What's Happening In Our Neck Of The Woods

Okay, so I know this is more of a true winter this year but COME ON!!! I have decided to turn up my heat to 85 degrees and put on my bathing suit, call some friends and have a Hawaiian party or something to make it feel like spring!! I am soooooo in need of some warmth and sunshine!! It just can't make up it's mind .....one day snow(like today again-3 inches) and then 2 days later 54 degrees!! Anyone else ready for Spring/Summer?? I might just have to go visit Kim in Chile!!



Oh and one more thing.... If you want to get some free ring tones for your phones go check out Phonezoo.com , it's totally free except the text message charge to send the tones. There are some cute, weird, funny, and just plain bizarre ones on there! ( See what happens when you done get out much!! :) ) You can also create your own! Enjoy!

Easter was a little different this year. Keeley was sick so the Easter Bunny didn't come until late Sunday evening after Jarrin called the Easter Bunny ( Brad in a funny voice) and asked why he hadn't come yet. We wanted to wait a day or so until Keeley was better since they didn't really know what day Easter was( or so we thought) which is why Jarrin called the Bunny!!

We started off with the baskets and then I painted the eggs on there tummies which if you look further down the page you'll know why! They didn't want to get left out!!

So this is the finishing of Easter today because Keeley felt a lot better and could actually enjoy it! We dyed eggs and put stickers on them!! This was the first time for them . They loved it!!
This is Brad's artwork on my prego belly!! It was so fun watching how intensely perfect he wanted to be. This was impossible with the baby rolling around and kids jumping on the bed to see and telling Daddy he was doing a great job! It was a great way to make our unborn child a part of Easter decorating this year!! :)
This is what it looked like out of the Easter grass and eggs!! It was funny!! It's was even funnier looking at it thinking to myself " I can't believe thats my belly!!"

It was a great 2 day Easter. Not to mention that Jarrin and Keeley the whole two days kept reminding everyone that the most important thing about Easter was Jesus and that he died for us so we could be together forever with Heavenly Father, Jesus and our Family!! It's great to know that what you teach them actually sticks with them! Sometimes you wonder!?! I hope everyone else had a Happy Easter also!

This was Jarrin's requested cake this year mostly due to the cake set of towers and such for a princess cake, that also pictured a really cool " boy castle"on the box, that Grandma White had given to me for Christmas. I was trying to figure out for the longest time how to do this w/o using the fondant for decorating that it showed on the box( which I think is horrible tasting, not to mention difficult and time consuming to work with) when I thankfully remembered about that cool "rock candy"! I was saved! Oh and never get the pre-made squeezable frosting in the soft tubes( I used it for the blue mote) it is beyond yuck tasting!! The knight set was at Micheal's which also helped!! Jarrin loved it and it turned out better than expected.
The boys at the party thought this was the coolest part. The knight vs. dragon fight!!
I thought Jarrin was old enough to have a little tease with the candles this year!! He blew the trick candles out and sat in confusion when they lit back up! :) Blew them out again and then....
His friends by the 3rd and 4th time were in hysterics and Jarrin and his friends blew with all their might !! I was well pleased with my decision!! It was a huge hit! Brad then proceeded to take the candles out before we ended up with a cake fun of saliva spray!!
The kids all got homemade knight armor( Silver plastic tablecloth cut in sections with a hole for their heads and a printed animal crest on the chest! ) It was fun, we just used duck tape to make the belt around the armor to keep it on!! My mother-in-law told Jarrin she really liked his costume and Jarrin said "THANKS NANA .....I'M A NIGHTMARE!!!!" We all lost it!! It took all night to remind him he was a Knight , not a nightmare!!!

It was all around a great party, but Oh BOY! these things get crazier every year older they get!! The moment the kids showed up it was a running, balloon bashing race around the house, and up and down the stairs! Good thing Keeley's birthday is in the summer!! EVERYONE OUTSIDE and have fun!!

Jarrin's Birthday is also the first day of Spring!! As you can tell Spring is not as close as we all thought up here!! We got 3 inches of snow that day and 5 the next! Happy Spring Birthday Jarrin!!
We had a mini family party for Jarrin on his Birthday because his Nana and Papa Brown took him to dinner. So he opened up his presents from us and went on his way! He loved his rake and shovel, his outdoor lizard bench, and Daddy had to get his own goose call and fishing tackle box!!
Keeley also likes the bench, which is why we got it! It wouldn't be any fun with 1 chair!!
This is part of the load of gifts from Nana and Papa who took him shopping after dinner for his birthday. 1 of my favorite gifts he got with the money sent to him from his "Auntie Pat" from England, was his child safe digital camera. It is really cool that they have things like that. Jarrin takes a lot of pictures. What's even better is that he uses his own now and not mine !! It's only 2 mega pixels but for a 5 year old WHO CARES!! :) He just loves the fact that it's his own, and so do I!!!
We asked Jarrin what he wanted his Birthday dessert and we were giving options like pies and ice cream, because I was making his Birthday cake for his party the next day, and it threw me off when he said " Fruit Salad". Jarrin loves fruit salad and that's pretty apparent when he asks for it for his Birthday dessert over everything else, but there was now way I was going to argue with that!! So this is a picture of his fruit salad birthday dessert, with a candle to blow out of course, in a piece of strawberry!!! :)

I am so very excited that I only have a few more weeks of this big belly thing! I can't believe I posted a picture of it either! Oh well I know I am not the only one that feels like a big balloon the last few weeks of pregnancy!

