Easter eggs, eggs, and more eggs!

I hope everyone had a Happy Easter!

We were very busy hunting eggs this year!

We stared out on Saturday morning at the Uintah Easter egg hunt! It's a really fun one and the eggs go FAST! It's also extremely well organized! (My mom is in charge of it.)

It was a pretty cold day, but that didn't stop Baylee from playing on the playground! It did make her not want to get her picture taken with us and the giant bunny, but I made her!

I had all day Saturday off of work so after the egg hunt we went to my mom's house for lunch and more egg hunting fun! Owen had his own egg hunt! See the cute sporty ball eggs my mom got for him? He also got to taste his first peep! Yum!

Baylee found the eggs Grandma hid for her around the house! Then she got to eat a peep too!

Then my mom had an egg hunt for her kids and their spouses. Each couple got to find two silver eggs! They were filled with CASH! Mark and I were the first to find our eggs so I declared us winners!

Then we colored eggs! Always more exciting to do this when Baylee is around! She spilled a whole cup of egg dye! Oops!

Here are all of our beautiful eggs! Baylee stared crying today because she wanted to eat her Baylee egg, but I made deviled eggs with it last night! So sad! I'll have to remember that for next year, so she can eat her own egg!

Easter morning was lots of fun! We have 9 a.m. church so we got the kids all dressed before we went downstairs! No one had to tell Owen which basket the Easter bunny left for him! He crawled right over to the one with the trucks in it! Baylee got her first Barbie and Ken dolls!

After church we went over to Mark's parents house for Easter dinner. Then we had another egg hunt with Baylee and Owen's cousin Beau!

After dinner I took the kids outside to take pictures of them in their Easter clothes. I tried to get Baylee changed into pants and a tee shirt for the egg hunt, but she put her dress back on over it! I was freaking out the whole time because it was pretty muddy! I finally got her to take the dress off at the end of the hunt so she could play outside!

Easter

I read this talk this morning and it really helped me remember the TRUE reason we celebrate easter! I wanted to share it! I'll post all of our fun easter pics later :) Click here!

Spotlight on Baylee!

So I wasn't sure what to call this post. . . but it's about Baylee so I figured that would do.

First off she started tumbling a few weeks ago! I think she likes it. She is the youngest in her class and all of the other little girls have been doing it for a year or more. The second time we went she told me she didn't want to go because she wasn't very good at it! I think she's gotten over that though. She is always telling me to "check out my moves!"

Here are some pictures of Baylee in all of her tumbling gear. . .

She goes to Farr West Tumblers and they have little frogs in a fish tank she loves to look at.

I also have been writing down some of the silly things she says so here they are:

One day she was looking in the mirror at the little veins on her eyelids she says, "Mom my eyes are webby."

Mark has an old mission shirt that has little cartoon drawings of everyone he was in the MTC with or something like that. I wore his shirt to bed one night and the next morning Baylee wanted to know who all the people on the back of it were. Mark was telling her about it and I asked her which one she thought was daddy. She looked at Mark and goes, "lets see you kind of have an oval head." Ha ha!

Baylee had a cold a while ago. She is always hugging and kissing her baby brother, so I told her she need to stay away from Owen and not kiss him so he wouldn't get sick too. She said to me, "But kisses and hugs make people feel better!"

One night when Mark was putting Baylee to bed I overheard her telling him she has one cough elbow and one sneeze elbow.

Another time she said to me, "Mom do you recognize that I am really sick!" She's quite dramatic sometimes!

The other night Mark came home from work and Baylee was sitting by him on the couch. I'm not sure what they were talking about or if she just said it randomly, but I heard her say to him, "well you're mean, but you're going to try to be nice!"

Oh, and I just remembered one more. . .

Yesterday I was cleaning out my kitchen cabinets and Baylee was entertaining herself by calling people on my phone (sorry if she called you). She called my mom and if you have a picture of the person you are talking to it shows up on my phone while you are talking. The picture of my mom is the one she has on facebook she is standing by a bear in the picture so Baylee says in her sweetest, most conversational voice, "Hi Grandma! I see you're by the bear!" Every time she talks to my mom I think she thinks Grandma is by a bear!

Happy Birthday to. . .

Me!

That's right I turned 26 yesterday! Has it really been 10 years since I turned the big 16? Weird it doesn't feel like it was that long ago! I'm still not a very good driver! I can't believe I've managed to avoid any major accidents for 10 years! Cross your fingers for the next 10 years ;)

Here I am with my beautiful cake! Mark and I threw it together Sunday night! It was chocolate with peanut butter filling! Yum! Try this next time you make chocolate cake (if you like peanut butter) melt 1 T butter and 1/2 a cup of peanut butter in a sauce pan. Then add 3/4 cup powdered sugar! It's a little thick so I thinned mine with milk! It made it extra healthy ;) It tasted so good with the chocolate!

Baylee could hardly wait to eat this thing!

Owen couldn't wait! He dug right in! (His 1st birthday is a month from today! Crazy!)

Yum! Yum! His first taste of chocolate ;) (ok, maybe I've snuck him some chocolate a time or two before this!)

It was kind of an interesting Birthday this year. My sisters sweet mother-in-law passed away on April 5th. Her funeral was yesterday so we spent the morning at a funeral. It was a very nice service. My brother-in-law Matt and his siblings did a wonderful job! I left the funeral wanting to be a little more like Kathie wanting to be a better mother, wife, daughter, and friend! My sister is very lucky to have married into such a wonderful family! If you'd like to read more about Kathie, Matt made a wonderful blog if you'd like to read it click here.

