2014 Family Photos

I finally am getting around to posting the Mother's Day photos for this year.  The disk has been sitting on my desk for weeks, just staring at me.  I figured I better deal with it before the kids graduated from high school!

 

Soccer

Will had his last soccer game of the spring season tonight.  His team named themselves "the Bulls".  It was all preschool and kindergarten aged kids.  The league runs through our local rec center and only goes for about 2 months.  Paul ended up coaching the team because there were no other volunteers.

Here are some highlight photos.

The kids all got a trophy after the last game.

This is what happens when you tell William to smile like he's happy.

Lilly wanted to play with the boys really badly.  She's actually pretty good at dribbling the ball with her feet and kicking it were she wants it to go.  I expect that she will be really good by the time that she's old enough to be on a team.

Lilly's 3rd Birthday

We had Lilly's 3rd birthday party last weekend with her friends from the neighborhood and our local family members.  She choose a Bubble Guppies theme for the party. (For those without small kids it's a cartoon starring little mer-people.)

Lilly got a lot of great gifts from everyone, including her own soccer ball and a big girl bed.  Her favorite thing is to tell people that she is now "this many" with 3 fingers up.

Easter 2014

We had a great Easter this year. Paul and I were leading the class for the kids this week, which was a bit chaotic but fun.  Once we were done with church we all went outside for the annual egg hunt.  The teenagers did an awesome job setting up everything in the park next to our church.  The kids loved it.

 

Afterward we went to Grandma Nina's and played with all our Easter toys.  So much fun!

Will's 6th Birthday

Will turned 6 last week.  We had a party for him on Saturday with a ton of his friends.  He picked a Pirate theme.  I ordered a beautiful cake from Winco and we found some great decorations at the party store.

We had the entire house set up into separate areas for the kids.  We had a station at the dining room table for them to color their own pirate hat.

Grandma Rhonda and Grandpa Bob put together an awesome treasure hunt through the downstairs for the kids.  They had to follow a treasure map to find stickers placed at locations around the basement and then find the treasure chest at the end.  Grandma manned the treasure chest handing out "loot" bags, complete with eye patch and "gold" doubloons.

I set up a "Tattoo PaRRRlor" at the kitchen counter.  I found some great kids fake tattoos at Walmart with pirate themes.  Each kid got to pick 2 tattoos.

After all the fun we had cake and ice cream.  Grandpa Bob found some awesome color flame candles at the store.  When we lit them the flames matched the color of the candle.

Will got a ton of presents.  Aunt Erin gave him a set of soccer equipment (socks, cleats, shin guards, and a ball) so that he will be ready when soccer starts at the end of the month.  He loved it and I had to persuade him not to put it all on right then!

School Pictures and Updates

Well, I finally got the blog to start working again!  Something happened when I updated my internet explorer.  Bless Microsoft...

Anyway, a lot has happened since I last posted.  William is doing awesome in kindergarten.  Here is his first school picture.

We got the news that Will was accepted into the dual immersion program at school.  Starting next year he will have half a day in English and half a day in Spanish.  The program is run throughout the state of Utah and follows the kids all the way through High School.  They said that they are working with the state Universities to offer college credit to these kids in High School so that by the time they graduate they will already have a minor in their selected language.  The best part is that siblings get first choice when they get to first grade for dual immersion placement so it's likely that we will have an easy time getting Lilly enrolled as well.

Will decided that he wanted to try wrestling this year.  The local high schools have a little league program so we signed him up for that.  He did pretty well and he never gave up, even when he struggled.  We were so proud of him.  Out of 4 tournaments he won one match and tied in another.  When they had their last tournament he got a medal.  He's decided that the next thing he will try is soccer.  That league starts in April.

Grandma Donna turned 80 in January.  We decided to make her something special with the number 80, so we used our hands to make a couple of apple trees with total of 80 fingers.

I've been busy making baby blankets.  Paul's cousin, one of my friends, and my doctor all either recently had or are expecting babies.  So, I've been busy making everyone"string blankies" as Lilly calls them.  Here's a picture of the one that I made for Paul's cousin.
When I was done I had enough left over to make a pair of booties.

Paul's been working hard at Mark Miller Toyota.  They were really great about working his schedule around so that he could go to Will's wrestling tournaments.

Lilly is getting really big and basically rules our little household. Paul calls her our little kid-tator.

Christmas Outings

We took a family outing last night and went downtown SLC to check out the decorations at the Grand America hotel.  None of us had ever been to the Grand America and we were definitely impressed with how "grand" it was.

 

They had all of the shop windows decorated with elves and parts of Santa's workshop.  They had handouts with a quiz about the windows on them.  If you went through and answered all the questions you got a candy at the end.  They also had a huge, over 6 feet tall, gingerbread house.  The kids loved it.

 

Afterward we rode the train down to the City Creek shopping area and had diner.  The kids love riding the train.  They think that it is an adventure.

We finally got home around 9 pm and put the kids to bed.  It was cold, but it was worth it.  :-)