Conference Weekend!

[From Family News Page]

It was a great conference! We missed about half of the first session due to scheduling issues with the cable down here - it took me longer than it should have to remember that we can watch it online... The cable company finally caught on and it worked fine Sat afternoon and Sunday morning - but Sunday afternoon it was playing with horrible reception (it would stall and go digitalizing every few seconds - we'd only catch about 3/4 of most sentences - it was exciting stuff) so we turned on the noise online and watched the video on TV - I even managed to get the voice and the mouth lined up! That was an exciting moment!! Too bad it didn't last the whole time - I had to adjust a few times - but it was nice to be able to think we just had weird surround sound...

I miss the days when I could pay more attention and take copious notes... These days if I manage to even hear more than 1/2 of it over kids needs I consider myself lucky. We debated about letting the kids watch movies in the other room so we could get more out of it, but decided it was more important for them to be with us listening to prophets. Shelly actually had fun with the BINGO thing for a bit (I found one online I printed off sometime during the Sat afternoon session - does anyone else remember doing those as kids?). It lasted almost an hour - and then she realized she could eat the M&M's....... On Sunday afternoon (the afternoons were better for us, since Jason napped!!) she heard a song from across the room and got up and ran to her bingo card and put a cheerio on the Hymns square (yes, we switched to cheerios - we should have started with those, but were not quite so smart apparently). It was the last time the BINGO card was seen, but it was still rather funny. I was impressed she knew which square was the right one! She ended up falling asleep on the floor under the foot rest for the last half of Sunday afternoon! It was a nice ending to a rather eventful weekend.

Ok, that's about 20 times longer than I meant to write - I must have some sort of a condition that forces me to write much more than I need too... If anyone ever figures out what that is, let me know cause so far I've been blaming it on being female, but I'm pretty sure that not only is that not accurate, it's not really fair... I also have issues with using dashes and commas and whatever those three periods are called (ellipsis) too often. It's a sickness! :-)

March Madness

[From the Family News Site. I was excited that I won our family's March Madness Brackets!!]

It's official! I won the March Madness Brackets! Even though I haven't had anyone in for the last 2 rounds, I did well enough before they all lost that only Doug could have beat me - and his champ didn't make it to the finals. Mark did have NC make it to the finals (the only one with a team correctly in the finals), but has them loosing to another team that's no longer in. Now we've started over again since no one has a champ left... Anyone want in? There's a good chance we won't watch it for a while (if at all), but I'm assuming that no one but Katie even cares in the slightest (and Nate of course) and everyone wishes I'd stop writing such boring drivel. Don't worry. This should be my last time - unless of course my last guess wins. :-)

Adventures in the backyard [Katie]

Rach has been making a lot of changes around here. Including having a garden in the backyard. She got herself a book that told her the best way to get started, made herself some drawings, and got busy setting her plan in motion. We went to the store bought tons of dirt, wood, and other stuff that I don't remember. Then we headed home to commence construction.

Shelly, Jason, and Aunt Katie's feet chillin' watching the excitement of the box garden

Mark shoveling the dirt into the box garden

This one was mixed in with the other ones. Jason got a hold of the camera and this is the result. Pretty cool huh? :)

Jason again, but this time with Oreo

Fixing the house [Katie]

The front of the house struggles and since the association (and our neighbors) is crazy, we had 30 days to fix it.

Here's Uncle Doug sawing away!

Jason getting in on the hammer action

The grass was looking a little long, so Shelly and Jason thought to help out by hammering it down.

Grandpa and Uncle Doug working hard!

Time for a break! Shelly shoots, she scores!!!!!

Shelly and Jason with bugs! [Katie]

K, so there isn't a bug, but it is Jason doing a BIG no-no! That's our neighbor's wall....

Here's the bug! A lady-bug to be exact!

Fun times, fun times!!

Adventures in the life of the Schofields...

Here's some random adventures over the last month or so...

Mark had gone to play basketball in the morning, and I was doing my best to sleep in - that is until I heard a loud crash followed by screaming coming from the kids room... This is what I found when I ran in. Shelly was under the top drawer or two and was able to get out on her own, thankfully, so I left the mess for someone stronger to help clean up. Mark is awesome!!

Here's Shelly enjoying a rare ice cream sandwich. Mom brought some back from somewhere, and Shelly quite enjoyed helping finish them off...

I had been worried this day would come - and that it would be one of my kids fault. Despite my best efforts, the kids love to draw on the window with chalk [this includes banging]. I'm pretty sure they weakened the window quite a bit, and if it hadn't been one of Doug's friends, one of the kids would have done it soon. I figure I actually owe the guy a favor for saving the kids from broken glass falling on top of them... [in case you can't tell, the window shattered, from the inside and all the glass is on the ground outside]

Grandpa to the rescue! He cleaned up all the glass outside and took out the leftover pieces of window. What an awesome guy!

I bought a Santa Potato Head around Christmas, but apparently I forgot about it. I found it the other day and Shelly wanted to show me what Santa says... I had to tape it! It was pretty much required.

Playing with Daddy

Mark came home unexpectedly early last night and was able to see the kids just before bed time. They needed it too! I woke up super tired and it quickly turned into a TV day - all day. [This it not normal - I'm typically against having the kids watch tons of TV, but lately it's been happening more and more. Thankfully, since I've gotten better, I've been able to get back to not quite so much TV again - who knows, maybe I'll even get to none someday! Oh the ideals I had before I had kids!!] I did feel better later, but not better enough to switch the routine - and then it was Jason's nap time and Shelly and I couldn't leave the house to go to the park like I had planned... Oh well. They got some good rough housing in with Daddy in the evening.

Both on Daddy's back for a piggy back ride!

Again!!

Not quite sure how this one started, but everyone was laughing, so it's all good!