Happy Birthday Dear Calvin

Calvin turns 5 tomorrow. Since Mondays are a crazy day for us, we celebrated it on Saturday.
He picked donuts for breakfast and then opened presents right after. He got a Lego set that has specialized pieces to build all kinds of construction vehicles - dump trucks, loaders, dozers, ect. He got the game Twister - which should be interesting, and a gun from grandma. He loves his gun and he loves terrorizing everyone with it. It's perfect for him, it 'shoots' a plastic cap off the end with a popping noise. The plastic cap is attached with a string so it doesn't go far. As you push the barrel forward it reloads the cap and when you pull it back the cap pops off again. Calvin can shoot it and reload so fast that it sounds like an automatic. The sound gets to be extremely annoying after about 2 minutes - but Calvin loves it! Ah, little boys!
Mike took Anna Elise and Calvin to Lowe's kids workshop and they built bird houses. They loved it - Calvin wore his apron all day.
After lunch we had Cars birthday cake and ice cream. The black icing on the cake gave everyone
black faces, purple tongues, and stained fingers.
He had a great day!

Calvin unwrapping presents


Calvin blowing out his candles


Calvn's black tongue

Lilah enjoying her cake

Calvin terrorizing everyone with his gun

Car Pictures

Here are the promised pictures. It doesn't look so bad in the pictures. The problem is what you don't see behind the doors. Notice the gap at the top, the door doesn't actually close all the way. After taking the pictures Mike was more hopeful that it can be fixed. We'll find out tomorrow.

A Week to Remember

Every aspect of our lives is falling apart. A friend at church told me that bad things happen right before good things come (or right before a big calling, I'm voting for good things).

As we have tried to make good decisions and do the right thing, it seems like things just get worse. I read a quote from a talk Elder Holland gave (thanks Tanners) "Some blessings come soon, some come late, and some don't come until heaven; but for those who embrace the gospel of Jesus Christ, they come." and decided that maybe our blessings would come in Heaven and that is not a bad place to get blessings!

I'm not going to describe in detail all the unexpected challenges going on with our NHance business. Nor am I ready to go into the details of what's going on with our family. But just know that we could use your prayers right now.

Also, Mike found out that his real estate broker closed the business, without telling Mike. He is trying to find a new business to work for. Luckily (thanks to the Williams) Mike has a listing right now so he should be able to find a new broker without any problem - he has been making lots of phone calls. Then there are our rentals, we finally got the second vacancy filled, but not until May and now it looks as though we'll have another vacancy (3 vacancies in less then 2 months). If the market wasn't so bad I'd just sell them all!

Then, on Saturday I was in an accident. I had the 3 older kids and we were coming back from Primary Activity Day when a car failed to yield the right of way. He stopped at the stop sign, didn't see me, so went and T-boned me as I drove by. We are all fine, nobody hurt, but the car doesn't look too good. We'll find out on Tuesday how much the damage will cost to fix. We are praying it can be fixed. The car is paid for and we really don't want the car to be totaled - we don't want a car payment right now.

We did manage to have some fun in the midst of our awful week. We had planned to go to Yorktown after the Primary Activity on Saturday. Despite the accident we went! We borrowed our friend's suburban (thanks Cordons!) and just went a little later then planned. We went to the beach. It was windy and a little bit cooler, but the kids had a great time. Anna Elise and Calvin swam in the cold water and they all had fun digging in the sand and collecting 'clam' shells. Afterward, we all went to 'Pop's Drive-In' for dinner. It's not a drive-in. Mike remembers eating there as a kid and he was so excited to go back and relive his childhood memories.

My mom told me she hoped I had a better week this week, I told her it would be hard not too. But I eat my words all the time. So, here's to not having a worse week!

building a sand castle

Calvin buckled his own life jacket (don't worry, I fixed it)

Lilah carrying around her shovelful of sand


the crazy kids swimming in the cold watersome very content kids

a photo for our 'Pops'
we will post a picture of the car tomorrow - so check back.

The Natural Bridge

For Anna Elise's spring break we decided to go on a family trip. On Wednesday we drove to Lexington, VA. It's ok if you've never heard of it, I hadn't either. It's in the middle of nowhere in western Virginia. It's absolutely beautiful there! We got a hotel with an indoor pool and the kids where in heaven! On Thursday we went to the Natural Bridge and saw the bridge, a replica of a Monican Indian village, and hiked to a waterfall.

