Birthdays and Spring Break

We have had quite the busy week here in Lehi. This could probably cover several blog entries, but since I don't get around to that often enough, I'm putting a lot into one entry. We had spring break and I took the week off. Let's start with...

Joseph's Birthday!!!!!

Joseph turned 4 years old on April 8th. He had a friend party between sessions of General Conference on Saturday. He played Duck Duck Goose and freeze dancing. He had a pinata in the shape of a giant 4.

He told Marsha he wanted a cake with pink frosting and missils. We settled for orange frosting and if you look closely, you can see a few missils mixed in with the candles.

Lauren was in charge of the games. She also set up an easter egg hunt for the kids. I think that was the highlight of the party.

On Joe's actual birthday, we were at the Deardens. We stayed with them over Wednesday night. In the morning Aunt Sharon made breakfast cake and eggs. We usually put candles in some pancakes or waffles for birthdays in our house. To carry on the tradition, we put some candles in the breakfast cake. Thanks Aunt Sharon. 

Joseph got a BYU hat for his birthday. Here is a picture of him wearing it. (Nothing special about the picture, but I thought it was really cute of Joseph.)

After leaving the Dearden's, we went to Park City. Lauren and Marsha went shopping at the outlets and I took Ryan and Joe bowling. Here are some action shots from the bowling. (I didn't get any action shots from the shopping, sorry.)

BTW: We stayed at a hotel in Park City for the night. The kids like to swim in the pool and it is a fun thing to do. Mark wasn't with us because he was on an orchestra tour in Seattle for the last part of the week. 

Lauren's Birthday!!!!!

Lauren turned 12 yesterday (4/10). She is now officially graduated from primary and is in the Young Women's program at church. She is really excited about that. She got her Faith in God award and graduation from primary certificate today in church. She is excited to go to the Jr. High next year. As I mentioned in the section about Joe's b-day, we usually do candles in waffles or pancakes for the birthday person on their birthday. Lauren is currently in the not-liking-waffles-or-pancakes phase, so we put candles in her scrambled eggs.

Lauren still loves to plan things. She wanted to have a big friend party on her birthday. Unfortunately due to Spring Break, several of the friends she wanted to invite were out of town, so she had a smaller friend party. She invited five friends over. They played games, had a white-elephant type exchange, made fancy flip-flops by tying on fabric strips to flip-flops, watched "The Princess and the Frog" using the projector Grandpa Lindsey brought (thanks, grandpa!), opened presents and had "cake" and ice-cream. Lauren decided she wanted a donut cake. Marsha made her homemade spudnuts and built them into a cake.

A great time was had by all.

Grandpa and Grandma's Visit!!!!!

Grandpa and Grandma Lindsey came for a visit over conference weekend. They had a mission reunion while they were here. Joseph alternated between calling them Grandpa and Grandpa and Grandma and Grandma. He would also call them by the full name of "Grandpa Lindsey" or "Grandma Lindsey". He would say things like, "How are you today, Grandpa Lindsey?" He saw Grandpa coming out of the bathroom and asked, "Did you go potty, grandpa?"

Ryan reading a book to Grandma

Ryan and Joseph looking at animal pics on the computer with grandpa

We had a great time with G&G, but wish they could have stayed a little longer.

Easter!!!!!

We had a fun time dying eggs the day before easter. Here are Ryan and Joseph working on the dying.

We had a fun easter egg hunt on Easter morning before conference. We were going to have it outside, but it had snowed about two inches during the night. We ended up having it in the basement. We had some cute hunters. 

The easter bunny even put in an appearance

Lauren's bunny, Skittles

The Zoo!!!!!

On our way back from Park City, we stopped by Hogle Zoo. If anyone wants to see lots of pictures of a cheetah, giraffe, gorilla, baby orangutan or lots of reptiles, let me know.

Lauren, Ryan and Joseph by the griaffe

Cotton candy at the end of the visit.

The Kitchen Project

We have been talking about repainting our kitchen for a little while. It used to be kind of a sunny yellow color. Marsha wanted to go with something a little more bold and dark. She also wanted to put in a higher backsplash behind the sink and by the stove. We decided to go with 1" x 1" glass mosaic tile for the backsplash. It has greens, greys and browns in it. Once we decided on the tile, we had an easier time picking out the paint. We wanted something that would tone down the orange look of the cupboards. We also wanted something to bring out the browns in the tile. We found two colors that we liked. One was called Wine Barrel. The other was called Chocolate Cherry. Neither were quite right, so we combined them and liked the result. We went with a pearl grey grout. We finished the grout yesterday.

