My Sister's Wedding

My baby sister got married this week.  I can finally post pictures of the ties I made.  Here's what all the boys got to wear who were part of the wedding party:

I made 7 of the younger boys ties.  It was great to see so many green ties around.

Here's the great couple just coming out of the temple.  My brother's wife did all the flowers for the wedding.  Isn't the bouquet beautiful?  Kamee did an amazing job!

My sister, Rachael, made the wedding cake.  She is super talented.  That is real frosting, not fondant folks!

And here's the cutting of the cake.  My sister was just slightly upset with how much frosting ended up on her face.

The reception got a little long for little Joseph.  Luckily he had Clara to keep him entertained!

And we all held sparklers as the happy couple walked away.

It was a wonderful week.  Since all my family had come into town, we decided to hold our family reunion the same weekend.  One of the things we did was run a 5k to earn money for the Boston Marathon victims. 

Here's a picture of almost everyone who ran.  The only two that ran that aren't in the picture are my two brother-in-laws.  Little Joe got pretty sleepy while we were waiting for the last few people to finish, so he snuggled with Dad.

And here's the last picture of the week I want to share.  I love  that my little girl can get her dad to do almost anything! :)

Teething and Plays

Joseph's top two teeth came in this week.  We've had some very long nights.  But Joe has made this face all week too:

Another amazing thing Joe did this week is pull himself up to standing!  Yay Joe!

Clara decided to be Super Clara and designated me as Sidekick Mom.  We saved Joe from various terrifying stuffed animals.

We were also able to see my niece, 3 nephews, and a cousin in a local play this week.  It's titled Prisoner of War.  The director wrote it herself about her own grandfather.  We got to attend on a night when the grandfather was there.

The play brought tears to my eyes on several occasions.  I am so grateful for all those willing to serve in our military so that I can enjoy not only my amazing freedom, but my family as well!

Family Play

Before I start the story of our family play, I wanted to tell everyone that Jeremy got to start his new job today!  We are so excited for a permanent position!  He was nervous but super excited for this new opportunity.  It's a huge blessing in so many ways.

Clara decided to write a play for our family to act out.  She had me write everyone's lines on a paper for them.  (Except for Joe because "he doesn't know what to do with paper.")  She then asked me if I had any pink and black material to make some costumes with.  I informed her that even if I did have pink and black material, I did not want to make costumes.  So she resigned on making masks for everyone to wear.

She informed me that I got to be the Big Bad Wolf and she, Dad and Joe got to be the three little pigs.  She also did scenery for the play.  She put a house made out of sticks on Joe's door, a house made out of hay on Dad's door, and a house of bricks on her door.  She also numbered them for me so I would know which order to knock on the houses.  I like that she made each name plural, even if she did use an extra s.  Considering, she's not in Kindergarten yet, I'd say that' pretty good!

We then waited for Dad to get home from work so we could all be in our family play.

Clara also decided to put on a fashion show for us, complete with a red (pink) carpet.  Her idea of a fashion show was to dance on the runway and not a whole lot to do with what she was wearing....

Jeremy got some new headphones this week, and Clara really wanted to test them out with him.

I was able to attend a Relief Society meeting this week and when I got home, I found this on the floor right when I walked in the door.  I sure do love you too, Clara.

Conference Weekend

Twice a year,  we get the privilege of hearing council from the leaders of our church.  I love conference weekend.  Not only is it spiritually fulfilling, but we get to spend so much time together as a family.

While the men were at their session Saturday night, we got to go to the park and look at ducks with Grandma.  We had such a fun time there. 

After we got home from the park, I went to take a picture of Joseph, but the camera was no where to be found.  I drove more quickly than I should have back to the park, and was very grateful to find it on a park bench!

When all the sessions of General Conference was over, Grandma held her annual Easter basket treasure hunt.  It's a favorite of all the grand-kids.

I love how all the older cousins graciously let the younger kids find the clues and read them.  It's hard to see, but in this picture, Cooper (the 14 year old boy in the blue shirt) is holding Clara's hand so she has a fair chance at finding a clue.  Clara has some amazing cousins!  Not many 14 year old boys would offer to hold a 5 year old girls hand.

Clara getting to read her clue.

And the loot...

Thanks Grandma and Grandpa for all your hard work in putting that together.  We'll sure miss you for the next 18 months!

Easter

Clara was super excited to wake up to the Easter Bunny having come.  She kept giggling the entire time she was searching for eggs.

Since this was Joseph's first Easter, we needed to get him an Easter Basket. The only one that we could find that we liked, didn't really match Clara's.  So we ended up buying two new Easter Baskets.  Jeremy loves Joe's and Clara loves hers!  :)

Clara was super excited to get a Lego Magician toy as well as her very own watering can.

Clara has been into magic shows lately.  She's been putting on show after show all week.  So I thought the Easter Bunny did a great job picking out things she would like.  Here is a picture I took this week of one of Clara's magic shows.

I'm so bummed I never got a picture of Clara's Easter dress.  She's been excited to wear it to church all week, and I failed to get a good Easter picture.  Oh well.  She was also super excited to go to church and discover that one of her best friends got the exact same Easter dress!
Clara got to give a talk in Primary on Easter too.  She was super excited last week to get the assignment. She prepared her talk all by herself!  She even had her own visual aids.  Here's how her talk went:

"Jesus prayed by a tree.  That prayer was called the Atonement.  The prayer so was special that it made Jesus bleed.

The bad soldiers (while practicing with me all week, she kept saying Lamanites, but said soldiers in her actual talk) took Jesus and put him on a cross.  They put nails in his hands and feet and a sword in his side.

The people who loved Jesus took his body.

And put it in a tomb.

Three days later, an Angel moved the stone.

Jesus came out and showed everyone the nail holes in his hands so they would know it was Jesus."
Sorry about those last two pictures.  Clara drew those back to back, and so you can see the other picture when I scanned them in.....  She did a wonderful job, especially since she wrote it all by herself!

Lego Art Exhibit

We decided to drive to Park City with my sister and her family to see the Lego Art Exhibit.  I was amazed at the ability the artist had to build such cool things out of Legos.  The best part is that Clara was super excited too since she loves to play with Legos.  Here are just a few of the pieces we saw:

One of Clara's favorite games to play is airplane.  You know, the game where the adult lays on the floor on their back, puts their feet straight up in the air, and the child lays on the adult's feet and pretends they are an airplane flying though the air.  I was playing that with her one day this last week and Joseph started to fuss.  Clara thought it would be a great idea if he came to join us.  So I held him up with my  hands, Clara up with my feet, and Jeremy took the picture.

Clara also loves to draw and thinks that everyone around her feels the same way.  Every once in a while she will hand me a blank piece of paper, tell me it's her gift to me so that I can draw what ever picture I want to on it.   What a thoughtful child!
She will also instruct you on what your works of art should be.  While we were coloring together this week, she gave each of us 2 pieces of paper with the requirement that one piece was for coloring and the other piece was for cutting and gluing onto the first piece.  Here are our finished products: