"Busy" Satans Power Over Christians

While I was eating lunch I was checking my e-mail, you know keeping busy - multi tasking. I opened this link from Jen Winterton and read it while I ate. I thought I would share a few thoughts I had to help in the fight against Satan. This Christmas in my kids stockings I am going to ask Santa to put something in it to remind the kids of the birth of Jesus, a picture, statue, book or other age appropriate item. For Easter it would be neat (and less tempting for me) to ask the Easter Bunny to replace some of the candy with pictures or stickers of Christ's Resurrection and his life in the eggs. If anyone else wants to share their thoughts and ideas on this with me feel free to do so. (Thanks Jen for sending it.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgJ-w5GSaYo

The Plant

Have you ever wondered how those shirts get so crisp and stiff at the Cleaners? Well, if you have never seen inside a shirt laundry you are in for a treat. This is my Parents business. It has been in the family for years. My Grandpa Irby started the company.
When I was little we used to call it the Plant, now my Dad likes to call it the Sweat Shop.
I used to love to go to work on Saturdays and hunt for change on the ground or in the trough behind the washers. I also liked to pick pockets in hopes that someone would have left a couple bucks in their shirt pocket and forgot to take it out before they sent it to the cleaners. We would have basket races when all the workers went home.
I have taken all of my kids to the Plant so they can experience riding in a basket and also see where Grandma, Grandpa, Uncle Jeff and Uncle Jim work. Here we are playing around with the baskets. Grandma and Uncle Jeff (my oldest brother) pose with Andrew.

April SNOW brings May flowers?

Here it is, my Garden theme inspired by my sister in law Mandi. She gave me these cute FAMILY blocks for Christmas, which she made. I loved the green and yellow with the red flower so much, and this is the result!

Easter Breakfast

I am the Activities Chair for our Ward. We had an Easter Breakfast this year. All the primary kids drew pictures that represented Christs Resurrection and we displayed them in at the breakfast. The primary did an Easter Egg Hunt for each age group. This is my proud kids standing next to their masterpieces and Andrew finding an egg.



To set the mood a few of us combined our Spring and Easter decorations as centerpieces for the tables. I had some old Greg Olsen calendars the I cut the pictures out of and framed one for each table. We had Hillary Weeks on CD playing in the background. (Beam me up scottie, you had to be there.) For breakfast we had casseroles and fruit provided by the ward members. The activities committee provided juice, milk, muffins and pasteries. We had a wonderful turnout even though we did it over spring break.

Easter Sunday

What cute nieces and nephew I have. Eli and baby Paige belong to Jon and Mandi & Faith and Molly belong to Jeff and Susan. I love them so much. Grandma Julie and Uncle Jake held an Easter Egg Hunt for all the grandkids. One thing we learned is that even hard boiled eggs crack easily, especially when little kids throw them. Next year we will be hoping for plastic eggs. Calli had so much fun finding eggs all day this is just a small glimpse of her excitement.

La la la la, La la la la, ELMO'S WORLD!

Our family has a pass the the Children's Musem. We went to learn all about the body, with the help of our friends from Sesame Street.


Calli really explored, as usual. She couldn't figure out why the toothbrushes, toothpaste and combs were stuck to the counter. She tried to comb her hair by rubbing her head on the brush. Then she got tired of that and got in the sink. This is normal for her, at home she usually tries to wash her feet when she is washing her hands in the sink. After her grooming was over Calli and Dad went shopping at Mr. Hoopers' store.

Marshall learned how the nose works and how to tie his shoe the manly way in elmo's world. The gigantic nose sneezed all over him.

Hilary and Andrew took a rest on the bench in front of all the characters after Hilary wore herself out dancing with guy smiley.

Andrew loved that he could just go where ever he wanted and Calli wasn't there to pick him up and try to carry him back to mom.
Dad had a lot of fun also. He picked the Sky Box to eat lunch at. March Madness was going on and with a million basketball games all around him it didn't matter if the kids were being good or not. (They were good). What a fun family outing.

Picture Perfect

So everyone knows that I have an obsession with photographs of my kids. I roped Adam into going to Target one Thursday morning to get their pictures taken in their Easter Outfits. Well, it was a disaster... to start off we couldn't find one of Andrew's shoes. (That had to be a sign). We ended up running about 10 minutes late and still had to stop at Payless to buy Andrew some new church shoes. We got into the car I noticed that Andrew's hair wasn't done. I ran in to grab his gel before we took off. Payless didn't have the shoes I wanted so I ended up getting him sandals (which I took back later). We get to Target and I look down at my feet and notice I grabbed the Cetaphil and not the hair gel, I just laughed. We check in I run to purchase hair gel while Adam gets Andrew's shoes on and the s began to get sister pictures taken. Finally we get all the kids in the studio and Andrew is ready for his nap. We finally give him his milk and he downs the whole thing. Marshall being the stubborn kid he is isn't being cooperative either... KIDS! Sooo, the got a picture of all 4 kids one with Andrew screaming and one with his sippy cup in his mouth. We decided to let the that was there before us retry her pictures. After looking at the photos we asked if we could have one more try. The tells us NO because she has appointments for passport pictures coming and asked if I wanted to reschedule. I proceeded to tell her no way and that she was crazy to think that I would get the kids all ready again next week. So we left.

After we calmed down, OK after I calmed down we decided to head to Jordan River Temple to try a photo shoot of our own. Here are the results: