What we've been up to the last two weeks.

Parade #2 of the summerThe 2nd half is a water fight! Parade #3
Whitney got to invite a friend!

Whitney's Birthday!

She picked out this horse cake-that some little fingers

got into as soon as the horses got put on.

Whitney in her new dress and liahona necklace.

The liahona is supposed to represent the Holy Ghost.

She is getting baptised on 4th of July weekend!

She is growing up fast!

Grandma with Trevor *We got to see gamma & papa that weekend*Fatty Boy in the Bathtub-So cute!

Can you believe this is the 1st time I was able

to get pictures of him taking a bath?The last two mutual nights I've brought Trevor along

because we were to be gone for almost 4 hours each time.

This is him hangin out with us at our Waterslide activity last night!Looks like fun, no?

Remembering When...

Remember when Disney played movies every Saturday or maybe it was Friday evenings. Anyway here are some of my favorite oldy but goody Disney Flicks:


The Parent Trap
The Gnome Mobile
The Moon Spinners
Bedknobs and Broomsticks (Amber's fave)
Summer Magic
LT. Robin Crusoe
Mary Poppins (Brooke's Fav)
In search of the Castaways
Swiss FamilyRobinson
Follow Me BOys
That Darn Cay
The Happiest Millionaire
Babes in Toyland
Savage Sam
Apple Dumpling Gang
Hot Lead and Cold Feet
Condorman
Flight of the Navigator
White Fang
The Mighty Ducks
Iron Will

Any of these would be great for a family movie night!!

Kindergarten Graduation and School Awards!!

Amber graduated from Kindergarten last Friday and the program was jungle themed and quite fun. Here is my favorite song-you can hear Amber singing out above everyone else it is so hilarious-and cute ofcourse!

Plus on Tuesday was the 4th quarter awards assembly and Amber and Whitney both received awards for citizenship and Whitney received a Student of the Year award. She will get her name engraven on one of the plaques in the schools hallway. This is the second time she has won this award. I am proud of both of my girls for the hard work they put in this year and it was so nice to see them both be rewarded for their efforts! I love you girls!!

On a side note: Trevors weighs 14 lbs. 12 oz and is 24 1/2 in long-Big Boy!

California

My family with my Grandmother
My grandfather passed away a few months ago and my family decided to hold a memorial service for him on Memorial Day weekend so down to California we went. This is my mother's side and I haven't seen some of them for a good long while-not since Jr. high and some longer than that. It was so nice to see everybody again and catch up. I was a little apprehensive about my large family (4 kids is large if you aren't LDS). But all in all they did okay. The trip down took a bit longer than we had anticipated as we wanted to schedule bathroom breaks around the time we'd feed the baby-but Whitney thought she needed to go every hour for the first half of the trip...and she soon realized that there wasn't rest areas that frequent along the way. My brother flew in from Germany and my sister Ashley flew in from Arizona and I hadn't seen either in two years so it was nice to see them and meet Ash's daughter Carly for the first time. She treated me with a Pedicure Friday night-the first one I ever had done. Thanks sis!!Saturday was the Memorial Service and it ws very nice. My favorite was the slideshow my cousin put together of my grandpa. Later we had a nice dinner in my Aunts backyard and visited with family. My grandfather was an amazing person and will be missed. I didn't get much sleep at all on this trip -waking up to feed baby plus Saturday night Brooke came down with a nasty stomach bug and was throwing up all night. Needless to say I went to the nearest laundromat and washed as much as I could so we didn't have to smell puke all the way home. Sunday we spent in quarantine at the hotel-hopefull that no one else would get whatever Brooke had. . Monday we packed up and spent about an hour or two saying our goodbyes and taking pictures-knowing that it will probably be a good while before we will see each other again.

Grandma liked to hold Trevor alot!My parents and siblings +niece CarlyMy siblings (Me, April,Ashley,Arica, Austin)

At the hotel

Brooke slept alot..poor thing.

My parents with grandmaA picture of everyone taking pictures.he he

Wonderful News!!

So Trevor had an MRI Tuesday and this morning the Dr. called with the results to say that everything looks good. I had noticed Trevors eyes shift back and forth involuntarily at times and was concerned. I took him into the dr and she said it looked like it could be Nystagmus or even Opsoclonus and that we should do an MRI to make certain that there weren't any brain tumors or anything wrong with the optic nerves as well. Our kids have a 50% chance of inheriting Gorlins syndrome-Joe has it-and children can develop brain tumors. So with the factors we felt it was necessary to check and make sure about the tumors. She also prepared me for the fact that because he wasn't tracking objects-he could have severe vision impairments. This was disheartening to hear and I went home to tell Joe. Definitely I went through scenarios in my head of what life would be like if Trevor couldn't see and how it would affect his life. It was hard not to.

