The End of Another School Year

The end of the school year always gets busy but it is exciting to get ready for summer.

 Kate and Emily's ballet group performed Thumbelina.  Kate was a minnow and Emily a dragonfly.

 Emily completed Kindergarten - Hello 1st Grade!

 Andrew graduated from elementary school.  I hope the Middle School is ready for him.

 Mack and Natali earned lots of awards and Natali said goodbye to Middle School.

More Birthdays

Andrew celebrated his 11th birthday with his traditional cinnamon rolls and Sour Skittles although this year he ate them separate; a good change.  He graduated from Cub Scouts and received his Arrow of Light Award.  

Andrew's favorite thing about church is all the babies.  He knows every baby's name and is always trying to smile at them.  He loves the primary leaders who let him hold their babies.  I think those leaders are smart - he is much more reverent while holding a baby.

 For his Christmas present he and Greg drove to Hell's Canyon and took a river boat ride.  He had to wait several months but it was worth it; they had a blast.  I love this, "The sun is in my eyes!" picture.

 For Greg's birthday this year he made himself dutch oven peach and mango cobbler and I made ice cream.  A win for everyone.

It Birthday Time

Kate's 9th birthday.  Chocolate Mousse Cheesecake from Cheesecake Factory was fabulous.  She requested a violin but I couldn't find a good deal so I encouraged her to wait till school was over.  By the time we got back around to the violin she had changed her mind and picked out a bicycle.  The only girl bike we could find that wasn't pink.  No pink for that girl.

 Natali turned the big 14 and has started to go to stake dances.  Crazy!

 Emily got to have the Wilfords over for her 6th birthday party with rainbow cake.  The cake was supposed to be a rainbow jellyroll cake but the cake broke into a million pieces and so we turned it into a rainbow trifle cake.  Luckily, Emmy was thought it was still great.  Love that girl.

This party was held before her birthday because she spent her birthday in Yellowstone looking for moose.

 Our birthday girl- hiking in the rain on her birthday.  I love hikes like this - everything points to failure (i.e. hiking in the rain with 6 kids) but they had a blast and worked together to keep each other cheerful.

 This skeleton on the trail did cause a little drama but we did a goo job of distracting them on the way back so they forgot all about it.

The lake at the end of the journey - love these guys!

She's 3

For her birthday we played her favorite game, pretend you are an animal.  She has given herself a name for each type of animal game we play-- "Pillow" the cat, "Emily" the dog, "Squeak" the dolphin, and "Snip Snap" the turtle.   I love that she is so consistent with these names.  If she comes up to me and "meows" I know she is Pillow.  She never wavers from these self imposed names.

Her neighbor and buddy came over with a gift of bubbles and stickers.  Immediate joy and entertainment.  I love the simple pleasures of kids.  The best part was that Lily said thank you, unprompted, 10 or more times.

 About 5 minutes before making her cake I luckily figured out that the kitty cake she had been talking about for months was actually a Unikitty cake.  Glad I figured that out when I did.  The unfortunate part was that Unikitty is way harder than plan old kitty, but she was so happy when it was done - all worth it.

Lily loves to be on the counter and we had a bit of a run around night so in the midst of dinner, presents and cake she settled into her favorite spot and opened all her presents right on top of the counter.

For her birthday Kate and I sewed her some new bedding.  I tried hard to copy the feel of her favorite blanky in an attempt to make one long enough to cover her growing body since she won't use any other blanket.  Miracle of Miracles she actually likes it and uses it every night.  It made me so happy.  

Here she is with her new bedding and all her "guys" as she likes to call her beanie boo stuffed animals.  She has a growing herd of them since that is all her siblings can think to give her for every holiday or generous moment.

I love this beautiful brown eyed girl.  She makes me so happy everyday. 

To Disneyland We Go

Emily has been begging to go to Disneyland but that is not high on our family destination list.  All the older kids have been and she wanted her turn so for Christmas we gave her a trip to Disneyland.  She and I flew down to San Diego the end of January where Greg's sister hosted us.  Emily and her cousin spent an entire day at Disneyland.  We got there at 9am and left the parking lot at 10:30pm.  We had such a blast.

 The pictures aren't great but they will help her remember...

 I'm loving the Dole Whip and she preferred her Milk Duds (they were our waiting in line distraction and worked like a charm)

 One of our favorite parts was stumbling onto this Frozen show just as it was starting.  It made us both laugh.

 Our longest line of the day was to see Minnie's House.  The girls didn't even want to see Minnie - just the house, but we stood in line for 40 minutes.  But it was worth it to them because they loved Minnie's place.

 Her cousin was not so sure about this ride so we skipped it but Emmy still wanted to pose on the car.

 Half way through the day the girls got brave enough to ride next to each other instead of by their mamas- so fun.

 Waiting for the night parade...

 I had never stayed for the night parade before - so amazing.  We both loved it.

 Dumbo

 They were asleep before we left the parking lot.  A long fun day.  Her favorite rides were Tea Cups, Star Tours, Pirates of the Caribbean,  Buzz Lightyear and Nemo's Submarine - in that order.  She strongly disliked Thunder Mountain Railroad but loved everything else we tried.  

The next morning the girls just played for awhile before heading to the annual celebration of the Mormon Battalion reaching San Diego.  They had several different booths set up where the kids could do pioneer things.  Her cousin lent her a pioneer dress and they had such a blast doing things like...

 Making rag dolls,

 Writing with ink and quill,

 Cooking biscuits over coals (she did this twice- they were quite yummy),

 Washing socks,

and going for a wagon ride with some other cousins that met us there.  

From there we headed to the airport, endured a two hour delay and arrive home at 12:30pm.  We were both exhausted but it was such a wonderful trip.  I loved being able to spend time with my sister-in-law's and just hang out with my Emmy.  She is such a cheerful girl, I love making her smile- and she smiled a lot on this trip!