Spring Break Repeat

The kids were on Spring Break the past week.  We have been dying to get out of town ever Mike got finished with his busy time at work. One of the nice things about living where we do is that there are quite a few places we can drive to in a few hours.  Last year we went to Dallas for Spring Break, and we liked it so much that the kids voted to go there again.  Once again we had a great time. We headed down on Thursday morning.  We got there and checked into our hotel. Then we went to the King Tut exhibit at the Dallas Museum of Art. There was a lot of really neat artifacts, and Megan was excited to see some of the stuff since she has learned about Egypt in Social Studies. Sammy and Noah did remarkably well there, even though they didn't have a lot of interest in what we were looking at.  

After the museum we headed to the kids favorite restaurant-Sweet Tomatoes! They loved going there when we lived in Utah, but we don't have one nearby anymore.  

On Friday we headed out to do some serious shopping.  We started at Bass Pro Shop, a place we thought Noah would enjoy.  Then off to the mall.  We pulled off a 7 hour shopping trip, with a break in the middle to go see Monster vs. Aliens.  

What 7 hours of shopping does to a kid!

Then to dinner at a place that Mike and I wanted to go - Pei Wei.  We finished our trip Saturday with a trip to the American Girl store for Sammy.  

There are a couple of other things we would have liked to do, but the weather was quite cold, so we will save it for next time.   

A Little Catch-up

I haven't had anything very interesting to blog about recently, so I thought I could just recap what we have been up to these last few weeks.  Noah finally started tee-ball practice a couple of weeks ago. He has been looking forward to it all winter long.  Unfortunately he was sick the first day of practice, but nothing would stop him from going.  Thank goodness for medicine!

A couple of weekends ago, Megan and I decided to go to the Twilight DVD release party at Borders for our mother/daughter date this month.  It was a kind of a strange scene.   I like Twilight, but I realize that I'm nothing like the die-hards that were there.  I wasn't brave enough to take pictures of them. They had trivia contests, and I can't believe the type of details that people remember from the books and movie.  They also had a scavenger hunt with Twilight questions. We actually did pretty well on that. It was a late night since they couldn't start selling the movie until midnight.  I exercised some poor judgement around 11:15.  There were a lot of people there, and I was thinking that it would take forever to pay for the movie once it was midnight since they don't have many registers.  So I talked Megan into going over to Walmart where they were also have a release party. When we got there, we realized that there were even more people there, the line wrapped around the store, and it would probably take even longer to get through it than it would at the bookstore.  So we got back in the car and headed back to Borders.  Of course during the time we were gone, they had let them line up there, so we were at the end of the line.  It went fast though, and we were home by 12:30. Megan wanted me to stay up and watch the movie when we got home, but I was too tired.  I'm not the night owl I used to be.  I'm getting old I guess.  

The end of the line

Patiently waiting

Finally got it!

12:45 - Ready for bed!

We finally decided to get a Wii Fit.  The kids have been playing on it so much, that Mike and I have hardly been able to try it out.

When did this happen?

After the thousands of dollars we spent at the orthodontist for Megan's teeth, they decided to reward us by giving her a gift certificate to go and have a portrait session done.  The photographers were really great, and it was fun watching her have the pictures taken.  But nothing prepared me for what I saw when we got the pictures back. My first baby, my little girl, she is all grown up!  I wonder when I missed this happening.  I feel like I have been there, watching her every step of the way.  I sometimes wish that I could squish my kids back down to babies again.  The days seem to go by so fast that it often seems like a blur.  Today I went visiting teaching.  The message this month was on Understanding the Divine Roles of Women. I laughed at the title because most days I don't feel like my role is anything close to divine.  I really loved the quote in the message by Julie Beck.  In it she says, "The half of our Father's plan that creates life, that nurtures souls, that promotes growth, that influences everything else was given to us.  We can't delegate it.  We can't pass it off to anyone.  It's ours.  We can refuse it, we can deny it, but it's still our part, and we're accountable for it.  There will come a day when we will all remember what we knew before we were born.  We will remember that we fought in a great conflict for this privilege."  I love that last sentence.  That is the piece of the mothering puzzle that I forget most everyday.  I fought for the privilege to be a mother, so I need to do all I can to be the best mother I can be.  When I look at these pictures of my beautiful Megan, I realize that there's no time to lose.  I have to do my best now because they grow up too quickly, and I don't want to look back and realize it's too late.  I love my kids so much, and I'm so grateful that I get to be their mother.

A Big, Icy Mess

So, for our friends and family outside of Arkansas, we had a big ice storm here on Monday night and Tuesday.  It left things an icy mess, so we have been hermits in our house for 4 days now. We got out and drove around a bit yesterday, and the roads were terrible.  They just can't seem to clear them the way they do in Utah.  And the drivers here are crazy! School had now been cancelled for 4 days, which will have to be made up at the end of the school year.  We are all getting a little stir crazy.  Mike got to stay home from work for 2 days, which was nice since we haven't hardly had him around for the past 3 months.  We lost power for about 5 hours on Tuesday night, and were grateful it didn't last longer.  To stay busy we have been watching T.V. and movies, playing the Wii, playing outside in the snow, playing with friends, playing games, and doing a puzzle.  We are hoping it melts over the weekend so that the kids will be back to school on Monday. I need a break!