Here are some pictures of the finished result.

Here is the backsplash behind the stove and the dark paint above the cupboards and around the pantry.

This is the backsplash behind the sink. We also took out our appliance garage. It was where the mixer is in the corner.

We painted all the way out past the computer desk on one side...

...and out past the French doors on the other.

 

Here is the overall effect.

Next up is painting the family room.

Christmas in Lehi

We've had a great Christmas here in Lehi.

We have started some traditions that we followed up with this year and started some new ones that we hope will carry over to future years. Marsha and Lauren made an advent calendar. They made 24 cloth bags with pockets in the front. Each pocket contained a ticket with a number corresponding to the date. The bags contained a treat for every day as well as a sticker and an activity. Everyone got to eat a treat (Hershey's Kiss or candy cane or something like that.) The sticker was of a stocking or something Christmasy (Christmier as Ryan says.) We would stick the sticker on the date tag and hang the tag on the tree in the piano (front) room. We would then do the activity (anything from read a Christmas story to go see the lights at Temple Square.) Another tradition that we have been doing for a few years came from our friends, the Birches, in Provo. They do an advent wreath. Once a week for the four weeks leading up to Christmas, we get out a wreath and put four candles in it. Each week we light an extra candle (so one candle the first week, two candles the second week, etc.) We turn off all the lights in the house except the candles and the Christmas lights. We then read a Christmas story by flashlight while drinking hot cocoa with candy canes. It is really a neat thing.

We had snow in the week leading up to Christmas. Mark was still in school, but the rest of the kids were out and I was off, so we went sledding at a park near our house. We had a great time and didn't even get too cold.

We had a bunch of cute sledders.

Christmas Eve we decided to take the kids to a movie to pass the slow afternoon time by going to a movie. We saw Disney's "The Princess and the Frog." The movie was OK, but it served its purpose.

We had a "Eureka Christmas Dinner" on Christmas eve. This included clam chowder and crab salad. The kids weren't overly impressed, but I thought it was good.

After dinner we drove around to look at lights. There is a place in Alpine that has a HUGE light display and sleigh with Santa. None of the kids wanted anything to do with talking to Santa (hmm, I wonder where they got that?) but we took a picutre of him anyway.

After we got back from looking at lights, we had our Nativity play. We only had one person crying this year. That is a new record for us. Try to guess who it was from the picuture.

After the nativity, the kids went on a treasure hunt. They got a chocolate orange at one stop. We all got Santa socks at another stop.

The last stop had PJs for Mark and Lauren and quilts for Ryan and Joseph. Marsha made the quilts herself. They are pretty awesome.

Christmas was  a really fun day. Lauren kept trying to negotiate an earlier time to wake up. We settled on 6:50. We (I) tried to sabotage Mark and Lauren's alarm so that they didn't get up so early, but it didn't work. Santa found our house again and we made a haul.

Our family gift this year was a Wii Fit. It is really fun except for the fact that it told me I am overweight.

Some other fun gifts: 

Lauren loved her new camera.

Mark spent hours downloading music (classical, of course) to his new MP3/video player (sorry, no photo.)

Ryan spent hours putting together his Lego creations

and Joseph couldn't get enough of his new bowling set.

We got an awesome calendar from the Meyers and a fun game from the Banks. We loved the presents that the cousins sent. (Ryan is detecting all of the metal in the house, the Pirate Potato Head cracks me up, the locker room esentials kit was perfect (Mark smells beautiful, thaks Syd) and the shirt and book were perfect for Lauren.)

It wouldn't be a Lindsey Christmas blog unless we talked about the food. We had ham, turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry, jello salad and rolls. Outstanding!!!!

Of course one of the funnest presents for the little boys was a giant box that we turned into a bus.

Marsha and I had a fun Christmas. It is so fun to watch the kids be excited about their presents and to help them put stuff together. We got some fun presents as well. We are very thankful for the Christmas Season and for the birth of Jesus.

We hope you all had a Merry Christmas and have a happy, wonderful and prosperous New Year!!!!

If You Build It...

A while ago, I did a blog on Ryan building things. This is a follow up to that blog. Ryan LOVES to build things. He loves Legos. He builds really cool contraptions of his own design. Recently he has found some MegaBlock collections that Mark built in the past. He and I have built a fighter jet (Blue Angels)

and a destroyer.

