Easter 2013

I love Easter Sunday!  It's such a happy holiday!  Of course, we're celebrating the happiest event in eternal history, so it ought to be.

Our Saturday before Easter was so full and busy that I had already put the kids to bed before I realized that we hadn't colored Easter eggs.  I boiled them that night so they were waiting for the little darlings when they woke up.  They basically colored the eggs, then ate them right away.  In fact, you can see Bronson's egg in his big smile!

Everyone got bubbles in their Easter basket.  What a hit they were with Bronson!

Bronson is all dolled up in his new Easter outfit.  What a handsome boy!

Whoa!  I'm swooning when I see Josh's Easter pose!

Nicki in her cute pink Easter dress.  I wish she'd quit growing so fast!  She'll be out of that dress in a few months!

Alison's Easter dress is bright and fun - just like her!

Dave and I had been up past 2:00am painting, so we were a bit groggy in the morning.  We were pretty busy at church that day - I was singing in two musical numbers and both David and I were teaching Sunday School lessons. That in itself would have been okay, but Josh picked the exact time that we were both supposed to be teaching to have a full blown "I-Won't-Go-To-Church-Any-More" meltdown. I didn't know anything about it because Dave took care of it, but I guess it wasn't pretty and it didn't lend itself to Dave feeling really spiritual as he began teaching his lesson.

Between Sunday School and Relief Society, I ran home to put the ham in the oven.  On my way back to church, I ran into Dave's car in the parking lot.  He had Josh in the back seat.  There was steam coming out of David's ears, but he calmly said, "Take.  Him.  Home."  I did so, and put him down for a much-needed nap.  Dave went back to church and got to listen to a wonderful lesson in a combined RS/Priesthood meeting that I was very sad to miss... sigh.  Oh well.  It did give me the opportunity to get dinner all taken care of the the table set before the rest of the family came home. 

Dinner was fabulous.  It was kind of sad because earlier in the week, we decided to be healthy and make roasted veggies instead of cheesy potatoes to go with our ham.  By mid-Easter morning, however, all hopes of being healthy had gone out the window, so I should have made cheesy potatoes after all!  Don't worry - we still ate some delicious food!

My parents dropped by in the evening.  I think the boys were already in bed, which is sometimes nice because the house is much less rowdy with only two kids running around.  Grandma Smith brought over an Easter craft she had used in her Primary class that morning.  The girls enjoyed making those while we had a nice, peaceful visit with Grandma and Grandpa.  We went to bed that night very full and very tired, but also very happy.

Happy Easter from the Gee's!

Egg Hunt

Easter weekend fell pretty early this year.  Luckily for us, we live in the Tropics of Utah, so the weather was very nice.  I still remember our Easter egg hunt in the snow a few years back in Idaho.

Every year, my parents' neighborhood puts on an Easter Egg Hunt for their children and grandchildren.  Its so much fun!  This year was especially exciting because it was the first time we'd seen Nicole since she went on her special vacation.  She looked so cute and happy! 

Josh was excited to get started!

While we waited for the hunt to get underway, Bronson made a friend and they filled his bucket with dirt.

These two stuck together the whole time...

The grass wasn't green yet, but do you see those flowers poking out of the ground?

 

All the neighbors who participate hang a balloon from their mailbox so the kids know which houses to go to.  But since the eggs are in plain sight on their lawns, it's pretty easy to tell where to go.

Here's a picture of all the kids that attended.  That's  LOT of eggs on each lawn!  It's so nice of our parents and their neighborhood to do this every year!

Heading back to Grandma's house with our loot.



Here's the crew from our family that came.  The kids are growing up...not as many this year...
 

 My parents were watching Kristin's kids for her that afternoon, so they decided that it might be fun to have a cousin play day with our girls as well.  After the Egg Hunt, we all went to Pizza Pie Cafe for a "light lunch."  ha ha.



Nicole and McKenna had their own booth.  They wanted to keep their special weekend going as long as possible.

After lunch, Dave and I took our boys home for their naps.  Then, we got to work painting.  The girls stayed with Grandma, Grandpa, Payton, and McKenna.  They went to a movie, played at a park, and watched the musical fountains.  They didn't come home until after 5:00pm.  What a blast they had!  Grandma and Grandpa rock!  And...they might be a little bit crazy to tackle a whole day with those four kids  :)    But even Grandma and Grandpa said they had a great time!

Living The Dream

April 15th was a pretty crazy, frustrating day.

First of all, I dropped the girls off at school, then took the boys straight to Kent's market in Clearfield, where they were selling strawberries for $2.99 per flat.  I couldn't believe the price, so I bought 5 flats.  That's 40 pounds of strawberries for $15.00!

