Called to Serve....

Ryan received his mission call today, he will be leaving July 20th to serve his mission in the Baton Rouge Louisiana mission. He is really excited, his one requirement was not to go to a ski town, although he really did want to go somewhere cold and snowy where they let the missionaries use cross country skis. If you know any facts or have been to Louisiana feel free to comment!

Spring Break

Our spring Break was pretty lame this year, I had to work part of the time, Destina had a babysitting job one of the days, but we managed to fit in a few fun things. Destina wanted to go shopping, that girl loves the mall and needs to look good all the time. We managed to find a few good deals and she was happy. One of the day's it was pretty warm so we decided to go to Birch Bay, it was not quite as warm up there by the water. We took a stroll along the trails to the ice cream shop and then walked back the girls thought that was perfect. It was a beautiful but chilly day.

Molly One Month Old

Molly was one month old last week, she is so dang cute and I love holding her and watching her funny facial expressions. She was born looking just like McKenzie but I see so much of Tim and his mom in her expressions. I have a "pretend" slap bet going on with Tim whether or not her eyes will stay blue.

Nine is Fine

Avrie had a birthday on Saturday. She was really worried about turning nine, I told her that eight was great but nine is fine, and she bought into that. She has been planning her birthday since Christmas, it seems like. This year was a family party not a friend party. So she planned a movie, and she wanted haystacks for dinner, with root beer floats instead of cake. Her birthday was on Saturday, I had been thinking and wondering for several weeks what to get her for her birthday and I was coming up blank.  Then on Friday afternoon I decided I would surprise Avrie. She has been wanting an American Girl Doll forever. All her friends have one. I just have a hard time with the whole concept of "lets spoil our children and over indulge them so they can have this wonderful childhood experience....." Since when is it ok to spend that kind of money on a doll? Not to mention all the stuff they now have to collect to play with their doll.
I had done a pretty good job of convincing Avrie that she did not need one and that I would never buy one. Then I caved! On Friday morning I was ready to go out shopping to see if I could find some things that Avrie might like for her birthday, I had a budget, but no idea what to get. So I thought that since I was probably going to spend close to the same amount of money on random things, I found at the mall, that were going to clutter her room even more, I decided to surprise Avrie.

I let Destina in on the surprise, I told Avrie that I needed to go to a store in Seattle and then we would go out for a birthday lunch and be back in time to go to the movie. She willingly agreed, partly because Destina was on board. We drove to the American Girl Doll store an hour and half away, and as we were walking towards "the store" I needed to go to all of a sudden Avrie saw the store and her eyes got big and she pointed it out to me and asked if we could just go in and look around, she said, "I know you will never buy me one but can we just look?" I told her "sure let's go in and take a look." Once she made it through the revolving doors of childhood dreams, I leaned over and told her happy birthday you get to pick out your very own American Girl Doll. It took her a minute to realize what I had said and then we spent the next 45 minutes picking out just the one she wanted. She was so happy, it was her dream come true. We then went to lunch she wanted the mall food court where she found salmon and chips, then to the movie. She was so happy as we were walking through the mall she told me "nine really is fine." She kept telling me that I surprised myself because I was never going to buy a doll, she was right!

Tulips

We are so lucky to live close to the tulip fields, it is breathtaking to look out and see tulips as far as the eye can see. People come from all over to see the tulips and we were lucky enough to be one of the many on a busy Saturday morning. We arrived early enough that it wasn't too crowded yet, but when we left it was packed. We love going to the tulips with our friends, they provide the entertainment with their cute little crew of kids and this year was no different. They had a couple of stalkers that insisted on taking pictures of themselves with their twins, I wish I would have captured it, but I didn't. 

Jayden

It was fun having Jayden home for the long weekend, he surprised me on Friday morning he woke up, unloaded and loaded the dishwasher without me even asking, that was so nice.  He spent some time with some of his friends, he went to work with Scott for the day, and even played a game or two with the family. It was really nice having him home.

Easter

The kids had fun at our friend's Easter Egg Hunt. There were a lot of kids, and they all had a great time. The sun was out and it was a beautiful day! Even baby Molly enjoyed the sunshine and didn't mind being passed around! Avrie and Braden had a good time finding eggs together and Braden played a little soccer with the other boys there.

 Tia was glad her BFF was there and a couple of other older kids, but she was far too old to hunt for eggs, except to help out the little ones.

 Avrie thought her hair looked funny when she went upside down and wanted a picture!

 They played some silly games while waiting for the Easter Bunny to hide the eggs.

Family Pictures

Sunday was the only day that I had everyone home at the same time and I really wanted to update the family picture, Sunday was also very rainy. After lunch there was a dry spell so we loaded up and took a few quick pictures. It was a little cold and we didn't want the baby out longer than needed. We had about 30 minutes then it started raining again. But we managed to get a few good shots. It really is hard to get everyone looking good in a group picture and we included the dog, Eddy is getting old and we are not sure how much longer he will be with us. We missed having Jeremy in the pictures, he was still in school and couldn't miss to come up.

 And my favorite one of all everyone cooperating except Ryan, the story of my life!