Arizona Trip over Easter Weekend

We went to Arizona for Easter Weekend. Here are a few pictures from the weekend. We dyed eggs with cousins.

 We had fun spending time with our new cousin, Jesslyn. She married Nick in December and this was the first time the kids have hung out with her. I think we over whelmed her.

 We went to the Phoenix Zoo on Saturday. It is a great one. My camera battery died  after about an hour  so we only had a few pictures.

 Easter morning fun

 Grandma Hardman always does tshirts for Easter gifts. The girls got Frozen t-shirts and they were excited to wear them.

 Easter egg hunting in the back yard

 Cousin time.

 The Hardman tradition is to have an egg derby. They roll the eggs and smash them against each other. When the yolk rolls out you loose and you continue until there is one winner. I love traditions. They are what the memories are all about. You need something to bring excitement to a long Sunday.

 Thanks to Nick and Jess for teaching the littles how to roll the eggs.

Easter egg dying

 We dyed eggs at home this year. We have often traveled on this weekend so we decided to do eggs before we left. The kids were so excited. As they don't love hard boiled eggs in any form we decided to use raw eggs. The kids did really well and only cracked one. I think that is a success versus throwing out a bunch of hard boiled eggs. I loved the joy on Lydia's face as she pulled out each brightly colored egg

 Tanner turned it into a scientific process and each egg went into several colors to see the result.

 Kyle was on duty helping Ainsely. She was a quick dyer. In and out and on to the next one.

 Here are a few of our creations. Using the white crayon was too hard to resist for Kayla. She loved writing on all her eggs.

 All the eggs in their brightly colored glory. Now it is fun to cook with colored shells.

 Kayla made these little sugar cookie Easter baskets in mini muffin tins. They were adorable, the only problem was they kids would eat none of them.

Last day of KG

Here are some pic of the bigs teachers. We had an amazing teacher Ms. Hundley but she got a job as a councilor in a local middle school for the alst 6 weeks of school so this picture below is of their long term sub Ms. Rissi who as great as well.

Here is Ms. Hundley when she came back to visit.

Here is the last day of school. I was trying to find the pictures from the first day to compare but didn't yet.

Of course the littles couldn't let the bigs take a picture with out them.

Summer in Vegas

As anyone who has been in Vegas in the summer, you might imagine to "joys" of having 4 little kids, a busy husband and one little house to hold all of you away from the heat. Once the days reach over 100 everyday life can get old. So we don't plan on sticking around much. My bigs have been in CA with Grandma Hardman since Friday. Then the rest of us will head to CA for a long weekend and enjoy the cool of CA.

After a week home we will go to Utah for a reunion of the decedents of Barbara Dickson Whittier up in Morgan. It should be a fun time and my bigs are looking forward to camping. Again refer to  the heat as to why we don't do that in Vegas in the summer. After a week in Utah we will come home for another week.

Then we are off on a great adventure. I may be a little insane (or a lot) But I am taking my 4 munchkins alone and heading off to OK to see Troy and Brooklynn. Then to VA to my parents and a few days at Will and family. Then back to TX to visit Cherise and family. And finally back home. That should take us about 3 weeks and bring us to August and home again. Then a couple of weeks until school starts.

 Here are a few pics from the last month. We had a backyard sleepover before it became too hot. Here is our fire for smores.

 And the tent, only the bigs and I made it all night.

 Setting up our pool. Lydia was in heaven.

 Kindergarten Promotion program

Kayla receiving her award for good citizenship.

Forever and a Day

I have not been on here in forever and have been thinking I should. I don't think many people read this but I loved recording the stories of my kids that I don't write down anywhere else. Here are a few pictures from January.