Spring has sprung!

Here it is the last day of March and it's looking and feeling like Spring! I love it! Summer is just around the corner and we're excited! We have about 2 months of school left. Summertime is going to be HOT, so I'm enjoying this beautiful weather that we are having now. Can't wait for swim season though. The pool is warming up! :)

I found some old pictures that were taken at spring time that I wanted to share.

Cole is 15 months old in this picture. It's taken at the Temple grounds and it's one of my favorites of him. :) Pretty flowers in the background.

This was taken at Easter time at our old house. Jacob was 2 years old and Cole was 4. I love the smile on Cole's face here. So cute!

Then of course one with the Easter Bunny. Jacob was 3 years old here and he's looking pretty brave! :)

These are the pretty flower fields near my parents home in CA. We took this picture when we were there last year at spring break. Love it!

Here is Nick and the boys in front of the flower fields also taken last spring break.

Happy Spring everyone! Enjoy the beauty! :)

Pinewood Derby...Year 3!

Saturday was our ward's Pinewood Derby. Fun was had by all! Cole got first place in the Webelos den and 4th place overall! Way to go Cole! This is his last year to be in the derby, so he was happy that he did so good. Jacob also made a car for fun. His first official year will be next year since he still has two more weeks before he turns 8! Here are some pictures.

Here he is showing off his cool car!

Jacob had to get in on the action too. :)

He is waiting for the race to start. He got a license with his picture on it, cute! :)

Waiting for his car at the finish line. He was racing against two of his buddies here.

He looks pretty pleased with himself as he hangs out with two of his good friends. :)

Here he is getting his award and showing his car off to everyone.

Jacob's turn to race his car and against Cole's too!

There were some pretty cool cars there. Cole and Jacob's cars are on the far left two lanes:)

Nick is being funny. This is a car that looks like a popsicle so he is pretending to eat it. It even had popsicle sticks glued to it! Cute idea! There were quite a few creative cars there! :)

Cole is showing off his certificate. His car got Sportiest Looking car. :) My cute boys. Cole won't be a cub scout for much longer and Jacob will be one in less than 2 weeks! Time flies!

Way to go boys!

Let's Play Ball!

Baseball season is upon us! Opening day for Little League was last Saturday. Cole is on the Twins team again and so far they are doing pretty good. They've been practicing for over a month now, so he's glad to finally be playing in games. He's pitching again this year, and he's also catching. Poor kid was catcher for the entire game on Tuesday and he was so tired after! Nick is also coaching again, so it's a busy baseball season once again for us. I forgot my camera on Saturday, so my friend Lynda took some pictures of him for me and she has an awesome camera so they turned out really good. Thanks Lynda! I couldn't choose which pictures I liked best, so I put them all on here!

Here is the Twins team on the field during opening ceremonies.

Look at the form on this kid!

Way to go Cole! :)

Nice batting stance bud!

Well done #10! It was a great game and the Twins won! :) Yeah, I'm a little proud, can you tell?

A New Kind of Cereal...

A few weeks ago Cole finished up his latest book report and project. This thing was the DEBIL! I'm tellin' ya it took a lot of time, but in the end it turned out really well. He was quite proud of it. He had to create a cereal based off the title of a book he read. He went with something easy, Harry Potter, and really did a good job. He had to prepare a 2 minute commercial to go with it also.

The ingredients were listed on the side and that was where he had to write the main characters, on the other side was the plot, on the top was the title and author of the book, and on the back, an activity, he did a word search that took FOREVER! It was a cute idea though. He brought home an awesome grade for it too! :) Yay Cole! So now who wants some Sorcerer's Stones Strawberry Flavored Oat Cereal? Sounds good, doesn't it? ;)

Swimming with no water?

Last week we had to drain our pool. Apparently, with salt water pools, you have to drain them every two years. The sun makes more salt and so eventually the self chlorinator will stop working because of too much salt, which means that we have to manually add the other chemicals. Well our pool is basically maintenance free and this is not something that Nick wanted to do, especially since I teach lessons and the pool gets used a lot. This is not something they warn you about when you buy a salt water pool either. So while the boys were at school, Nick rented a pump and drained it all into the sewer clean out. When they got home from school it was done so they were able to go into the pool while it was being filled back up. They had loads of fun in there climbing around. Now the pool is filled up again and soon it will be warm and ready for the summer! Yay, can't wait for swim season just around the corner. :)

The pool does go to 6.5 feet, so they had quite a climb up to that step. They weren't even standing in the deepest part either. :)

Seriously? Already?

I know there are some of you out there who think that I am just completely and totally obsessed with Twilight and that I am the biggest Twilight fan. Well that is true to a point. However, I'm not an obsessed enough fan to put a countdown to the New Moon movie on my blog yet. That's right, I actually found an even BIGGER fan out there who is already counting down to New Moon which by the way doesn't come out until November! I won't have that on my blog until at least October. ;) Here is the proof that it is really out there, ALREADY! Geez, now I want to see it and I have so long to wait. Why do they do that to the poor fans? By the way, as of today there are apparently 246 days left. That's a lot! :( And yes, they have started filming it already.