My parents watched the kids for us and Mark and I went out to eat then to see Source Code. It was a good movie! Then we did a little shoe shopping! Then we went home to have some cake!

Getting ready to blow out my candles. The kids got me the shirt I'm wearing and Mark gave me an external hard drive. (I'm totally taking up all of the room on our computer with the millions of pictures I take of our children!)

Thanks Mark! I love my presents!

Baylee helped take this picture of us! Then she went a little camera crazy!

Here is a collage of her work! The cake, the floor, the ceiling, the plate, the birthday sign on the fridge, the lighter, and herself!

Note to self: Maybe Baylee needs a camera for her birthday ;)

Baylee's Perm. . .

Baylee's hair has been looking like this a lot lately. . . kind of flat and in her eyes.

She doesn't like to have it styled too much and usually won't let me put elastics in her hair.

So a couple of weeks ago while I was at work I was doing a perm and I though to myself, "Baylee needs a perm!"

We headed down to my salon this morning and got rolling!

I went prepared with her little DVD player and a Dora movie. She sat very still the whole time! (Truly a miracle for this kid!)

She doesn't have much hair and I'm pretty fast so we got it wrapped in maybe 20 minutes. Then I hurried and put the perm solution on, we rinsed it, neutralized it, and took the rods out. I think the whole process took less than an hour and now Baylee is all curls!

I didn't get a very good after shot, but you get the idea!

I love it, she loves it! I'm glad we did it!

Ogden Temple!

Mark and I went to the Ogden temple last week. We went to our last session there before the renovation! I love the Ogden temple because I grew up in Ogden, and it is the Temple Mark and I were married in!
When the church announced the renovation I was a little sad that it will not look how it looked when we were married, but I think it's going to be even more beautiful so I'm excited!

Here are a few pics of how the temple looked on our wedding day:

This is how the temple will look in 12-18 months!

It really is a gorgeous design, so I'm excited for it!

We took the kids on Sunday to take a few pictures by the temple before they close it. We weren't the only people there taking pictures either! :)

I like this picture Mark took of Owen and me!

The kids and me!

Baylee is a "tree hugger!" Her words!

I think I'll get one of these pictures printed and hang it on my wall!

(We don't have an Ogden temple picture!)

Resolutions and other things. . .

Well I've been working on my new years resolutions. . . kind of.

If you'll remember this year I resolved to

• Make dinner four or more nights a week
• Read the ensign cover to cover every month
• Read eight books

Making dinner four nights a week has been going pretty good. I usually cook most of the time anyway but sometimes I just have to pull out a frozen pizza :)

My second resolution reading the Ensign has not happened. Apparently our Ensign subscription expired and I didn't renew it. I'll work on that. But I have been reading all of the general conference talks from 2010 on my phone! So that is kind of like reading the Ensign.

My third resolution is the one I've been working on the most! I read the first two books of the hunger games series around Christmas time. I read the third on this year but I'm not counting it as one of my eight books cause I'm grouping it with the other two.

I'm sure many of you have read these books. They are ok. I really liked the first one. The second one is kind of a repeat of the first one. The third one is weird but I liked how it ends. They are not the best ever but definitely worth reading!

I also finished reading No Apology by Mitt Romney. It was really good. It kind of makes me wish Mitt Romney was president now :) I started reading it in October and finished in like February! Ha ha! It's a good book but not the most exciting. It doesn't count as one of my eight thought cause I started reading it in 2010.

The first book I read this year that I'm counting as one of my eight books is called Longshot it was written by Lance Allred. Mark has a serious love of Weber State basketball and all things related to WSU basketball. Lance Allred played for Weber State in 2004-2005. Before that he played at the University of Utah with coach Rick Majerus.

Longshot is a book written by Allred about his life growing up in a polygamist community in Montana and then about how he started playing basketball and eventually made it to the NBA. An amazing feat in itself and even more amazing if you consider that Allred is deaf.

I think this book is very raw Allred is very honest about his life. He suffered from OCD and depression. Rick Majerus was very verbally abusive to him while he was at the University of Utah. Majerus was "cleared of any wrongdoing" by the University. I found the last 50 or so pages of the book the most interesting. That is when Allred talks about playing overseas and in the NBA developmental league.

It took me about two weeks to get through Longshot, but the next book I read I finished in 3 days. It was very well written and very interesting. I read Staying True by Jenny Sanford. Remember a few years ago when Mark Sanford the governor of South Carolina went missing? His staff said he was "hiking the Appalachian trial" but it turned out he was in Argentina with his mistress. Well his now ex-wife wrote a book about their life and marriage. She talks about how she stayed true to what she believed in. She comes across as a very strong woman with very high moral values.

If you are looking for anything to read I really would recommend any of these books! Also if you have any good book suggestions let me know!

Okay here are some other things. . .

I made some new decorations for my kitchen.

These topiaries took forever to make but I liked how they turned out!

Our Primary had a talent show last week. It was on Saturday so I had to work but Mark took Baylee and Owen to it. I made a poster of pictures of Baylee helping me bake because she loves to help me in the kitchen. I figure that's a good talent for three-year-old!

Then Mark's dad took us to see Peter and the Wolf at WSU a couple a weeks ago! It was really fun. I tried really hard to get there on time but Baylee was very determined to get dressed all by herself this day (I picked out her clothes she just put them on). I am proud of Baylee for wanting to dress herself so I try to encourage it but when you're in a hurry to go somewhere it's hard to be patient while she buttons up all of her buttons! We made it though, we got there just before they closed the doors!