So we got the MRI scheduled and on Friday saw a Pediatric Opthamologist. The PO said that his eyes looked good-so far-and wanted to watch them a bit longer to see how they developed as the Nystagmus is usally more continuous and that Trevor might just grow out of what we've been seeing plus he should start to track objects in the next few months as well. So we left feeling more hopful about a scary situation. The MRI was done yesterday and the Dr. called me this morning with the news that everything looks great- no tumors or any abnormalities that might affect his vision. So we are so relieved but will still follow up with the Ped. Opth. every few months to be safe.

Just another small miracle in my life and I am so very thankful that the Lord knows how strong I can be and gives me the faith to know that with His help I can handle the trials ahead.
But I did want to say thankyou for all the prayers and concern from family members and close friends. It really was strengthening to hear your words of encouragement and know you were thinking of little Trevor and our family. Although-I'm not certain i should call Trevor little-he's 7 1/2 weeks and weighs 13 1/2 pounds. He's quite the happy healthy little boy!!

We kicked off Parade season with the first parade last Saturday!!

One down...at least three more to go. Deep in thought or sleep?Amber is going to teach Trevor all about Dinosaurs

-whether he likes it or not.

Check out the double chin on this guy

Area Festivals for the next two months!!

Here is a list of events and festivals in our area for the next month or two-looks like there is something fun to do every week!!
Click on the highlighted underlined words for more infor about the activity

May 10-15th Payette's Apple Blossom Festival

May 16-22nd Boise Bike Week

May 14-16th Snake River Birds of Prey Festival
Click HERE for schedule of events
Registration Family is $5, individual $3, children free.

May 21-23 Eagle Island Experience Festival

July 10th Star Mule Days (Usually it's first week in June-but they changed it this year)

June 5th 9am-3pm Celebration of Flight Air Show

June 9-11th Eagle Fun days and Rodeo

June 17-19th Meridian Dairy Days

June 26th Wag'n Walk and Pet Friendly Family Festival Free-fun contests for your pets and family fun

June 26-27 Boise RecFest learn more HERE

Trevor's first month-for gramma

Trevor at 1 week old--with Mom

2 weeks

1 month old"There's no crying...there's no crying in baseball"

Save and EARN money by using coupons!!

I joined Inbox Dollars about a year ago. It is a site that pays you a few cents for viewing e-mail messages they send to you. You can also earn cash others ways such as taking surveys..but my favorite one.....is COUPONS!! Okay so most people know that I am a big couponer and I use coupons.com for most of my internet printable coupons. Well if you sign up for inbox dollars-you can print coupons from coupons.com directly from their website and for every 10 coupons you print and use they will pay you $1. I am so excited about this because now not only will I save money by using coupons, as I always have...I will also get paid to use them as well. So visit Inbox Dollars and get signed up and pretty soon you will be earning some extra cash doing the things you do anyway.

ZOO trip

Since the weather was nice this last Saturday we decided to take the kids to the Zoo. It was quite different with Brooke walking now and an extra child (trevor slept the entire time in the stroller). Ofcourse Brooke wanted to ride the carousel and since that wasn't going to happen-she's not tall enough anyway, we had to find many ways to distract her. You would think the animals would be enough. But every time we walked by the carousel it was meltdown maintenance. It is so smart of the zoo to place it where you have to walk by it at least three times if you want to see all the animals...I mean seriously. Anyone else know what I'm talking about?? After the third tantrum we were so ready to be done with the day and our two year old. The giraffes are new to the zoo since the last time we visited.

At least they have this cool giraffe slide.

Who's bright idea was this anyway???

So there is a reason why you don't put carpet in bathrooms. I just spent the better half of my morning extacting water from my bathroom floor. When we bought the house, one of the things I had wanted to do first was replace the flooring in the master bathroom. Picture this..beneath the toilet there is vinyl...then the area around the sink and leading to the walkincloset is carpet..then there is a tiled step area in front of the bathtub. So we are talking three different types of flooring in this room. Well the reason for my flooding issue began last night. The faucet to one of our sinks broke-so that it was difficult to shut the water completely off-unless you wiggled it a certain way-plus the drain was really slow. So Joe and I decided we would use the other sink (there is two in each bathroom-something I do love about the house) until we could fix the other faucet and clear out the drain. Well I think I should have told the children to not use mommy and daddys bathroom because when I got home from dropping the kids off at school-I heard some dripping and investigated. Sure enough-the sink was overflowing and water was running off the counter and onto the carpeted floor below. Needless to say my morning hasn't been fun-and I still haven't had breakfast yet.

The problem with babies is...

They are just so adorable and sweet and warm and cozy that they make you forget all about the terrible 9 months of uncomfortable morning sickness, back aches, swelling, emotional days, and everything else that goes with being pregnant. Just holding this new little one makes me want to have another one-I know I am CRAZY. It tends to run in my family....