Happy 8th, Emma!

Our oldest child is now eight! Here is what we did to celebrate. The night before Emma's birthday we had a family dinner with Ben's side of the family. She got some wonderful gifts, including a scrapbook kit! She LOVED putting that together over spring break.

She requested a cherry cheesecake for her birthday cake. My cheesecake-loving dad would be proud! :)

She also got some super cute clothes from relatives, including this darling horse shirt from Grandma!

We got Emma a new bike. She's used her bike for 4+ years and has outgrown it.

For one of Emma's gifts, we arranged to have her go to a nearby ranch and ride a horse for an hour. Rachel and Lauren came too. The ranch owner was great with the kids: taught them the basics of riding, how to get on and off, how to steer, etc. She even set up a little obstacle course with cones for them to practice guiding the horse around. This was the highlight of Emma's birthday and she has asked several times since if we can go back and ride again.

The girls rode a horse named Sadie, 22 years old, which is apparently rather old in horse years. She was gentle and calm and perfect for kids to ride. Emma was in 7th heaven! She even got to lead Sadie back to her stall after and give her a treat.

Lauren loved it too!

Rachel's ride. She was pretty nervous about riding such a big horse, but once she was on she couldn't stop smiling!

After horseback riding, we picked up the boys and Dad at home and headed down to Provo. We stuffed ourselves at Tucano's, went to Rock Canyon Park to play for awhile, and then headed home with an ice-cream stop at Macey's on the way. The weather was gorgeous and we had such a fun time together. Emma at age 8: *Loves horses, of course. :) And she loves to pretend to be a horse, with Luke being the horse-catcher. Too funny! *She REALLY likes to play school with Rachel. She plans out these little lessons and activities and Rachel loves it (most of the time...). :) *Likes to study and learn. She loves to research things in books and on the internet and she even takes notes! *Loves watching movies and eating popcorn. Mulan is a favorite. She looks forward to our Friday family movie night every week! *Still loves trying lots of different foods. *Is a fantastic reader and speller! We love our Emma and can't believe she is EIGHT!

Easter 2012

We got a fancy new camera this weekend and had some fun trying it out. Beautiful blossoms!

The best we could get in the pre-church rush.

The boys

The girls

Egg-hunting!




We hope all of YOU had a fantastic Easter too!

Misc. March

Matching girls

Emma loves to play with Max and make him laugh. It's adorable!

Wow, are all these kids mine??!! We took a trip to Farm Country at Thanksgiving Point one Saturday and had a great time.

Love my sweet baby.

My new favorite picture! I love this one of all my kids. And Max sucking his lip? Priceless. He does that all the time and it just cracks me up.

There was a wedding: Belle married Woody. They are living happily ever after. :) Do you like the TP veil???

We had a big family dinner last week when some out-of-towners were in town. 7 out of the 9 kids in Ben's family were there. It was definitely a photo-op!

We've been putting Max in the bath with Luke (and sometimes Rachel) more often and they just love it. Cute boys.

Saturday was a glorious day. We listened to General Conference and spent the rest of the time outdoors. The blossoms are absolutely heavenly these days. I tried to get some good pictures of the kids with the blossoms, but it was almost bedtime and very windy and I wasn't too successful. However, even though they aren't perfect I still love these photos.



Look who's pulling up now! Yep, Max is at that stage. Which means lots of bumps and bruises. He is fascinated by the frig and cruises for it whenever I open it.

Luke caught his first fish! And several more after that first catch. Ben has been fishing numerous times this spring and has taken at least one of the kids with him each time. So cool!

Luke LOVES his daddy! One of "their" things is singing "Baa Baa Black Sheep" together. They have made up several additional verses. Ben plays it on the guitar and they both sing. It's these little moments!

I know I've posted Luke wearing this funny cake hat before and now the kids like to put it on Max!

The weather has been (mostly) fantastic this winter and spring and we have taken many walks and bike rides. Still love my double stroller--that is, if it's being good and not giving me a flat tire!

Rachel and Luke continue to make up funny little games. The latest one is "Help, help!" where one of them pretends to fall down a cushion mountain and is thrown a blankie to be pulled up to safety. Pretty funny.