Mother's Day Photo Shoot

Some Pictures from the Last Few Months

We'll go in reverse chronological order

Here are some pics from the school carnival last February.  They recruited Patterson Panther alumni to help run the game stations.  Joshua loved doing the prize wheel:

Daniel manned the Lollipop Roulette station.  He thoroughly enjoyed himself and did a great job:

I'll let these next few speak for themselves...

Chase all cozied up:

Watching TV in his little chair - I thought he looked so cute!

 Lucas' sidewalk art.  It kind of reminded me of Bert's drawings from Marry Poppins:

Caden's Birthday:

Chase is a total leftie!  This was taken at the school and when the kindergarten teacher saw his pencil grip she was blown away.  She said she has kinders that can't hold a pencil that well.  She was the second one to comment on his pencil grip that week.  Not sure what it means, but I guess it's neat :)

Magic Trax!  We love these!!

Again, I'll let these speak for themselves ;)

The youth of our ward do a lip sync pretty much every year; it's a BIG event.  Here's the Teachers Quorum doing 'You're Welcome' from Moana.  I think they're all supposed to be Maui, it was a riot!

And just to finish with a beautiful salad some friends and I put together for a birthday luncheon:

I think that's a wrap!

Making Daydreams a Reality

Ever since we moved into our house almost 10 years ago (I know, I can't believe it either!) I've been wanting to turn our closet-under-the-stairs into a toy closet.  Unfortunately when we moved in, the closet became a place where we dumped things we didn't know what to do with or where to put.  It was very messy and crowded and our Christmas decorations were in the very back, requiring excavation every December.

Finally, finally, finally - I don't know what came over me - I cleaned it out and organized it into a nice place where we can keep a lot of our games, toys and some craft supplies.  A lot of these toys were previously in our family room taking over and using up valuable real estate.  They now have a place to call their own and we have almost all our floor space back.

A thing of beauty

Also, for years and years and years I've been wanting to put things on the walls in the boys' bedrooms.  I could never find anything they (or I ) liked enough to actually hang.  I finally decided that bulletin boards would be perfect so they'd have a place for their favorite art projects and awards.  Problem was, I thought about it a lot - I even got some magnetic boards from Costco - but I lost steam for some reason and they just sat around.

Finally a friend very generously offered to make bulletin boards for our boys since she feels every child needs one, where they can display things they're proud of.  She and her daughter love doing projects together and just a few short weeks later they delivered these to our home.

Since we now had bulletin boards, it provided the kick in pants I needed to get moving on the magnetic boards as well.  Jake spent an evening hanging all of these and it really is a dream come true.

Here's the bulletin board in Lucas and Caden's room:

Here's the magnetic/dry erase board (if you click on it you might be able to see Lucas' rendition of 'The Scream'):

Here in Joshua and Daniel's room are a couple of plaques each boy in our ward is given when they turn 12.  It lists the different Priesthood responsibilities they'll fulfill over the years, leading up to serving a mission.  I've always wanted to display these but could never decide where they should go.  With the arrival of the bulletin and magnetic boards, the perfect space opened up and it feels great that they have the place they deserve:

Here's their bulletin board...

...and magnetic board:

All I can say is, Huzzah!!!  I especially appreciate Karen and Natalie, and Jake for making these dreams a reality.  Daydreams really can come true!