Tax Day

We celebrate an unusual day at our house, April 15, tax day. No, it's not because we're getting a refund (we've usually gotten it and spent it by then :) ), but it's the day we get Bill back. Starting from about the middle of December to April 15 is a very stressful, very busy time for Bill at work. Although this year was a little better in that he didn't work so many Saturdays, I think it was a little more stressful with all they've got going on at work. I'm just glad he didn't go into public accounting as we'd really not see him at all during this time, so it could be worse. However, by the time April 15 rolls around, we're ready for a party. We're ready to have a happy, relaxed Dad around again, so we throw a party for him. We celebrated with a very clean house, taco salad, the "special plate", german chocolate cream pie, pepsi, and a time to snuggle with dad and just relax together. It was a good night. Ahhh, I love tax day!

Easter

A little slow, but at least it's not May yet. We had a great Easter weekend, despite all the snow. It was so nice to just relax and watch conference - about 5 more and I think I'll have my cross-stitch Santa done, I think I've been working on it for about 5 years now. :) We colored eggs on Saturday night. And in between sessions on Sunday, we had our hunt for their baskets. Bill and I hid them all upstairs. The kids ran up, did a quick run through all the rooms and announced they couldn't find them. I told them to look again, with their eyes open ;) , and they started looking a little closer. It still took them quite a while and some clues from me before they finally found them. We had a nice dinner at home and just enjoyed being together the rest of the day.

April Showers, bring May flowers, right?

I'm not sure that old saying meant snow showers though. So our latest snow storm dumped about 5" on us and farther south, around 8". My kids were pretty bummed when lots of schools (and their cousins) had a snow day in April! And what a spring break - it snowed every day they were out, and when it wasn't snowing it was windy, cold and miserable. Oh well, that's spring in Idaho. So instead of complaining too much, we took advantage of our new very wet, heavy snow yesterday and the little kids and I made a snowman. It was much easier and way more fun to roll it into a snowman than to try to throw all that heavy snow off the deck. But it was fairly warm, the kids are all in jackets, and the snowman toppled over in a couple of hours (then I let Cheyenne shovel the rest off. :) )

Contest Entry

Hi I just need to make a quick post about one of my favorite websites - Snapfish! I do pretty much all my photo printing from them, unless I'm in a big hurry and need one hour. The quality is excellent, the colors are fantastic, and the prices are really good - especially when I wait until it's a free shipping promotion. Anyway, I just found a contest on rockinmama.net where you can win a $50 gift card to Snapfish. I can always use more credits for prints as I'm slowly making my way to catching up and keeping current my scrapbooks, so I get an extra entry if I blog about it. Go check it out!

Craftiness

I love doing crafts of all kinds from scrapbooking and other paper crafts to jewelry making, to cross-stitch and all kinds of things in between. I come from a long line of crafty people from my Grandma who started me stitching a Winnie the Pooh dish towel when I was about 7 or so; to my Mom, the queen of sewing who is known to quote quite often, "If you can read you can sew;" and both my Mom and Grandma are excellent quilters. Then to my sisters, Kristen - the Princess of the Paintbrush and all her many incredible tole painting in years past, or now, the "collector" of all things scrapbooking. ;) She's still very crafty, just doesn't have as much time to do as much. And my younger sister, Leslie, as I posted a couple weeks ago, has taken Mom's "If you can read you can sew" motto to heart, and whips up all kinds of fun creations. She's also my scrapbooking partner and not only keeps her beautiful books completely up to date, she's been known to work on my kids books, trying to help me get a little more caught up. And that's just immediate family, add in my very talented sisters-in-law, and daughters and nieces, and we've been known to have quite the crafting fests. It's always more fun to craft with friends. I always have someone to call for "expert advice" on whatever project I'm working on. So here's my latest fun I've been having:

The first is a wedding present for a cousin. Now I just have to get the present to her. These notebook/journals were one of our group crafts a couple years ago. I'm just finally getting around to making myself one and with a few tweeks, one for Cheyenne, too. (By the way, family, I have a tab punch now if anyone wants to make more of these. Actually I still have some of the sticker tabs, too.)

Glass etching is my new found love. It is so much fun! I'm always on the lookout for something more I can etch. :)Now that I've cleared off my table of these fun projects, and I've done some cleaning out/reorganizing of my craft stuff, I'm itching to do some scrapbooking. It's been months since I've done anything, and my piles of pictures aren't getting any smaller. So that's my new goal, to do at least two layouts every week. Even if it's 15 min. increments, I think I can accomplish this. Then maybe I can get a little bit closer to getting caught up and Leslie won't have to do my books, too.

Dr. Seuss's Birthday

"Try them, try them and you may. Try them and you may, I say." Since quoting this line is almost a daily occurence at our house, and is mostly said to Cheyenne with Jon coming in a close second, it's only fitting that we celebrate Dr. Suess's birthday with dinner of green eggs and ham (or sausage this time-same family, and so much better:-) ) This year's eggs were a little extra green with some swiss chard in them, too. Yes, I'm branching out and tried a new green vegetable, thanks to my "Bountiful Basket" last week. Cheyenne was not impressed, but I would eat it here or there. Say, I would eat it anywhere. We love celebrating his birthday with this dinner and then snuggling up and reading our favorite Dr. Suess books, of course!

Testing

Natalie has earned her green belt now. She tested on my birthday, Feb. 13, and I actually got to see the whole thing this time. Aunt Leslie and Camden and Cheyenne came too. It was pretty cool. She started by being quizzed by all the Sensei's. Then she had to do her self defense techniques, each level adds on to the moves they do. Then was the fun part, the sparing. It was fun to see Natalie just let loose, especially since she was one of two girls testing. The pictures are blurry, but she's the one with the orange belt. Then she had to do her Kata (no idea if that's spelled right.) That is a sequence of moves and punches and "ki-ya's" that each belt does. Again, it adds on, so she has to remember everything she's learned so far. I thought she did pretty good, but apparnently the whole group needed more work on those. She passed and here she is changing belts.Natalie is still loving karate and has moved to a later class, 7:30-9 now. (Works a little better with our crazy Wednesday/Mutual night schedules, too.) She's now in a class with teenagers and adults, but she is doing fantastic in it and really enjoys not being with the little kids. Next up is blue.