Mothers Day

It's so sad to think that it's been 7 years, since my mom passed away.  She was such a great influence on who I am.  She was a wonderful mom, and a great example to me.  I sure miss her.

Mike's mom is at the point, where she doesn't want gifts, so I try to think of things I can do to help her.  Her backyard is mostly a brick, with plants all around it.  In between the bricks, weeds had grown like CRAZY.  It looked pretty sad.  I spent the afternoon, weeding and cleaning her patio furniture. 

 It looked so much better!

Friday afternoon, Jamie called to see if I could tend Kelsi and Oliver. Molly was babysitting someone else's kids, and  Abi was at a friends house.  It's so fun to be able to tend again!   We made breakfast for dinner and had a great time playing games with these two.

Saturday, most of our kids went to Lagoon, Savannah is a little short to ride the rides, so we got to play with her.  We took her to visit Grandma Cline.  She hadn't seen her since she was tiny. 

Savvy is just the right size to push Mom's cute buggy.

Since we had gotten together last weekend for dinner, I told the kids they were welcome to do dinner with their mother in laws.  Krista invited Matt's family for dinner and had a fun celebration there.  Emily's mom ended up being out of town, Jamie's mom is in California and Merijane's family celebrated another day, so Jordan invited us to his house for dinner.  Jack ended up with a cough, so Josh's family didn't come, but Jamie and Emily still came, and we had a great time.  

1st Family Dinner at our house in over a year

It has been FOREVER since everyone has been to our house for dinner.  

It was so fun setting up and getting ready for them to come.

All 10 of our girls and our 4 boys.

All our kids!  (Jamie's stripped shirt is all I got of him.😂)

It was so fun to be together.  The adults sat at the table the entire night and visited while the kids played outside and inside.

 

Middle's Sleepover

Last Friday, we had these cute girls for a sleepover.  We stopped on the way home from picking them up, and bought us all shakes and took one to Grandma Cline and enjoyed visiting with her.

They decided they wanted breakfast for dinner, so we made Crepes with strawberries and whipped cream,, bacon, hash browns and juice.

Aida brought a ton of fun games and we loved playing them together.

For breakfast, they made delicious cinnamon biscuits, yummmmm!

I asked Mike if he would do an art project with them, since they all love art.  

He decided to do a wire sculpture, so they are cleaning their wire while swinging.

They all wanted to make a butterfly.

They turned out so cute.

We walked over to JoAnn's and bought some pots to put them in.

We added some succulents and they were very happy with theirs.

Abi  and Molly had a track meet in American Fork, so we finished the fun watching them run.

 

Sleepover with the Littles

Friday night was our sleepover with these three cute gals.  We had a lot of fun with them.  

We went to the park and played games.  

We walked to the dollar store and made snow cones.

We did a lot of baking.  We made pretzels.

Bacon and pancakes for breakfast, and brownies for dinner.

We also made banana chocolate chip muffins to take to Grandma Cline..

She was so excited to see these girls, it's been a year since she'd seen them.

The boys get the first sleepover

After the Quarantine Party, we took the boys home for our first sleepover in more than a year.

We stopped on our way home and bought a bunch of glow sticks and had a Dark Dance party!

They watched a movie and went to bed about 10:30

They were up by 6:30 ready for the fun to begin.  They started with Legos.

We opted to do church at home and watched it on TV instead of taking 4 boys to our meeting house.

 I had some Bingo cards from Conference that they did to help them focus.

Then onto decorating their foam airplanes.

Next it was creepy crawlers.

Here's a few of them, so CREEPY!

Then a little outside time.  They are all big enough to climb our apple tree

It was warm enough for the snow cones we had taken to our party the night before, but it was too chilly to enjoy them .  They all like to put all the flavors together.

Shortly before we took them home, we made soft pretzels.  They weren't interested in making pretzel shapes. they did all kind of crazy shapes.  

They are just a tiny bit WILD, and LOVED jumping from bed to bed,

 it was a bit terrifying!

             

End of Quarantine PARTY!

On Saturday night, our kids threw an End of Quarantine Party, it was so much fun!  Unfortunately, this does not mean Covid is over by any means, but they have come up with a vaccine, and Mike and I have had it.  We are hoping and praying that it does what they say it will.  They decorated so cute and had a delicious dinner of smoked pork sandwiches, chips, pasta and green salads, fruit and vegetable platters, cookies and soda.  Everything was so tasty!

The hit of the night was the cotton candy machine!

They had bounce houses and 6 legged races that made us laugh so hard!!!!

                                            They had a fun Connect 4 game

Lani brought a pinata, she is the best!  It was so great to be together!

 

Playground makeover

Ever since we put this swing set in our back yard, our grass under it has struggled.  For the last few years, I've thought we should dig up the grass and put in bark.  It always seemed like too big a job so I never did it.  This year, since I have sooooo much time, I decided to tackle it.  It took me 3 days, to dig  out all the grass and spray for weeds.  Mike made a border for me out of 2 x 4's.

Then I covered it with a roll of weed prevent paper/fabric.

I ordered a load of playground wood chips, and spent a couple of hours wheeling them to the back yard.

Wala!  It turned out so great!  I called the kids and invited them to come to our house to play on Saturday, instead of us coming to theirs.  The whole week had been beautiful weather.

Saturday, however, was not so beautiful.  It rained allllllll day!

The kids still came, but didn't get to play in the backyard.

They played downstairs and then some games upstairs.