On Friday we went to the Virginia Animal Safari. It was so cool! Mike, Lilah and I loved it! It's 180 acres of animals roaming free. You drive through it and hold buckets of feed out your car window and the animals will eat and you can pet them. It's a great concept. We were the first car there that day and the animals were waiting for us! It went really well for the first 30 seconds. The kids were holding their bucket of feed out the car window and the Llamas were eating. Llamas began to swarm the car and the kids got a little worried and decided to pull their bucket in. The llamas put their heads into the car to follow the buckets and the kids just lost it. We had three screaming, yelling, crying kids huddled in the middle of the car wanting to go home. We had to roll their windows up. I fed the animals with Lilah for the rest of the trip. We fed llamas, ostriches, emus, camels, deer, antelope, other antelope types of animals, and dromedary. We saw but did not feed bison, bit horned cows, zebras, and pigs. After lunch we came back and the kids enjoyed the 'regular' walk through zoo with the tigers, kangaroos, birds, monkeys, giraffes, ect behind bars. I highly recommend it! We drove home Friday afternoon.

If asked, the kids' favorite part of the trip was swimming in the pool. If you asked Mike his least favorite part of the trip he would say sleeping in a hotel with kids. But we had a good time! Unfortunately we didn't bring either of our cameras with us - I was mad at myself the whole trip! We did get a few pictures and video with Mike's phone. It just doesn't do it justice, but you get the idea...

waterfall on the way to the Natural Bridge - it was so beautiful!

The Natural Bridge - it was so green and cool, it's not a good picture. It was breath taking.

The waterfall we hiked to.

Our safari kids recovering in the gift shop after their traumatic morning

Mom and Lilah feeding a llama while Anna Elise 'freaks out' in the background

Mom and Lilah feeding the camel. You have to listen to the kids' conversation in the background. This camel was huge with two tall humps. He was very sweet and eventually rested his chin on my window ledge and let us pet him while he 'purred'. He had cool dread locks too!

Happy Easter

I'm ashamed to say that this was the first year that we have died Easter eggs.  It was sad that my kids had no idea what dying Easter eggs entails.  They were fascinated by the whole process.  We had a good time, coloring, dying and decorating eggs on Saturday.  On Sunday they got to find the Easter eggs.  Mike hid their hard boiled eggs along with some candy filled plastic eggs.  We had a junior egg hunt in the front yard for everyone 3 and under.  It's a good thing that Madeline didn't have too much competition because she is so easy going she didn't really want to go find the eggs.  After Lilah found the first egg and realized what was in it she was off filling her bag with eggs.  Madeline finally decided that it might be worth exerting some effort.  She found her share of eggs but had mom help her empty out the candy for her - can you say lazy!  We had a senior egg hunt in the back yard for those 4 and up.  It was very entertaining to watch.  Anna Elise and Calvin played 'hot' and 'cold' with their dad to find the harder eggs.

We did manage to catch 3 of the 4 hours of conference today - which has to be a record for us.  We were also able to go play at a park for while as well.  It was a good Easter Conference Sunday.

Packing it ALL in!

We had a FULL day on Saturday.  Mike has been working every weekend this year.  When I realized he didn't have to work this past Saturday (unfortunately he did work for a couple hours on Sunday) we decided to take full advantage of his time off and the nice weather.

We got up Saturday morning and loaded up the car and headed for Washington, D.C.  We actually got there earlier then expected so we drove the kids around to see some of the monuments from the car and Mike illegally parked with Lilah while I took the kids to see the Lincoln memorial up close.  Anna Elise had learned about "Honest Abe" in school and wanted to see him.  We were able to look at the Washington (DC as Calvin would say) Memorial from the steps of the Lincoln memorial and the reflection pool in between.  I love it!  We found parking and walked a few blocks to the Capitol.  We sat on the grass and ate our lunch and joined in  the 'Kill the Bill' rally.  There was over 30,000 people there.  The kids love yelling, chanting, and clapping!

After an hour we loaded the kids back up and drove to the zoo.  Mike dropped us off to play and he went to the temple.  4 tired kids and only 1 mom at a zoo set on two large hills isn't ideal, but it was still fun.  We took lots of rests and had lots of snacks packed.  The weather was beautiful!  Mike came and got us and we went out for dinner and then headed home.  We stopped at a McD's for ice cream and finished the trip off with Lilah throwing hers up in the car on the way home.  Perfect!

 Lots of these guys around - keeping all of us 'radical' tea party 'extremists' in line!

 Lilah and Daddy checking out the crowd

 The rally in front of the Capitol Building

 At the zoo!

Frederick

The kids have been reading the book Frederick. It's about a mouse. On the inside of the back cover are instructions on how to make your own mouse. Anna Elise decided they needed to all make Fredericks. She gathered the supplies and the kids made these on their own. We got a chuckle over them!

The first is Anna Elise's. It actually looks a lot like Frederick. She did a good job. Mike deemed it worthy of the name Frederick.


This one is Calvin's. His was looking pretty good but he just couldn't stop adding things, this Frederick has a hat, mustache, beard, cheeks, and I'm not sure what else. Mike named this one Frederico!

Here's Madeline's. So typical, she was excited to start it but wasn't interested in the details of it. She was thrilled with this Frederick with no arms, legs, ears or tail, since she didn't want to worry about putting those things on. Mike named hers just Fred.