He also spent quite a bit of time this summer assembling the Rippin' Rocket Roller Coaster - a K'Nex structure that is bigger than he is. We took pictures of the MegaBlock creations, but unfortunately did not get a picture of the roller coaster before it got destroyed. I did find a picture of it when Mark built it in 2003 that I included here.

Ryan has also recently came across an Electronic Snap Kit that we have. It lets you put different electronic components on a board and hook them up to a battery. Depending on the configuration of the components, you can turn on lights, play music, turn a motor, etc. It teaches basics about circuits and lets you learn about switches, resistors, capacitors, transistors, etc. Ryan loves that thing. He has spent hours making circuits. On Saturday I had to tell him to do something else because after two hours of laser gun sounds and sirens, I was getting a head ache.

He's a great kid! We are glad he is in our family.

Halloween 2009

We had a fun Halloween. Lauren had big plans for her costume and had been planning it way in advance as usual. At the last minute, she decided that she wanted to do something else. It was touch and go for a minute, but she decided to be an aviator / Amelia Erhart. She wore my leather jacket, Great Grandpa Lindsey's safety goggles, a bat costume hat turned inside out and a scarf. I love this picture of her. It is really cute.

Joseph didn't plan his costume at all (or we didn't plan it for him.) We tried to stuff him into his Bob the Builder costume from last year, but it was too small for him then and this year we didn't have a prayer. Lauren found a bee costume that we had made for Mark years ago and Joseph was happy to put it on.

Ryan had costume trauma this year. He wanted to be a skeleton for a long time. We came up with a skeleton costume for him, but he didn't like it. At the last minute we threw a baseball hat and giant glasses on him. The glasses came off after the first house, so he was a baseball player.

After the kids got back from trick-or-treating, Marsha and I tried on some of the costume accessories. I was wearing Lauren's goggles and aviator helmet. Notice the slimming affect it has on my face. Marsha put on Joe's bee hat and Ryan's glasses. Aren't we cute? We rival Brad and Stef in their costumes.

Mark's costume this year consisted of making a Belgium flag and taping it on his shirt. He went as a Flem. Strange boy. The day after Halloween, he was messing around with Joe's bee costume. This is the result.

Quilt Lady

Can you believe two posts in two days?

Lauren's class was in charge of making a quilt for a tree the school is entering in the Festival of Trees this Christmas time. The trees are donated by local schools and businesses. The proceeds go to help different charities.

Anyway, Lauren was so excited about the quilt that they made that she wanted to make one for herself. She and Marsha went to the fabric store to pick out just the right material for the quilt. When she gets into a project like this, there is no stopping her. Marsha didn't have time to help her, so she made the quilt herself. Here are some pictures of the finished product.

Lauren loves to do projects like this. She had another activity at school where the kids could sell goods. She made around friendship bracelets to sell. She sold them all. She is great at stuff like that.

As most of you know, Lauren got a cat this summer. Her name is Tortie (for the tortoise shell fur she has.) She reminds me a lot of Rammy - really skinny and doesn't mind being toted around by kids. Here is a picture of her from the summer. She is a little bigger than that now, but not too much.

Eagle Project

It's been a while since we had a post, so let's get back into it.

This has been a long time in the works, but Mark has finally finished the work on his Eagle Project. His project was to paint red curbs by fire hydrants to mark them as no parking zones. It took a while to get going on the project because the prep work included talking to the Fire Chief and getting donations from local businesses (like Home Depot and Kwall Paint.) For those of you who know Mark, he would rather get teeth pulled than talk to people on the phone. It took a while to get in gear, but he finally got going. Mark got a donation of paint from Kwall Paint and supplies from Home Depot. He started the project during a Tuesday night activity. The Teachers and Priests were lined up to help out. About 22 people in all showed up to help. It was really windy that night and we didn't get very much done (about 7 curbs.) The project continued that Saturday and about 10 people showed up to help. We painted about 15 curbs that day with half the people in the same amount of time. There were six curbs left to do. We finished them up on Saturday. Mark has now finished his Eagle Project!!!!! Hooray for Mark!!!! Now he just has to finish up one requirement on three merit badges and do his Eagle paperwork.

Here are some of the pictures we took for the before and after photos required for the project.

In addition to the Eagle Project, Mark has been studying hard. He is getting good grades and is doing well in his AP Chemistry class that he was a little worried about at the beginning of the year.

He also had a performance evaluation in piano. Performance evaluation is where you go play for a judge and they evaluate your performance. Mark played "Danza del gaucho matero" by Alberto Ginastera. He did well and was invited to perform at an honors recital at the end of this month.