the toof fairy

Brinley woke up yesterday with her tooth missing. She found it in her bed and ran in to our room extremely excited. The girl turned 7 last week and just now lost her first tooth, the excitement on her face was like telling her we were going to Disneyland.

She took her tooth to school.

She named it.

She was not giving it up without a fight.

This was the letter to the 'Toof Fairy':"Don't take my tooth, but give me money!!!!!"

The Tooth Fairy did NOT leave money.
Brinley got to keep her tooth.

Sarah loves

snack time.

All she wants to do is eat all. day. long. Which makes me think she's in a growth spurt. Her favorite snack has been strawberries, sour cream and a little brown sugar. It's fun to play in and tastes delicious.

it's Brinley's birthday. shout hooray!

I can't believe my beautiful little 6 year old is now 7!

Last Saturday I had a little party for her, well, I thought it was going to be little because I wasn't expecting all but 2 of the girls in her class not to come, plus the extra friends that we've had for years. It was me and 11 girls...aaahhhh! Not ONE parent stayed, but that's okay.

Actually, they were really good.

This is the invite I sent out, with the obvious address and phone number missing, of course.

She wanted a Space themed party. She REALLY, REALLY wanted a Spaceneedle cake, but I wasn't about to come up with that one. I did, however, come up with the most horrid looking cake ever. I don't recommend trying to put a cake together at 1am. It did not turn out as I had envisioned. This ugly cake was supposed to look like the moon sitting in outer space with a Brinley Astronaut on top of it. I bought some black food coloring to make black frosting, but it never got home with me, so I had to improvise with chocolate...it turned out really sad. Then the stars looked like snowflakes. And yes, that is a Buzz Lightyear with apicture of Brinley's face taped on it...I am white trash for sure.

Space suits are expensive for 11 girls, so I came up with glow in the dark alien masks...the glow in the dark part is coming up. When they all got to the house, they got to make a mask. Here, Brinley is saying, "I come in peace and mean you no harm." She's a nut.

I spent most of Friday afternoon and evening making the basement look like space. THANK YOU, THANK YOU Karen, for cutting out all the stars and planets on your little machine...what a time saver. I draped all of the walls in black table cloths, cung a black light on the wall, decorated with white paper stars and neon planets, then hung white streamers from the ceiling. Then, I hung some white poster board on the wall and let the girls draw with highlighters...which eventually ended up on themselves, because then they would glow in the dark.

I wish I could have taken a better picture of this room. It really was cool. Want to see what highlighters do?... Awesome, huh!

The weather ended up being amazing, so after playing in the basement forever, we went outside and they took turns 'flying to the moon' on the rope swing. My arms were worn out. We ate pizza and had cake and ice cream too. Then opened gifts. Brinley said it was the "best birthday party ever".

Mama scored some brownie points for sure!

Today at school, Brinley got to be line leader and answer questions from the class and got to wear a crown. At the end of the day, I brought some cupcakes for the class. They sang 'Happy Birthday" and she got to pass the cupcakes out. She requested the same ones as last year, rainbow. Sarah claps after anyone sings. She got to sit at Brinley's desk while the class sang to Brinley.

My Brinley-girl, I LOVE YOU! You fit just perfectly into our family. Your an awesome big sister and a huge help to your Momma. You are smart and amazing and your teacher at school thinks your pretty special too.

So here are a few things about you:

you hate dolls

you LOVE stuffed animals

you like littlest pet shop

your favorite food is Spaghetti

you haven't lost any teeth yet

you love to swing

you are the best big sister

your favorite color this week is green

you really, really want a pet...not happening

you think asparagus is disgusting, but I secretly catch you eating it

you think that baths are the best thing ever

you love to stay home because you get to wear your pajamas

I could go on and on...but we are headed out to Olive Garden, her choice, to celebrate some more.

