When I'm not in my house this is where you will find me!

Given our circumstances of being students with kids we definitely live in an ideal situation. Everyday we feel so grateful we ended up in the place/neighborhood we are at. It is filled with lots of MBA students (thanks to Jenner) and their families which means lots of friends for our kids (and for me!)
If it is a nice day this is usually where you will find me and all these great gals (and a few others who are not in this picture) Here we are enjoying some yummy salsa and chips Amber brought over for us to enjoy while watching our kids.
Here are some of the activities that go on in our cul-de-sac:

Thanks to Logan and Brian we all enjoy some scooter rides around the neighborhood. The kids line up and beg for rides. Here is Ethan riding with our friend Brian.
Even I get to take a ride from time to time.....I think I could own one of these some day!! It's really fun!

The kids are always making up new games and creating things to do. In the fall they use to race down the hill in wagons. Here are Lucy, Eliza, and Kamryn When Taylor brought out the Barbie car it was a huge hit with all....even the boys!!

The Cul-de-sac is always filled with lots of kids, bikes, scooters, bubbles, tricycles ....Everything seems to come out of everyone's garage and it becomes a free for all! It's lots of fun!

Lucas

A little disturbing!!

So the other day a bunch of kids and moms were outside playing and Sara started talking about how scary this baby doll looked. As it turns out the little girl who owns this doll left it outside so the doll ended up in our garage for the night and I couldn't resist playing a trick on Sara. I asked her husband to put it on her pillow. I think he did something slightly different but I still thought I was pretty funny. However, the joke was on me. The next day I came home and found the doll staring at me. She had taped it to my door! It was funny!
Look at this scary looking face!!

Happy Easter

We had a nice Easter weekend filled with LOTS of Easter Egg hunts and excuses to get together with friends. It was fun. The festivities started with an easter egg hunt for the kids at the business school. Jane wanted nothing to do with the big giant easter bunny and I was surprised to see Lucas get within inches of it! On Sunday we enjoyed watching conference and then had a giant Easter dinner with about 50 other people. It was lots of fun. Thank goodness for nice weather because we would have never fit in our tiny apartment! Our Easter Festivities ended on Monday night with and egg hunt and dinner with the Kelly Kids. The kids loved it and have been on a sugar high for the past week. So have I!!
This was Janes first time sitting in the grass. She was pretty fascinated with it!


The kids LOVE decorating Eggs. Last year they each got about 4 eggs to decorate and that was it. They were disappointed when the eggs ran out so this year I decided to do LOTS. I did 4 dozen and yes, we still have a fridge full of hard boiled eggs! Jane even got in on the coloring. However, she never made it to the color because the egg went right to her mouth. Nothing like munching on a shell!!
Lucas LOVES the color green so of course all of his eggs were green!

Spring Break

So, there are some benefits to being students again. Not only do the kids get a spring break but so does Andy - 2 weeks of break for him. It was heaven having him around and home for dinner. We spent our first week getting some things done around the house and then spent the last week in D.C. We had so much fun staying with Andy's brother and family. It was fun seeing the kids together. They all had so much fun!

We enjoyed spending a lot of time in D.C. Jim (Andy's brother) was so nice to drive us around to the memorials one night. They are so far apart from each other we realized our kids would never be able to walk it all so he dropped us off at one and picked us up when we were ready and took us to the next. It was so nice of him. We loved it!
We've spent a lot of time in this car over the past year. This is what our road trips look like. Lucas who could care less about T.V. spends his time talking to us (yes, it gets tiring) and eventually it gets quiet and I look and this is how we find him. He wore himself out talking!! So, it takes a good 6 hours to get him to sleep and no fail no sooner than he drifts off to sleep someone has to go to the bathroom which means it'll be another 6 hours before he is asleep again!!
Lucy and Ethan do their own thing in the back. They are perfectly happy watching movies all day long!!
And Jane is so sweet. She was a good little traveler and was thrilled when any attention was given to her!
We loved visiting a lot of the museums in D.C. Here is Ethan in the natural history museum.
We loved going to the air and space museum near the airport. We especially loved seeing the spaceship. It was HUGE!!!
Here are Ethan and Lucas standing under the spaceship.
We also had fun visiting Jon and Monica and kids.
Here are all of our kids together
We had a lot of good weather but a few rainy days too. Ethan and Katie had lots of fun together while we were there. Wish we lived closer to cousins!
Here are Andy and Jim and kids in the Air and Space Museum standing by the Pioneer 10 which was the first satellite to make direct observations of Jupiter and their dad helped design it!! Cool huh?!?!?!

What does that tell you when the car Andy had growing up is found in the museum!! Hmmmm.....are we really that old?!?!?!
Katie, Ethan, Lucy, and Marc - All of the kids had so much fun playing

We got to see the world war 2 memorial which we had never seen before. It was beautiful with lots of fountains everywhere.

