My new time waster...I mean hobby!

For our young women camp fundraiser, we took pictures for ward members in the gym before and after church. And then I got to play around with Photo Shop :)

I could spend hours having fun with that. And I'm sure I will before this fundraiser is over!

And no, this photo is not altered all that much, or that amazing, but think about how bad gym lighting is in the church, and then be impressed that the Walmart picture lady made me sign a copyright release because she thought my picture was professional!! Ok, ok, I know that a walmart picture lady endorsement isn't worth all that much :), but hey, I'm still learning!!

Smelly Science

Mom's make the so many sacrifices for science projects. I hope their teachers appreciate it!! Brendon did his project on which liquids germinate beans the fastest. And when you choose milk and vinegar as liquids...you know you're going to get smelly fast!! So not only did I have nasty cups of liquid sitting on my counter for a couple of weeks, but we had to do the project OVER because the first web project we followed was totally whacked and didn't work. Then I had smelly plastic bags on my counter!!

I know you'll all be shocked to find out that water is the best liquid. Amazing.

Easter

So my most proud moment of Easter was actually making rice krispie nests with robin eggs. I think it took us four bags of robin eggs before I remembered to get rice krispies at the store :) We love our robin eggs!! Sadly, this was actually the day after Easter, but that's not important, right??

But seriously, I think this was my favorite Easter. We had so many Easter programs at church that I felt like we were all totally in the Easter mood. I loved it!! We really enjoyed doing a scripture/quote reading program everyday about the Saviors ministry, viewing a visiting art exhibit by Mark Mabry called "Reflections of Christ" and participating in a musical number for the Relief Society Meeting.

And we loved having Easter dinner with our friends the Schoppmanns complete with an amazing Easter cake Jamie made!!

Fun, spiritual and yummy Easter--just what I love!!

The Hunt is On

Our friends the Lundbergs invited us (and some other awesome families) over for and Easter egg hunt.

I didn't get a picture of Jonathan until after the hunt was over and he was devouring his candy. And Brendon was completely unpictured.

Suzanna, Bridger and Spencer playing with a real baby bunny.
Finding a baby bunny would seem more amazing if we didn't live in bunny town :)

Tyler and Sam searching for eggs by the swing set. We had so much fun with friends!

It's easy being green!

Suzanna is all about saving the environment...even when it comes to facials!! They have to be natural. She and her friend mixed one up with avocados, but they they forgot to mix up a the egg white separately, so it was a little lumpy :) They had a great time!!

Phil's Birthday weekend

Phil's Birthday was COLD!! It was windy, rainy and freezing. In April. I know that may be common in some crazy place like Utah :), but here in Arizona we don't expect that. Even in Kingman.

And then the rain turned to snow! It wasn't sticking too much in town, but when we went to dinner with friends up in the Hualapai Mountains (a whole 15 minutes away) at The Lodge this was the view outside our window:

So cool. I felt like it was Christmas, not Spring!! Dinner was fabulous--delicious food, awesome scenery and great friends.

And then the next day looked like this:

So we decided to go swimming at the indoor pool at the wellness center. Which seemed like an OK choice until we had to get to our car in our swimsuits as the hail rained down!! Normally I'm not so crazy :) but we had a friend of Brendon's staying with us while his parents were out of town, and it's a pretty boring day for 12 year olds when you can't go outside. Because this was NOT a warm snow!

Sadly, our weekend didn't end well. Brendon started throwing up that night and had horrible pains all night. We finally called our home teacher in the morning to come over to help with a blessing, and after he called a doctor friend in the ward, the doctor called me and told me to get him down to the emergency room. Lots of tests and several episodes later, we still have no idea what happened or why he was in so much pain. But he's returned to normal, so the doctor says we need to just wait and see....

Frog Jump

Love when my kids get creative!! All they need is some paper...and they come up with so many fun things. We have bags of paper airplanes, paper ninja stars, paper fingers, paper flowers, paper boxes...you get the picture. And not only do they make them, but they "sell" them to each other with their own system of fake money and stores. Brendon even has his own "copyright": BPA.

One night we came home to Frog Jump, Brendon's made up board game with origami frogs and questions made on old business cards. So great, and the kids were all completely entertained!!