Easter 2011

I think we've been over run this year with Easter egg hunts and candy.  My sweet Cohen who used to beg for a banana for a snack is now asking for "tweats" (aka treats) non-stop.  It's far too difficult for me to keep even myself out of the candy, so I may have to just toss it soon before I go crazy.

Despite the excess of Easter treats, we had a wonderful holiday weekend.  I didn't have my camera on me for most of it, but I did enjoy it.

We had a little Easter party with Steve's brother and his family on Friday.  The kids loved playing with their cousins... they really are such good friends.  Then, we had an egg hunt/breakfast on Saturday morning for a church activity at our park in the neighborhood.  It's just too bad the weather has been so crummy still.  It was a little bit of a swampy egg hunt in 46 degree weather.  Where is Spring???  We colored eggs that evening.

 

I laugh when I see this picture and Kelan's expression... we colored one little green egg for him and of course he decided to taste it first.  I must have alarmed him when I said "eww, yucky!" because I got this deer in the headlights (and a little cross-eyed!) look when I snapped the photo.  

 

I'm not sure what Cohen did, but I asked him if he wanted to go on timeout... I snapped this photo mid-answer.  I like that he's giving me this innocent pleading look as he says "no". ;)  He is such a little charmer when he wants to be.

 

Then Sunday, we attended church and had a great Easter dinner with wonderful friends and family.  I ate entirely too much turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, homemade rolls, jello, veggies, etc.  It was just all too good!

I should have gotten a picture of everyone when they were sitting down and eating, but that didn't happen.  It's a little chaotic with 6 kids needing to be fed too... but here is the table before people and food.

 

My friend, Jen, motivated me to try growing my own wheat grass this year.  I have wanted to, but just never got what I needed in time.  It turned out so cute!  I have harvested a bit of it and Steve is going to toss it in a smoothie and see how it tastes.  ;)

Here are the kids just before we left for church that morning.

 

Don't they all look sweet?  Even Cohen.  But, don't let that fool you.  Mid-way through our Sacrament meeting that day (a short 30-45 minutes after this photo was taken), a chain of events led to me chasing Cohen outside and into the parking lot.  To top it off, I was in heels AND carrying Kelan at the same time.   Good times...  He ended up face planting it right there on the asphalt.  Now there is a lovely little scuff mark on his nice suit pants to remind me of this very incident.  Luckily his face was spared.  He certainly makes life interesting!

Me and my monkeys. I didn't plan to match them... but once I realized that I did, I made Steve wear a purple tie too.  :P  No time to figure out a family photo though and still make it to church on time... too bad.

 

After church, the kids went on an Easter egg hunt in our house.  We let Cohen go first because he's the youngest and he only made it half-way down the stairs.  He found an egg on the stairs and decided to open it and eat all of it's contents before continuing.  By the time he finished it, the older two had found all the eggs.  He didn't seem to care though as long as he had his candy.

Aren't the two boys hilarious?  The shed their white shirts and ties within seconds of being home.  That Easter egg hunting is serious business!

  

Next year, this little guy will be running with the rest of them!  It will be so fun.  :)

 

I hope everyone had a wonderful Easter... It always seems hard to keep the focus on what the holiday is truly about when you have children.  My sister-in-law gave me the cutest thing that definitely helped my kids this year.  You can check it out here or easily make your own!

It's what's for dinner...

...or I should say, what my kids think is for dinner.

A little faux grilled cheese...

It's actually pound cake with orange frosting in the middle.  I got the idea here.  Don't they have some awesome ideas??  Love it.

I'll share their reaction to my little April Fool's joke later. ;)

Did you get pinched on Thursday?

Surprisingly, I didn't.  I didn't even wear green for the holiday and Cohen and Kelan didn't have a lick of green on them either... Kanyon and Scarlett did, but only because I was afraid that someone might really pinch them at gymnastics that day.  However, I was a good mom** and actually made some St. Patrick's day themed food.

**I say "good mom" because I seriously was up all night with a crying baby and I actually made both of these items around 3:30am.  No sense in wasting time awake listening to the kid cry... so I got some things done.  

A pot of "gold".

 

I forget how completely NOT messy jigglers are.  I'll be making these more often I think!  Love that you can pretty much bounce pass them to your kids with no mess. ;)  Oh and the pot of gold was supposed to be put in little individual hollowed-out limes for each kid, but the only limes I could find would have held one piece of gold.  Not worth it... so I improvised.

The yummy "green velvet" cupcakes with cream cheese frosting.  Yum.  I made them last year too.  :)  Remember?

And no... they aren't very pretty. (Would anything be very pretty made at 3:30 in the morning though?!?) I always overfill them. Something to strive for when I make cupcakes next. Seriously, it drives me crazy.  With Scarlett turning 4 in a couple weeks and Cohen turning 2 in about a month... I'm sure I'll be getting some practice!

