Happy Easter

We had a great Easter this year. The kids had fun dying Easter eggs, finding their Easter baskets, and learning about Jesus. Tyler was especially curious this year about the ressurection, and I am always amazed at the faith of little kids! Halle got a pony in her basket and Tyler got the card game "Go Fish" along with way to much sugar and junk, but it was fun:) We had a couple of friends over for Easter dinner which turned out really nice, and we were glad that we had someone to share our day with. Hope everyone had a Happy Easter!

Our First Visitors!!!

Two of my most FAVORITE people, my mom and dad, I LOVE you!!!! We got to do so many fun things on their trip out to Cleveland. Here is the very brief rundown ( I tried posting this a minute ago in much more detail and then somehow navigated away from the page and lost it all so this will be less detailed:) On Wed night when the fam got into town we went to eat at the Cheesecake factory, yum! Thursday we went to Kirtland and saw the Kirtland Temple, NK Whitney store, Whitney home, school of the prophets, and visitors center. It was so awesome to feel the spirit of Kirtland (only 25 min away from our house if anyone is thinking of visiting:) That night we ate at Brio a really yummy Italian restaurant mmmmmmmm! On Friday we went to Cosco and loaded up (thanks mom and dad:) and that's when the worst storm in 25 years started, seriously, if you think MT gets a lot of snow OH put it to shame!! We were pretty much snowed in for the rest of that day, but it was so fun hanging with the fam, and the kids loved the attention! Saturday everyone went to the Cleveland Cavaliers B ball game to see LEBRON!! The kids got to swim at the hotel and eat pizza which we all thought was really fun. Halle is still talking about gwandpa splashing her in the pool:) Sunday church was cancelled due to the wild blizard outside, so we got to spend more time with our fam. This post doesn't even start to describe what a great time we had with them, and we miss them terribly!!! WE LOVE YOU!

Me and my cute sisters Camille on the left and Chloe on the right, we were so happy they got to come out to Cleveland!!!!!

While everyone was at the game, Halle and I made smoothie popscicles, carrot and spinach puree (I'll have to explain that one on a different post) and chocolate strawberries. She ended up having an ear infection and pink eye in both eyes, she looks pathetic, but really acted pretty happy.

This picture was taken in the school of the prophets. The back wall is the original wall, so we in a sense got to rub shoulders with many of the former prophets of the church! Since we were the only ones on this tour, they gave our family time to be in this room together alone, there is an amazing spirit about this place especially when you stop to think about all that happened here!!

The Newell K Whitney store

Me, Ty, and Halle in front of the Kirtland temple. We sure missed Chase who was at school and had to miss out.

Tyler and Halle in front of the Kirtland Temple.

This girl has some serious hops! I'm pretty sure this was Halle getting all riled up because gma and gpa were here!

Everyone was pretty excited to go to this game to watch LEBRON, he's the
MAN! Chloe and Camille don't play basketball, watch basketball, talk about

basketball, or even really care about it, but they were pumped to watch

LEBRON!

Chase and Tyler at the game! Tyler got to eat a hot dog, cotton candy, popcorn, pop, what's not to love? When the Cavs scored 100 points they told the audience that everyone would get a free chalupa from Taco Bell. Ty thought he would get his chalupa at that moment plus he thought it was a toy, and cried about it the whole way home:)

Chuck E Cheese Trauma

So last night some of our good friends called us up wanting to know if we could go to yes, that's right Chuck E Cheese. For those of you who have never experienced this magical (ha ha) place let me give ya the run down. First of all it is way over priced - $25 for a large nasty pizza and four pops, but get this, you get 40 tokens which you can use on rides whoa nelly! It doesn't stop there, after you play on all of the germ infested rides and games they give you like 5 tickets that you can redeem at the counter for a plastic fish or something your child will really cherish:) My friend is way on top of things though and she had gotten some coupons from the internet, and the kids absolutely love it, so we really thought it would be fun for them. After telling Tyler that we would be going to Chuck E Cheese, he was thrilled! You have never seen a more excited child, he was talking about rides, games, tokens, and could not WAIT to get there. When we got there, literally the whole city of Cleveland was at Chuck E Cheese and it was going to be at least an hour wait, so that's right, we had to tell Tyler we weren't going in. The poor child had his coat off and we weren't even in the door yet! He was scoping out all the rides and I cannot tell you the shot of pain I felt after crushing his dreams by telling him we weren't going to get to go in! OUCH! Everything worked out, we went to our friends and had $5 pizza on their living room floor and watched a movie, and it was way better than the germ infested Chuck E Cheese. PS I'm taking Tyler and Halle there for lunch next week to make up for the trauma they experienced last night:)

New First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints

Thomas S. Monson is the new president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. President Monson, 80, succeeds President Gordon B. Hinckley, who died 27 January 2008.
The new world leader of the Church has called to serve with him in the First Presidency, the top governing body of the 13-million-member faith, President Henry B. Eyring, 74, first counselor, and President Dieter F. Uchtdorf, 67, second counselor.
I love these elect men called by our Heavenly Father to lead His church on the earth!! Follow the Prophet, he knows the way:)

I wanna barbeque a fish!

So let me tell ya about my good buddy Tyler. He is such a great kid, anyone who has been around him knows that he makes friends with everyone wherever he goes. Whenever we have a gathering with our friends he is usually the entertainment. I find myself laughing a lot out loud at him and with him, he is such a fun little person... anyways, he is also very deteremined, and once he decides to do something he won't leave it alone. A few months ago he did "jobs" and "earned" a baseball mit and ball for T-ball this summer, and the other day he was saying that he wanted to do more "jobs" to get something cool, so I asked him what he wanted and he said, "I want to earn a fishing pole so that I could fish in Montana." Then I asked him what he was going to do with a fish, and he said, "I wanna barbeque it!" So everyday he does his jobs to get his fishing pole and can't wait to barbeque his fish in Montana:) We can do the fishing pole, but I don't know about getting to MT to barbeque it:)

Christmas birthday girl

I just couldn't neglect our poor Halle any longer...she had her birthday on Christmas and I have still not posted anything about our sweet girl. Halle Kay is our little 2 year old who is such a fun little person to have around. She is constantly going around the house singing her "ABCDEFG's" and I am a child of God in a high pitched voice. She loves pickles so much (just like her dad) and usually just yanks open the fridge with all her strength and shouts "peekle, peekle!" She LOVES to change her shoes/clothes on a regular basis making sure that she has at least 3 shirts on (usually a onesie, followed by a longsleeved shirt, and finishing with a short sleeved shirt on top). For pants it is usually pretty funny, she'll wear whatever pants but then she'll want either a pair of shorts or the little underwear things that she wears under dresses over her pants. She is always wanting to wear her snowboots, slippers, sandals, church shoes...and she wants to change about every five minutes. I only let her have her "options" on days I know we won't be going anywhere. She loves to play with her "chichin"(kitchen) and her babies, she enjoys getting horsey rides from her brother, "helping" with the dishes - or rather splashing water and bubbles everywhere, and she gets giddy everytime she heres Chase come in the door from school. She is so precious to us and we love her so much!

Christmas outfits with the cousins

Well, it has definatly been way too long since I have posted anything, so I thought I should at least do this Christmas pic until I can sift through the 500 pics my dad took during the Christmas break! We had a fabulous time in MT and were able to spend 3 weeks there, I know, that's a long time, it's one of the few perks of still being in school! We got to go to Fairfield where Chase is from and spend some time watching Tate play a few b ball games. He is quite the little player, as all of his brothers were:) The kids were yelling his name and I'm pretty sure they were probably a distraction. Halle kept yelling "Go Tape, Go Tape!" which was pretty funny. Since we have been home she has been wondering where uncle tape is? Janis showed me how to knit little hats with the "knifty knitter" looms, I have made several now for people who have had babies recently and they have been a hit, thanks Janis! The kids got to get gumballs from grandma pearsons gumball machine using pennies, I think we at least spent a dollar on gum:) We went to the community choir christmas concert at the highschool which was really good, Chase has several cousins with amazing voices. Best of all was just spending time with them visiting and catching up, we are so sad that we will miss McKay coming home:(

In Billings the kids strung fruit loops on yarn and made little cinnamon ornaments to hang on the tree. We celebrated Halle's 2nd birthday on Christmas Eve this year, she had a wonderful day and it was fun to be with family (I will do a special post just for her later) We did our famous re enactment of the nativity with costumes, we never fail to get excited about this:) We just did so many things it's hard to post it all, but I promise more pictures are to come, so get excited!