I had the funniest conversation with Jarrin about my belly, he usually calls it my basketball tummy, but in this conversation it was my "fat tummy" and for a little background on the conversation, Brad and I take turns putting a child to bed, one night it's Mom and Jarrin / Dad and Keeley and then we switch the next night so each of our kids get very personal time with us! They love it and so do we, but when I put Jarrin to bed he always wants to cuddle and he has to move way over for me to fit on his bed now with a baby in my tummy. So the conversation goes like this...

Jarrin: Mommy I love you so much, I want to marry you and you can have lots of fat tummies for me for LOTS of babies with me!

Me: Well I love you too but Daddy already has me so you have to marry someone else

J: Then I'll marry Keeley!

M: Jarrin, you can't marry people in your family. It has to be someone outside your family.

J: Why?... You married Daddy and he's our family! ( that got me giggling!)

M: Yes, he's family now but my family use to only be my Mom and Dad and all my Sisters and Daddy had just Nana and Papa, then at a church dance we met and said ooohhh you're cute and fun then we thought we should go have dinner and we had fun and we liked each other so much we decided that we should get married in the Temple and then 2 years later we had you! So we are family now and you have to meet a good girl outside of the family and marry in the Temple and then have babies with her!

J: Well I just don't want a girl to sleep in my bed!

M: That's great...until you get married in the Temple, then you can share your bed with a girl.

J: But Mom, if I get married in the Temple and my wife has a fat tummy like you, we won't have room in my bed for her fat tummy.

M: Well,( I couldn't help giggling so hard by now) you don't always have to have a small bed
like this one. You can buy a big bed like Dad and I have so you both can fit in the bed even
if your wife has a fat belly.

J: I just think she'll have to sleep in her own bed so I have room.

M: Okay hunny, whatever you think right now is just fine with me, but you'll change your mind after you get married in the Temple.

J: Maybe I will...


I love the things a 4 year old thinks of! I know this came up because of the lack of room in his twin bed with me cuddling with him!! He's such a mush though and he still insists on having me cuddle even if there is a belly in the way! Oh the conversations I'd have if I had a tape recorder running all the time!

Well with the temps up here in the high 40s - Low 50s, it looks as if Spring might be creeping up soon! We had a morning that the sun was shining and it felt so good to just sit on the porch and soak it all in!! It felt so good the kids and I hung outside for a few hours and Brad joined and decided to play with what snow we would have left and throw it around, mostly by the shovel fulls and the kids would run under it yelling "it's raining snow"!! It was fun, but as much as the snow makes it so beautiful here, I really am a summer girl!! I've decided the sun fuels my body with so much more energy and happiness. This dream of Brad's moving to Alaska( Mr. I boil up in heat if it's 60 degrees or warmer) is impossible being married to me, poor guy, and of coarse my dream of living where it is 80 degrees or warmer all year around is impossible being married to him. So I guess Idaho is a good compromise for us!

Well I guess I've been tagged for this. We aren't big nickname givers due to the fact that our kids have told us numerous times" That's not my name....My name is Jarrin...or....My name is Keeley!" So we have a few that are tolerated! :)

Brad

B-Love
Babe
Hun
The Bull
Daddyo
Dad, Dada

Eleasha

Honey Bunny-when I was little
Leash, Leasha (Don't like this one, but friends call me it) Blah
Mom, Mommy, Mama

Jarrin

Handsome pants
Buddy
Cutie
Love Bug

Keeley

Kiwi (Jarrin called her this when he was little, he couldn't say the L's)
My Angel (Dad)
YaYa (when Keeley got upset as a baby she would yell this)
Cutie Patootie
Cutie
Lynnbug

So there it is! I can't tag anyone because everyone that I know has already done it!!

I love that my kids have gotten so very creative lately!

They got the mattress for the toddler bed( that we don't use) And decided to take it down the stairs! They had so much fun and considering it was a mattress, pretty safe. This was probably one of the only times I will ever say that I really wished we had a much longer straight staircase!! It was so fun watching them and remembering that my sisters and I had that same fun by taking many different things to slide down the staircase with, blankets, pillows, sleeping bags , anything that would slide, and get that same thrill!! So I loved seeing that same excitement I had when I was young!!

I had an appointment with the Midwife on Tuesday in Spokane and we don't like to waste gas for a 30 min appointment so we always make a trip of it and go bait the ducks and geese in with bread at the pond in Manito Park! There are usually a lot more but since the pond is mostly frozen there was only a few but the kids always love to see and feed them. Of course a lot of that has to do with their Duck and Goose Hunting Dad! We even saw a goose that was double banded! It isn't very common but it is a big deal when hunting if you get a bird with a band. The bands around their leg or neck is put on them to track the migration patterns for conservation and for learning. They mark where they banded them and when you hunt and get a banded bird you call in and tell them where the end was, that way they know the flight patterns and can create better marshes, ponds and lakes for breeding and living. It's actually pretty cool! The kids loved to see that goose also, but still not as much as Brad!!!!