Even a little can make a BIG difference

Many of you know my good friend and neighbor Julie.  Her brother Kerry was in a horrible ATV accident that has left him a paraplegic.  He is the father of 4, 2 of which are on missions.  If you want to help click on the button on the right to go to a blog that is hosting the online sale with all proceeds going to Kerry's family.  They are also holding a yard/bake sale on the 1st of May.  Go to Julie's blog for details on that.  Thanks for anything you can do :)

We Throw Grandma a Surprise Party!

 Grandma is the party master, but we also have a few tricks up our sleeve! We invited Grandma down to "play" and surprised her with a decorated door, homemade pizza, and presents! We had so much fun!

Random

Chris had taken to calling Andrew "the Black Ninja".  On Saturday he dressed him all in black.  I'm not sure if he came up with this new name all on his own, or it is because we have been using our "ninja" blender we got for Christmas all the time.  (by the way, the Ninja Blender is AMAZING!)

While Ben and Kallie were inside swimming we had to take the black ninja outside to run around.  He was not happy being cooped up inside the rec center and not being able to swim.  We went out to the track and he starting RUNNING.  It was so cute!  We walked/ran the whole track once, then he was on to bigger and better things.  Like trying to open any car he could get close enough to before Chris or I headed him off!  

Ben and Kallie's first day of swmming lessons...again.  They are becoming quite the little swimmers!

And lastly, I'm pretty sure she is much to young to be practicing flirting looks!

The Shiner

For the life of me I can't get blogger to do what I want it to do!  So please excuse how all these pictures are out of order!  The picture above is day 3 (and in case there is a question, no, those are NOT Ben's real teeth).  The picture below is day 2.

(The above picture is day 5 of the black eye...it now has a green tint, with a little bit of purple mixed in)

Wednesday night while I was on the phone with my sister Shelley, Kallie came running in and told me Ben had a headache.  To be honest, I didn't think much of it and kept talking to Shel.  I happened to turn around a few minutes later and saw Ben on the couch curled up crying.  I quickly got off the phone with Shel and ran over to Ben, feeling horrible!  When I finally was able to remove his hand from his face, his very swollen, bluish blackish eye was starring back at me.  I grabbed a cold cloth and put it on his head.  It was a doozy!

Since I didn't see what happened, this is according to Kallie with a little Ben mixed in.  Jake and Ben were running around our neighbors new shed when they ran into eachother.  The hit on Ben's eye and Jake's forehead.  Ben got a black eye....and Jake got a goose egg on his forehead.

Ben loved the attention he got at school and from everyone who saw him.  I have to admit I was just praying someone didn't think I had done that to Ben!  When we went to his dentist appointment on friday everyone was looking at his eye, but not bringing it up or asking about it.  Finally I couldn't take it anymore and happened to bring it up in our conversation and had Ben tell the story.  I could see the tension leave and we talked and laughed about it.

Mother Nature has a sense of humor

Last week we had a beautiful day so we had to make the most of it and get out to the park!  It was sunny, beautiful, warmish, and just so refreshing!  The kids had so much fun playing on the playground, especially Andrew and little J.  I'm not sure they can ever remember even playing on the slides last year!  They were all smiles and giggles.

I love these shots of J and little J!  J was spinning with little J and little J was loving it!  It was so adorable!

(The picture is supposed to be one up)

Our park trip came to an end when it started it get a little windy and we felt a few raindrops.  We held out for as long as we could, but finally had to admit defeat and head home.  Apaarently we weren't fast enough because we got caught in some pretty "fun" rain on our walk home.  Poor Andrew, he was crying the whole way home and I didn't take the time to stop and see what was going on.  When we got home and I finally got him out his little hands were ICE cold!  We got all wrapped up in a blanket and snuggled on the couch and a few minutes later he was starting to defrost.  He did take a great nap that day :)

Now, this is what we woke up to the next morning....

I thought for sure we were done with snow.  I was so confident that I actually packed up all our snow stuff and put it all away.  It felts so wonderful to get all that junk out of my closet!  So, of course it had to snow. :)

Before we knew about this amazing storm that was coming our way, I had gotten the kids all excited to go to California to surprise my family for Ahma's big birthday bash!  I had it all worked out with Joy, I was packed, ready to go, car gassed and all.  When I woke up and saw all this white I changed my mind about driving alone 9 hours with 3 kids in a mini van in a storm.  My kids were VERY mad at me!  We missed the party and seeing my side of the family.  Ahma did have a wonderful birthday though and was surrounded by people who loved her...and in the hearts and thoughts of those of us who were a little farther away :)  HAPPY BIRTHDAY AHMA!  WE LOVE YOU TONS AND TONS!

Goodbye 20's...Hello 30's!

It's official. Another ten years and I'll be cresting the hill. The day started out just like any other day. The first sign of something different was that Katie and the kids came to take me out to lunch. That was where the conversation went something like this:

Blah blah blah....

Katie: Well you're the one who said you didn't want to do anything for your birthday!

Me: NO, I just said I didn't want to choose what we did on my birthday. I wanted to be surprised.

Katie: Oh, well that's funny. 

Being the amazing woman she is, she immediately turned that around. By the time I left work, there were enough balloons tied to my car to float me home and we had a really fun party with the kids that night including the family tradition of hanging donuts.

Even on a birthday it takes a lot of shots to get the kids all looking at the camera.

I got cool new nerdy toys.

Katie and the kids filled a bunch of balloons with little lies about how much they love me. 

Andrew managed to snatch two of the donuts off of the chandelier before we could even get started.