The other day we were outside and Chloe found the best thing ever... little yellow flowers popping up all over our yard. Not only were there "beautiful" flowers, but there were also tiny umbrellas that you could blow all over our yard to make more beautiful flowers! What an amazing discovery for our little girl to make! From the minute she found our little flowers she began her quest to pick and blow as many flowers as she could possibly find. The few spontaneous moments that we were able to capture were awesome. She was being the cutest little thing ever!

Chloe is our little sweet heart. She always has a way of putting the biggest smiles on our faces. She loves it when Daddy tickles her and plays games with her. Her evergy is neverending and her laughter is musical. She truly is our little princess and we love her so much!

MaKing A WiSh....

This week for family home evening we decided to make homemade ice cream. The kids were so excited!!! We left most of it up to them, stirring, measuring, pouring, the ice and salt, and listening for when the machine was done. They were great at all of these things but I think their favorite part was eating it. We were so excited when it was done that I never got a picture of the finished product... but take my word for it, it was good.

Yesterday we went out to watch Liz's brother Matt play a little Tennis! He plays for Timpview and is truly amazing to watch. It was fun even though the match only lasted about 30 minutes or so. It was an easy win for Matt. Needless to say he would have had better competition playing me, and I only play a few times a year. Ok, so the poor kid he played was really nice and he never quit fighting! It was really fun though and we were able to snap off a few pictures of Matt in action.

I Swear he probably serves this ball at about 100 mph. Its crazy to think that some people can actually return serves like that. Needless to say that after watching the poor guy he played I have a new respect for the pros that can return serves that they can't even see.

This shot was just after the previous one and you can actually see how far the ball moved in about 1/5 of a second!

I love how Liz was able to almost totally freeze the ball in this shot.

You could probably about read Wilson on the ball.

As you can tell from this shot Matt's opponent is out of focus, this is mostly due to the fact that he was shaking in fear from the rapidly approacing ball! This gives a whole new perspective to the movie BALLS OF FURY!

Parker's 26th Birthday was Wednesday April 2nd. Wednesday's are his busiest days! He has school all morning until early afternoon and then a Kaplan course for the dental test from 6-9pm. During his first break I took him to Chilies for an early dinner, it was so yummy. Then after his class we went to my parents for cake and ice cream.

Blow out the candles on your cake and make a wish!

Last week my Dad had told us he had a surprise for everyone for Parker's birthday that we would be doing on Friday night. We spent the whole week coming up with what it could be. My brother Scott thought my Dad had been called as a mission president (he wasn't!), I thought we were going to a play (we didn't). We drove to Bountiful and met up with Parker's parents who had driven down from Pocatello. Everyone met at The Mandarin restruant in Bountiful. Parker was so excited because ever since we met (9 years ago) I had told him that I would take him there, which was one of my favorite restruants. I had promised him more than a dozen times that we would go there and every time we tried something would come up. My Dad knew this and so he made reservations and surprised us all. Maybe it doesn't sound like a big surprise, but it really was and it was so much fun. Since Parker had never been there he was totally certain that it didn't exist!





When we showed up Parker was shocked that it actually had people working and eating inside because it looked like it was closed from the outside. Inside though, there wasn't even standing room inside the waiting room! Luckily we had reservations! Once Parker tried the food he was in heaven! I think he has a new favorite restruant now. Dinner was awesome and my Dad gave everyone a kick when he told everyone that he was called to be a mission president in California! I thought I would die when Scotty, Chelsey, Matt and even Megan (who we already had told that we were doing this) all believed our little pratical joke. Anyway, it was a great dinner and everyone had a great time. After my Dad took us to Neilsens frozen custard for a concrete. I think we got our calorie count in for the entire week. I love that we were able to spend time with so many people we love!!! We even got a bonus~ Parker's parents came and spent the night at our house. We talked and played rook. The kids were excited when they woke up and saw that Grandma and Grandpa had slept over!

I love April fools day! I think some of it runs in my blood... no one can pick a prank and pull it off like my Grammy. She's GOOD! So the night before I was trying to plan what I was going to do, my brother Scott called and asked for ideas. He told me he was putting Jello in their toilet. My first thought was that Jello in the toilet would lead to other surprizes and pranks that my kids would try and pull on me, probably for the rest of my life. I can only imagine the kinds of things they would try and stick down the swirling vortex of no return, and this would lead to me having to make a call to our friend Bo, who is a plumber. So.... Jello was definently OUT!!!

I decided to stick with FUN (safe) food ideas. I made blue german pancakes for breakfast, Parker was nice enough to eat them, because he thought they looked so nasty there was no way they would taste good. I also set the table with BIG serving spoons, the kids loved it. By dinner the kids had forgotten about "fools day". I called them for dinner. I had made mini hamburgers and cupcakes. The hamburgers were cookies with york patties, green coconut, and red frosting. The cupcakes were sheperds pie with pink mashed potateos on top ( I got the recipes from family fun magazine).

My kids had no idea what they were in for! After the prayer, they both picked up their hamburgers and started eating. I was actually impressed! I've never offered them dinner and dessert at the same time and I thought they'd start with the cupcake. They looked at each other and then at me "mom, why is there chocolate in my burger?....... and the bun kindof tastes like a cookie" Jackson had the best look on his face. The kids disected and ate their "burgers", then they started on their cupcakes. Chloe dipped her finger in the frosting and tasted it, she pulled the "yuck" face. She was expecting something sweet. We got laughing as they tried to eat their very cheesy "cupcakes". They both had two and woke up the next morning asking for more.