Happy Birthday Boys!

I am so behind in events that I want to blog about, but I will start with this one first. Our boys turn 4 today. I am so excited to see what this next year brings with them. They are so much fun and they always keep me laughing! Because their birthday is in the middle of the week, we opted to have their party this past Saturday. We had a lot of good friends and family help us celebrate with a pirate themed party. This was by far my favorite party we have thrown for them. Not because of the theme, but because this is the first year that they actually understood it was their birthday. I was also very excited that I didn't have to open their presents for them..they did it themselves! Bonus for me.

I can not decide which pictures to post as I like most of them that were taken, so I will post all of my favorites.

The Cake..I'm sure you figured that out though. The coolest part about this cake was it is actually made of cupcakes..


The boys and their friends (Jacob, Kian, Isaac & Taylor) eating pizza

Part of the Loot..this was meant to be a pirate earing, not nose ring. It sure made me laugh, though.


I love this picture.


We were originally planning on tying this to a tree, but because it was too cold outside we had to improvise to make it work inside. I wish I would have gotten a picture of the contraption Tony made in order to get this to hang. We had a paint roller extension (another blog to be posted later) sitting in the front room. He added the roller plus 5 or 6 climbing carabineers just to get it to hang. I'm sure there was something a bit less complicated as this, but it worked out great. It didn't hurt that the boys happen to have a very tall grandpa who was nice enough to hold the stick for the 10 minutes or so it took it to break.


I love this age. I really thought that all of the boys would be fighting over who got all of the candy. There was actually some left on the floor. The boys each took a handful, put it in their bags and more less walked away.


The boys were super spoiled this year by everyone. They had so much fun opening their presents and are having even more fun trashing my house with all of them! One of the boys, Kian, actually picked up the wrapping paper and threw it away after each present was opened. It was super helpful for me and a lot of fun for him because he was helping.


This bag was HUGE. There was a present stuck at the bottom..I was actually waiting for him to dive in, but this worked too!


Taylor trying his new skates.


Isaac trying his new scooter


The boys asked if they could let some of their balloons go so Grandpa Mike could have them. I thought that was very cool and they loved watching them float up. They sure miss their Grandpa Mike!


About 35 minutes after letting the balloons go, this is what we saw out of our front door. There was actually a third one but I couldn't get the camera to pick it up as it was very faint. I have never seen a triple rainbow before. What a way to end the boys' party.

Wow, this really is a long blog. Here are a few last pictures I wanted to post. The first ones are of the boys when they were 6 days old. I can't believe how tiny they were!


Isaac. Look how tiny his little head is next to the nurses fingers!


Taylor.

And finally..one of me. I was flipping through some of my old pictures and found this. I can't believe that 4 years ago today I looked like this!



Ok, I am done now. Sorry for the long blog!

Memorial Day

Since we were unable to make it to Idaho Falls today to leave flowers for my dad for Memorial Day we decided to plant flowers for him in our front yard. The boys picked beautiful "Grandpa Mike" flowers. We miss him so much! The boys talk about him all of the time. They love to listen to The Beatles, just like their grandpa. We love him and will never forget him!!!

Here are a few pictures of the flowers the boys chose to plant for him.

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The boys' Great Grandpa Bill passed away last year also. He had a Catalpa tree growing in his front yard for years. Every time we saw a Catalpa we always thought of grandpa. So, in memory of him we planted a Catalpa Tree in our front yard. I'm so glad the boys were able to play with Grandpa Bill at the Elk's lodge while he was volunteering there. We miss and and love him!

Trip to Boise

After being in Boise for the last 5 days, it is way nice to be home and back in the swing of things. We had SO much fun visiting with my family up there. The main reason for the visit was my mom turned 50 this past Tuesday. She had a hard time with it for a bit, but I think she is OK now. I had to laugh..she woke up Tuesday morning and after she visited her MySpace page, our conversation went like this.

Mom "My page says I'm 50" (she started to cry)
Me "Oprah says that 50 is the new 30" (no reaction from her)
Me "It will be OK" (still nothing..obviously I was not sure how to comfort her)
Isaac " Grandma?"
Mom " Yes sweetie?"
Isaac " Your REALLY old!" (She busted up laughing)

I wish I would have had a camera there to capture the moment! We kept busy all weekend while we were there. We went to Chuck E. Cheese's, the Zoo, golfing and played around in her back yard. Here are a few pictures from the weekend. There are a lot of pictures, so I totally understand if you get bored and decide to close your browser!

The boys squirting the fish in the pond

Chuck E. Cheese's


This picture is for you Mike..I think it looks like something you created in one of your video's. SCARY!!


