What the "Team" Did in March

Three highlights for a quick re-cap of our March

#1 Spring Break

snowed Monday, outside at the park in beautiful sunny weather by Thursday.

#2 Temple trip to Winter Quarters

with all 3 boys. Swapped babysitting with our amazing friends and relied on some other kind souls for the half hour overlap. It was crazy busy when we went!

#3 The Spring Spectacular

Every year the boys' school puts on this huge musical production. They perform at the High School theater, lighting, costumes, props, the whole shebang! To make it more manageable for the amazing teachers that put the whole thing together (and because there is NO possible way all the families of all the students could fit in the theater...) only the 1st, 3rd, 5th (& 6th graders in choir) participate each year. Lucky for us it works out that Matt & Nolan end up performing the same year (Matt's in 5th, Nolan's in 1st). This was Matt's 3rd Spring Spectacular, and by far my favorite so far. It was a celebration of the music of each decade from 1910 - 2010. It had it all...

Dorothy, Scarecrow, Tin-man & the Cowardly Lion A 40's Train medley (think Chattanooga Choo-choo & Atchison, Topeka & the Santa Fe...) Mouseketeers (singing Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah... Oh, my goodness, TOO CUTE!) ADORABLE little sock hoppers (Cutest thing EVER!)

Elvis The Village People (aka the staff of the boys' school, - tragically, we didn't get a picture! Boo!Fail! Sorry!!!)

and the pièce de résistance

yes, that's M.C. Hammer... How cool is our school?!?

Serious, serious fun.

I Really Want This...

But it's only sold at Sears Canada and they won't ship to the US...

Anybody have any brilliant ideas about how to get it from there to here?

Wow!

Guess I should try a little harder to update this every now and then, huh?

Our December and January were a blur... One notable time eater, snow days and a lot of them!

Seriously, once the kids went "back" to school following Christmas break they only spent about 50% of their school days at school. I'm not joking. It was nice to have them home, but also difficult, especially when you don't know for sure one day to the next if they'll have school tomorrow. This week they have been 3 days in a row, will attend tomorrow for sure, but then they get a 4 day weekend! As it stands now, they won't get out of school until June 1 (the original last day of school was May 19).

In other news, we had basketball from October until just last week. Matt played for his 4th year, and Nolan got to play for his first year! So fun! But as a result, we were at practices 3 nights a week (which was actually nice, it could have been 4, and there weren't any overlapping practice times), and games on Saturday.

Matt's team had a "perfect season" unfortunately that's because they LOST EVERY GAME. He was extremely frustrated, but the kids on his team were nice and I do think he learned some new things this year (i.e. zone defense) so it wasn't a total waste. It did make us decide that we will probably cross over to the competitive league next year...

Nolan had a blast! He is quite the little ball handler! They don't keep score in 1st grade, so the kids really just get to enjoy learning the game. It was cool to see the progress he and all his team mates made. They had awesome coaches (3!), and 7 of the 8 other kids on the team go to his school, so he got to play with his buddies.

All in all a good time had by all.

We also celebrated 2 birthdays (11 & 34),

enjoyed a visit from Grandpa Dave & Grandma Diane,

endured a small basement "issue", and a survived a "blizzard" in the last month. Good times!.

Cody is cute as ever (even if he is developing a bit of a temper), RUNS EVERYWHERE, defines the word "busy", and is ALWAYS "talking". He is probably up to about 30 recognizable words and just this week has started adding new ones left and right. He is currently obsessed with dogs "dog - oof!" and enjoys jumping up and down in his crib like a monkey when he should be taking a nap.

Phil continues to work hard for our family, recently moved into his own office (no more cubicle!), works with the 11 year old scouts at church (of which now Matt is a member), and is still (and will always be) loved and adored by his wife and 3 boys.

So far 2011 has been fun and eventful, and we're looking forward to much more!

Halloween Costumes 2010

Because I really should even though it's waaaaaaaaaay late...

Happy belated Halloween! =)

Matt's Summer

Matt had a great summer too...

He went to 2 amusement parks (1 with a friend, 1 as Team Armadillo's celebration of Kids' Day 2010) & 1 water park (again with a friend). Made a new friend, temporarily living on our street this summer. Read 1000+ pages (for his school summer reading challenge - 5th year running) and completed the library summer reading program, also read The Book of Mormon with mom, his first time all the way through!

Participated in a shaving cream war, and swam - lots!

All the while being an amazing and helpful big brother... have I ever mentioned how I miss my boys when they're at school?

Oh and I almost forgot! We got to host 4 darling girls that were in the area with a traveling performance choir for a few days... It was so much fun, we took them firefly hunting and shot baskets in the front yard, They were good and kind to all our boys, but Matt was the only one up the morning they left. Do you think he minded giving his room up for a few days? ;)

4th of July

Our what we like to call the revolving door holiday...

We had several friends (at different times) stop by for different phases of the celebration.

Cody wasn't phased by the fireworks, he just loved being outside.

(our resident fireworks expert - such a hottie! pun totally intended, but still...)

Good times, excellent company, great food - fun fireworks. What more is there to say?!?

Oh, I know - I'm proud to be an American, and so very thankful for the many blessings and opportunities my family and I are allowed to have because of this great land.

Nolan's Summer

I'll start with Nolan, just because I have a lot of pictures of him since summer includes his birthday... (special birthday cupcake - compliments of our very dear friends - thank you!)

Nolan had a great summer, we celebrated birthday #6!

There was going to be a big pool party bash, but it sort of fell through. I was going to try throwing together some kind of friend party, but Nolan was being Nolan, so in exasperation, I asked him if he would rather have a party and invite his friends or get a "big" Lego set.

Any guesses on what his answer was?

Clue: we now have this at our house...

So we just had a "family" party - which was pretty great because Grandma Diane & Grandpa Dave were in town! Good Times...

Moving on - the boys got the chance to catch a new (to us) reality show... I dare you to guess what it was...

(if you guessed Deadliest Catch - you're good!)

We spent a good amount of time at the pool where Nolan learned (on his own - because we all know with Nolan there is NO other way) to swim! Yay Nolie! (sorry no pictures...)

Nolan also spent TONS of time outside this summer - our next door neighbors get a nanny for their 3 kidlets in the summer so they can be home - and that suited Nolan just fine, he had almost unlimited access to his BFF Hudson (& crew) and LOVED it!

This is one of the (many) times they flooded the sandbox... There was also MUCH scooter riding.
And, we added a new obsession to the mix - Super Mario Bros. - specifically this guy...

All in all Nolan's summer was fantastic!