Easter

Easter was fun.  

We did the whole community egg hunt this year for the first time.  It was actually fun as far as egg hunts go.

 We bumped into friends of ours.  They have 5 boys and one girl.  I'm pretty sure Jared wishes he was part of their family.  

Some of the parents were super competitive and were yelling at their kids to hurry and grab a ton of eggs.  They were kind embarrassing to watch actually.  "Just get them!  JUST grab that egg right there!  You don't need to just get boy colors!"  Rude right? (Yes, I'm totally being judgey right now).  It didn't really work, the kids just froze and were slower.  So then the REAL competitive mom (me) could in my most loving and encouraging voice with just a hint of excitement get my kids to grab a ton.  

 Kinsley did well for her first time really egg hunting but check out Sadie!  She got the most out of all the kids.  Oh yeah, super proud moment!  (It might have helped that she had a competitive edge since she is at the end of the age bracket for that section). 

 Later that afternoon our family came over for dinner.  It was the first time we've had the WHOLE family over to our house for a dinner.  I was pretty worried about the whole thing going to pot.  I even tried perfecting my mother in-laws famous dinner rolls which failed over and over again throughout the week leading up to the dinner. Everything turned out fine.

All the cousins together.  We used to take pictures like this with our Texas cousins because we were all about the same age.  It's kind of cool to repeat that with my sister's kids.

The WHOLE group.

Christine my step-mom with Hyrum.  She played with him pretty much the entire night which made hosting so much easier.

Three of us sibs together. 

The next morning was Easter Sunday. The kids all woke up to full baskets!  Lucky little ducks.

Hyrum's first Easter.  

(I miss my long hair).

Then the family egg hunt.  I guess in Arizona the Easter bunny hides the eggs instead of lhow it goes in Oregon where the parents hide the eggs.  That was a learning curve for me the first couple of years being married to an Arizonian.  (Yes, I realize that not all Oregonians and Arizonians do it the same).

And that was Easter.  

Wood Pallet Garden Fence

We have a dog. 

He is a chewer.

Last year we had our first real garden.

  We loved it!   

But our dog, the chewer, and plants don't mix.

Wes and I knew that we would need to build some sort of a fence so that our garden would actually have any chance at survival.

We had to think for a while on how to afford a fence because money has been tight.  Thank you taxes.

I really love the phrase, "Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without," if only I could ever remember it without having to look it up on the internet...saying phrases correctly isn't my thing.  :)  I also like the idea of repurposing things.. 

Anyways, I decided to make the fence using wood pallets since company's just toss them all the time.  So I started scavenging for wood pallets.  Those things are a beast to rip apart by the way.  I probably looked more like the crazy neighbor lady than I normally do, with my sledge hammer and circular saw trying to get those babies apart.  

We also were given some wood and other types of supplies from family and friends.  A BIG sincere thank you to all of you who offered something or another to get this fence up.  We really appreciate it.  We were able to spend significantly less because of it.   

I usually like to do projects ALL by myself.

I'm not a team player.  Sad, I know.

But Wes and I worked together on this one because this was kind of intimidating for me.

I dug all the post holes.

Wes cut all the posts and cemented them in.  That was one of the parts I was worried about.  I kind of think this part has to be exact in order for the rest of it to actually come together.

Wes is that kind of man.  Exact.

After taking apart all the wood pallets I cut all of them to size and the wood our neighbor donated to the project as well.  I love using this saw (I'm not sure what it is called, miter?) over the circular saw.  I feel like I should get a medal every time I use the circular saw and don't cut my arm off.  :)

 Then Wes showed me how to put the brackets up and I cut the horizontal 2X4s and got the fence ready for the pallets/planks/siding.

Last Friday and Saturday I started adding the siding.  

 I worked until it was dusk on Saturday to get it done.  I hate leaving projects half done and I might have been tempted to finish it on Sunday.

The gate was another part that I had no idea how to make.  I procrastinated it for days.  I got some pointers from Wes.  But I was still nervous about it and was about to call him at work and ask him if he would just make it instead of doing the other projects he has planned.  But then today I decided to try.

I'm glad I did because it was actually not too hard and came together pretty quickly.

Here it is all finished!

If you can't tell I am pretty proud of how it turned out.

  I sort of love it in fact!  

We were going to have the kids paint it all sorts of wild colors but I'm sort of loving the old and new wood look and might just seal it with a transparent sealant.  

I can't wait to start planting! 

Hair Cuts

Hyrum came into the world with a full head of hair.  But as he's gotten bigger I don't think his hair has been able to keep up with his huge head (95 percentile for head circumference!) and I think he's just lost some of his hair.  Either way, the poor little guy seriously needed a hair cut.

The youngest case of a boy suffering from male patterned baldness.

 There, that's better!

I guess I got on a hair cutting kick because I decided Sadie needed a hair cut too.

