A Little March-iness

 Another train man.

Saint Patty's Day Pasta. mmmmm

 The Andersons were over and Cody painted everyones toes. Thats Rocco with the gray sweat pants.

 A Diet Coke and Mentos experiment after church was pretty awesome with the wind. Doesn't it look like Rowdy's is floating away?!

Easter crafties

A Valentine from Feb. but I had to remember. 

translation= "I love you Mom. Thank you for this lovely year mom. Thank you. My Valentines to you

Ding Dong ditched!! yum

 

Elliot has discovered her closet..and Ezra's cruiser. Watch out Cedar crest

Hedges gone-ish!

 

Elliot's "baby worm"

 

 

Cody might have baby fever. Sweet Paravel.

 

Yaya came for her spring break

Cody Surprised me with a fancy new phone! In a fancy new track jacket. Tryin' it out on my Mom & co.

  

Its springish! One tree green. One tree popcorn. See Rowdy?

  

General Conference Seminary Jeopardy!

My Jeopardy

Late night Easter

I just have to remember ...
The way Elliot gets so excited to use the potty and run/ jumps off the the bathroom.
She loves jumping with both feet off steps wherever she may be.
She often says thats so "tewt" (cute).
The past couple of days, after you ask her a question.. "um um um yeah", which is a contrast from her very articulate, "yesss".
She was so excited to get a pink piggy bank this morning from the "Easter Bunny" She was walking around with it loving it. and then it broke within a few hours. Rowdy gave her his old little piggy bank and during rest time she tucked it into bed and said, "You gotta take a nap if you want to go to Livee's house".. Shes so "tewt" :)
She will often tell me right after she has done something messy but she is usually trying to help. For example. She walks into the room with a spray bottle of Resolve for laundry and a rag and says," Mom I cleaned my room o tay?!" Yeah I am daily reminded of the little rascals..."Oh -Tay!"
She is kind of bossy sometimes and I see her wagging her finger and giving instructions especially to Ezra, but also to Rowdy. The other Day Ezra was a bit whiny so I was ignoring him a little at the park and he was whining/crying across the park. and she said, "Mom go get him! He is crying! Go get him!"
I was thinking we were pretty much out of the terrible twos which I think we are, but then in the past two days the mischievous side of her 2 year old self has re-emerged. She snuck into the pantry and ate a handful of sugar then relocated the whole sugar bucket to the middle of the kitchen floor and sat down around it  and spilled a bunch. (sugar is lame to clean up) and she came out of my bathroom with mascara artistfully smeared up the side of her eyelid.
Elliot and Rowdy are in love with each other right now. She will run up and hug Rowdy when he comes home from kindergarten, and he genuinely hugs her back. It is so cute. They have just been close buds lately
Rowdy is Mr. Popular right now with Ezra and Elliot because he is all of the sudden very into helping with them and making them happy. He is very quick to share or trade or help them fix a problem. Ezra was throwing a fit the other night and Rowdy offered to trade him turns sitting on my lap. He has been doing selfless things like that all the time lately. It is very cool to see and a huge blessing for me as a mom. He will also invite the littles to play with him or make up games that make them laugh. One thing though that is grossss, his is eyelid flipping! He knows it grosses me out so he does it all the time ewww! And he is in love with cleaning lately too! He was begging me the other night to do a "power half hour."  So we did and then the next night he really wanted to do one again but our house wasn't that dirty so I suggested a power 10 min, and he was very upset....probably because it didn't rhyme. He is also reading up a storm. He is very motivated right now by a little speed to read competition at school. but he is really surprising Cody and I with his skills.
Ezra is totally into puzzles right now. He always wants to do "the puzzle with the cars that light up". He is always asking one of us if we want to help him...even thought he could probably do it with his eyes closed. He is often referred to as the Lone wolf by my Dad. He is very cool with just playing with toys by himself for a long time. So a few friends have invited him over for "play dates" and he hasn't really played with them. We have a little girl down the street we carpool with she told me "Ezra didn't even play with me today." He just sat on their floor and played hungry hungry hippos for almost an hour. But when he gets in a talking mood! He also has been loving on Rowdy. They love to watch Rescue bots, and make up games in the toy room. He is cute with Elliot. He mostly tries to steer her in the right direction. & Ezra loves to help in the kitchen.
Cody got called into work early this morning...Easter morning which was kind of lame but we did get to have a crazy fun day with him yesterday. We did an Easter Egg hunt and picnic yesterday at a new park we found in Flower Mound. A combination of me not wanting to go to the store and wanting to eat better led to filling the Easter Eggs with crasins and coins and raisins and grapes. and I did have a few Reese Pb balls but the kids loved the mostly candy free! And today was pretty much candy free they each got one candy egg, and the rest were hard boiled. It felt good. I think I would've been a little disappointed and all the candy free if my mom hadn't kept sneaking me her secret chocolate stash of Easter candy last week :) We went to Flower Mound because Cody had groupon stuff for a theatre on Lewisville. We were still pretty early for the show so he wanted to take Ezra to ride these mini go karts. Ezra was so cute! Rowdy got to ride to and they both had a blast. Ezra was so excited about his little "points card" he called it a drivers licence. Elliot...got a slushy. Then we went to watch the Croods and it was the studio movie grill so we ate while we watched it then came home to dye Easter Eggs. Whew.

