Wicked!

To celebreate our tenth anniversary (a little early) Timothy and I decided to go see the musical WICKED. It was amazing! It's been a long time since I'd seen a professional quality musical- not since Les Miserables in London in 1998. (That was before I had studied music in college.) Timothy and I both really enjoyed it and thought that it worth the professional price we paid. ...$111.00 for the 2 of us... YIKES! WE don't normally spend that much on a date, so we decided to splurge and go out to eat as well. :)

We're having a hard time believing that it's been almost 10 years that we've been married, but in July it will be whether anyone believes it or not. I'll post a more mushing post in July- a lot closer to our anniversary. But, I thought I'd just mention the amazing time we had on our anniversary date (even though it was early.)

Too bad we didn't get any pictures to prove we were there... but we do have the tickets to stick in our journals.

Easter Photo shoot

Rebekah and Hyrum

Rebekah and Mommy
This dress has a story. Long ago I bought this purple Pansie fabric and made curtains out of it. They were my and Timothy's bedroom curtains for about 2 years, but I knew we wouldn't be living in that house forever so I made the curtains in a way that I could easily take them apart and make something else out of them. So, when Rebekah started growing out of all her dresses I took her into my fabric stash and had her pick out some fabric for a dress. She picked these old curtains, and she picked the pattern she wanted from some old patterns I had. So, I found the ribbon and thread left over from a previous project, and the bias tape from Timothy late grandmother's stash. So all I had to buy was a $1.39 zipper and later 3 buttons for $2.59. So, this dress only cost me $3.98 to make!

Handsome Brigham Boy.

Cute little Hyrum!

Darling Rebekah!

My three beautiful blessings!

Kissing Daddy

Our Family

I'm hoping to photo shop this one a bit sometime in the near future.

New Pajamas

The children got new pajamas in their Easter baskets.
We tend to put our children in warm zipper pajamas 10 months out of the year because we keep our house pretty cool at night. It only gets hot in July and August around here.

Easter Bunnies

The boys weren't too excited about their bunny ears. But, Bekah thought it was fun a few minutes.

Finding baskets

We've decided to do Easter Bunny stuff on Saturday so as not to "commercialize" the Sabbath and the true meaning of Easter, but still continue with traditions. So, on Saturday the children woke up to candy and eggs and baskets hidden in the living room.

Then they found them and managed to consume most of the candy before breakfast.

Rebekah finding her basket... do you see it hanging on the coat rack?

Later that day they got to do an Easter egg hunt at the church and Hyrum's foster parents ("nana" and "papa") gave the kids Easter baskets too.

Grandma M also sent baskets for the children which we forgot to get out until Sunday. So, they got a lot of Easter baskets and way too much candy!

After finding their baskets, then they got to fill them a little more with some chocolates and eggs.

They sure had a good time!

Coloring Easter eggs

For Family Home Evening this week we were going to color eggs, but the kids were too tired and couldn't handle staying up a little late, so we decided to do our FHE Activity on Tuesday morning instead. The children were much more excited and we didn't have nearly so many meltdowns do it in the morning. They managed to dye their hands as well as their eggs.

ZYX's

Brigham and Rebekah think it's great that I am teaching them the ABC's backwards (since they already mastered it forwards.)

I hope this works, I haven't had success in the past for posting videos.

Follow the Prophet

We have just finished listening to another great two days of General Conference. What an amazing blessing to have prophets and apostles of the Lord Jesus Christ on the earth again to give us direction!

I know President Thomas S. Monson is God's prophet today. To learn more about him go here. Yesterday he spoke to us about the church's welfare program, and the importance of temple work. Learn more about temples here. Just thirty years ago there were only 20 temples now there are 134 with 27 more in the process of being built! He spoke of many examples of people who have made great sacrifices to attend the temple. He said, "Those that understand the eternal blessings which come from the temple, know that no sacrifice is too great, no price is too heavy, no struggle too difficult in order to receive those blessings."

What a marvelous blessing to have a living prophet and to have the sacred temple of God close enough to us to travel without too much trouble!

Visit to Idaho too!

We were able to stop in and visit with family in Idaho as well and had a good time. The kids loved playing with their cousins, especially Kiki, since she is the closest to their age. They are still talking about how much fun they had with a sensory play Gram-Gram planned for them. They got to play in Styrofoam packing peanuts and made a complete mess of the main floor of Gram-Gram and Grandpa's house. But, they sure had a great time! Sadly, we didn't even think to pull the camera out while we were there. The Styrofoam was a sight to see- it looked like it had snowed in the living room.

