Easter Preview...

The kids have some new fancy clothes for Easter, and they couldn't wait that long to wear them (neither could I!) so here are some pics of my handsome boys and beautiful princess!!

Traeden - I love his shy little smile, he feels good in this suit but doesn't want us to know it!

Jaxon - He feels good in this suit and wants EVERYBODY to know it!!

Araleigh - well, she always knows she's pretty so what makes this any different??? :)

I sure love my kids! They rock :)

St. Patty's Day in the City!

I finally saw it!!! After all these years, wanting to see the Chicago river when it was dyed green for St. Patrick's Day, we finally saw it! I convinced our friends, Chris & Kim and cute kids to ditch chores and join us too! I have a talent for convincing people that stuff like that can wait until later :) It was a beautiful Saturday (we don't see many of those around here yet) so we just had to get out and see it. It was really neat! Of course, the pictures don't really capture the green as well as I wish it did, but you can tell that it is unnaturally greener than usual.

So then it turns out our friends hadn't been to Millenium Park, so of course we had to show them the "bean" sculpture, which the boys had fun doing unique poses under - these are some of my favorites:

And then what would a trip to the city be without topping it off with what is, in my opinion, the best deep-dish pizza at Giordano's!?! Mmmmmmm...... Yep, great day!

A Family of Snowboarders - FINALLY!!!

So one of my life's goals has come true - learn how to snowboard as a family!!! And with a giant THANK YOU!!!! to my brothers, Jeff and Danny, and Jeff's awesome wife-to-be Liz, we now know how! The kids had a few days off of school so we took a VERY quick (we're talking 2 day) trip to SLC to hit the slopes! What a perfect day, too! Fresh snow, not too cold, and not crowded at all! Our fantastic teachers were very patient with us and they all did such a great job! It was the best day! So much fun! I can't wait to do it again!

Traeden was definitely the most natural, doing jumps by the end of the day! Now if only he could stop as well as he jumps, we'd be in good shape :) He did great, of course, he's always had a natural talent at everything...definitely gets it from his father:

Dave did awesome as well, picked it up a lot faster than me, and I have done it before (well if you could actually call it "snowboarding"...mostly we just tumbled down the mountain all day...but we had fun! Right, Wendy???) Of course Dave is a really good skier, and he has no fear which helps! I am such a wimp and too scared to go anything even resembling not slow!

Liz was awesome and literally held Jax's hand for his first few runs. She was so good with him and such a great teacher! I wish I had a picture of Jeff helping him up the tow rope - I must say those things are impossible on snowboards! Jeff would hold onto him and put his foot on Jax's board and they'd ride up together - it's amazing to me that they didn't fall. Dave and I fell several times, and Traeden just ended up taking his board off and walking up the practice hill.

Finally done practicing, and ready to try out a real slope! Jax rode up with Jeff and Liz, Danny took Trae, and Dave and I braved it out together - and amazingly did not tumble on top of eachother!!!

So after a long day and a lot of practicing, we ended up doing pretty good! The boys had a lot of fun and are anxious to go again! Jax's first comment as we were leaving was "can we come back tomorrow??" What a fun trip!

Artsy fartsy day:)

Happy Valentine's Day! Ours was not that exciting, so I'm moving on - to President's Day :)

We didn't fly anywhere for this 3-day weekend (I know - weird!) so instead we went and had a fun day downtown at the Art Institute and Grant Park! We invited our awesome friends the Saunders and had a great day!

Riding on the "L" (subway train) you can see they are all so super excited!

In front of the Art Institute - one of the Lion statues that guards the entrance. Unfortunately it was quite freezing, but the kids were tough :)

Inside the museum, the boys were on assignment to decide which artist was their favorite for the day. Traeden liked Delacroix, Jax was holding out for a Van Gogh, which we didn't see (it's a really gigantic museum...)

In the kids' area, they had art tables set up where the kids could make masterpieces of their own. They were waiting for their paper to be delivered to them, so they colored on the table cover for a bit. It was pretty much the only quiet moment of the day! I think the art really inspired them!

In another section of the kids' area they had art books, puzzles of famous prints, and foam blocks. Araleigh was so thrilled that her brothers helped her build this tower!

Next, on to Grant Park, where they were having a Snow Days Festival, complete with dog sleds, snow sculptures, and snowboarding. Well I don't know that it can really be called snowboarding, I mean clearly there are no mountains out here so they built their own with some rails for a few tricks during a 5 second ride. It made me miss Utah - a lot! But now the boys are anxious to learn how to snowboard, especially seeing this little kid who was probably only 5 or 6 doing fancy tricks! We are hoping to make it out there soon so they can get practicing!

