The missing shoe is found!

April 10, 2008
Our top soil and decomposed granite has arrived. After weeks of hard work on Tyler's part, the sprinklers are done as well as the drainage system! Tyler spent so much time digging and shoveling and digging and filling in trenches and now we are ready for some new dirt! The DG, or decomposed granite is for the new pathway.






April 11, 2008 Benjamin loves helping, especially outside and in the dirt.



Can you beleive that this shoe was found?! Ben lost it in the mud during some of the digging. When Tyler was filling in the drainage trench it turned up. Even more surprising was that after I washed them, the pair is in decent enough condition to pass along to my nephews!

Now it's time to plant and lay sod, I can't wait to have a yard again!!!

Micah's first piano lesson!

Micah and Jennifer

During his lesson

Micah has been begging to take piano lesons for the last few years and we finally got him going.

He was so excited all day long. My friend Jennifer ( who I've known since elementary

school) is teaching him in her home. She has an amazing backyard, well, 3 backyards really. She

lives in between her sister-in-law's family and her brother-in-law's family and there are no

fences seperating their yards. There is a pool in the middle and a huge wooden play structure

and lots of kids and toys to play with. Jacob and Ben had a blast playing everywhere while

Micah had his lesson and Micah had fun playing after his lesson while Jennifer and I visited. She

all but had to help me pry them away when it was time to go. Thank you Jennifer for giving him lessons and for your hospitality, I hope we never overstay our welcome! After his lesson on our drive home I asked him if he liked it and he said, "Yes, but I didn't learn to read music yet." All in good time honey! He is so good about practicing and when we missed practice due to a busy schedule he made sure to double up the next day. I wish I had had as much dedication as he does.

The boys playing on the playstructure.

Family Home Evening

I gave the lesson about the printing of the Book of Mormon. We learned that the type had to be set by hand, letter by letter. They got to put just the title together letter by letter and learn how long it takes. We also learned that Martin Harris sold over 100 acres to cover the cost of the book, which was $3,000 for the first printing. I forgot how many they printed, sorry! We looked at a replica of the first Books of Mormon too, very cool, all in paragraph form and no footnotes, it looked just like a regular novel.

Zoo trip

Tyler forgot his lunch and asked if I could bring it to him, and since he works right by the zoo, I could just take the kids. He had just bought our family an annual zoo pass. I thought it was a great idea. We didn't have long though because I had to be back in time to pick Jake up from school, but it was fun. Ben ran from animal to animal and was very excited. I bought him a kid burger and we shared a Sprite, I got a jalepeno cheese stuffed pretzel and Peyton was quite happy in the stroller, as long as it was moving. I did have to sit and nurse her in front of the Sea Lion exhibit, and Ben didn't like that, he wanted to keep going. I'm looking forward to bringing the other kids and taking many zoo trips this next year.

Like I said, running from animal to animal...
Aww, posing with the "in memory of Nosey" statue. He was the elephant I remember as a kid.

The sting ray exhibit is one of my favorite. You can even feed them for $1. When we went it wasn't feeding time though, but they still will come up and suck on your hand if you put it in there, checking for food I guess! Ben couldn't reach far enough in, but I don't think he really wanted to touch them anyway.
This is one of the smaller ones, I think it was the same one that kept checking for food every time it swam around.

Posing in front of the Seal. I told him I wanted to take his picture when he was swimming by, so Ben watched and as soon as he swam by Ben turned around and said, "cheese!"



Waiting for our lunch.

In the air baby

Peyton loved Daddy putting her up in the air. We love Saturday and Sunday mornings when all the kids come to our room, it's one of my favorite times.

Jacob's Butterfly lunch

Thanks so much for this idea Jennifer. I made Jacob a butterfly sandwich and he loved it. He gets so sick of sandwiches and this really helped him enjoy his lunch, he asked if he could have one again tomorrow.

Always climbing

Ben is our busiest most active, most boyish boy. I was at the computer and I heard him say, "Mommy, can you help me down?" I went in and saw him up on the counter and snapped a few pictures. When I was done he asked me if it was ok to jump down. Mommy said, "Nope, not on the hard floor, sorry."
"Awight mommy."