Easter

We spent the Saturday before Easter dyeing eggs at Julie's house with Corinne and her kids too. Each kid got to dye a dozen eggs. It's one of the messiest things I believe we make a tradition out of. It stains hands and tables...but who cares, right?

After dyeing the eggs, Kelsey played the Easter bunny and hid all of the plastic eggs in Julie's front yard.

The babies didn"t care so much for hunting eggs and were more interested in the yard toys and getting to play outside. The storm followed us home from Utah and we had a few snow flurries over the weekend, luckily it hasn't stuck around and our temp's have been into the 70's and almost 80 degrees. NICE!

spring break

Yeah, I'm way behind on posts. Bad me.

Anywho...this year for spring break, Julie and I took our kiddos to Southern Utah and into Arizona. We started our drive at 8am and got to Springdale, Utah at 3am...where NOTHING is open. Not even the hotels with vacancy signs. So we slept in the car until about 6:30, when the cleaning people show up and they were nice enough to let us into our room way earlier than check in time without charging us an extra night. Thank you nice people. We tried to get a little sleep, but the babies were wide awake. So we just got ready for the day and headed to Zion National Park. Very cool, but small and not a lot a room to park anywhere so we could hike around. We got the kids out for a short hike, but mostly drove through the really long tunnel and saw everything from the car.

We spent the afternoon walking around downtown Springdale and let the kids play in the mud. I didn't get many pics from that part of the trip though. It was very fun and we all loved it.

The next morning we got up way, way early...i woke up at around 3 and could not go back to sleep. So i got the car packed and myself ready then woke up Julie to get her stuff done. We left at 5 and drove down to Page, Arizona, my place of birth. It was a GORGEOUS drive into Page. Lake Powell is a little low, but still beautiful. We found the house my parents built... It took us 3 times driving by it to recognize it. It looked nothing like this 30 years ago, or 10 years ago. They moved the front door and painted it some hideous color and the yard looks like crap. I got out to take a picture and the new owner came out to talk to me. I guess he is in the middle of major renovations and hurt his back. He apologized for how the house and yard looked, but was a totally nice guy. He had only lived there 2 years and wasn't thrilled with the color of the house either. If you ever drive through Page, the restaraunts are horrid. Really. We didn't want fast food and stopped at some little italian/mexican restaraunt. It was like 7:30. They closed at 8...what restaraunt closes at 8...we left and went and ate some of the greasiest disgusting food ever. YUCK!

We drove through Page that morning and went straight down to the Grand Canyon, and Grand it is. We also stopped at a Navajo jewelry stand and got a few things on the way.

This place is AMAZINGLY HUGE! Those idiots in the above picture are on the edge of a 400 foot drop. There is no railing and we even saw a few kids. If you ever want to read about some interesting deaths, you need to read the book 'Death in the Grand Canyon'. Most of them are because people are stupid...like the above. We stayed far away from the edge and wouldn't let the kids be on the Canyon side of the walkway. They were okay with that. It is quite the sight to see and makes you think of how tiny we really are. The weather was beautiful, but SO WINDY!!!

We drove back into Page and stayed the night. The next day we headed to Antelope Canyon...MY FAVORITE! Absolutely amazing. It was beyond windy...we had sand in places where it shouldn't have been.

It's worth the money and I suggest not going on the guided tours, just drive out to the place. You still get the guide, but about 1/2 the price.

We were going to head up to Moab that day, but the dang weather was crap, so we headed to St. George. Beautiful city, the people...thats a whole other post. I loved St. George until I got out of the car, thats when every fake blonde/tan/too perfect woman/girl looked Julie and I over about 10 times. Um...we have been in a wind storm and have been driving for 3 days.
We headed back north the next morning, straight into a snow storm. We decided to take a detour and go to Vernal, but I took a wrong turn and we ended up south of Provo...we were bummed, so we just drove home that night. It gave us a few days to relax and prepare for Easter.

I put 2800 miles on my van. Its an awesome van and I love it.