Fun in Utah!

We were able to take a quick trip to Salt Lake mid February to pick up/buy our new vehicle. Our lease was up on our van in April, so we decided to start looking and came across this Black Lincoln Navigator for a sweet deal! But it was in Colorado... So we decided to meet halfway in Salt Lake to make the deal. We were expecting the weather to be somewhat nice, at least in the 50's... But it happened to be even colder and snowed even more there than back home! Blah! Oh well, we had a fun time anyway.

We stayed in a pretty sweet little condo that had a separate bedroom and kitchen for only 43 bucks a night! Mike found it found it on Hotwire. It was a little dated, but it worked just fine.

We took the kids to the Discovery Museum at the Gateway Mall. It's always a lot of fun!
Jacob had to ride the horse:

Ethan's favorite thing was building with these soft block things:

Jacob's favorite was the water table/center:

Mia and Asia loved to shop at the pretend grocery store:

Mia and the vacuum ball thingy:

After the Discovery Museum we decided to go do a bit of shopping. Can you tell which one is the real mannequin?
How about here:

What about this one?:

This one's a little trickier...:

And one more:

My kids are such goofs! They do this everytime they see a mannequin. They pretend they're mannequins and see if anybody notices! Silly! So, I should have a picture of our new ride, but I just realized that I don't have one. Oh well. You'll have to wait til I take a pic and then wait until I have the time to blog about it!! Ha! 'Til then... :)

Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day was a fun one at our house. the kids had to wear red, of course, and then I served them up some red heart pancakes and eggs.

They each got their own little box of chocolates:

Asia's heart hair:
The cooking of the heart pancakes:
Then we made and decorated millions of heart cookies:

Then we made our very own heart-shaped pizzas. Yum!
I got Mike a new ring and he got me flowers and chocolate cinnamon bears (my fave!) We also went out to eat on the weekend and probably went to a movie or something (I can't remember!) I've got to keep up on this blog thing so I don't forget stuff! Yikes!

Haircut!

I'm finally posting the pics of Mia's haircut that we did in February. It was getting very long, but only in the back. She had what I like to call a Baby Mullet. And it was a fine one at that!

Now she has a cute little bob. It's so easy! Her hair isn't as thick as Asia's and it isn't as curly so it can just be wetted down with a spray bottle and looks as cute as can be. I like easy hairstyles!

And her eyes are starting to turn green like her daddy's! Beautiful!

Just Fun!

The local figure skating club has a free skating lesson day every year that we like to go to. It makes me feel like I'm instilling some Canadian roots into my children! The only pic I could get of Jacob was blurry. Sorry! He didn't like the one blade skates but was fine on the two bladed ones. Ethan is a natural:

Mia had so much fun and wanted to go around and around the whole time!

Asia and her friend Maddie.

Since Ethan turned 9, he was ready to advance from a wolf cub scout to a bear cub scout. He earned his wolf pin and 3 silver arrows.

Mia likes to dress up in daddy's sunglasses and gloves and take his keys when he comes home for lunch. She thinks it's hilarious!

And here's Asia with our AWESOME babysitter Hannah. Hannah always brings fun things for our kids to do. This time they built a tower out of index cards! It was amazing! And yes, Hannah is 7 years older than Asia! She's such a petite little thing! Or Asia is a Giant!

Just some fun stuff that we've been up to the last few months of winter. I'm almost caught up now! Phew! Just February and March to go... Stay Tuned... :)

Ethan's Friend Party!

This year Ethan decided it would be so fun to go roller skating for his friend party. They took him roller skating at Scouts and he's been bugging us ever since to take him again. It was actually really fun! The boys loved dancing to the music and seeing who was the fastest. I got to brush up on my rollerblading skillz as well! There was a lot of falling involved!

Ethan's IPOD cake:

Opening presents:

Some of the gang:

Blowing out the candles:

Fun times! I wonder what he'll want to do next year to celebrate the big 1-0!

Ethan's 9th Birthday!

Ethan had an awesome birthday this year! He got to have breakfast in bed; French toast, bacon and eggs: We got to have lunch with him at school:

He chose to have French Crepes for dinner with strawberries, bananas, and whipped cream. (his favorite!)

Then it was present time! He got his very own skateboard and ramp:

His favorite gift: Sweet Moula! Thanks Grandma and Grandpa Yamada!

Then he chose to have brownies for his birthday cake. Yum-o!

Since Ethan is the oldest in the family, I feel like we put a lot of responsibility on him and we expect a lot out of him. It's not very fair to him, but he really tries hard to live up to our high expectations. He's an AWESOME kid! He is very loving and always loves a good snuggle with his momma or dadda. His favorite thing to do is wrestle with his dad and ride roller coasters. He's one of the smartest kids in his class and has straight A's and gets to go to Discovery class every Wednesday. He loves to read and is trying to get through the first Percy Jackson book. He's already read all of the Wimpy Kid books and Magic Treehouse. He's a great big brother and is always there when his younger siblings need help. It's fun to see this little guy grow up into such a fine young man. I just wish he would slow it down a bit!! We love you Ethan!

Asia's Special Day!

Mike and I like to take each child out on a date with just the three of us for their birthdays. Asia chose to go to Applebee's for dinner. Then to Sundae's for dessert and then to Gameworld to play. I can't change the order of my pics for some reason, so here's Asia waiting to go down the slide at Gameworld in their little jungle gym thingy:

Mmmm, that's just Asia's ice cream! She ate most of it all by herself!

And Applebee's where she ordered chicken fingers.

She's growing up way too fast!

It's S'N'O'W' Fun!

Here are just some fun pics of the kids enjoying the snow. Hopefully these will be the last snow pics of the season!

Ethan loves the movie ELF so he made perfectly round snowballs just like Buddy! Then he rolled them all down the hill. I think he was hoping they would get bigger and bigger as they rolled down, but they just rolled. Dang it!

Here's Daddy and Mia sledding at Community Park. She loved it and wanted to go down again and again!

The Talk

So, I know I haven't posted anything in a very, very long time, but I had to write this funny thing down before I forget. Then maybe I'll try and update you on what's going on in our crazy lives. My computer is very, very slow so it's been hard for me to keep up on the blog. That will change soon as we get it overhauled hopefully this week or next.

Anyway, as we were driving back from my nephew's ballroom dance performance tonight, we started talking about when the kids were babies and when they were in my belly. So Asia brought up the dreaded question, "How do those babies get into your tummy?" Gaaaaah! She's only 7! I don't think I learned about that stuff until sex ed. in fourth grade! So
I guess it was time to tell her the truth before finding out some crazy story at school. We sort- of had "the talk" with Ethan last year because he had heard some things at school and was just curious about it all. But he, apparently, had forgotten some stuff and started saying babies come from Jesus and it's like some sort of miracle how babies get into a mommy's belly. But then he started to remember little details and said, "Oh ya, that's where a mommy and a daddy put their private parts together!" And Asia got this disgusted look on her face and said, "Eeeww! That's just NASTY!" Ha Ha Ha! Cracked us up so bad! Then they wondered if anyone could do this "nasty" thing. So we had to have a talk about who can do the "nasty" and what it's for, etc. etc. And then Ethan said, "Can't you do it just for fun?" That's when Mike and I totally lost it! Man, I gotta practice some sex ed. answers for these tough sex questions! YiKeS, I'm not ready for my kids to grow up!! HELP! :)