Yikes!

While I was at work Darryl and the boys were preheating the oven for their german pancakes when they noticed the oven smoking like crazy.  Darryl opened the door and found smoke pouring out from the vents on the bottom of the oven.  He unscrewed the bottom piece, pulled it off and found this little jewel on fire.  It use to be a yarn and tulle crocheted dish scrubber my mom made.  As I've mentioned before Cole likes to put all of my dish towels in the oven but is good to take them all out, but I still check every time I turn on the oven.  Well apparently he discovered the slot on the bottom of the oven and shoved this in it. 

cul-der

Cole loves to color or as he says it cul-der. He got a hold of Clint's color explosion and had a blast coloring and playing Chinese handcuffs with the marker lids.

Sledding trip 2

The boys had so much fun on Saturday I thought we should hit the hill again on Monday on the boys day off.(It was a good thing I did because the next day the park looked more like part swimming pool part snow cone slushy and part ice skating rink.)  Cole even got to go this time. He loved it and when he wasn't sledding down the hill he was content to just sit in his sled and watch Kade and Clint. Kade and Clint were doing so well on the snowboard too they even went off the jump a bunch of times. I find it so interesting that it can take and adult so long to "get the feel" for something but a child doesn't fight it they just naturally are able to do so many things.

Sledding trip 1

We had to resort to sledding at the north facing hill at our park this year. It's not the longest and steepest hill but it was the only snow covered hill for miles. :) The boys had a blast. We let Kade and Clint just walk over with their sleds which scared me a lot so I ended up going over for a little bit to watch them. I'm glad I did because I got some really fun pictures of the dare devils going off the jump.

Be My Valentine

Darryl was going to be gone on Valentines this year so on Friday he showed up with these beauties--he's so good.  Happy Valentines!

Cozy?

Cole fell asleep on the couch while I was on the treadmill today.  The amazing thing is that the noise level in the room was incredibly high.  The treadmill was going Clint was being noisy and I had the TV cranked up so I could hear it above all the noise.  Love the smashed face.

My Boys!

Fresh out of the tub my sweeties all wrapped up.  Clint wasn't feeling super great today but as you can see Kade was feeling much better and Cole was Mr. Happy.

Our Big one for this Year

Here is the big one this year. It was a big storm but not as big as we usually see. The boys were so excited to go play in some great "snowman" snow but since we were dealing with the sick bugs I wouldn't let them go out. :*( So Darryl built a 7'+ snowman for them to admire. Unfortunately it warmed up enough during the day that it's belly and head slumped off.

Happy??? Birthday Kade

So Kade's Birthday was a summary of events. We were planning on starting the celebration off with his friend party on Friday. This decision came the Sunday prior. He had been saying he wanted a family day but then on Sunday he said, "All I really want is a friend party." When I questioned him about why he was saying a family party before he said, "I just like to spend time with my family." Wow he's a sweetheart. Well we went with the friend party and told him he could spend time with us everyday. ;) He wanted a fighter jet party and so the plans started. We thought it would be fun to make the invitations into planes but wow the "cool" fighter jets take a lot of time and we had 15 people including Kade and Clint that needed invitations. Side note: we usually don't have that many kids for the parties but Kade says he plays with each of the people we invited at recess or lunch everyday and so he can't not invite them. So. . . I made an executive decision and just made them Air Force Badges. :) We delivered them on Mon. and had all kinds of fun planned for Friday. Friday came and it was an extra special day because it was the 1st grade field trip to Provo to watch the Snow Princess ballet. Kade said he was tired before school but he said he didn't sleep because he was too excited for his party. I thought nothing of it. About 2 PM a friend called and said Kade wasn't doing so great. He was burning up and miserable. I wasn't sure what to think because if Kade has a little cold the world pretty much needs to stop turning. Well when they brought him home at 3 I knew when I saw him he was sick. We called everyone and postponed the party until Monday. He slept for a very long time and that night we thought it might perk him up to open his gifts. He was excited but you could tell he was still not himself. He was super hot(hence the no shirt). He went to bed and was sick all Saturday with a 104 deg fever. Sunday morning he flew down the stairs and announced, "I feel great!!!!!!!" We were so glad but we stayed home from church because Cole was sick and Darryl was leaving for a trip in a couple hours. We decided the cake wasn't going to last so we at the fighter jet cake with our brunch and then Darryl left. In my opinion Kade was 100% all day. Monday morning seemed to be the same. I was relieved we wouldn't have to put the party off again and was happy he felt better. I didn't hear anything from school so I figured he was fine all day. The kids started arriving after school and when Kade came home he was great but was quickly getting really tired. He still had fun but wasn't himself unfortunately. We started off by having them fold their own paper airplane and throw them into different shaped laundry baskets each with a different point value. The kids were having a lot of fun with this but many of them were too impatient to keep trying and they just dunked their plane in the baskets. Then we played plane, plane, jet(duck, duck, goose). They had so much fun with this-- I was surprised. The game I thought would be the greatest was the biggest flop because there were too many kids. I made buildings (just paper bags standing up with the bottom on top and a point value written on each) and they had missiles(tootsie rolls) that they were bombing the bags with but they had to stand behind the couch. It was fun but the kids were worried about their tootsie rolls and kids were all over so it was hard to see the point values. Oh well. So we did a matching game. For this one I took our fighter jets that grandma gave Kade and Clint for Christmas a couple years ago. Since she gave them both the same set it was perfect for a matching game. I hid the planes under cups and they each took a turn trying to make a match. It was a lot of fun. Then we opened presents-- I always feel so bad about this part because I don't ever feel like the child or I really get who gave him what-- I just want him to really be sincerely grateful for the gifts. But it always ends up being so crazy because everyone wants you to open their gift or play with another gift. After the gifts we all fired up our jets and flew around in the backyard leaving our tail of smoke behind us; we just ran round with silly string. The boys love silly string and think it's a must at the birthday parties so it was a stretch but I had to get it in somehow. Then we had cupcakes and ice cream and made airplanes from gum, lifesavers, and a smartie. They were cute and the kids had fun. Then they all tore into the presents. Every present was opened up and legos were even put together in about 2 minutes flat. It was fun for the kids to try out all toys and it was fun for Kade to get a chance to play with them with others for a little bit. Cole was great for the most of the time but at one point I was trying to explain something to the kids and he started crying so I put him in his bedroom and he immediately quited down. I went in to get him and he'd fallen asleep on the floor-- poor kid. I moved him to his bed and life was great for him. Clint, poor guy, was banished to the basement for the day. He woke up and said he wasn't feeling good so I figured he was coming down with what Kade had so I didn't let him go to school. I cleaned and sanitized the upstairs like crazy so wouldn't let him go up there since the kids would be upstairs during the party. Then I didn't let him in on the party either. The saddest part is afterwards I don't think he was ever sick. I think he was just trying to get some attention because we'd been focusing so much on Kade, but how was I to know he wasn't heading down the Kade road. Well after we got the kids all home it was clean up time. Wow was the house a disaster. You can't see it much in the picture but there was chocolate cupcake crumbs EVERYWHERE! Not to mention pieces of paper and cardboard too. Cleanup crew was just me thought Kade slept. He was falling asleep while we were taking all of the kids home. Crazy end to a celebration but I think Kade had the others had fun.