Then I came home and worked in by bedroom for a while.  There was a spot on one of the walls that was bugging me - the texturing was uneven and it stuck out like a sore thumb.  So, I sanded it down and re-textured.  I re-painted later in the afternoon.  The result?  failure.  It looked even worse than before - the spot I re-did was obviously different than the rest of the wall.  I guess we're going to have to sand down and re-do the WHOLE WALL!!!  Oh well - we wanted to start with the bedrooms so that we could make our mistakes and learn our lessons before we moved to the main living areas.  Frustrating, though.

I was about to start exercising when I got a call from the girl's school.  I was expecting it to be Alison, who has been complaining of a cold, but it was Nicole.  She was crying and saying that something was stuck in her eye that she couldn't get out.  I loaded the boys up in the van and we went to school to bring Nicki home.  Her eye was really puffy and watery, but I figured whatever it was that bothered her probably flushed itself out by now and she just wanted to come home.

The kids watched a movie while I exercised, showered, straightened up a little and made their lunch.  While the boys went down for a nap, I figured I'd get the strawberry fest underway.  Nope.  Nicole started freaking out.  Her eyes were sensitive to light, really watery and very painful.  It seemed to be getting worse, not better, as time went by.  She was sobbing, asking, "Why does this kind of thing always happen to me?!?!?!"  I told her that it doesn't - Josh has his share of drama too....

By the time school was getting out, Nicki was in hysterics.  I was half-way through my first batch of jam, but I just covered the bowl and left it on the counter.  I picked up Alison from school and left her to babysit the boys (Not something I normally do, but this was sort of an emergency.  Plus, Bron was still sleeping) while I took Nick to the optometrist.  I was half expecting there to be nothing wrong, and half worried that she was going to be permanently blind.  To make a long story short, she wasn't going blind, but she did have a speck of glass or pencil shaving or something that was stuck on the underside of her eyelid.  Every time she blinked, it scratched her eyeball.  OUCH!!!  The doctor said that it wouldn't have washed out on it's own because it was so deep in there, so it's a good thing we went. Nicki said that she thought the Holy Ghost told her to go to the doctor.  She's probably right.

Of course, we were at the doctor's office while I should have been cooking dinner, so we stopped at Little Ceasar's on the way home.  So much for our diet...again...  That's getting really frustrating. 

I got to work on the strawberries as soon as I could, but it's not too easy with four kids running around.  I think I finished my last batch somewhere around 10:30 at night.  It wasn't until I woke up the next day that I realized I had done every single batch WRONG!!! I had doubled the fruit, pectin, etc. but forgot to double the sugar. No wonder they didn't set up.   I had to dump them all back into a bowl, add more sugar, and re-fill the jars. We're talking a lot of jam here, folks!  Frustrating.

So April 15th was not the best day to be Kelley Gee.  But when I got home from the doctor's office and heard for the first time about the bombing in Boston,  somehow my little frustrations seemed pretty silly.  Sure, I was over my head in a lot of ways.  Sure I was up to my eyeballs in very ripe strawberries and very neglected children.  Sure our diet was pretty bad and our budget was starting to feel as tight as our belts.  Sure I was doing extra loads of laundry from wet beds (yes, I said BEDS) and cat vomit (I spared you the details of those stories).  But all-in-all, we were happy, healthy and alive.  We truly are living the dream...

Nicole's Special Vacation

Our family has a special tradition.  Whenever someone turns eight years old, they get to spend a few days with Grandma and Grandpa Smith all by themselves = no parents or siblings!  Alison lived in Idaho when she turned eight, so she got to drive to a different state on her trip.  Nicki only lives ten minutes from them now, so we wondered how we would make it extra special for her. 

Boy!  We didn't need to worry!  She had the time of her life!  In fact, a few days after she came home, she confessed that she wished she lived at Grandma's house all the time!!!  One of the best parts of her trip was that she got to share it with her cousin, McKenna!  McKenna turned eight about a month before Nicki and they decided that it would be fun to share their special weekend with each other. 

Here's a few of the highlights:

Grandma Smith picked each of the girls up from school on Thursday, March 28th.  McKenna's school had spring break on Friday, but Nicki's didn't.  We excused her absence on Friday for her vacation.  They ran to our house to pick up some stuff, then headed off for their big adventure.

They stopped at Sam's club to pick out some treats for the Easter Egg hunt later in the week, and got a treat for themselves while they were at it.

Then they went home and got set up.  Here, they're trying out the bed they would share.  The girls played with each other for a while and did each other's hair. 

When Grandpa got home from work, they went to Farmington Crossings, which has a park, shops, movie theaters, and super awesome dancing fountains!