Keep in mind as you look at our pictures that it looks like snow, but is actually ice.

Our Christmas

I guess I better post about our Christmas before next Christmas rolls around. We had a great Christmas this year.  We stayed home, and didn't have any family come to visit, so we just enjoyed the holiday by ourselves.  Mike has been in the midst of his busy time at work, but was able to get a couple of days off, which was so nice.  Christmas eve was quiet - we had a nice ham dinner that we ate on our china.  We read some stories, the kids opened their new jammies, and we tried to send them off to bed. But because Noah took pre-dinner nap, it was midnight before all were asleep. I think he had just barely fallen asleep in time for Santa to make his visit (we were afraid he would have to skip us because he was still awake).  Samantha was awake by 7:00, but we kept sending her back to bed until 8:00.  The kids were all so excited about the gifts Santa left them. Megan got the purple Ipod she has been wanting so badly.  Sammy got a new American Girl doll - Julie Albright.  Noah got a slot car set that he can do with his dad.  We then started opening the presents under the tree.  We were actually able to stretch that out so that we didn't finish opening presents until around 3:00.  The kids would open a few presents, then we would stop for awhile so that they could play.  Then we would would start again after a little while.  It was fun to make it last all day.  Later in the afternoon we went over to some friend's house for dinner.  They just moved into our neighborhood from Boise, and we are so excited to have them here.  We had a fun night eating and playing games.  It was such a nice day, and we were so sad when it was all over. 

I'm not sure what happened, but our attempt at photographing the events of this Christmas was PITIFUL!  It seemed like we were taking lots of pictures, but somehow only managed to get 10. Of course I'm kicking myself now. Maybe I'll hire a photographer next year.

Parties, Piano recitals & Choir concerts

My title pretty much sums up the month of December.  It seems like there were 3-4 events and activities every week.  Each one of them are what makes the holidays so fun, but also so hectic and stressful.  

Sammy was able to perform in her first piano recital.  She has been taking piano since September, and is making so much progress.  She has started to memorize her songs so that she doesn't have to look at her music.  Over the Christmas break she started to sit down at the piano and plink out notes without using sheet music until she figured out a couple of Christmas songs.  I think she has real talent (of course I am biased).  Here is a video of her piano recital performance.

I should probably mention that Megan was supposed to play in the recital as well, but got the stomach flu and wasn't able to be there. Too bad because her songs really sounded great, and she was excited to play them.

We also had the opportunity to go to Megan's winter choir concert at school.  She is in the Women's choir this year.  We weren't sure what to expect other than what we saw in her choir concerts when she was in middle school.  This concert totally blew us away.  I couldn't believe how good each choir was.  The music was really beautiful, and it was so neat to see Megan performing in such a great program. I hope she continues her interest in singing.

We went to so many fun parties.  I think I counted 2 school, 3 church, and 4 friend parties all within the month of December. Unfortunately, I only have pictures from Noah's school party. We even squeezed in a Saturday family trip to Branson (no pictures of that either).  It was a very busy, but fun month.

Sammy's Birthday

I am finally back from my blogging vacation!  Things were so busy from mid November on that I had to put blogging on the back burner. Now that I am back, I have some catching up to do!  

At the end of November, Samantha turned 7 years old.  For some reason, her going from 6 to 7 was a big deal to me - it seemed so old!  I remember her birth very clearly.  The night she was born we had a big snow storm in Salt Lake.  Fortunately, we were already at the hospital when it started.  Sadly, it made visitors quite scarce, so we got lots of time alone with her.  We had a hard time choosing a name for her.  We had 2 names we really liked, but when I called her those names, it didn't feel right.  Finally, as I was getting ready to check out, a lady for the birth certificate office told me I need to fill out the certificate before I could leave.  Mike wasn't there at the time, so I called him and asked him how he liked Samantha.  It was a name we had thrown out earlier on, but never really made the list.  I thought it felt right when I called her it, and Mike gave his okay.  

Sammy was such a happy and funny baby.  She always had a mischievous look to her, like she was up to no good.  We loved how different she looked from the rest of us - her hair was quite blondish-red, and her eyes were very blue.  Mike likes to call her the mailman's daughter.  It was fun for me because when I had her, Megan was in kindergarten, so I got lots of time to myself with Sammy.  It was like having my first child again, but with the experience of already having one. Megan was thrilled to finally have a younger sibling, and quickly took the role of the second mother (she hasn't given that role up yet).  Sammy has gotten a little shy as she has gotten older, but has such a great sense of humor, and is a really great teaser - especially with Megan.  She is also a quick learner, and very smart.  She is quite sensitive and tender hearted - the tears turn on easily. 

For her birthday this year she got the added treat of having Grandma and Grandpa and Uncle Michael here visiting from California.  We had a lot of fun on her birthday.  She went on a shopping spree at Justice, played at Chuck E Cheese, had dinner at Pizza Hut, and came home to open presents and have cake and ice cream.  For her birthday she got an Ipod Shuffle, an 

Itunes gift card, Justice gift card (for the shopping spree), American Girl doll clothes, and a Webkin.  It was a great day.  She can hardly wait until her next birthday when she can get her ears pierced and be baptized!