Happy Memorial Day 2009!

Jeff had the day off from work, and we decided to make it a fun ending to a three day weekend. After much deliberation throughout the weekend, Jeff and I decided to take the kids on a "hike" in the morning after breakfast. We went to a trail in Ogden that wound around a very large pond, and also touched up next to a river. The kids really loved exploring through the tall grasses and flowers. The trail was just over a mile long, and seemed to be just the right length for our little family. We were almost back around to the car when the kids started getting tired. They thoroughly enjoyed their hike yesterday.




Here I am in my red, white and blue tribute to the veterans.


This is one of my favorite pictures. If you could see her from the front, you'd notice her left hand is in her pocket. She was mimicking her older siblings who all found it very relaxing to walk around with their hands in their pockets.





This is what happens when we say "Alex and Lucas, come sit on this bench!"


As you can see, there was no sitting involved. Audrey was wondering where everyone went all of a sudden.

Along the way, the kids saw lots of things to stop and examine. This one was a great big snail.

They saw lots of different colored flowers along the way as well. Each of the kids picked one for me.



Even Jeff picked his favorite to add to my beautiful bouquet.


I graciously added his contribution to the others for this picture.


But here is it's ultimate resting place... I mean... you can't really blame me. It wasn't the prettiest, and it was prickly!

Here's the final bouquet. I would have put them in a little vase of water when we got home, but Lucas ended up stepping on them in the car and they didn't make it home in one piece. Oh well. At least I have these pictures to document the fact that my family loves me.

These are some of my favorite kinds of pictures. Jeff is such a good dad, and really loves the kids. Sarah had so much fun riding on Papa's shoulders. And Alex was just delighted to help push his little sister in the stroller. He loves to help, and he loves his sister.



Lucas couldn't be left out, though. Jeff was nice enough to indulge his request to be picked up. The car was only about 50 feet to the right behind Jeff in this picture. He carried them both the rest of the way there.

Happy Memorial Day!

Yet Another New Addition.

And no, we're not pregnant. Here's the kids enjoying an outdoor picnic a week or so ago. Notice anything different in the background?

How about now? Anything different about the front of our house?The Farnsworths have a fence! And it is SO nice. The kids can play in the back yard without Mom worrying about who is walking into the street, or into the neighbor's open garage door, or into the pond... you get the picture. WOO HOO! Hooray for summer!

Another new addition to our property are these beautiful Gerbera Daisies. These are my absolute favorite flower, in case anyone wanted to know. I planted a few around our mailbox this year to add some colorful cheer. Aren't they pretty? I needed a "mommy break" a few days ago, so I walked outside and sat down in the grass next to my mailbox and just looked at these flowers. It was eerily calming. But it did the trick. They cheered me up.


And my little gardeners. They helped me dig up some plants I found annoying, and plant some seeds in their place last Saturday. They were very excited to wear their gardening gloves and dig in the dirt with Mama and Papa. It doesn't matter what the activity, I think they just love being outside. They're my little cuties!

Happy Mother's Day

I had a pretty nice Mother's Day this year. Jeff did a lot of the wrangling, cleaning, cooking and other tasks that usually fall on my shoulders on any given Sunday. We relaxed, watched a movie, ate food... I even got to paint my fingernails and toenails. I got the itch to make a cake, so I made one that sounded really good to me. It had strawberries and bananas in it, with walnuts, a sugary, nutty filling, and chocolate sauce. It was good. Unfortunately, the only picture I got of the day was of a piece of cake! But it did taste really good...

Ice Cream!

Okay... There's nothing special about ice cream per se. But I'm pretty sure this is the first time my kids have had an actual ice cream cone. It was pretty fun to watch the pure innocence of childhood at its best.


And yes, for those of you who noticed the computer content in the background, that is in fact Arrested Development playing... On that note: the other day, we were watching the news. They broke to the Fox News Correspondent in Washington DC for a story. Lucas was sitting at the kitchen counter at the time. He saw the man on TV and said, "That's Michael, mom!" It was pretty funny.

Tyler's A Missionary!

In the beginning of May, my family came up for a visit, and to drop my little brother, Tyler, off at the MTC. There were so many good pictures from that few days, and I am posting way too many as it is. I really enjoyed their visit. Love you guys! Here are some of my favorites:

The first night Tyler was in town, Jeff went and picked him up from my Dad in Salt Lake, and took him on the Father's and Son's camping trip with the boys. It was much more fun than the health seminar my dad had planned on taking him to that night.

Sunday was all about Tyler.


We had a pancake/waffle dinner with about six different flavors of syrups.

I spent most of the time doing this:

... And this:

My Great Aunt May and her husband LaMar came to celebrate Tyler's mission departure. It was fun to see them again.

This was the first time that all four of us siblings have been together in a very long time. It's been at least 3 years?? Probably longer. Anyone remember? Brooke?

Funny story: One of the nights we were all up late talking and messing around (this particular night found me coloring Brooke's hair), the power went out! I was in the middle of putting highlights in Brooke's hair with foils. Only about halfway done. I had to have Tyler hold a flashlight on her hair for me, while I had one on a headband and quickly finish putting the product in her hair in the dark! When enough time had passed, I had her stand in front of my car headlights to check the color because my headlights were the most natural and brightest lights we could find at the time. It was funny. Her hair turned out very nicely, too, I might add. It was just an interesting experience. Oh, a car hit a power box and the power was out for about 6000 houses for about 3 hours.

On Tuesday, we all got to go down to Temple Square in Salt Lake and see all the church history sights. We visited the museums, the tabernacle, the Temple grounds, and the distribution center. It was pretty fun.

This is one of my personal favorites from that day trip.

When we got back, we had a fun craft activity planned with Grammy and Grandpa Lance. They helped the kids decorate some T-shirts, and the kids helped decorate one for each of them to help remind them of their trip to Utah this year. It was a lot of fun, and the shirts turned out really well. I keep meaning to get a picture of each of them individually, but each time they're wearing them, I forget! Maybe when I get some I'll post the finished products.

During his visit, Sarah decided she really liked Uncle Tyler. Here she is enjoying her uncle's music. A few minutes after this picture was taken, she actually fell asleep right there. I think Uncle Tyler ended up carrying her to her room. Cute. All the kids really took to Tyler. They still talk about him now. Just yesterday, Sarah was naming off the ages all the kids will be when they get to see Uncle Tyler again.

And the purpose for the whole trip: Dropping Tyler off at the MTC.

My little brother's a missionary! Good luck, Tyler, and God be with you! I'm proud of you, and I love you.

A New Look

Yes, I know. My blogging has been severely lacking as of late. This is a lame update, but at least it's an update! So it's finally happened. I know I posted recently about loving the long hair, but being frustrated with medication making it thin. Well, yesterday, I'd had enough! Ironically, the night before, I had just told Jeff that I wasn't ready to cut my hair yet. He's been wanting me to. He likes it short and wispy. But yesterday, I woke up and just came straight downstairs to get the kids breakfast before getting dressed for the day or doing my hair. It was down and just messy. I was looking at the ends of my hair, and noticed they were splitting. One, in particular, was split at least 3 ways! It's been over 10 years since I've had split ends. Not cool. To avoid getting more upset about it, I decided to put it up in a bun with a pen. That's the way it stayed until I went up to get dressed before taking Sarah to preschool. Since I hadn't showered or really done my hair yet, I decided to look in the mirror at my messy pen bun to see if it was presentable enough to be seen outside the house. It wasn't. I looked at the size of the mess of hair I had tightly wound up and stuck with a pen. It was SO TEENY! I mean, seriously TINY. It was the size of maybe a golf ball. Maybe. So sad. I ripped it out, put it in a ponytail, took small sections of hair and pinned them up around the base of the ponytail to create some fake volume. It looked good enough then, but I was still upset. I knew my hair was thinning because of my medication, but this was getting ridiculous. Later yesterday, after running some errands, I was passing by the train station where Jeff had left his car to take the train to work. Being the sweet, loving, amazing, awesome wife I am, I decided to go leave him a little love note. As I was driving through the parking lot, I passed in front of a nice hair salon. In the window was posted a sign that said "Tuesdays only: $10 shampoo and cut!" I thought to myself, "Hmmm... that's not bad." And I kept driving. Then, I realized, "Wait... TODAY IS TUESDAY!" That was it. I was cutting my hair. I left my note, got on the phone, and arranged for a couple of babysitters for a half hour later, and then there was no going back! Here's what happened:




What do you think??

Jeff also got a haircut recently. Only his was free. I did it. Here he is with his new do, ready for bed. Can you tell?