Look at these darling cousins!

They're watching the fountain show.

Then, they ate at Johnny Rockets, a fun diner that has dancing waitresses and home spun milk shakes.  I think they're purposely pulling faces here, not actually angry.

After that, they went home for the evening.  Grandma totally SPOILED them the whole time they were there.  She cooked fun treats and rented great movies for them and gave them tons of gifts! 

On their first night, she surprised them with matching nightgowns.  They were in heaven!

She also gave them matching Webkinz bunnies.

And matching shirts the next day.  She gave them darling hairdos each day (something I don't do much of).  On this particular day, their hairdos matched as well.  People thought Nicki and McKenna were twins.

Day Two:  Grandpa Smith took the day off of work to spend time with his girls today.  In spite of the fact that the girls went to bed way late the night before, they woke up at the crack of dawn!  They ate a HUGE fancy breakfast and watched Rise of The Guardians.  Then, they rode the Front Runner Train to SLC.

Waiting for the train...

First stop was the Hansen Planetarium.  WOW!  This is a cloud machine.  It makes clouds!  It was awesome!

They saw a 3-D I-Max movie about butterflies. 

Then, they went shopping at Citicreek.  At the food court, Nicki got the biggest piece of pizza EVER! 

Nicole sneezed right as this picture was taken.  Bless you, Nicki!

Try again!  Grandma said that Nicole and McKenna were best of friends and NEVER fought at all.  They really love each other!

That afternoon, they went to another park for a while. They're playing on the toy mountain here. 

That night, they had a rousing game of Uno.  I think McKenna was mad about someones move at the time.

The next morning was the day before Easter and we all came over for the annual Easter Egg hunt.  I'll write more about that on another day.  Our little Nicki had the time of her life at Grandma and Grandpa's house.  She felt very special and very grown up.  Thanks, Grandma and Grandpa for taking such great care of our girl.

First Hike Of The Year

On March 16th, our family hiked up Ensign Peak in North Salt Lake.  It's the site where Brigham Young and a few other pioneers went to survey the Salt Lake valley.  It's not a difficult hike at all, only about 1/2 mile or so.  Perfect for our little family. 

L-R: Alison, Joshua, Nicole, and Bronson.

 It was a beautiful sunny day, but a bit breezy at the top. 

We got home around lunch time.  Then David and I spent the rest of the day painting.  Have I mentioned that we're painting the whole top floor of our house?  Perhaps that story should wait for another day, when it's finished.  Right now, it feels like it never will be....

Photography

David took a Community Education Photography class in February/March.  He wanted to learn more about what our camera could do and take better pictures for our family history.  Of course, I fully supported that! 

The class was fun and I think he learned a lot.  He was a little hindered by the fact that he was one of only two people in the class who didn't have super-fancy, telephoto cameras.  He was really focused on the first few weekly assignments and he took some great photos.  But by the end, they were doing things his camera couldn't do, so he didn't even try to complete those assignments.  Here is a small sampling of the pictures he took:

This wasn't for one of his assignments, but we tagged along once to help him get ideas of things to take pictures of (a job Alison took VERY seriously!  She was really getting into it!  Dave couldn't keep up with all her ideas.)

We came across a field with llamas.  We said, "Hey!  Look kids!  There's a couple of llamas..."

"...um, wait.  There's a LOT of llamas!  And they're coming to get us!"

Hello there, llama.  They were pretty cute little critters. Just hanging out right in down town Kaysville.  Who knew?

 

Let's Hit The Gym

The Holt parties continued in March.  Payton turned 10.  For his birthday party, his family rented out a local gymnasium.  What a great idea!  We ALL had a blast playing on the equipment!

What form! What grace! 

Alison jumping into the foam pit.  I have to say, I didn't know until I jumped that I have a fear of heights. 

Nicole on the parallel bars.  They are so narrow!  I could barely get my hips through them.

We don't have many pictures of Joshua - he was on the go a lot!

Bronson on the super bouncy trampoline. 

Dave had no fear of the foam pit....

But he probably should have.  He hit the bottom and sprained his ankle.  Ali is trying to help dig him out.

Payton doing some crazy-amazing thing...as usual.

Blurry, but I wanted to show how cute McKenna was in her leotard.

Katie has no fear of heights either.

She did a toe-touch into the pit. 

Kristin holding a perfect iron cross.  Wink Wink.

This one's real - no trick photography here!

Mom shares my discomfort with heights. 

Here she's trying to scoot into the pit.  Scott's taunting her.



She finally did it, though.  Way to go Mom!

Bronson on the balance beam.  He's so proud of himself!

After his turn, he insisted on helping me walk across too.

Megan, Bronson, Alison and Nicole.