Caught in the act....the act of sleeping! [Katie]

I'm not sure why or how she got in the box, but she seemed to be quite comfortable!

Jason, not to be out done!

AWWW!!!! How cute! I guess they really do like each other. It's hard to tell sometimes in between all the fighting and yelling ;)

Jason during his nap, cuz Shelly would not allow him to be sleeping in her chair other wise

Easter Time!

[This is taken off our Family News page that my side of the family uses to keep track of each other. It's in my color from that page - Hope that's not too annoying. It's one of those updates that I wrote and it kinda stands out since not too many of us write lengthy entries...]

Well yesterday [Saturday before Easter] - aside from doing about a dozen small projects around the house, not the least of which was weeding the back yard and planting our garden - we had the kids dye Easter Eggs! It was a mess!! Newspaper is a good thing! As is 'painting shirts' for the kids! Shelly and Jason both managed to dunk their whole hands into the cups to get the eggs out - mostly they used that wire thingy though - and at dinner Shelly had signs that some of the dye had run down her arm... Mom bought a ham to eat (who knew there was a traditional meal for Easter??) and we're breaking out some corn from the farm and we're in the middle of making rolls and homemade mashed potatoes (those of you from Idaho or a farm, forgive this house - we grew up on the fake stuff and I have only recently discovered that real potatoes can be good! It's a trick remembering to cook them for Sunday dinners though... I often forget and then it's back to the flakes for us! :-) ). Later today, after Mom and Dad get back from church, we're going to go on an egg hunt with all the stuff that Mark's mom sent down for us. We each get to find a bag with homemade caramel popcorn and some other small candy, as well as 5 eggs per person to find, I think that number is right but I'm going to have to count to be sure. Some of the eggs have numbers inside and if you find an egg with a number you get to pick from the stash of loot that came in the box from Elaine (small stuff - probably mostly from the dollar store, and mostly stuff the kids would enjoy, but it's still fun!!) That's about it here. I'm just waiting for the dough to finish rising so I can go finish the rolls... The house is otherwise silent (kids are napping and I'm not convinced they're the only ones - I just wish I could join them!)

I'm adding some pictures...

Uncle Doug helping make sure Shelly doesn't make a mess
Jason trying to get the egg out with getting his hands messy - he didn't mind the mess for too long...
Shelly showing off her 'dyed' hands
It quickly became clear that it was easier to let Jason put the eggs in empty cups!
Emily (Becca's friend who we like to have visit) trying to help Jason. I'm not sure he sees it quite that way though...
Play time!
She's eating the egg - shell and all!
Not quite as good as it seemed now is it?
Jason learned from his sister, and peeled the egg first. It took them quite the long time to try to peel those eggs!

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!!