Happy Birthday Jenny!

Today is the one week anniversary of my sister Jenny's 35th birthday. No, I didn't forget about her birthday. In fact, I brought her lunch that day and you can see proof here.

Actually, I've been trying to find a good picture of her to post. This is one of my favorite pictures of us together and it took me awhile to dig it out of my closet. I'm just pleased I could find it. It was actually in a box labeled "1990-1994" filed under 1993. I love it when things are where they're supposed to be. That doesn't happen often enough in my life!

But enough about me, this post is supposed to be about Jenny.

On second thought, let's go back to me for a minute. I was 6 1/2 years old when Jenny was born. You can see pictures of baby Jenny here. I was thrilled to have a little baby sister. I had a little wooden rocking chair and I loved to hold Jenny and rock her. One day I had a wonderful time pretending to be a little mommy and rocking Jenny in her green sleeper. I thought she was the cutest baby in the whole world. I decided to remember that day forever and I promised myself that when I grew up I would tell Jenny what a sweet baby she was and how much I loved her.

Being the third child, Jenny got lots of love from my brother Scott and me. Another of my favorite pictures (which is probably somewhere in my closet not properly boxed and labeled) is of the three of us at Christmas time. Scott is holding Jenny in a death grip just below her neck and it looks like she might fall at any moment. I think she was smiling though!

She's been smiling ever since. When Jenny was about 3 or 4 she used to scare my Mom to death by wandering up to a complete stranger with a big smile on her face, climbing up on his lap and starting a conversation.

Jenny has always been friendly and out going. Today when I stopped by her house she was warming up lunch for an itinerant laborer. Fortunately, she wasn't sitting on his lap.

Happy Belated Birthday Jenny!

Easter Morning

PAJAMA TIME

Marianne and Evan were up early to find where the Easter bunny had hidden their baskets. Ryan and Aaron stumbled out of bed just in time for Easter brunch. Thank goodness we have 1:00 church. The boys made it known that they are NOT too old for Easter baskets. Ryan got a book entitled Renting Your First Apartment in his basket. Do you think the bunny was trying to drop a hint?

Marianne decorated these blown eggs for a cute centerpiece,

Evan spent the morning battling with his army men, which the Easter bunny brought at his request. I hear that the bunny had quite a time locating those army men. For some reason, they don't seem to be a popular Easter gift.

READY FOR CHURCH

It seems that Ryan and Aaron ARE too old to get new Easter clothes and pose for their mom. Fortunately Marianne & Evan are still willing.

Our beautiful girl

The weather was perfect for kite flying

It's All About Food!

I know the true meaning of Easter, I really do!
We sang "He is Risen" every morning the week before Easter.
We all shared our favorite scriptures about the atonement.
My boys sang in The Messiah at the Performing Arts Center.
I read my favorite Easter story and a great Passover story to my younger kids.
I tried, I really did!

So why is it that all of our Easter photos seem to be about food?!

Hope you had a lovely Easter with lots of yummy things to eat!

By Request

Green Pasta

AKA "How to Get Your Kids to Eat Greens"
or A Great St. Patrick's Day Recipe

1 very large bunch fresh spinach, kale, chard or other greens
(the recipe says you can use 10 oz frozen spinach, but I've never tried it.)
1/4 cup warm chicken broth
1/2 cup parmesan cheese
1/2 cup milk
dash salt
1 lb pasta cooked & drained
1/4 cup butter

Steam fresh spinach just until wilted (frozen spinach until warm). Combine spinach and a little bit of cooking liquid with warm broth, cheese, milk & salt in blender. Process until smooth.
Toss pasta in bowl with butter.
Add spinach mixture; toss to mix well.

Makes approx 6 serving. Enjoy!

I am happy to announce . . .

The cookies are gone!!!!

We sold our final boxes of Girl Scout cookies at Wal Mart on Saturday afternoon (after the Primary activity, Evan's baseball game & a shopping trip - Whew!) Marianne sold over 500 boxes. She worked really hard and learned so much!

I'm so glad we're done!

Colors of Monday

Our home was filled with beautiful colors today!
I'm so grateful that God created such a colorful world!

Yellow

I love daffoldils!
They were closed when I brought them home, but they opened in no time.
This is one of my favorite springtime traditions!

Green

Happy St. Patrick's Day!
Our day started off with a visit from "'Lucky" our favorite leprechaun.
We never manage to see him, but he stops by every year to visit the little house that the kids make for him. This year's house included a miniature table laden with Sculpey watermelon. He gobbled it up, took the gold coins and left shamrock & rainbow notepads and green dollar bills in return. (He doesn't like paper money because it isn't shiny enough for his tastes.)

For dinner we had "green pasta" which (surprisingly) everyone likes! It is kind of like macaroni & cheese, but healthier because it's made with spinach.

