the 30th

today...we had Mormon Helping Hands

the kids were SUCH great helpers! Planted trees and weeded the picnic areas. Excited when they pulled out the huge weeds!

baseball...Ashton played great and was happy that he didn't even get tagged out once!

Grandpa's birthday, 66!

Everything Grows and Bumble Bee

Cousin Marshall got a new car and wanted to show it off to us at softball practice...when he drove up I said, "Hey it's BUMBLE BEE!"

Ashton had a presentation day today. "Everything Grows"

They have watched tadpoles grow and change...

Silk worms...

The chicks have grown alot and have even started to get their feathers.

Hey Mom!

I know why flamingos are pink... why?
because they eat alot alot of shrimp!
According to ehow.com...

The Flamingo's Diet

The Flamingo's pink color comes from it's diet. The crustaceans and algae that the flamingo eats are both high in beta-carotene, and birds without sufficient beta-carotene are paler than other flamingos.

More in Ragnar news...

Megan just sent us our Ragnar results...
We placed 11th in our division and 290th overall. Not to bad! :)

"Not tonight Honey, I'm on the Ragnar."

HAHA!!!
My sister sent this picture to me today and I had a good laugh, look at my hair!!! :) There, now you've had a good laugh too! Your welcome!

Happy Easter!

"He is not here, for he is risen..." What a beautiful morning we had. No Easter bunny yet, we just got ready as usual and got to church on time. Today is about our Savior! Sacrament meeting was amazing...Sierra sang with her class and the two older classes, "Does Jesus Really Live Again", so sweet! Sis. Heyborne gave a great talk on the final days of Christ's life. She put it so beautifully and it really touched my heart and Bro. Woodhouse taught from the scriptures and I love the scriptures...I studied the last week of Christ's life and taught it to my Beehives with pictures from the Gospel Art Kit we have...I loved learning and studying the details...also in the Friend I read with my kids the final week of Christ's life...they have it set up so every day you can read what Christ did THAT day. It was amazing because when you are reading what he did on Thursday and it's Thursday, it seems more real. I am grateful for my Savior and for his strength and endurance, for his willingness to do his Father's will, for his sacrifice for all of us, for his love and forgiveness.
Sierra gave a talk today and what is significant is she wrote it herself...she did such a great job!
"In John 19:30 Jesus says"It is finished" as He was on the cross dying. "Father into they hands I commend (give) my spirit." Jesus bowed His head and gave up His only life. Lightning crashed, the earth seemed gloomy and sad. He stayed in heaven for three days teaching the spirits in heaven, then on the 3rd day He was risen. Jesus was able to be resurrected because He is our Savior. When Mary and other women went to the tomb to put spices and ointment on Jesus' body they noticed the stone was rolled away. When they entered the tomb, they saw a "young man sitting on the right side, clothed in long white garment...And he saith unto them, Be not affrighted: Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified: He is risen, He is not here." Luke 24:4-7. Jesus later visited all His disciples and ate fish and honeycomb to show He truly was risen. Jesus really is our Savior and Redeemer. He was born King of the Jews, performed miracles, then died for all the sins of the world. Today Jesus stands on the right hand of God listening to our prayers and watching us do service.
I know Jesus really truly is our Savior and Redeemer. In the name of our Savior Jesus Christ..."
Easter Egg hunt #1 at home after church (the Easter Bunny came during church, what a nice Easter bunny!)

We went out to Aunt Ruthie's and Uncle Randy's house in the afternoon and it is so much fun, we had a massive awesome Easter Egg hunt with about 200 eggs and it was way fun! These are the kids waiting for the go!

I know I'm sorry, nice booty shot!
The aftermath, what fun! Grammy got such fun things to fill the eggs: sticky hands, silly bands, bouncy balls, whistles, sticky frogs, rubber lizards...
It was such a fun afternoon, the kids love it out there.
Then we headed to Jake's parents for another Easter Feast...Ashton asked Grandma if they could have another Easter egg hunt, but she didn't have any eggs so we got our bags of plastic eggs out of the car and Sierra and Ashton took turns hiding for each other in Grandmas back yard, entertained them for a long time! :)

In other news: The tooth fairy got to visit our house too! Ashton lost another tooth. That makes 4! Funny story, he was getting in the bath and I was helping him take his shirts off...the long sleeved one had buttons at the top...well, we got the shirt off and then there was a big white thing in his nostril...I said "What is that, a booger?" He looked up at me and said "it's my tooth!" and grinned at me with blood all over his mouth. His tooth got caught on a button and it pulled it out and then it got stuck in his nostril as we pulled the shirt over his head! NEVER seen that
before. :)
and he sure does talk cute with those 2 front teeth missing! :)

"Mom can we dye Easter eggs?"

I have heard this question for days now! Finally the task was accomplished today! And the kids seemed to LOVE every minute of it!

Confessions

I am always receiving good praises in regards to my Ashton, "he is so quiet, so well-behaved, such a good boy, never a problem."
Last night Ashton was in the bath and he says to me..."mom, I was naughty at school today." What?! "During read-to-self I didn't do it, I looked at the calendar and petted the chicks."
me: hmmm...are you going to make better choices tomorrow?
A: Yep
Then today he tells me, "I was naughty again today." WHAT?! "me and Darren were trading silly bands during Spanish class."
me: well, are you going to be naughty tomorrow or are you going to make good choices?
A: Make good choices!
We shall see! :)

Thanks Sis. Davis!