Timothy and I were able to make a quick trip to the Boise Temple while Cindy watched the children for which we are very grateful! It was much easier than coordinating a 6 hour babysitter and a huge drive if we had gone to our temple from home.

Playing at Grandma's

We were able to make a trip to Utah last week and the kids got to play at grandma's with cousins and aunts and even grandma joined the fun! We had a great visit!

Hyrum, Mikayla, Rebekah, Brigham, Emma

We're glad we were able to make the trip. The real reason we went was because the Murry Symphony was playing an orchestral arrangement of Timothy's and they wanted him to guest conduct. That was a good experience too, and sadly, I didn't get a picture. Although the symphony did send a DVD of him conducting his piece, so at least we have some record of it.

cute kids

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I got Rebekah a new dress that she was very excited about. Brigham got this outfit from Christmas from Bethany. And Hyrum is wearing Brigham's old outfit for the first time.

Sensory play

The children have really been into sensory type play lately.

We recently expanded Hyrum's ball pit from Christmas to the swimming pool- adding two more bags of balls. It's not quiet enough to fill the pool, but they sure have fun with it anyway and they can all fit at the same time which solves a lot of problems.(The extra legs in the pictures belong to a little friend.)

They also have been very interested in playing with some old, expired beans. I pulled these out and set them on the floor with a few measuring cups and bowls and they were content while I made breakfast.

Hyrum is so excited about the beans, the ball pit, and also play dough. That he's constantly asking to play with one of them. It's nice to have him interested in something other than getting into my things. This morning he asked to play with the beans and I told he needed to wash the table and then put his blankets on his bed - then he could play with the beans. So, he promptly washed the table, put the cloth away and then ran (without prompting) to the living room, gathered his blankets and put them on his bed, and before I knew it he was back in the kitchen asking for the beans. I was very impressed that he remembered all those steps and got them done so fast!

Great imaginations!

The children are developing some amazing imaginations. They love to play together and are each other's best friends. One day, after we got back from grocery shopping (I had gotten a good deal on some cereal) I was putting groceries away and they started a game with the cereal boxes.

They turned them into a fort and were hiding from a bear- if I recall correctly.

They had a great time until I had to stop the fun becasue Hyrum was starting to get hungry (apparently) and was tearing the boxes to try to get at the cereal.

Learning to Trust

These last few weeks have been very interesting for me. Lately I have been feeling the need to be more in-tune with the promptings of the Holy Ghost and to follow every single prompting and personal revelation I receive. It has been an amazing adventure. First, the promptings were small- call this person, take dinner to that person, etc. Those were very rewarding experiences as I found I was answering the prayers of others. As I continued to follow the promptings the Lord was able to trust me more- or more accurately- I was learning to trust HIM. The promptings kept coming- faster - harder tasks - greater responsibilities.

One night as I was praying the thought came to mind that I needed to do this "master cleanse" that my friend had been talking to me about. The master cleanse is a process of fasting for 7-10 days and drinking only this awful tasting lemonade. (Awful because of the amount of cayenne pepper in it.) I didn't want to do it and I was worried I would loose too much weight (as I don't have any to spare.) I was worried I wouldn't be able to take care of my children if I wasn't eating. And the list of worries could go on. But, I kept having the confirming witness that this was something I needed to do- for my physical health and for my spiritual health. So I researched the idea more and asked several questions of my friend who had done it. Finally, the second week of February, I decided it was time to start. I went for 10 days without eating - 7 days on the lemonade and water only. As I was finishing, I felt great! My body felt cleansed. I had enough energy through out to take care of all my responsibilities. (Except one Saturday evening- I had the most awful headache and didn't function very well.) I am so glad that I was able to do this, and that I received that inspiration to do it -because I would never have made the decision to do it on my own.

The physical benefits were great, but the spiritual benefits are of the most value to me. I learned to trust God to a greater extent. I learned greater self-control. I learned that I can do anything with the Lord's help. But most of all I learned to Trust.

Guess who's learning to READ?!?!

Brigham has been very interested in letters and letter sounds and Timothy and I have been fostering that interest. Finally, this week I check out a set of early readers from the library called Bob Books. I pulled them out and he picked up on them so fast it amazed us both. Rebekah is also trying to give reading a fair shot and is only a step behind Brigham. She will likely begin reading in the next couple of months as well! CRAZY! I never expected my children would learn to read at 3 and 4 years old, but they are just so interested and have the desire to do it, that I can't stop them from learning! Brigham has read the first three BOB books by himself and is very excited to read more!