Mel's Fantastical Insights

My mom and dad invited us all kids to Easter at their house. Most of us made it. They had a whole weekend of fun planned for the kids. Thanks to mom and Tiff. The kids made bunny ears and little ducks and bunnies. They decorated cookies and played with cousins. My kids had so much fun. Then we had a wonderful easter egg hunt in which we found all but one easter egg. Daniel of course tried to get all the eggs before the other kids even realized what was going on. Alice did pretty good collecting eggs. Abby and Steph looking at their goodies. This is Alice in her adorable new dress. Thanks Steph!

Yes yes, well Alice's birthday was in April, so we aren't too far behind. As for tradition we went to the Tulip Festival for Alice's birthday. It was so fun. The kids loved being outside, I loved the gardens, and Jason, well he loves the food. We had the best pulled pork sandwich there, yum. Also there was clogging going on which the kids loved. Before it started, they just had music playing and lots of little kids danced on the platform. Our kids of course loved that. We keep trying to go back to the gardens, but the weather has been uncooperative. Alice got a trike for her birthday. We just took it outside last week and she loves when I push her around. This being our second trike, we bought the one with the parent handles. Alice helped make her cake, by choosing the frosting color. We put M&Ms on it and that was all she wanted to eat. Then she scraped her finger on it to get the frosting off and we just let her have fun. Soon the whole cake looked like ...

Okay so Daniel's birthday is in March. I know that it is May, and I wish that I could say we have been so busy, but mostly, I am just too lazy to find a spot for my laptop and put pictures on it and then blog. Oh well. Daniel wanted a space birthday. Jason and I painted his room and wall papered the space items on them. Our wonderful brother in law installed the ceiling fan. Daniel loves his new room. His cousins gathered "moon rocks" (newspaper balls) in his room before the presents were opened. Daniel wanted planet cakes. Thanks to borrowed cake pans I made, Mars, Jupiter and Venus, into cakes. We have discovered that Alice and Daniel love the frosting only. All other parts of the cake are useless to them. Oh well. This is Daniel's new room. I am not sure if we will ever paint again. Although, I am sure that will kind of be like how we say we will never go to Hawaii again.

I have noticed I take way more pictures of Alice than of Daniel. Is this common? I am not sure if it is on purpose or not. Alice liked Grandma Sug's house the best because she could just lay around and watch TV. Her favorite thing. It helped also that Grandma Sug has a stash of chocolate to bribe small children to her as well. My kids love chocolate. Daniel played outside a lot which was nice for his sleepy parents. Thanks Grandpa Stan! Daniel keeps asking to go back but then says "why do they have to live so far away?"

I have ten minutes until Daniel's quiet time is over which means the insanity will start soon. Daniel is having a hard time lately. One of the girls in his preschool class is mean to him, he never wants to go to church anymore because it is boring, he always wants to go to Grandma's house, and he whines constantly. Alice is talking more and her favorite things to say are "Daniel!" "Jason!" "Get down" and "Don't." She thinks everything is yellow or blue. But I just love when she yells at Daniel for me. She cries less and less everyday except when Daniel is mean to her which is becoming more and more frequent. Oh kids, they drive me so crazy. Lately I have been hating winter. My kids are bored, I am bored and I hate taking them places because they are pains. They aren't the kind of kids that come when you call, they run and think it is super funny. I know I know, if I put them in the stroller it would solve some problems...

Usually I sit down to blog and can't think of anything to write about but today I have too much. Mostly today though I was reflecting, on this article called "Why I can't stop reading Mormon Mommy Blogs." My friend posted this on facebook (thanks Erin!) and I thought it was really interesting. Here is the sum up. This woman who wrote the article describes herself as a "childless, overeducated atheist feminist," who reads at least five "mormon mommy blogs" every day. Then she describes about the blogs, how they are different than other mommy blogs, and why she thinks she likes to read them. She also stated that she is not the only one who reads these blogs, but had many friends who also loved the Mormon Mommy Blogs. Then I started thinking about how grateful I am for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in my life. I love that our church teaches that families are not just important but essential to life and happiness. Jason read a...

We had a big snow storm, Blizzard 2010 was about a week or so late. Here are my cute kids bundled up enjoying the snow. Here are some belated pictures of our Christmas. We had tons of fun and sad to say we have yet to sort out where all the new and old toys should go. Needless to say Alice's favorite thing was her can of crunchies. I love sugar cookies, and my kids love to help me make them and eat the frosting. This was Alice's first time being able to help us. She is very dainty, so she actually did a decent job. Mom and Dad gave us more cookie cutters for Christmas so my kids insisted that we try them out. We (I) ate a lot of sugar cookies this last month.