Orange (and white)

On Saturday Ryan took a leave of absence from Youth Conference and went to get a spray-on tan. When he walked in the door on Saturday night he looked like a giant yam. I about died laughing. Sadly, we couldn't find the camera anywhere, so I wasn't able to capture his lovely orange color in a photo. After several showers he has faded to a lighter shade, but is still quite a bit darker than his naturally pale self. (His friends sometimes call him whitey-white.) He is normally about the same color as Evan.

Hope you had a happy & colorful day!!

Happy 18th Birthday Ryan!

To celebrate Ryan's birthday we took a family trip to Disneyland & California Adventure. That may not sound like much to those of you with annual passes, but for us this is a BIG deal. We haven't been to Disneyland in several years and we've never gone for two days in a row. We had a wonderful trip, celebrating the birthday of wonderful Ryan.

Here are some words to describe Ryan.

R is for:

Really handsome
Rich (potentially)
Rapport builder
Red
Righteous










Y is for:

(Yes this is a Y. It may look like an I, but if you look carefully, you will notice Ryan is using his arm to turn that I into a Y. Work with me & use your imagination. Besides,
C - A - L - I - F - O - R - N - I - A doesn't have a Y in it!)

Yacking on his cell phone
Youthful
Yelling
Yearning to travel
Y chromosome carrier
Yep that's Ryan






A is for :

Awesome
Adorable
Ardent
Adamant
Auto-detailer
Actor
Aaron's brother
Able
Absolutely outgoing
Active








N is for:

Noble
Nice
Nail-biting
Narrator
Noteworthy
Native Californian
Networking
Nightlifer
New York lover








Ryan was born just before midnight after many hours of hard labor, but He was worth it! I didn't get much sleep that night, but early the next morning I opened my eyes to find a priest standing over my bed. I thought maybe I had died.

"Good morning" said the priest. What is your baby's name?"
"John Ryan" I replied.
"That's a good Catholic name" the priest said with a smile. "May I baptize him now?" asked the priest.
"Sure" I mumbled, still trying to figure out why I was having such a strange dream.
He proceeded with the ordinance and by then I was awake enough to ask, "Father, exactly why are you here?"
"Oh, I'm visiting all the Catholic mothers this morning" he explained.
"But I'm not Catholic, I'm Mormon. Ryan will be baptized again when he's 8, but no harm done!"

Ryan has kept my life full of surprises ever since! I love you Ryan!

Pinewood Derby

It is legendary--a scouting tradition.

There are so many great lessons to be learned through the Pinewood Derby

hard work
craftsmanship
friendly competition
sportsmanship

Unfortunately, I'm not sure my boys have learned any of these lessons. Case in point...

In past years Evan has spent hours on his pinewood derby car. . . cutting, sanding, painting, decorating and finally weighing his masterpiece.



He's done a lot of hard work and had a lot of fun, but he's never even come close to winning the race.

This year we were slackers. We've had so much going on that John picked up a pre-cut car and brought it home to Evan. An hour or two before the race, Evan applied a few coats of spray paint, put on the wheels & hoped for the best.

At pack meeting they found some left over weights and put them on.

I've been so busy that I didn't even go to the Pinewood Derby, let alone take these pictures. Thanks to Marianne we at least have a photographic record!

And it is important to have pictures because . . . he actually won. Yes, it's true. He won first place, and I wasn't even there.


I should have known better. This isn't the first time something like this has happened. At Ryan's very last Pinewood Derby he was a little too cool to participate. He didn't want to make a car. I tried to encourage him, but he refused. Finally he said, "I'm just going to bring this block of wood and race it."

I let him do it, sure that he would be embarrassed and learn an important life lesson about hard work and doing your best. Can you guess what happened?

He and "the block" won 1st place!

For some reason Mom keeps learning these lessons instead of the Cub Scouts.

Happy Birthday Evan!

I can't believe my baby is 10 years old!
He was the cutest little guy and he's still cute now, only I'm not allowed to say that. He's cool now, so I've included a very cool picture of him below.

Evan was a very sweet, easy-going baby! When he was 4 months old, John had to work at a convention in New Orleans and he took Evan and me along. Some of my other babies were difficult to travel with, but not Evan. He smiled during the flight, happily went along on a walking tour of historic homes, went in and out of taxi cabs and never made a fuss during all of our site-seeing.

New Orleans has some fabulous restaurants and Evan came along to them all.
We even went to a very ritzy place called "Commander's Palace" The food was amazing and waiters were everywhere, ready to attend to our every need.

When we arrived with an infant in tow, the maitre d' glared at us and everyone stared as we walked to our table. As expected, Evan was a perfect angel! By the time we left everyone was admiring Evan and smiling at him.

Here he is at his coolest.

John took Evan and a couple of his buddies hiking to celebrate his birthday.

Aaron started a tradition that Evan loves--making your own birthday cake. Here he is getting the batter ready. Notice he's already sampled some.

Concentrating as he puts on the ocean blue frosting. It will be the perfect background for the turtles and fish he's using to decorate his cake.

If only we could get him to write this neatly all of the time!

The birthday boy and the finished product!

Happy Birthday Evan! We love you!