A new house

After the festival we went to Kurt and Ashley's house.  They just built a beautiful home and we went over to celebrate.  We had a BBQ and went four wheeling in their backyard. 

The kids absolutely loved going on rides with Matt.

 

 Matt forced me to go on a ride with him and Kurt and Ashley also went out with us. It was really fun going over the river and even more fun when I got to drive! I am a slightly more conservative driver than Matt so I wasn't scared for my life with me behind the wheel.

  

We are so happy Kurt and Ash have an awesome party house! We will probably be over there more than they would like:)

Kite Festival

The kite festival was HOT.  We realized in years past we had always gone in the evening, but this year we went in the afternoon and about died!  You have to park very far away and then walk into the festival and once you get there there is pretty much NO shade.  So we drank lots of water and had lots of snow cones and tried to make the most of it!  The kids still had fun but when we were leaving they just couldn't take it anymore so we parked our stroller on the side of the road under a wall that provided some cover and Matt literally RAN to get the car. He is so good to us!:)

Making the trek to the festival...it didn't help that our stroller was half broken!

These two were pretty cute holding hands the whole way.

Of course they loved all of the bounce houses.

 Kash crashing down the giant slide.

 

Scowling for the camera

 It's amazing how a snow cone can lift your spirits.

 

 

  Evie was double timing the water bottles!

Ella running with her kite.  There wasn't really any wind so it didn't work out too well!

 

Poor Evie with her flushed cheeks.

 

 I think she's done.

We learned our lesson.  We will time it a little better next year.

Fiesta Fun

We went to Fiesta Fun for family night and the kids had so much fun.  They keep asking when we can go back.  They loved playing all of the arcade games the most, especially Kash.  They were so excited to earn their tickets and pick a prize.  Afterwards we played miniature golf and chased Evie around the course.  Then we went out to dinner. 

At one point Matt had to climb up to the top of the play set and save Evie.

This was Kash's favorite game!

 

 

Story Time

Ella read a story all by herself in front of her kindergarten class.  She chose the book, "That's not my Princess."  She read it using the overhead and did a great job.  She was a little shy about it, but read every word correctly and at the end exclaimed with much excitement (which her teacher appreciated because they have been learning about punctuation marks) "That's my princess!"

She is growing up so fast!

One Last Time

After dinner Matt and the kids jumped in the jacuzzi for what will probably be the last time.  It is starting to get warm now so this is the last time we will be heating it.  It's not too sad though because in the summer it turns into their own little pool!

 

Kash and I

Today I want to remember how Kash and I played together. It started when I turned the music on. He had a giant bouncy ball and was trying to throw it at me as I attacked him with my dance moves. I was afraid we were going to wake up Evie so I ran outside with the ball and he followed. We played on the trampoline together. We would toss the ball back and forth as we jumped. We were both laughing so hard. At one point he said, "Mom, I'm making you laugh a lot." We started running around in circles on the outer edge of the trampoline, still throwing the ball back and forth. I don't know why it was so funny but we couldn't stop laughing. The combination of jumping and laughing didn't go over very well for me and I exclaimed, "OH MAN! Kash, I peed my pants a little bit!" He replied, "Ya, sometimes I pee my pants a little bit too." We continued playing. When we were tired we laid down on the tramp, me on my back and Kash with his face smooshed against the mat. I asked him what color my eyes were and he said green and white. I told him his were green and that I loved him.

Easter

Easter was its usual extravagant event. We had lots of family, festivities, and fun. It started with a small Easter egg hunt in the living room, Easter baskets, and bunny pancakes. Then we headed to Bob and Dobo's house for the real party. We had yummy food, a huge egg hunt, pinata, games, and of course the bounce house. Everyone loved it.

Reading the note from the Easter bunny.

They were very excited to get Puss n boots, and super soakers. I'm not sure if they even looked at the clothes...

Kash showing off his new flip flops.

Ella lovin on her stuffed bunny.

Youngest were first for the egg hunt. It was quite the stampede. Evie would have been right out front but she was busy napping.

Sydney was scaling walls to get those eggs!

Emily and Adam with their goods.

The older kids checking out their loot.

Nikki, baby Ezra, Madeline

Nate was the lucky one to get Evie up from her nap. Doesn't she look happy?

Gina made the bunny pinata herself and it was darling. Here is Adam taking out his anger on it.

Ella swinging that bat that is as big as she is.

At one point the pinata had to be re-hung so Matt scaled the tree with Mike assisting.

Braden is actually in baseball right now so he had a slight advantage.

Kash has a pretty good swing.

You would think they had enough candy by now but they still went crazy for it.

Gotta love this wardrobe malfunction!

Seriously those legs...

This was a relay game where we had 3 teams with a list of certain colored balloons they had to run and get out of the bounce house.

They had to bring them back to their team and pop the balloons so the next person could go.

Evie loving the bounce house.

I love this one with James in the background.

Lauren and Ella.

Evie does smile occasionally, although Madeline doesn't believe it.

She worked on putting the wand back in the bottle for a good ten minutes!

I'm so grateful to have such an awesome family to celebrate with. So fun!