Spring Break 2013 PICTURES!!!

This has been a fun spring break for our family!  We still have one week to go, but I want to share our pictures so far!


Easter Goods!

Ready for Church Easter Morning

 Later that week after Master Chief was done with work we packed up and headed to Grandma Great's house!!!


Visiting Grandma Great's friend who has deer for pets!

  

Watching the deer eat

Then we went up to some other neighbors of Grandma Great's who have donkeys and a miniature horse.  Miss Piggy was a little afraid to get in there to pet the horse, but soon she found it was quite easy!



Back at Grandma Great's house we played outside on the laundry swing.  This will be gone the next time we see Grandma Great because she'll be tearing down her house so she can build a new one with my Aunt!  Mama spent many hours playing on this growing up!

Soon we had to leave and make our way south.  First we stopped at Mama's best friends house where were supposed to drop in, surprise her and leave in a matter of minutes.  I think we spent a good hour there talking, laughing and just having a great time.  Her oldest is betrothed to Miss Piggy, so we thought it would be funny to take a picture of the two of them.  I'm not sure how funny they thought it was though!!!

Her youngest is just a little older than my youngest and those two are two peas in a pod.  They played so well together, but both moms know that they could never be left alone for 2 seconds because they are both trouble makers!  They were quite the pair.  Perhaps they should be betrothed as well because when we told them to hold hands they were all too excited to do so!

 After leaving my best friends house we continued south to Salt Lake and to Temple Square.  We enjoyed walking around the grounds of the temple, seeing the beautiful flowers and statues.

Kermit wanted lots of pictures taken, he loves the temple so much and wanted to show him hugging the temple!  He said he never wants to let go.



 We got to go inside the tabernacle and show the kids where General Conference used to be held.

 Then we walked over to the Visitors Center.  Kermit wanted his picture taken in front of the building.

 Inside the Visitor Center is a beautiful statue of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

Then we walked across the street to the new Conference Center.  They have a pretty waterfall that falls from the top of the Conference Center to the ground that was really neat!

 Inside the Conference Center was magnificent!  It seats 21,000 people, not a bad seat in the entire place and we listened to the organist practice for General Conference. 

After we left the Conference Center Kermit really wanted a picture of him with Angel Moroni, which is the gold statue on top of the temple you see in the distance.

 We were getting hungry, so we found a Noodles and Co for dinner.  Our girls were being quite silly.

Afterwards we went to our Uncle and Aunts house where the kids played, the dads played and the moms did the mom thing!  We made our way back home on Saturday afternoon and enjoyed a relaxing day Sunday watching General Conference.  It was fun for the kids to see Conference because we had just been where the magic happens! 

Kermit Earns His Bobcat Award!

Kermit has been working very hard on scouting and his Faith in God.  A month ago he earned his Bobcat award in scouts and due to some emergencies at our church building, they had to cancel pack meeting last month so Kermit had to patiently wait until this month to be awarded this patch!  Little did Mama know, this award was special for her too.  The asked Kermit to escort Mama to the front of the room, so I quickly gave my camera to Miss Piggy to take pics, and the cover was on the camera!  What you don't get to witness is Kermit pinning a mothers pin on my shirt!  I was so proud of my little cub scout! 

There were 3 boys earning their Bobcat and after getting their patch, they got to "BOB" for apples!  I got this on video.... remember Kermit has only 1 front tooth....

Way to go, Kermit! 

Miss Piggy Turns 8 and Gets Baptized!!!

It's finally Miss Piggy's turn to be 8!  It is a long 10.5 weeks in between Kermit and Miss Piggy's birthday, the only time they are different ages!  She has been anxiously waiting for this magical age to come along.  Her actual birthday was last month.  She invited her best friend over and played all day long since it was a school holiday.  She chose to go to Applebee's for dinner!

And then the long wait began.... to be baptized!


Miss Piggy was bapized by her dad a few weeks ago with many friends and family there to witness this event.  Miss Piggy was hoping that something would come out of the water so she could be baptized 2 times, but her dad pushed her under just enough!  She said the water was so warm she didn't want to get out!  Afterwards we had a fun family party with cheese pizza, salad and cookies!
This is my mom's sister, my grandma, me, Baby Girl, Miss Piggy, and Gram-Gram.  A 4 generation picture!!! 


All the gentlemen that helped give Miss Piggy the Gift of the Holy Ghost! 
Miss Piggy and her BFF!And Mama couldn't resist holding 2 nephews, feeding one and remembering how hard it was to have 2 babies at once! 

