St. Patty's

Better late than never right? St. Patrick's day began with a play date with Ella & Maggie. Can't go wrong with a favorite cousin from out of state. Then Gma & Gpa took Emily & Ella to see Tangled while Jacob napped and I had a luxurious hour to myself to ... bake cupcakes.
As soon as Jeff was home from work we had dinner (green pesto tortellini) and then the kids had fun looking for the leprechaun's lost gold. Later they exchanged the gold for a surprise present. They loved looking for the gold and Jacob was so cute following Emily all over looking for coins.

Emily excited to open her gift - a new book - and Jacob enjoying his new car

We ended the night with yummy green cupcakes and multiple attempts (again) of explaining the whole pinching thing to Emily.

A Really Cute Girl...

... that is so grown up. Emily can be so mature sometimes that it's hard to remember she's only 4 years old. A fact I always feel guilty about after yelling at her for something even an 8 year old would do. She is so smart and is working hard to learn how to read. She is such a big help to me I don't know what I'm going to do when she goes to school all day. She is great at playing with Jacob so I can shower or fix meals. She is also always watching out for Jacob and will either pull him down or let me know that Jacob's climbed too high or is within reach of something he shouldn't have - which is quite a common occurrence. She is very sweet and is always telling me how much she loves me and how I'm the best mom ever - something I never grow tired of hearing. Emily loves every holiday and birthday and is always so excited to celebrate everything. She is a beautiful dancer and singer and is usually found doing one or the other. She loves to laugh and is very good at making others laugh too. She's great at following rules ... and helping others follow them too. She will burst into tears if she can't go to primary or read her scriptures at night and will never pass up the opportunity to pray. She is a wonderful little girl and one I completely cherish.

Preschool field trip to House of Bread

A hat from Russia ... that reminds me of Tina Turner

A Really Cute Boy...

...that just keeps growing and growing. He is way into feeding himself these days. Which is a nice skill to master, but the clean up during the learning curve isn't so joyous. He is extremely independent and wants to do everything his sister does. He climbs on everything, gets into everything, is extremely dramatic, and L.O.V.E.S. being outside. He would spend all day in his swing or going for walks if I let him. I often hear Jacob and Emily laughing together which is like music to my ears. I love that they have fun together and I'm so grateful they have each other. All in all I'm completely in love with this little boy and can't believe he's already 15 months.

Spring ... I Think

We have loved the change over to warmer weather... well as long as it lasted anyway. We've also enjoyed have a yard to use during the warm spells. The kids are thrilled that Gpa put the tramp back up and it's been great to have something new for the kids to burn their energy on. It's also been way fun to see Jacob learn to jump. Spring also brought birthdays. Within 2 1/2 months we celebrate 6 birthdays on my side of the family alone. Of course that pails in comparison to the month of June where we have 9 family birthdays within 25 days of each other. But the Spring rush is still a fun time... maybe because one of them is mine? Anyway, we had cake for Jenn's big day in March. I also took the opportunity to snap a few pictures of the kids and also a prego pic of Jenn since she said she didn't really have any. Can you believe she was 30 weeks in this picture?

FHE with my family - we acted out Ammon

(Jacob was one of the robbers w/ a sword - he loved it and looked adorable)

Emily has been playing indoor soccer. She has some fun kids on her team and has enjoyed it. It's different from outdoor - to which she's excited to start again the end of April - but she's loved being able to play goalie. And she's good at it too.

Picture day - and a snapshot with one of Emily's teammates and his dad,

who happens to be Javier Morales from RSL

So our enjoyment of the beautiful spring weather has continued to be intermittent by weather. I swear we've had more snow this spring than all of last winter. How can such wonderfully sunny days be gone within a matter of hours? Well at least we were still able to have some fun with it...

I'm still praying for flip flops and sun though.

A New Camera = A Lot of Pictures

A few weeks ago Jeff completely spoiled me. We've been having problems with our camera for a while and have taken it in several times to get fixed. Thankfully my parents have let us borrow their camera during this time - otherwise we would have missed Thanksgiving, Disneyland, Jacob's 1st Birthday, Christmas, New Years and all the random events that happened in between. After a long drawn out process Best Buy decided to finally junk out the camera and give us the money towards a new one. I've been wanting a DSLR for a while and considering the price of them figured it was a dream that wouldn't come true for a l.o.n.g time. But Jeff surprised me and ended up getting me one. We also got a 2nd lens for it that's awesome and I've spent the last several weeks snapping pictures left and right - getting the hang of the camera and just having fun with it.