Easter was very lovely today. The only thing that could've made it better was Cody being here. My sweet VT's dropped off stuff to do the little resurrection rolls. The kids loved that and we read Easter story books while they cooked. It was a fun little way to teach them. Later we went to the Carmacks for a yummalicious family dinner and a sweet little Mormon Message. It was really nice. I really should be sleeping or finishing up my seminary lesson but I feel like these moments are so fleeting. I've just had to get some of this down. The gratitude I feel in my heart for this sweet family... and all of my family is deep.  Thank goodness for our Savior.
"I know that my Redeemer lives. What comfort this sweet sentence gives."
Happy Easter

February

 
+ monica ..aint no body got time fuh dat... corn. temple
great wolf  + sickies
oklahoma snow! ok city site
nan and lettti museum chit chat
Paisley and Elliot
seminary weirdness
back to feb.  weather pretty nice. Soccer pick up game
Elliot potty training

January

Ezra learned how to ride a bike!  The look on his face is when he is riding.."Are you seeing this?! This is Awesome! Are you seeing this?" Like a joyful surprise.
He likes to ride Rowdy's bike the best, so he's learned how to fall gracefully with it since he can't reach the ground.  He picked it up in like an hour...thanks to Dad and all the practice with that little cruiser of his.

and the next hour Cody built a ramp, and he did fine on that too.

 

We also love to see our cousins over in Coppell. We were hanging out almost every Friday for a while. Its been nice having  them nearby. & Yay for Paravel! She is such a doll. Its fun to be close and watch the nieces and nephews grow.

Here are some more nieces and nephews w a game Cody made up. However old you were that's how many balloons you had tied to your ankles and everyone had to try and pop them..except Elliot...and later we learned Ezra... (they were a little emotional over the whole thing)

We turned gun owners in January. 

Cody was so excited about his mega thrift store find...I was not so excited. but after he showed me the glow in the dark one and we had a glow in the dark dance party for FHE (with our crazy black light form Halloween) and Rowdy stripped down to his undies, because they were white and glowed better, and proceeded to dance around super silly trying to avoid the glow in the dark bullets and I almost wet myself laughing, that's when I started liking them. Plus we do little nerf gun stuff in seminary sometimes, & I giggle at the thought of everyone having the little guns and me walking into the activity with the one as big as Rowdy. I haven't worked up the nerve yet.

The kids rediscovered the sand box. 

Elliot loves, even in 40 degree weather, to take off her shoes and socks and stick her toes int he sand. Got a little California girl in her ;) 

Almost everyday for the past couple of months they will go play with it in the front yard right before Rowdy comes home from school then a bunch of neighbor kids will come play too.

Miles and Rowdy play really well after school together. They are pretty creative.

Elliot put her hand on the stove after we had made popcorn :( She fried her palm and most of her finger pads. It was so so sad, but she was a little trooper. She called it her hot hand. and was so excited when she got "new pink skin!"

This girl is unstoppable.

A sweet love note I found from Rowdy. He does and says the most thoughtful things.

He takes after his Dad

Also so proud of Rowdster for passing off all of his sight words! He made his own goal to finish, because he wanted to go to the principal and pass them off for his dogtag. Way to go!

There was also an after school camp night...Read S'more or something cute. When we went, so many teachers knew Rowdy and told us how great or thoughtful or polite he was. It was a great feeling. Thanks Rowdy for being such a good kid.

Elliot is getting better about eating real food, but she still loves her sugar... daddy

It snowed in January but not enough to call in a snow day. I took this picture after seminary
and there was a day with funny little dip n dot hail.

Ezra and Elliot admiring Paravel

 

Ezra and Elliot have been at odds lately (January-ish). Elliot knows how to push his buttons and sometimes she is mean. Hitting or biting mean, just because she knows he will cry. She realize it hurts. Time outs aren't cutting it. So even though it felt weird I told Ezra to hit her back. He was such a gentlemen and would just sit there (crying though) while she railed on him. I had to remind him quite a few times. Sure enough it only took a few times and they are back to being mostly buddies. 

A few weeks ago I was in & out of a seminary nap stupor, and I heard a smack and a crying. These days I am very slow to conflicts. I just let them try and work it out. I could hear Ezra crying, they were the only kids home, and Elliot says,"Rowdy did it! Rowdy hit Ezra!" !!  Then when she realized no one was around, & she wasn't getting in trouble she apologized to him! :)

We got to see Yaya for a few hours in January. She flew in for Paravel's blessing & we got to see her. Its nice having her around. We've got to see her 3 months in a row!! 

After Paravel's blessing we went over to Locke and Katie's for a lovely brunch. mmmm. We should do brunch more often. That was delicious.

 

I really should stay on top of the blogging. I'm hurting knowing I have already forgotten sweet bytes from my littles.