Happy Birthday Miss Piggy.  You are one of a kind!  You love to read, you want to be a school teacher, teach art, or a nurse.  You love cheese pizza, cereal, and you don't love to eat salad!  You are into reading the Babysitters Club books and Magic Tree House books.  You are a super gymnast and are hoping to do some cheerleading this fall.  You love to take care of your little sister and be a little mommy to her.  We love you with all our hearts!!!

Kermit Turns 8 and is Baptized!!! The Family Goes to the Temple!

Not so recently Kermit turned 8 and 4 days later he was baptized a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints!  On his baptism day, before the actual baptism, we had a wonderful opportunity to attend a temple open house.  What a neat experience it was to take our children into the temple once again! 

Kermit is such a great kid.  He is one of the hardest workers I have ever met, he is extremely talented in sports and is a year ahead in his math.  Kermit is extremely excited to be a cub scout now and looks forward each week to attending his den meetings.  We couldn't ask for a better son, we love him so much and are so thankful that he is apart of our family!  Now for the pics!!!

Happy 12th Anniversary!

Master Chief and I celebrated our 12th year of marriage last Saturday.  We celebrated by attending a dinner theatre!  We had a delicious dinner and watched Something's Afoot.  We had a great evening!  So I thought I would post what my top 12 highlights are from our awesome marriage!

1 - Angel Baby - She made us parents!!!
2 - Trip to Sea World because Master Chief didn't have any idea that Shamoo was really that big!  He was like a little boy there!!!
3 - Dave's Graduation - WAHOO!  We went out and bought a car afterwards!
4 - Adopting Kermit - What a blessing in our lives he is!
5 - Miss Piggy - How scary it was to have her, but thankfully she is healthy!!!
6 - Moving to our current home - FINALLY HOME OWNERS!!!  (Lived here since 2005)
7 - Baby Girl - What a welcome suprise!
8 - Playing board games all night long!
9 - Master Chief's dinners he always likes to try out, they are all so yummy!  (Aren't I lucky to have a chef!)
10 - The way Master Chief always likes to suprise me with chocolate and Diet Pepsi!
11 - The way he makes me laugh - It's the things he says and does that make me laugh years after he's done them!
12 - Making plans for future event with each other.  Master Chief has some fun ideas on house plans (far in the future, lol), trips to take, cars we want.  It's fun to have our ideas come together and see how we are like a well oiled machine!

I love you Master Chief, I look forward to eternity with you!

Kermit, The Football Star!

Kermit has found his favorite sport.  FOOTBALL!  He has finished his season and is sad.  He played flag football this year as a Defensive Lineman most of the season, sacking the quarterback several times!!!  He pulled lots of flags and scored a few touch downs even!  On his last game, he was breaking through the line so well, the other team had to put 2 people on him to try to keep him back.  He is a little bull dog! Way to go, Kermit!!!

 

In 100 Years...

We have been growing lots of carrots all summer long in hopes of a great harvest to can this fall.  Friday was our harvesting day and what we thought would take a few hours ended up taking a lot more!  We had tons of carrots!  In the end, we had 24 quarts and 17 pints of sliced carrots!  YUM.

Canning these carrots came with a trip to the ER though! 

We had a perfect set up.  Kermit and Miss Piggy would wash carrots, hand them to Master Chief and he'd do a second wash, he'd put them in a bowl and Baby Girl would carry the bowl over to me and I'd slowly and carefully slice them on our mandolin slicer. 

It was a perfect set up!  I could see why families have lots of kids... to help with canning, lol!  I had 3 pints full, so just the beginning, when I came upon a rather large carrot.  I got to the top of the carrot and because I was going so slow in my slicing to stay safe I couldn't slice through this large carrot.  I turned my hand and used my thumb to push it through, gave it a good push and realized that my middle finger made it to the slicer before the carrot did. 

I said, "This is bad, this is really bad!"  We couldn't get the bleeding to stop no matter what we did and Master Chief thought it went to the bone.  Since I'd already hit my deductible this year I decided I'd better go get stitches. 

3 stitches later (And we found out 3 days later that I needed at least 4) I was good as new! 

This created a problem when it came to canning though.  I couldn't get my hand wet and I couldn't bend my finger so I couldn't slice carrots.  What were we going to do with all these carrots! 

We ended up putting Kermit and Miss Piggy on the job as scrubbers and Master Chief was the slicer, while Baby Girl still carried carrots back and forth and I carefully prepared the jars.  This worked out very well! 

As the night progressed, the kids were being hilarious!  They'd give each other break times and treated it as if they were at a real job.

Then Kermit said something to Miss Piggy that we are still snickering about...

Kermit - "In 100 years we can get together and say, 'Do you remember when we had to scrub all those carrots!'"  LOL!!!

Thank you to my sweet children for helping us out.  Without your help, Master Chief would still be canning those carrots!