Books!

Posted by Courtney-I love to read books! This is a picture of me and all my library books.

Butterfly Bungalow

For Aubrey's birthday we got her a butterfly bungalow. She got a mesh tent and a certificate to send off for 10 caterpillars that would become painted lady butterflies. Our butterflies started emerging yesterday with the last one climbing out this morning. It has been really fun to watch the kids as they have gotten so excited about the whole process. If anyone out there has thought about doing it you should ( although those of you in Idaho may have to wait a couple of months since it has to be above 55 degrees). Now when they go out and climb in the tent I hear constant laughter and screams of " it landed on my nose!" or " there's one in your hair." We will let them go next week, but until then our little "pets" are great fun!

Butterfly Bungalow ( in Aubrey's words)

( in aubrey's own words- dictated to mom) " I love the butterflies. They are fun to play with. They started out with caterpillars, and they came in the mail. They were little baby caterpillars. They were kid caterpillars. Then, they were mom caterpillars and dads. Then they went into chrysalids. They turned into butterflies and they were baby butterflies. We put the chrysalids in the butterfly bungalow and now that they are butterflies we can go in and play with them. I getted to see one come out of the chrysalid- it was cool to me, really cool to me. We have to be careful not to touch their wings. We were careful to not touch their wings. We like to put them on our nose and gently pick them up. I saw them drink from the sugar water we feed them and I saw their tongue. It was really cool.

Christian's 1st Haircut

Christian has reached the glorious age of 18 months and thus goes to nursery. As part of the festivities, we gave him his first haircut this morning. He had such cute curls in the back that it was hard for me to cut them off, but the time had come. He looks about 6 months older, but still cute as ever ( notwithstanding the remains of breakfast still on his face!). So, off to nursery he went, but the party was short lived when he was brought back to me for biting.... any advice out there on that one?! I just keep on him and keep telling myself this too will pass....

Weekend in san Jose

Last weekend, Mark was traveling up north near San Jose for the State speech tournament. We were not looking forward to another long weekend without dad, so he convinced us to come along! We had a great time exploring the area.

Friday we found a tremendous children's museum. After several failed attempts to ride the train there, we ended up driving and all of the kids loved it. (if you are ever in that area, we highly recommend it)

Christian's absolute favorite part was the water play area. It was a huge area and there were lots of activities with water and balls- 2 of his very favorite things!

Aubrey's favorite part was doing art projects of making a corn husk doll and a boat (and painting her own face to look like a heart!)

Courtney loves to learn about new things, so this was a great place for her to have all kinds of discoveries. Elijah loved this area here, it had several ways to send a tennis ball through a maze of contraptions!

The picture at the top was one of my favorite moments, not only because they are all so cute and having fun, but it was the one time when I sat down and was not counting to see who I was missing and where everyone was! It was very short lived though, just as I was looking at this picture on my camera, I felt something on my leg and looked down to find Christian had decided he was done painting the wall and his new canvas was my jeans!

On Saturday, we went shopping at the nearby outlet malls where we found a great children's place outlet. Despite being asked by nearly every person we passed if these were all my children and being told in a skeptical tone over and over what a brave mommy I was to be out will ALL these children, I did find a Pearl Izumi outlet and get a great deal for the new spin shoes I have been wanting!

Sunday, we did not bring church clothes, and dad was going to be busy with the tournament all day so we decided to check out the beach at Santa Cruz. Despite very windy and cold weather ( well 60 degrees- cold by California standards!), we had fun exploring the beach area. Courtney made a kite out of seaweed and a stick, Elijah tromped through a little stream of water, Aubrey explored holes in the rock wall and collect various items from the beach and Christian was happy to chase birds!

Sunday night, we were excited to have dinner with dad and his students. After a long awards ceremony where dad's student took 11th place ( not bad out of the whole state of California), they all came back to our room and the kids got to stay up late to spend time with them. We headed back Monday morning. Dad went to the Winchester Mystery house, so he will have to do a post about that. We are glad that we got to go along!

You're Gonna Miss This

Well, you may be wondering why we disappeared from our blog for a couple of months and now we are back! I have thought often of things that I wanted to post and just have not taken the time. So, I am recommitting myself to appreciating the little moments and sharing them here. The other day, I heard a song on the radio by Trace Adkins called You're Gonna Miss This. In case you haven't heard it I added it to my playlist on the side so you can. I woke up one morning a few days later, thinking about the third verse of the song where she has the little kids crying and screaming. In the course of taxiing everyone to their events that day, I heard this song on the radio no less than 4 times. In fact, once I changed the station and it was on another station as well. So, I have thought a lot about this and I know I am going to miss these days ( long after I have had time to forget the fits, fights and diaper changes!) Therefore, I hope to chronicle them better here and I hope your will enjoy reading about them and share your thoughts!

Mark's headed to Las Vegas!

This past weekend, Mark spent 3 days in Fresno with several students competing to earn a spot at the National Forensics League national tournament in Las Vegas this summer. It has been a goal of his for many years to have a student qualify and though he came close a couple of years ago, he'd yet to accomplish it. Well, he can finally check that one off his list. A junior student, Angel Ford sailed through to win the Dramatic Interpretation Event with her piece, "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof". She and Mark are thrilled and excitedly making plans for a trip to the national tournament. This is a great accomplishment and though we miss Mark with all the time forensics takes him away, we are very proud of him and excited for him having accomplished this!

Aubrey Turns 5!

We were in San Diego for Aubrey's 5th birthday and it seems as though life has not slowed down since, so I am now finally getting to posting her birthday. I did not want to skip it, lest she look back at this blog 10 years from now and feels any less important than her siblings!

We had a fun party with 8 little girlfriends of Aubrey's. She choose a spring garden theme and had a butterfly cake. We had most of the party outside ( though most of the kids and us complained that it was a bit cold at only 60 degrees!). Fun was had by all and Aubrey felt like the princess she is.

She got extra lucky this year because for the actual day of her birthday we were in San Diego for Spring Break. We let her choose the activity for the day and she chose the Wild Animal Park. We got to have Grandma Olsen, Uncle Trever and Aunt Amber and Ayana go with us and it was a great day for all of us. Then, we went back to our condo for pizza and cupcakes with everyone plus Uncle Aaron, Aunt Cari, Lindsey, Thomas and Tylers. Fun birthday!

Aubrey is a special girl. She is very passionate about everything she does and always tries very hard to do her best. She is a sweet and loving sister and daughter and she is the life of the party! She is great at making new friends and considerate of those around her. We are proud of her and the wonderful person she is growing to be.