Andy and Lucas

Lucas, Andy, and Ethan

Lucy and Katie

Lucas looking at the elephant and the zoo

Here are my crazy cute boys!!

The kids loved riding the metro into the city.

We did lots and lots and lots of walking

Lucy and Lucas

Here are the kids in the Art Museum. Lucy and I had fun walking around looking at the art while Andy hung out with the rest of the kiddos. Lucy LOVED the art museum.

Lucas thinks he's so cool....and he is!

We had tons of fun. Thanks to Jim and Kristina for letting us stay with them!!

Happy Birthday

Well, it doesn't really matter but I forgot to post about Lucas and Ethan's birthdays. So, here are a few pictures from their birthdays. Lucas turned 3 in January and Ethan turned 6 and had a pokemon party.

A first and hopefully a last!

Last night (when Ethan was supposed to be asleep in bed) he got a Lego stuck in his nose. We've never had kids put anything in their nose. I've heard of it happening but never experienced it with my kids. No surprise that Ethan was the first to try and hopefully he will be the last! So we told him not to breathe in because we didn't want him to get it stuck up higher in his nose. But that freaked him out because he felt like he couldn't breathe so he panicked a bit and in the end I managed to get a shish-ka-bob (sp?) stick and pull out the lego. So glad we didn't end up in the ER which is where I was pretty sure we'd end up!

California here we come!!

I am happy and grateful to say we have an internship for this summer. Andy accepted an offer with Toyota in California. We look forward to spending about a month with my parents in Utah and will join Andy for the last 2 months of his internship where we will live with his mom and enjoy being close to lots of Andy's family and of course enjoy lots of time on the beach (which is just down the hill from where we will be living!) Other than our 3 day trek out there and 3 day trek back we are looking forward to this summer!!

Dory lives here....really!

Remember good old Dory from "Finding Nemo" who says one thing and within seconds forgets what she said or even what she was talking about. Well, Lucas is unfortunately deserving of the name Dory! He makes Dory comments DAILY.
This is just a sampling of some of our Dory conversations:
Lucas: Mom that's a big car
Me: Yeah Lucas you are right, that is a BIG car
Lucas: What car?
or

Lucas was laying right next to the piano
Me: Lucas can you put your gloves away please?
Lucas: Where are they?
Me: Under the piano
Lucas: What piano?

or

this is kind of a gross example but he is potty training and has not yet learned to wipe his bottom so he called me to wipe his bottom
Lucas: Do I get a treat because I did a big giant poop
Me: No, remember you don't get treats anymore for going poop but you are right it is big (sick)
Lucas: What's big?
Me: Your poop
Lucas: oh, when did I poop?
REALLY?!?!? I mean I'm standing there wiping his bottom and he's asking when he pooped? Hmmmmmm!?!??!?

So, to Lucas' credit he is not stupid and is really funny and I'm not sure if he's serious when he says these things or if he's trying to be funny! Hopefully he's just trying to be funny....but sometimes I can't believe how much he is like Dory!!

BAD WORDS

This is pretty funny! Tonight at dinner our topic of conversation somehow got onto "bad words"and it went something like this:

Ethan: Well I know what the "S" word is!
I was shocked. Why and how does he know these bad words.
Me: What is the "S" word Ethan?

His eyes got really big

Ethan: You really want me to say it?
Me: Yes. Just here one time but never again.

Ethan: unsure if he should really say it or not and finally he blurts out "STUPID"
( I was relieved to realize that was the word)

The conversation continued

Ethan: I also know the "F" word
Me: How do you know that I said in disbelief.

Hesitantly I asked what it was

Ethan: "Fat"
Me: (sigh of relief) Yeah, that's not nice to call people fat.

Ethan: I also know the "D"word and the "P" word - DUMB and POOH

The conversation continued for a little bit longer and was finally dropped. It is kind of funny when I think about it because although stupid and dumb aren't nice words I don't think we've ever discussed that these are "bad"words. I guess I'm glad these are the words they know and not others!!

Poor Baby

On Friday morning Jane woke up with a cough. I didn't think anything of it. Saturday morning her breathing was a bit labored but I didn't feel it was too bad. I ended up taking her into the doctor thinking she might have strep throat. As it turns out we were sent to the hospital because she had pneumonia! Poor girl. She was on oxygen for the first day. And I had a very interesting 33rd birthday celebrating it in the hospital with Jane. We were finally released on Monday and today she finally showed signs of getting better. Thank goodness for so many willing friends offering to help in so many ways! And thank goodness for andy who volunteered to stay in the hospital Sunday night so i could sleep at home. (I only got 3 hours of sleep the first night in the hospital and was exhausted on Sunday) Things like this make me grateful for good health. I also couldn't help but think of my friend Becky who is in and out of hospitals ALL the time with her son Ben and yet always has a smile on her face and deals with it. You are amazing Becky!

Look at those sad eyes!!