2011

Maybe I don't want a Happy New Year, he said. Maybe I want an intense New Year with a lot of growth experiences

& I had to admit I'd never thought of that
-StoryPeople

Phew... Happy New Year! So nice to have a house put back together and not have stuff everywhere! As much as I love Christmas and I love to get out the decorations, there is something so fresh and new about your home again once it's all back in storage. :)

It's not perfect... lego T-Rex on the table, pull-ups from a recent Costco run, baby paraphernalia all around... but clean and de-cluttered as much as is possible with little ones in the house.

I've not totally come up with "resolutions" yet... I don't normally make any official ones but I want to have a couple of main goals for the year and I'm still thinking on them. For now though, I'll leave you with one thing that I know I'm going to try and master this year.

The Playroom. Ugh.
This was it's state this afternoon:

Can you believe I'm actually revealing it? Say I'm not the only one that has a room in their house like this one.
Even Cohen is appalled.

No matter how many times I try and "organize" and come up with some kind of system for storing toys, etc... it always ends up looking like this.




I'm not sure that I'm going to just throw my hands up and say it's the age of my kids just yet... although I would love to. My biggest issue is that this room is lacking a closet of some sort... a place to store sets of things and little items that just get tossed about the room by Cohen. ;) I'm not sure how to remedy that, but I'm going to try and figure something out. Any and all suggestions are welcome!

In the meantime... at least I know the kids are enjoying themselves and they are getting use out of the playroom! And thank goodness I have it. Could you imagine all these toys tossed about my house?? That would be a much bigger problem. ;)

For now I will just be grateful that I have to physically walk up a flight of stairs to see the mess.

2011. I hope it treats everyone well... and I hope that I don't have too many growth experiences this year (like the story mentions above). I figure I'm due for a year off after adding Kelan to our family in 2010. Those first and last few months of pregnancy were tough as well as the first couple months of the adjustment to 4 little ones in the house. It was a changing year for us, and although a bit tough at times... I'm excited for the future and where we are in life right now.

That sounded a bit like a toast... Where's my Martinelli's? ;)
Cheers!

Christmas Day 2010

Kanyon was up at 4am. And we thought his regular morning at 6am was early. Needless to say we sent him back to bed numerous times before we finally gave in just before 7am when Cohen woke up.

Santa did indeed make an appearance and the kids were giddy with excitement. They ought to have been too because Santa spoiled them this year. (I think next year, Santa needs to put a limit on the number of gifts and go from there... apparently this year he/she forgot how many things had already been purchased and tucked away as early as November! Oops!)

*these photos below are of the night before after Santa had set everything up*

Cohen had a gift that was setup in the playroom for him, so Santa wrote a note for him to go find it. Boy was he excited. I should have gotten pictures of his face when he dove in that thing. We do have video though and that's even better. :)

We enjoyed the day at home and family came to our house to visit and see what the kids got. Trevor and Alex were the only ones who stayed and had homemade potato soup and rolls for dinner with us and then we played the night away on the new Pictionary game that we got for the Wii once the kids were in bed.

Here is Alex's masterpiece after the game was over and she played on the free draw mode.

Pretty impressive, especially since the pen and drawing device take some getting used to!!
Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas!

(Call me scrooge, but all my Christmas decor was down the next day. :) I can't handle the clutter for too long!)

Christmas Eve with the Shipp's

We always spend Christmas Eve at my parent's house with my siblings and my grandparents. My mom made a ham dinner and we exchanged gifts as we do every year.




Trent was very creative with his gift of money for Alex this year... folded into little boots! :) It's kind of a running joke that Trent gives to Alex every year, even though each year we randomly draw names. It must just be meant to be. ;)

Great gifts deserve high 5's all around.

The kids dressed in their new PJ's they opened that night... and all freshly bathed!

I loved this picture of Cohen with my dad. So sweet.

Scarlett was showing a very interested Uncle Troy the contents of her purse that Great Grandma Cummings gave her... she has carried that everywhere with her since that night. :)

*Gasp*
Could this be a family photo? Yes, yes it is!

Thanks to Alex for the very first family picture with all 6 of us present and accounted for. :)

Sonnenberg Christmas

We always spend the 23rd of December over at Ken and Babata's house doing the Sonnenberg side of the family's Christmas celebration. The kids really look forward to it because they love giving gifts to their cousins that they picked out.

We had a really yummy spread of food... after seeing it all, I just gave up on eating healthy and ate what I wanted. :) I did not regret it either as it did not disappoint!



Kanyon and his cousin Maya are such good buddies.

Scarlett and Aliyah are too... and pretty much inseperable whenever they get together.

Grandma and Grandpa Sonnenberg with their great grandkids (and Babata). :)

James was there too, but apparently hiding from my camera.

After dinner we all went to a retirement community center and gave out gifts, cookies, and other little treats to the older people there that were eating their dinner at the time. They always love the kids and the kids love bringing around the goodies to share. It's really so sweet. My kids looked forward to it all week long after we talked about doing service for others earlier in the week.

Can't wait until next year! :)

Gingerbread Houses

We spent a family night this month building all the gingerbread houses that we had accumulated. The kids loved it.










They were all very serious about their decorating. Cohen even stayed on task and decorated his far longer than I expected before the candy eating commenced. ;)

Between these gingerbread houses and the ones the kids brought home from preschool... my counters were taken over!