Happy Birthday, Joanna!

My darling sister, Joanna, turns 30 today! I am so grateful for my relationship with her, where we can share our joys, frustrations, recipes, tricks, and ideas about anything! When I asked my kids what they wanted to do in Utah, they said "Go to JoJo's house!" She makes them feel so loved and appreciated! Thanks for being my sister, and loving my family so much!

Picnic at the FDR Memorial

I feel so blessed to be able to look across the river and see THIS! We were walking to the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Monument last night for a picnic, and the sun was shining so beautifully on the Jefferson. Can you believe that we live here?

As you can see in the background, the blossoms are so beautiful! Talk about popcorn on the trees. It's amazing, though, because the Cherry Blossoms around the Tidal Basin are completely gone! I'm thankful that Heavenly Father timed the blossoms to come out at different times, so that we could enjoy them for even longer!

The kids trying to get a drink at the same time! They got laughing so hard, and I had to grab a picture. The FDR Memorial is so amazing! I think it might be my favorite one! So many wonderful quotes and beautiful rock everywhere! They spare no expense when creating these memorials, and rightfully so. I"m so glad we could come down and have a picnic at such an amazing place

Hard to capture, but the sunset was absolutely incredible. The weather was just perfect too. No coats, no humidity, no wind, just the kind of weather that you don't even think about! Mindy and Jeff have now arrived in Utah and we are only 10 days behind them. It will be so fun to be together for Jesse's wedding! We can hardly wait!

Y is for Yellow!

What a perfect day to talk about the color Yellow! The boys had a great time painting with their lemons. We played with yellow buses, cars, dump trucks, yellow blocks, yellow bean bags and even had a taste test of...

Lemons! These boys are so cute! They just don't expect it to be that sour, and so they chomp right into it, and the reaction is...

PRICELESS!

Clark was faking this face a bit, but he chomped right into it again and again! This has been a great day, and these boys have so much fun together! Now, I need to get outside! Mr. Sun is calling my name!

Happy 6th Birthday to our sweet Faith!

These are our friends, "Big" Rachel and Shiloh - they joined us for cake and ice cream on Monday night, because Faith was sick on her real birthday, Sunday.

Faith is known as "Hannah Montana" at school. She is the only caucasian girl in her class, and so the cute little Hispanic girls ask her to take out her ponytails and shake her hair around. They make a show at recess and sing her songs -Faith is telling me this as I type. I had no idea she knew any of her songs. So, because we were only having a family party, I decided to indulge Faith with this giant picture of Miley Cyrus. Believe me, though. We will NOT be paying $2000 or sleeping out to get tickets for her anytime soon!

We gave Faith some "magic" candles, but I'm not sure she liked it. They kept re-lighting!

Here's Clark and Faith helping with the cake. They put Reeses Pieces all over and Faith decided when we had put on enough! It looked just perfect to her, and that's all that mattered!

A beautiful day!

Here's Faith wearing Clark's jean jacket, but I thought she looked adorable. She doesn't often share her 'real' smile for long, so I took advantage of our little photo shoot.

Clark would only do silly faces, but he's cute even looking like this!!

Hey, that's me! I'm not in very many shots, so I was glad that Andrew would click one of Johnny on my shoulders. Family time is PRICELESS, and I'm so grateful to my sweet Andrew who gets us out the door, despite the mile-long "to-do" list that never seems to get done. I love being outside with my children!

Kite flying!

On Saturday morning, Faith and I went out to breakfast to celebrate her birthday, and then we all drove to Hains Point to fly our kites.
It was the most fun kite-flying experience we've ever had, because the wind would take the kite RIGHT up without any effort!

The blossoms were beautiful and the weather was very pleasant, although it WAS a little windy! (wink)

John loved to hold the kite, but "accidentally" let go many times, which led us on a wild kite chase that he enjoyed watching probably more than anything else!

I couldn't help but capture some pictures of my beautiful girl and the cherry blossoms! Once you see these blossoms, you know what "Popcorn Popping" really means!

This is what happens...

when my kids listen to "Ice Ice Baby"! We were cleaning up my room (Daddy was working late tonight), and Faith turned on Vanilla Ice, and the kids...

turned into rappers! I did not tell them how to wear their hats, what faces to make - this was all them! I could hardly hold the camera still, they were making me laugh so hard!

Then, Johnny wanted to join in, so he grabbed a hat, and posed! They were dancing like rappers, and I couldn't get over it. Grant asked me "Do some people dance all day for their job?" When I said YES, he quickly replied "That's what I want to do, because I'm really good at it!"

April Fool's!

Let me preface these pictures by telling you what we did to Andrew this morning. First, we put an elastic around the squirter on the kitchen sink, so when he turned it on at Breakfast, he got soaked. Then, when he was in the shower, we soaked him 4 times with VERY cold water! The kids and I were laughing SO hard, we could barely stand up!

Tonight, I knew Andrew was up to something when he started some ridiculous story about a man who built his house out of ice cream (bringing one container out at a time as he tells the story). The story continued...'When the man finished the tower, he said "Happy April Fool's Day" and Andrew put a plate full of Cool Whip in my FACE!

Next was Grant. I told him to bring the ice cream into the kitchen, and when he rounded the corner, SPLAT! He got a pie in the face! He was a great sport about it and we all laughed REALLY hard!

And then it was Clark's turn...

After Daddy got Mommy, Mommy got Daddy and we all got Grant, we asked the other kids if they wanted a "pie in the face". Faith screamed "NOOOOOOOOOO!" Clark and John both said no, but Clark quickly changed his mind and said "Yeah, yeah, yeah!" So,

I got the honors, while Daddy snapped the shot

and here's our smiling boy AFTER! He's such a good sport - what a great April Fool's Day!