Babies Don't Keep

Janelle's scrapbooking abilities far surpass mine, but I can get by. I just finished doing this layout and although it is not my favorite kit, I love what it says. While I was doing it, Micah was sitting by me and he kept asking me who the baby was. To me that spoke volumes, babies really don't keep. I have finally gotten to Peyton's pictures in my scrapbooking and I am really enjoying doing the girlie layouts. Last night at mutual I made Mother's Day cards with my beehives and it was so much fun, they even liked it. It made me miss traditional scrapbooking for a bit, until it was time to clean up! So, on I will go with digital...

He Won!

March 28, yes, I'm a little late. Our first pinewood derby was great. Micah won in his race and in his pack. He had a lot of fun, I think mostly because his car did so well. He came up with the design and Tyler cut it out, he told me exactly how to paint it, and I painted it. After his car was finished, we got a letter sent home telling the parents to let the kids do most of the work. There's always next year. That being said, he did think of it all on his own, he just didn't execute the plan.

What a photo finish, huh?

They had a great new system that times the cars. The decorations were really cool too.


We forgot to get a picture of him with his car at the pinewood derby, so here he is, awards and car...

Thank you Deans!

About a month ago Jacob and April Dean gave us their outdoor playset. It is still in our living room but will soon be relocated to the backyard! Tyler just finished the new sprinklers and will soon be ready to lay sod, in the next 2 weeks or so. So, for now, the kids have been enjoying the slide and climbing on the structure in our front room. All of the kids that come over have loved it as well, thanks again!


Jacob and his buddy Ethan
Peyton and her betrothed, Ethan (just kidding). Isn't he looking at her so lovingly though?
This is her favorite thing to do, climb up the slide and then slide down, repeated hundreds of times.

She is really not sure about this guy

I love her reaction to this elephants movement.

All they need is a hotel

For some reason I have been putting this post off and I guess it's because I had so many pictures. Anyway, Tyler had to go out of town for work a few weeks ago, to Newport Beach, so we tagged along. The kids really don't care where we go, they get so excited just to stay in a hotel, so they 're easy to please! Our first night there we went to the original BJ's and this pic below was taken somewhere along the beach near BJ's.

Since it was Monday night we decided to take them to see the Newport Beach Temple and have a little lesson about the temple for Family Night.

You sure can't tell in these pictures because it was so dark, but the grounds were beautiful, the most beautiful temple grounds I've ever seen. Sadly it was all locked up because it was MONDAY! So, we made plans to come back during the day before we left.

I think the temple is somewhere behind us!

Our first day at the hotel the kids wanted to swim, they always want to swim. I got in for a wee bit and decided it was too cold to bring Peyton in, and it was too cold for me as well. The water is rarely too cold for the boys though.

After swimming we picked up some sandwiches from Big Belly Deli (delicious!!!) and walked down to the beach. I was really bummed because they whole beach was fenced off and there were huge tractors moving sand down to the pier. I guess it's a 6 week project to help prevent the erosion or something like that. It was really noisy and everytime they drove by the air was full of sand, so needless to say, so were our eyes. I also had these GRAND plans to build a ginormously awesome sand castle with the kids too, bummer. They were god sports about it though and still had fun in the dry sand.

It was pretty challenging to dig a hole in dry sand too, it kept wanting to fill itself back up.

We made it back to the temple during daylight hours and got to walk around the grounds this time. Miss P fell asleep in Daddy's arms and I couldn't pass up the picture.

I'm sure it's not great that we saw this, but there were several rabbits hanging out on the temple grounds, it really added to the magical atmosphere of the temple and the kids thought it was pretty great that so many rabbits were there.

Tyler had been to Rainforest Cafe before and has wanted to take us and was finally able to. I wasn't too excited about it, not that I didn't want to go, I just didn't think it would be that big a deal, so I was very pleasantly surprised. It was really neat, I had wonderful build your own fajitas, and we had a great waiter too. A guy even came over and made the kids balloon animals!

You can't see it very well, but Benji's was a snake and he had loads of fun with it. He even went behind one of the benches at another table that was being bused and poked his snake abouve the back of the bench. I think he was trying to scare the busser or something. He's a funny kid.

Micah's was probably the coolest, a monkey climbing a banana tree. I just threw it away a few days ago, so his lasted the longest by far.

Tic tac toe while we wait for our food.