Pre-hair cut

She wasn't thrilled.  In fact it took a lot of convincing to even get her in the chair. 

But it looks so much better now.  

I even attempted layers.  Don't look to closely.  I really had no idea what I was doing and just copied what I saw when people have cut Novalee's hair in the past.

Zoo in March

Wesley had a Saturday off!  I shouldn't act like it never happens because it happens way more than when he first started as an optometrist, when he worked EVERY Saturday.  But lately he's been working extra Saturdays and so we wanted to do something fun as a family so we decided to bust out our ZOO pass.

Thankfully the weather was decent enough to get out and play in.

Hyrum looks thrilled, huh? 

My cool kids in the sea lion caves.  

 They are getting so big.  Jared's head reaches to my shoulders.  It's so weird.

Check out this cutie!

In case you didn't know, our girls love penguins.  I do too.

We had such a fun time!  I love the zoo!  I love listening to my kids giggle and laugh when they see their favorite animals.  Kinsley loves the fish.  Sadie loves the giraffes.  Novalee loves the elephants.  Jared loves the birds.  I'm glad we had this day together and we got to do something fun.

Wesley's Old

I like to tell him that even though I'm only 7 months younger.  :)  But who's counting anyways.

I AM!  :)

He's 31!    

He told me that I didn't have to do anything special for his birthday since we had just had Novalee's party two days before.  But I wanted to do something special for him.  So I made him a cake.  Since I can't have desserts I needed a little help with taste testing.  Luckily I had some volunteers.  

I'm glad I made the effort because you could tell he was happy.

 For family home evening that night we sang songs about Dads, watched a video about what it is like to be a dad and read him notes that we all wrote to him.  I think he felt pretty good.  We are so glad to have him be part of our lives.  I especially couldn't imagine my life without him and at the same time can't believe I've been so lucky to have him as my husband.  Even if he is getting old.

Novalee's Birthday

Novalee turned 7 this year.  I know I say it every time and I will probably always say it but time goes by way too fast.  Out of all the kids I think it is the hardest for me to believe Novalee is growing up.  She has always been such a little thing, as in petite.  And the biggest age gap between all our kids is between Novalee and Sadie.  So she was just my little baby for the longest amount of time.

Don't get me wrong, I love that she is growing up.  I love the little lady she is turning into.  She has the sweetest heart when she wants to show it.  She's wild and adventurous.  She is way more mature for her age than any 7 year old I've ever met.  She writes the best notes.  I hope she does that for the rest of her life.  I find little things she's written that she doesn't even share that are so great.  For example the other day I found inside a Nike shoe box, "I love my mommy so much I could just explode."  Totally melted my heart.  She loves to read.  Just last week she finished her first novel.  There were 282 pages in the book.  And of course true to her sassy character it was "Dork Diaries."

I love how she is always thinking about how to maximize her gain whether it be treats at the store or how to enjoy her day.  As an example for her birthday party this year she took a very long time to decide what she wanted to do for her party.  She knew we had a budget.  She was given different options such as a day at the salon then ice cream, chuckie cheese, going to a movie or party at home.  She seriously thought about how many friends she would be able to invite versus which place she wanted to go to the most.  And finally it came down to having a movie night here because then she could invite the most amount of friends.  I like that she picked friendship over an activity.

I also really love when she does something and I can tell she only does that certain thing or only has a certain mannerism because she's been paying attention to her mommy and has decided that it's okay to be like her mom. :)

Anyways, she's great and I love her more than fluffy puffy baby penguins and oreos combined.

Here are some pictures of her party.  The theme was a night at the movies.

 So the girls all bought their tickets to the movie.  Then we loaded them up with snacks and candy.  They were all pretty happy about it, I'm not sure what their parents thought later.  Little girls can eat a lot of junk, that's for sure!

Sadie enjoyed being the ticket girl.

Novalee picked out a Pokemon cake over a very adorable girly cake. 

 All her friends and of course Jared entertaining them.

Here they are right before presents.

Happy birthday little pumpkin!

Jared's Wrestling

This is old but in December through part of February Jared was part of the Forest Grove Wrestling League.
When he first signed up I was a little worried.  I had no idea how it was going to go.  I worried that he wouldn't like it.  That he would get bored or discouraged.

 But he seemed to really enjoy it and man, he is fierce!  They gave the signal to start and he would just takes off.  One of the things that really impressed me was how many actual moves he learned, remembered and then applied.  Also I was really impressed with how he was able to listen to the coaches instructions while actually wrestling.  I would've been able to do that.

Here he is at one of his tournaments at the Forest Grove High School.

He's pretty great. 

 Pumped up for his first tournament.

 I just added this one because he makes me laugh.

 One of his first wrestling matches.

As a mom it was just great to see him get so involved in a sport.