Busy week

This has been a crazy week for our family.

Monday the kids and I rode the city bus with Timothy downtown and we went to the library while he went to school. The kids have been asking to ride the bus with Daddy for over a year, and we finally decided to do it. They enjoyed it. We checked out a few books from the library and then I took the kids home on the bus. Later that day, Timothy decided to ride his bike home instead of busing. He was part of the way home when he got hit by a car. Luckily he is alright, but his bike didn't make it.
Timothy came away with some very sore spots and a lot of scrapes, but nothing broken—hopefully no permanent damage to him. Here are a few pictures of his bike.

It's totally ruined. The only things really salvageable are the tires and the bike rack. Everything else is really bent up. The handle bars are folded in half, you can see above- the front wheel is folded in half. The frame is bent is a number of places. It's a mess.

Having this happen has made me realize that we never know what could happen to completely change our lives. If Timothy had gotten hurt worse or... not survived. I would have been crushed. It made me grateful that we have the gospel. It also strengthened my testimony that God does watch over us. It simply wasn't Timothy's time to go—or even get hurt badly—and for that I am deeply grateful. But even if something worse had happened, I am so grateful that I have learned to trust God and His timing.

Also this week—on Thursday—my little baby (who's not really baby anymore) had surgery to remove his tonsils and adenoids. Then, he had to stay in the hospital over night to make sure he was breathing okay at night. Hyrum has been in a lot of pain, but is dealing with it fairly well. It's so hard to watch my baby in pain, but hopefully this helps. He has had sleep apnea for a while—not sure how long—but he's never really slept through the night consistently. I hope the surgery is worth all the pain. I hope he'll be able to get better sleep once he's healed.

I didn't get a picture of him in the hospital, but I wanted to. He loved his "bunk bed" there. It was a huge crib that had sides that went up and down and plastic walls above the rails so he couldn't climb out. He thought it was great! He also really loved the partially outdoor playroom in the pediatrics ward. He was glad to come home, but the next day I asked him if he'd rather be at home or in the hospital and he said the hospital. I think he liked it so much because he got so much one-on-one attention and he loved the bed and the play area. But I think if he had been in the hospital much longer he would have been tired of it.

Mommy's little "Big Helper"

Rebekah has always been a good "helper". But, she is getting to be an actual help more and more. This picture above is a picture of her and the oranges and carrots she cut up (with a butter knife) for dinner a few days ago. It saved me time cutting them, and she was so proud that she had done it! I hope her desire to help continues as she grows.

Oh There's Sunshine, Belssed Sunshine!

The sun has shown itself in our neighborhood this week!

The children have been celebrating by riding bikes, playing in the water, and discovering our recently lowered basketball hoop in the front yard.(not pictured)
The water play started out innocently enough, but...
...this is how it ended- kids in the tub. Then, they discovered it was a lot colder than they thought with wet clothes and a slight breeze.

The boys are also sporting new summer hair cuts.

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!