Miriam and I Visit Teach Sis. Davis and she gave us bags and boxes of Easter surprises to bring home to our families...so amazing! An Easter basket with Easter eggs teaching of the final days of Christ's life. A big bag of plastic easter eggs, all sizes, and surprises to go in the eggs and their easter baskets. Two ceramic Easter bunnies, that I thought looked like my kids, one had a baseball hat on and the other was holding flowers. She also gave me a box of Harry Potter books, 1-5. I left with so much that she had to help me out to the car. WOW! So this is one special treat that I let my kids have early, giant chocolate bunnies!
Ashton gobbled his...

Sierra admired...

and nibbled...I ended up just throwing it away because she seemed to not be interested after a while...she hasn't even noticed.:)

Everything Grows

Right now in K-1 they are learning that everything grows. They have changed caterpillars into butterflies and released them...and they have meal worms that they will get to watch change into moths...they have just recently hatched chicks, they are only 1 day old and there are 3 or 4 more eggs that have to hatch still. We watched a chick hatch out of its egg yesterday and it was amazing! Today I got to hold a chick and walk around to the class and let them pet it...so, Ashton got to pet it and they are oh, SO CUTE!

Ragnar Relay So Cal 2011

Friday morning my mom picked me up and we went and met our van girls at the Malloy's at 5am. We made our way down to Huntington Beach, the start line. My mom got us matching shirts so we wore them for our first leg. The girls all decorated the van, I was nervous and getting ready to run. We each ran 3 legs of the race and you know how good it feels to check off what you have accomplished, well here are our boxes to check! :)

Trish made us our cutest capes, because we are SUPER gals and on them was an icecream sundae because we are FASTalicious! :)

We got Ragnar toilet paper and of course we had to stick it in my pants! :) Here we are walking to the start line, I go first.

The 6 of us are Van #1: Trish, mom, me, Kat, Kacy, and down in front Kiersten. Kim M. was in our van and was our biggest supporter...

see her right here on the right with the camera around her neck. She took tons of pictures, and even posted on Facebook througout the day. In the van she was our navigator and got us where we needed to go...she worked for 5 hours volunteering with Andrea's mom and Rachel's sister at Exchange 12, she was amazing! Thanks KIM!

We are waiting at the start line for the race to start! :)

Yay!!! Here we go! Mom waiting at her leg for Kiersten to pass off the bracelet...there's the pass off...GO MOM!Briana came for this leg because we were close to her house and Nixon got to ride with Grammy for part of her leg and he's amazing because he was riding up hill, it was so cute!Here we are at exchange 6 where we met up with our other van...so fun to see everyone! Trisha A. is not pictured because she was running! (Andrea, mom, Kat, Kacy, Mindy, Kiersten, Trish H., Megan, Emily, me, Rachel, and one of our volunteers Natalie, Rachel's sister)Waiting for Megan to come in to pass off to me...the first night run, had to be all decked out with all the equipment! :) This is where we saw Flash Gordon come in his underroos with a lightening bolt on his package...ask Kat, she got a pic with him! :)Here comes Megan, she's crossing the street!The pass off! YAY Megan! See Kim, she was our volunteer at this exchange. That's me, running in the night leg#2... and here's the girls, Trish is ready and waiting for my hand off. We are waiting for Kacy to come in and Kat to go, it is about midnight... we are so TIRED! Funny story, we are cruising through the parking lot trying to find a parking space, there are none! It's getting tight and we go around the corner and there is the exchange, cones, taped off, people everywhere, big bright lights, a line of outhouses (which is where we had to go to the bathroom the whole 2 days). Mom keeps driving and there is no where to go but backwards, oh yes there is, she wants me to move a cone over about 2 feet. I am so embarrassed, I do NOT want to get out and move a cone...I do. I just got out and kicked it over a little bit and then walked away. She pulls the van in, all cockeyed. When she is parked I jump in and say, "this is so embarrassing, how are you going to get out of here without knocking down that whole line of outhouses." Someone said, "I need some fresh air", mom is laughing so hard and says "not much fresh air out here because of all the outhouses and we don't have to go far to hear when Kacy comes in." We were literally right there, runners coming in, there's our van! It worked out luckily, runners came in and vans started leaving so we could just pull forward to get us out of there. That's it!!! Van #1 all 3 legs completed...

and we got to hang at the beach on Coronado Island, San Diego until Megan came to the finish line. (Check out the size of that ball on the seaweed and that wasn't even the biggest one.)

WE DID IT! We ran 200.9 miles from Huntington Beach to Coronado Island. YAY team! (Andrea, Emily, Megan, Kat, Kacy, me, mom, Trisha A., and in front, Mindy, Rachel, Kiersten, and Trish H.) Such an amazing experience, such an adventure, (because of the heat on Friday, Trisha A. got heat exhaustion, she recovered and was able to do her other legs, YAY Trisha, but she got lost on her last leg and my mom got lost on her last leg too! A van picked up my mom and brought her where she was supposed to be, so nice. And luckily Trisha had her phone and her van got her back on track but instead of 8 or 9 miles she ran 11 :O) such great memories, such a great group of girls, such FUN! Now we just need to get caught up on sleep. :)