They even have movie posters already! So, here is a little eye candy for you Edward fans. Nice! ;)

You're Welcome! :)

p.s. The Twilight movie comes out on DVD this Saturday! Make sure you get your copy. ;)

Witch Mountain at the Drive-in

Friday was the day that the new movie Race to Witch Mountain came out, so we decided to try something different and take the kids to the drive-in to watch it. Nick and I haven't been to the drive-in theater in years and the boys have never been. It was a beautiful night for a drive in and we had such a good time. We even saw some of our friends there that had the same great idea as us. I forgot my camera, but we made a bed in the Durango and the boys were super comfy there. The movie theater hasn't changed much since we were there last time which was about 15 years ago! Witch Mountain gets two thumbs up from us! So good! :)

More Spring Break Fun!

On Wednesday we went camping as a family up North to Canyon Creek. It was beautiful, but um, FREEZING! It even started snowing when we first got there and then again as we were packing up to leave. That wasn't a very good night's sleep, to say the least. There was snow nearby all over the ground. I'm not much of a camper, but since I'm outnumbered in this house 3 to 1, I was out voted. We were the only ones at the entire campsite. Probably cause no one is as crazy as we are to sleep in a tent in that kind of weather! :) We did have a good time though. The sun came out in the morning and we were able to enjoy the area and the view. The boys played golf and shot the BB gun. Good times!

Cole and Nick have been into playing chess lately, so they brought the chess set and set it up near the fire so they could stay warm while playing. Jacob is doing his usual thing, finding something to climb on. :)

Night time by the fire. We were playing some fun games and telling stories.

This is on our hike. Not sure what is with the Clone Trooper guns. Maybe they thought that they would shoot a wild animal that scared them, hahaha. Even Nick was getting in on that. ;)

Here is Canyon Creek. We had to drive across it with our car. It's built to do that, but it was a little freaky I thought. I kept having visions of the creek carrying our car away, LOL. It was so beautiful! :)

Here is Cole target shooting with the BB gun. They were having loads of fun shooting cans and other targets.

This is on the ride home. They were nice and quiet. Jacob had his iPod and some snacks and Cole had his DS. Ahh, peace! :)

This is a video that I shot of Jacob. He made up a little dance about the fire finally being out. I won't mention how they got the fire completely out, boys! ;) He was proud of himself for helping out so well so he started doing a little jig. He hammed it up even more when he saw me recording it! This kid cracks me up! :)

Swimming in March?

We've had a great time this past week during our spring break. Tuesday the boys had some friends come over to play and their friends couldn't handle looking at the pool without getting in. The water is 60 degrees, but I went ahead and let them all get in, knowing that it would only last 10 minutes tops! They got in and it actually lasted for 15 minutes. :) They were cold, but they wouldn't admit it. I saw them shivering though, so yes they were a little chilly. Here are some pictures to show everyone just how cold they really were.

They were so glad to get their towels. We did have towels for Dylan and Ethan to use and they did use them, I guess I just didn't get any pictures of them with the towels. We didn't make them stand there freezing despite what the pictures show.

Cole was going to jump back in to get the kickboard that was left behind. No one else wanted to do it, but not because they were cold, yeah right!

He got it and quickly got back out. He wasn't happy that he had to get wet again after already drying off!

The sun felt good after that cold water. Crazy kids! :)

A Day at the Zoo!

The boys are on Spring Break this week and Nick is on mandatory vacation all week, so we decided to head to the zoo yesterday. We haven't been there in over 2 years and they've added some things, so it was really a fun time and a great zoo day. The weather was awesome!

This statue has a special meaning for us. When Cole was on a 1st grade field trip the fingertip he's holding sliced him above his eye and there was blood everywhere. He wasn't sure if he wanted to get near this statue again, but he was brave and toughed it out. We had to take a picture of it again after all these years! :)

Jacob was so sure that he looked like a turtle. Um, I don't think so, haha.

I remember how small they used to look on these big ole tractors. Not anymore! They sure have grown since we were at the zoo last.

The Wallaby's were so cute. They were looking right at us while eating their grass.

This is a cool slide that looks like a Saguaro cactus.

This chipmunk was being pretty brave...up to a point. He ran back to the tree right after I got this picture.

Cole didn't notice the Tortoise behind them at first cause it was so still that it looked like a rock!

These little monkeys in monkey village were sure funny. This one was so close and kept climbing higher and higher, but continued to stare at us.

This little monkey is sleeping in a tree. You can see him right there on the branch sleeping. We did learn to not walk directly under them. One kid in front of us, well he got pooped on as he was walking right below one, haha. :)

These turtles, were "wrestling" the boys said. Yep...wrestling, that's what they were doing all right. ;) The boys noticed that when turtles "wrestle" they bark and sound like dogs. So, we learned something new that day, who knew? They thought that was pretty funny! The zoo is supposed to be G rated!

The above pictures are the Orangutuans. They were so entertaining. The baby one especially. She/he kept climbing and playing on that rope. It was so cute and quite hilarious! :)

Jacob posing for a picture on a boat that looked like a pirate ship, of course!

This is Stingray bay. It is the newest attraction at the zoo. The Stingrays come up so close to you and they let people pet them. Jacob was a little freaked out at first, but he got brave and once he touched one, he loved it and couldn't get enough. He said they feel soft and he loves soft things. :)

We love the Phoenix Zoo!