My brother, Scott

Waiting for Pizza

The three of us went golfing. Note how close the houses are to the course. Luckily, I didn't hit any houses!


This is the same tiger. The first picture was taken when the boys were less than 2 months old. I can't believe how much they have grown! (I am taking a shot in the dark that the first picture is of Taylor, but to be honest I have no idea which boy it is.)


My mom and aunt Lynn at the BBQ. And yes, my mom is wearing a crown that says Princess.

Mud Fight!

We are leaving town to poke fun and laugh at Cathy who is turning 50. Since the weather is taking a turn for the worse, and by that I mean hot, we figured it was time to turn on our sprinklers so the lawn doesn't look any worse than it does now when we get back.

Now is the part in the story where we drift backward in time a few months. When the snow all melted and we were able to go out into our mess of a back yard, we noticed that there was a hole about 8 inches in diameter and about 1 foot deep. This seemed like a strange thing to have happen until we noticed that it was right next to a sprinkler. The most immediate thought was we have a broken sprinkler pipe, crap! Never the less we decided to fill the hole with dirt, and to plant seed a bit later in the spring.

Now back to last night. Since we were going to have the sprinklers running we figured we should do our due diligence and make sure that they were all working. We turned on the water to the system and started going through them one at a time. The first two stations were just fine, but of particular importance because we are pretty sure they over watered and killed our little tree in our front yard. After a few quick observations and a short discussion about which sprinkler heads needed to be changed out, we moved on. It wasn't until we came to station 5, the last station for our small system, that we found the problem. We were all on the back deck checking out the coverage when we noticed the dirt we filled the hole with was bubbling. The immediate reaction was CRAP! So out comes the shovel and away we go down the road of sprinkler pipe repair.

The leak was not hard to find, but it was a pain to repair because it was at a T junction, and was right next to another pipe that had a sprinkler coming off of it. It took a few hours to get everything dug out, cut, put together, tested, and buried.

Now for the point of this whole blog, since we are fully aware none of you care about our sprinkler woes. While all of this was going on, our little helpers decided they wanted in on the action. Of course they have not played in mud before, so were hesitant to do so now. A little encouragement from mom and dad and they were right in there having a blast. They went from not liking mud to being more mud than skin in a short amount of time, as the picture at the top of this blog indicates. Of course there was little helping to be done, but there was lots of mud to be played with! Just so you all can see how much fun they had...and how dirty they were getting, here is a short clip of the event.

Weekend for BBQ'S

We were invited to two parties this weekend. One was a birthday party/going away party. The other was a Mother's Day shindig. Both were so much fun! Some of you who were at the parties requested pictures, so here you go.

These first ones are from the birthday party/going away party we attended on Saturday. Our really good friend Ryan and his son Xaine will be moving to Florida on Monday. We have had so many great times over the years with Ryan, so it will be hard to see him go.

Ryan and Xaine


Xaine


Wow, no kids.


Thats more like it.

Ryan..if you ever get lonely, just think about all of the good times! We will always have the Olive Garden, Tony's snap, the closet and who can forget about the trunk?! We will miss you!!!

On to party number two. We went to Tony's uncle Steve's house this afternoon for a wonderful BBQ in honor of Mother's Day. We had a great time and we were able to visit with family we haven't seen in a long time!

Annette, Mark & Mark


Yia Yia & Papou


Bruce, Rachelle, Melissa & Angela


Papou & Isaac

Odds & Ends

So things have been pretty crazy here this last week. Rather than wondering which activity to blog about, I will give highlights on our week so far.

First on my list was to pull the weeds from our yard. We seem to be having a HUGE dandelion problem this year. After 2-3 bottles of weed-b-gone and 3 hours of literally pulling them out of the ground, our yard finally looks almost normal. I couldn't believe the weed pile so I decided to take a picture to share.

I met up with my good friend Trish and her kids at the local park on Tuesday. It was a lot of fun and I even ran into an old friend of mine, Alisa Grover. We had great weather and the boys came home and slept for almost three hours! It was wonderful!

(This was the best picture of these two that I could get. This is Isaac and Kian)

We registered the boys for preschool on Wednesday. I am excited for them, but sad at the same time. I hope they do OK. They said it would be best to separate them into different classes. They are SO attached to each other, so it should be interesting when they start.

I have been cleaning the house for the past few days and I now feel like I need to post a picture of our room. This is just to redeem myself from a blog I posted a few weeks back. I finally got all of the laundry folded!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And finally, Tony gave me an early Mother's Day present!! I got to pick out a few planters. I was so excited as I haven't done much in the flower department for the last few years. I think they are so beautiful so I just had to share.

Family Football Pool Unity At Last!!!