Easter Etc.

On the Thursday before Easter, baby Bryce was born!
We had all six Wesel/Hymas cousins at our house that day.  I was dumb and tried to dye eggs too.  Dying eggs with 6 kids under 12 can be scary.  I don’t know how other people do it.  It’s one of those traditions that tends to send me over the edge.  I would gladly pay someone to dye eggs with my children.  Any takers?

Bryce!!

Our Neighborhood puts on an Easter egg hunt that was pretty fun.

You can guess what colors her basket was full of.

More Easter egg hunting

The Easter Dress

This was a fun Chemistry science experiment on density we did this week. 

Guess which item stopped at what level.

Every time we read about it in the science book I kept wanting to say Destiny instead of Density.

This little girl brought me a perfect bouquet of flowers yesterday.

She brought these to me after I looked out the door to check on her and found her chatting away with a total stranger in the neighbor’s driveway.  If I could remember back to when I was her age I would have been having flashbacks I’m sure.  I now know how my mother felt with me wondering off and talking to total strangers. 

Liberty went to the dentist for the first time this week and thanks to the tv attached to the ceiling, (the MOST ingenious idea I’ve ever seen) she did fabulous.  The dentist also pulled out Levi’s second tooth this week!

And I got this video this morning of Liberty dancing to Vivaldi’s summer during our classical music lesson.  Sorry the music didn’t come through in the video very well.  Am I wrong in thinking she has natural talent?  I’ve been raising boys, who don’t do this kind of thing, but it seems to me she’s pretty good. 

Twinkle Toes

April Action

We’ve had lots of little big things happening around here lately.

I found this little girl totally asleep one night IN her laundry basket after having emptied its contents onto the floor.  I don’t know what she has against her bed, but most nights we have to pick her up from off the floor and put her back in her bed. 

We enjoyed our semi annual Conference Crepes at General Conference.

Thank you so much, Reagan, for ruining the picture.  Sigh.

Last week at pack meeting Cade earned his Bear award.

That’s a bear skin hat, not a new hairdo.

And then he demonstrated how to reel in a fishing pole for all the boys.

Levi finally got bloody in a GOOD way this week by losing his first tooth!

Every week it seems Levi is knocking a tooth loose and we’ve been lucky he isn’t toothless by this point.  I’m very glad this one came out naturally.

My friend’s daughter graciously gave Liberty a ton of Barbies and a doll house too!  She has been in heaven for days!  Thank you so much Bethany!

Those of us who have had to help dress the Barbies when it is too hard for Liberty have NOT been in heaven.

We spent a fun afternoon at Aunt Janie’s last week.

Feeding the chickens

Holding the chicks

Wearing a cow pelvis

Riding Horses

The kids absolutely love Aunt Jane’s.  I wish we could get there more often!

Levi started his first season of soccer!

His team is the Dragons.

That’s Levi out in front.  He was all over the ball!

Having big brothers can be a pain some of the time, but it was a definite plus for Levi out on the soccer field.  He really knew what he was doing and was totally fearless.  But I guess that kind of describes Levi with everything.  Fearless.

We were actually late to Levi’s game on Saturday because just before we left, a mother duck and her ducklings wondered into our yard!  We have a small irrigation ditch in our neighborhood and we think that’s where they came from. 

The Mother Duck and her Ducklings

Eventually she made her way back out again.  I hope they found their way home again.

April Fools and Fun

On April Fools Day the boys did all kinds of things to play jokes on people and though most of them flopped, this one was funny.  I came home to a foil wrapped plate from Levi.  When I opened it, this was inside:


It’s a Brown-E!!!! 

In other, not surprising news, Levi had yet another head injury this week.  Five minutes before it was time to leave for church last Sunday he decided to jump head-long into the corner of the bunk bed.  Luckily, he did not break the skin, he just earned himself a huge goose egg.  His sister decided to poke it with a pencil later in the week, thus the red scab you see on his forehead in the middle of the greenish yellowish bruise that is now left. 
He was being such a goof when I tried to take a picture of it today that I decided to put them all on.







It’s a shame he’s trying so hard to wreck his adorable face.

This month we’ve been studying the American Revolution in history and Reagan wanted to try making some scone type things he saw the British soldiers do in a movie.  He didn’t have rocks and fire like they did, but he had flour and water.

Two weeks ago Rock informed me that for date night (in two weeks) he had signed us up to run the Bo Glo 5K, a night time, everybody wears glow in the dark clothing, run to support Cushings Disease research.  I haven’t trained for a 5K in years!  But I ran the whole thing!  Who knew!  Of course I cannot walk today, I’m so sore, but it’s conference weekend, so that’s OK!!

I never post anything on Facebook because I’m never really on Facebook, but I decided to post this picture and the response was pretty funny, I must say.  My favorite comment was that Rock is a dork, but he has really nice teeth.  LOL.   He does have quite the cheeser grin, for sure.

Spring Break 2014

This week was our Spring Break and though the weather didn’t cooperate all that well, (we had to cancel our zoo trip due to rain) we managed to get some real fun in.

On Monday the kids started off their break doing what every kid wants to do on their spring break.  Spring cleaning!  We thoroughly cleaned the basement and they were so excited to help clean and beautify our home that they generously refused my offer of lunch at Burger King if they helped.  Ok, so they totally needed a bribe and who wouldn’t on spring break, but it worked like a charm!  They each got their OWN milkshake, which is something they never ever get. 

Then we headed to the river for the first time this year.

The kids skipped rocks and played happily for two hours by the river.  I love that it’s so close and that there is so much to explore.  Even Liberty tried to skip rocks, but you can see by the size rock she has in her hand, that she was not very successful.  She just enjoyed the big splashes.

Tuesday the older boys went over to a friend’s house to make these awesome paper Marble Runs. 

Cade Marble Runs

Reagan Marble Run

Wednesday the kids watched Frozen for the first time because, yes, I am the only parent in the WORLD who has not shown their kids Frozen. 

I don’t have anything against the movie, it’s just not my favorite Disney movie of all time and is really not worth all its hype.  But the kids enjoyed it.  Honestly, the bigger reason we didn’t take them when it was in the theaters was because I did not want to waste the money on Reagan who would, I figured, just make gagging sounds the whole time.  Turns out he didn’t gag.   Olaf helped gloss over the yucky romance. 

We finished up Johnny Tremain, a Newberry medal book about  a young boy living in Boston at the time of the revolution.  One day it was even nice enough to read outside under the cherry tree.

Yesterday we started up Co-op again after a two week break and Levi is taking a class on the human body.  The kids got to put this whole x-ray skeleton together and label it.

And that was Spring Break 2014.  No, it wasn’t Disneyland, but hey, we watched a couple Disney movies…..

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.