About every ten minutes or so the two elephants right by our table would start stamping and snorting and doing their thing while the lights flashed and it was like thunder and lightening. Peyton thought it was really neat. Ty got her to pet the little elephant, and while she was petting it it started to move and she really didn't like that! I got a cute video of it I'll try to post next time.

This walkway was high in the air connecting two parts of the South Coast Plaza Mall. Bridge of the Gardens is its' official name. The kids thought it was very cool too, and they got to ride tons of escalators which they love. I was disgusted by the mall though, to be honest. The upper levels were jam packed with high end stores, I mean really high end stores like Versace, Dolce and Gabbana, Cartiers, Coach. The list goes on. There was also a super fancy french restaurant too.

I experienced a first with Miss P, I got to sleep with her in the same bed for a few hours, it was heaven. Micah slept in our bed all the time as a baby and with each child that happened less and less until we made it to number four and it NEVER happened, so it was pretty nice, as long as it doesn't become a habit!

The boys shared a bed which worked well, I guess they were too tired to keep each other up long.

I was worried about what I would do our last day there because checkout was 11 am and Tyler didn't get off work until 4 pm. My Aunt and Uncle live in Garden Grove which was about 15 minutes away, so Ty suggested I call and see if we could go visit with them. Aunt Troy had sugar cookies made for them to decorate and she had Uncle Ron set up their wii, so they were well entertained. It wasn't a long visit, but it was great to see them. We even got to go to my cousin's Daughter's swim meet. It was fun to see them in more of an everyday setting than at Thanksgiving or Christmas or summer vacation. I love my family and I'm so glad we got to visit with them.

Some of our pretty cookies, Thank you Troy for making our visit so special.

This is my Aunt Troy, she is kind of like a Nana to my kids. Isn't she pretty?

Although there were some disappointments and I'd rather go out of town on vacation than tagging along for Ty's work, it was a good trip and I'm glad we went.

She is such a GIRL!

March 21

From the moment she could crawl she had a love for babies. Having 3 older brothers there were no girl toys in our home until this past Christmas, but whenever I had other little girls over (the Stutzmans) and there was a doll left laying unattended, she would be there in a flash rocking that baby in her arms. I couldn't have asked for more in my only daughter. She loves clothes and dolls and hair bows and all things girlie. I am so happy to finally have a playmate. Next thing to look forward to....BARBIES!

We love animals!

March 20
We renewed our zoo membership again this year and have already used it quite a few times. My friend Denise (and my mom's friend too!) was visiting from Florida and we all went to the zoo together, Morgan, Mom, Denise, Me, Ben, Peyton and even Savannah. It was a fun day and we spend longer at the zoo than we usually do. Here are just a few of the many pictures I took.

If you ever go to the Chaffee Zoo, I recommend feeding the Giraffes. It is $3, but very worth it.
This is my friend Denise, she is awesome.
Yep, she had a great time.
This pic she was looking through the fence at a turtle, I thought she looked so cute.

We try to get a pic of the kids every year in front of the gorilla so we can see how they've grown.

For some reason I took a lot of pictures of animals this trip and I played with the color in photoshop.

If you've made it this far and you're still with me you can now have the answer to why I am often silly, strange, or off the wall. It's because of my mother, I'm sure of it now. She didn't know I was filming this. She was trying to make the noise that the Saimang monkeys make.

Can you launch loogies this far? (warning, very gross)

The other night Tyler was sitting on our bed and sneezed. I couldn't believe how far he launched this from his mouth. Our bed is at least 2 feet from our sliding glass doors and he was not on the edge of the bed! Gross I know, but I just had to share. He is well aware that I took these pictures, and I think I may have said I wouldn't post them, but I changed my mind!

Good News and Bad News.

Problem solved, but I have to remake all of my scrapbooking pages that I did yesterday. I saved them at 285 DPI, that was the highest my computer would allow. Apparently they have to be saved at 250 DPI or lower in order to look right. So here is my redone page...

One of the reasons

I look forward to General Conference is so I can sit and listen to the words of the Lord while I get to do one of my favorite things...Scrapbook! No other time can I devote 8 hours to scrapbooking! Woo Hoo, here is just one of the many pages I completed this General Conference. I am so excited because I am finally caught up to Peyton's birth and that means I get to use girlie stuff!

Not sure why the pic didn't upload correctly, any suggestions Mrs. Ehat?

They just can't stop

Peyton and Roxie (my parents dog) absolutely love to kiss each other. Peyton will crawl over to her and open her mouth for kisses. It is disgusting, and there is no stopping it.