Thanks Mom

It was so fun to get the package in the mail! What a pretty little basket of eggs! I let each little piggy pick an egg after nap time.

(I've noticed lately that Jack likes the color Orange. He picks the orange egg, the orange cup, the orange lego etc.)

Getting ready for Easter

I wanted to continue the tradition my parents had for us kids at Easter. We each had our own easter bunny basket my mom made and she would fill them and hide them and we would play the "hot and cold" game looking for them. This year I decided to make some for my kids. I didn't have a pattern so I just drew one up using my basket that my mom made as a reference. Hers of course is lots better, but I'm happy with the way these are turning out. The first one took me 2 hours to make. The 5th one I made today took me just 40 minutes. It's a pretty simple pattern.

I thought it would be fun to draw on eyelids and eyelashes for my bunnies with a sharpie.

I'm excited to fill them up and hide them. thanks Wendy for finding the green and blue fabric for me so quickly!

Glen's newest toy...and mine!

Glen's is the green, mine is the red Ruby in the background. Glen found this boat on you know what and it had never been used! We didn't even have to drive to Boise to get it. It was 15 minutes from our house!

So, the following day, we got a babysitter once the kids went down for naps and out we went! We were determined to go rain or shine! It was so much fun! I have a great teacher to show me the ropes to rafting the river. Everything was fine until the end when we had to get off the river. The river was fast and I just went through a rapid and then had to speed over to the left side of the river around a corner to reach the take out. I missed the first take out and the second and then grabbed a branch to make it to the third! luckily the home owners of that property were very friendly and didn't mind at all that we had to cross their yard with our boats. And we were sure glad we had wetsuits on! (don't worry mom, it wasn't dangerous,... just very exciting) :)

We're going to go again...and again....and again! We'll do a different part of the river each saturday during the kids nap times. Instead of Date Night, we now have Date Day. ;)

River Rafting and more

Glen, his buddy, Seth and Greg went down the river. Then when the kids went down for naps, they went again and took me.  We rafted from Hilgard to Riverside.  It was so fun!  It's been too long since I've been able to go.  

We celebrated Holly's birthday with the Tangled Theme.  :)

I took a million pictures of the kids with my dad's fancy snancy camera.  Here is just a handful of what I got. These aren't edited yet.

I finally got around to doing my last few tile pictures that I've been meaning to do for the past 2 years!

And, I tried out the Elmer's Glue way of creating the Crackle Finish.  It worked great!  Lots cheaper than buying Crackle Medium to do the job.  Once the glue dries, the base color shines through!  It's cool.

If only they lived closer . . .

Gramma Faye and Pappa Dave came to visit. Holly and Greg joined us later in the week. It was so nice to have them here. And as always, the visit just goes way too fast! :( I wish my parents lived here. We would have "Gramma School" for the kids and she would be great at it. My dad would have his own computer business fixing people's computers, making them run faster and teach classes on how to make charts and graphes on their computer. We would all go on walks together and have fires in the evening and float down the river. It would be heaven to have all my family nearby. but...I guess I'll just have to wait till I really go to Heaven to have that. In the meantime, I'll have to settle with visits every now and then.

As soon as Holly came, Gretchen went to her and never wanted to leaver her side! ... not even for me!

This is a picture I took of Gretchen before Holly showed up. After that, anyone was lucky if Gretchen let them hold her. hahahahahh

We all fingerpainted. Greg did a picture of his mario game from the wii. Don't mind his expression. He's just shy when it comes to getting his picture taken. :) hahahahhaha

The secret to not having grey hair. . .

Meet Uncle Joe. He and my Aunt Linda came to visit us last month. While they were here, I realized that Uncle Joe somehow managed to reach the age of 70 and not have one grey hair on his head!

(My camera was too close so it makes it look like he has lighter hairs but this grandpa has only thick dark hair!)

Wanna know his secret? Got to bed early. Rise early and walk a good distance every day. I'm sure Uncle Joe hasn't gained a pound more than he weighed when he graduated HighSchool.

We enjoyed their visit. (My Aunt Linda is my mom's older sister.) She shared lots of entertaining stories from her youth.

Thanks for visiting us!

Gretchen's One Year Pic

While my parents were here, I took a bunch of pictures with my dad's camera of the kids. Here is one of my favorites of Gretchen. I've been having fun learning how to use photoshop to cut her out from the wrinkled background she had to pasting her onto a smooth black background. I'm proud of the little baby hairs I was able to capture. That was tricky cutting out. Thanks again Dad for photoshop!

Elmer's - Crackle Finish Frame

If you like the crackle finish for your projects, watch this and save some money!

This what I just discovered. I'm excited to not have to spend 20 plus dollars for my project that I'm working on just to get a "Crackle" finish. woohoo!