soccer. soo much soccer. and a gift w/purchase.

He's the red shirt in front, in his "silky soccer shorts".
lEmily had to sit out 2 quarters. Better pictures of her do exist.
aHere's Hayden waving from the goal.
One day Emily set up a stuffed animal photo studio. She has a lot of clients. This is one of my favorites. She needs to retake the pics of the sock animals she made. They are pretty sweet. You should ask her to make one for you!
Yesterday was the last soccer Saturday until 2010! Hooray! Tate scored his first goal ever, and rumor has it there's a picture of it out there somewhere! Your gift with purchase (ok, with viewing) is this website: www.instant-origami.com/. There are delightful movies of origami being created. Delightful meaning unusual and funny. It's safe; would I send you there otherwise??? Have a delightful week. I will; I am going to run errands by myself until I just don't have any to run, because this is about Tate's last week of school. MY BABY ISN'T OLD ENOUGH FOR FIRST GRADE. But that is another post........

this and that. with pie.

FYI I KNOW SOME OF THESE ARE SIDEWAYS. I am in a hurry and don't really care.
mmm. strawberries in gel-stuff. awesome red color!
Tate petting a pygmy goat (NOT a baby goat or kid, as they led the other kids to believe).
Tate fishing at Mayor's pond.
Hayden also fishing at the same pond
Emily, same, same
the stupid puzzle.

So there was some of the last week or two in a nutshell. Tate went on a field trip. Saw animals and such. We had strawberry pie. Took the kids fishing at Mayor's pond, where there have been several hundreds of fish stocked. They caught nothing. Too fun. Then Tate got out this 500 piece puzzle that ANGIE gave us. (grrrr) and insisted on doing it. My obsessive compulsive tendencies make puzzle-doing an unpleasant experience. I can't stop. My back hurts, I'm bored, I'm hungry, the kids are hungry, but I can't stop. Thanks be to Mike and Hayden. With their help it was done in under 24 hours. But my house looks like crap. NO MORE PUZZLES, please, Tate, whose sole contribution was opening the bag and dumping out the pieces. Now that I've told you all about this, I really have to let it go. Really. This week promises to be just as special as last week. You know what I mean when I say special, don't you???

These pics are repeats if you're on FB. But my parents aren't.

So here are some new family pictures. Not too much exciting has happened to us this week. Well, Tate had a field trip and Emily's class had a chocolate party in conjunction with reading "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" (Was that supposed to be underlined instead of in quotes?). We still need to edit our Sea World movies. And spend way too many hours working in our yard. And....well, that list is just too long. We are a service project waiting to happen. Pathetic, eh?

Miniworld deserves its own post

Emily and Grand Central Station

Leave it to Mike to find the fly fisherman

Mike and I each found what we think are sets of missionaries: white shirts, ties, backpacks, book in hand...........

This is how I play chess

the kids and the NYC skyline

teeny pop machines in the alley in Vegas

the Guggenhiem, for heck's sake!

mimes and cops in Central Park

Fastest CA Vacation Ever. (Only CA vacation ever)

The kids driving lego volvos. That was funny. Maybe we'll post video later.

Emily and "Shamu" (if that's his REAL name....)

me and the kids at Sea World. Looks like California, eh?
This was an accident, but I decided it was cool. It's our shadows: Mike, Emily, Hayden, Tate, me. We're watching seals.


The closest we got to the beach. We were driving around looking for some fast dinner.

Mike and the kids in line to ride the bionicle spinning ride at legoland. You can tell because of the palm trees. This was one of the lines where we saw a little lizard running around.

Proof they've been there. Although I guess someone could just come and take a pic in front of the sign and go home. Like my kids would let that happen to them.

I've been a bit busy lately, but I keep hoping that this week will be better. I hope to post more pics and some family pics we took on Easter soon. Here's my bit to save the world through blog: family is important. Save the family. the whales can wait.

No pics, only blah-blah-blah.

So like many of you, I was watching conference today. One of the talks (ok, several of the talks) was about following the prophet (which in my mind, includes the twelve also). I thought, "hmm....what am I not listening/obeying the prophet about?" Well, what popped into my mind (mind you, this is not the only thing, just the first thing) was the encouragement they've given us to use our internet presence for good and blog/post/fb/twitter about the church. I feel hesitant to do that because I don't want to cheese people away. I mean, at Christmas I blogged serious and almost everyone disappeared from the comments. Another reason is that I am actually quite reserved about things that matter to me. You might be saying to yourself, "Pigs will fly when she acts shy" (then I would say, "you're a poet and you didn't know it"). Think hard, have you ever known me to wax loquatious about my husband? Do I gush about my kids (I mean gushing with praise, not frustration)? Things that are really, truly important to me are very difficult for me to discuss. I kind of think that I'm not the only one who feels this way. So other than pick fights, which goes contrary to the purpose of all this, what else can I do? Mostly only our family and ward friends look at this blog anyway, so how much do I need to say? Feel free to tell me what you think. What to do, what to do........... besides eat Easter candy, I mean. It really is the holiday with the best candy: coconut nests, choc bunnies, peanut butter eggs............Russell Stover has the best Easter candy. yep. P. S. don't go away--next week we will have pics of Legoland and SeaWorld to bore you with!

Was that really just a week ago?

Giant garbage sack air monster above and PVC circles below

Balloons
a gazillion packets of duck sauce--isn't it pretty?
Yummy brisa de mora negra (hope that's right)
Among other things, it was nice weather last week. Not so much anymore. We went to Provo and Orem and IKEA (in that order) last Saturday. We had lunch at Los Hermanos (ALWAYS). We went to the art museum at BYU and saw some pretty cool exhibits and got BYU mint brownies. Yum. Then we went to visit Mike's grandparents for a little bit. We went to Ikea and only spent $40. That's a record for us. Record low, that is. Dang. Didn't get batteries. Better go back soon. We were testing out our new van for a road trip later on. The kids had all this room to spread out and not fight. But they were all three doing wireless chatting on their DS-s. Fighting on the gameboy instead of in person. Then they played Mario all together on their DS's. "Hey, that's my mushroom!" "You never let me have any!" "This round is MINE!". Wow. The lengths they go to to be able to fight..... Yesterday we started our annual 8 weeks of soccer games, 3 each Sat. fun, huh?