The snow sculptures were really cool, this one was the first place winner!

"Where the Wild Things Are"

Einstein!

And what kind of posting would this be if I didn't put in a cute picture of my little girl?? She was such a trooper all day!!

From there we had to go get hot chocolate (mmmmmm.....!) and then I sent the Saunders on the train and the kids and I walked through the city to Dave's work to meet him for dinner. On the way the boys had fun finding all the random sculptures that are everywhere, and we were even lucky enough to walk by the CBS evening news - yes, my kids were those people who stand behind the news guy and wave through the windows :) They thought it was pretty cool that they were "on TV".

Where have we been???

Okay, I know it's been a while...sorry I don't have a good excuse! We have been pretty busy around here, so I think I'll just let you all know

WHAT WE'VE BEEN UP TO!!

Pinewood Derby:

Traeden competed in his first ever pinewood derby and thanks to some hard work and lots of great advice from Uncle Andrew, HE WON 1st PLACE!!! It was a very exciting and proud moment for all of us :)

Karate:

Jaxon has started Karate lessons and is doing great! He is determined to be a black belt some day! He works very hard and his sensei has been very impressed with him! Yay Jax!!

Basketball:

Traeden is in a basketball league out here and doing great! His team is the Raptors, and they are currently 4-2! He has improved a ton over the last several weeks and has contributed a lot to his team! He is a great example of sportsmanship! We all have fun cheering him on each week! Go Trae!

photography:

Miss Araleigh is very into the camera right now. She LOVES to have her picture taken, but mostly she loves taking pictures of us! I often find my camera with recent pictures of very up-close fingers :)

She likes to take turns- you take one of me, I'll take one of you!

Sometimes she even gets a face in the shot! Yay Princess!

GO UTES!!!!

I have been wanting to post this one for a while, but life has been so busy!!! We had the opportunity to attend the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans and cheer on our awesome Utes!!! What a blast! It was such a great game! Victory was sweet, especially after enduring small-minded insults from the Alabama fans!!! But hey, I guess Utah doesn't suck after all!!! :) We DOMINATED that field the entire game. What a fun day!

The fam - Dave's uncle Andy and awesome family drove in from TX and met us there to bring our group total to 11 - so much fun!!!

Arriving at the airport, they even welcomed us!! You can't tell by the picture, but Daniel was definitely the most excited of all of us.

View from our seats! We had FANTASTIC seats!!!

The equestrian police to keep us crazy fans from celebrating our way onto the field!!

SCOREBOARD!!! 'Nuf said. :)

It was a good Christmas!!

Here are some quick pictures of our Christmas morning!! The kids had such a great day! The boys gift highlights included an XBOX 360 (yes, I know that everyone else has had one for years, but that doesn't make us any less excited!) Guitar Hero (this may have been a little more for me than them, although they do love it!) and Legos - always a winner! Araleigh's favorite had to be the princess dresses, a pop-up castle, and a microphone! The highlights for mom and dad: watching how excited the boys were to give to eachother - they opened eachother's presents first! Ahhhh.... :)

The night before Christmas... Christmas jammies! A fun tradition!

They just can't believe it... :)

They look like rock stars already, don't they???

They can't believe this, either, apparently!

The princesses!!! Our friends, the Snows, came for dinner, and Araleigh had so much fun playing princess with Eleanor! She wears this dress just about everyday, while watching a princess movie! When she first put it on, the first words out of her mouth were, "now I need to marry a prince!" Dave LOVED that!

Another funny story: in my attempt to prevent Araleigh from being scared of Santa, I showed her where he was at the mall and said, "look! It's Santa! He likes you! He is so nice! He is going to bring you presents on Christmas!!" She looked at him for a minute and said "he likes me?" "yes, he likes you!" I reassured her. He then saw her and smiled and waved to her and she was so excited, and for the rest of the day would remind me that "Santa likes me! He brings presents on Christmas! He's so nice!" Well when the time came to see Santa (at our church Christmas party) Araleigh was so excited to see Santa that she literally hovered around him the entire time, smiling and waving, as if to say, "hey, santa, remember me? It's your best friend Araleigh! You like me!" So I guess it worked (not that she's ever really been shy or afraid of people by any means). And she did actually ask for princesses, so I guess she was a good girl this year, cause that's all she got!