-even when you’re old.

Our Dancing Diva and Olympic Hopeful

Liberty spends a LOT of her time prancing about the house singing and dancing.  Even walking to the breakfast table is done in true ballerina form.  I caught this video of her recently.

The Dancing Diva

We signed Reagan up for skiing lessons with a homeschool group in the area that offered a steal of a deal; $75.00 for three two hour lessons + all day ski rentals and skiing each of those days.  Even better is that Rock got to be a chaperone for two of those weeks for FREE.  We prepped Reagan very well ahead of time for the difficulty he might encounter at this new sport.  He is usually a perfectionist and has little patience with himself when trying something new.  It was with baited breath that Rock dropped him off last week for his first lesson.  But he was a raging success!  He figured it out very quickly and had a blast.  Here he is shooting down the slopes.

First Day Skiing

Second Day Skiing

I know who is going to watch the skiing events at the Olympics this year in a whole new light.