Happy Birthday Emily

My little sister, Emily, turns 25 today!

She has always been so cute. When she was a little girl she was so adorable, everyone loved her.



I think as little girls we got along as well as any other two sisters.
We had good times and we had bad times (like the time she kicked me and cut my arm with her toenails, I still have a scar) but because we were 5 years apart I think we were almost always interested in different things.

She is an awesome aunt. I only have pictures of her with Ned, probably because we both lived at our parent's house for a while when Ned was little. She really cares about her nieces and nephews. I know that if my kids have said or done something funny or smart or naughty, I can call her and I can tell that she really wants to hear about it.




This girl LOVES ice cream. She even has to have her birthday cakes be ice cream cakes. (I actually accidentally wrote down "she loves ice cream" twice when I made this list of things to say about her!)


She was the most beautiful bride I have ever seen. (Even if I am still mad at her (not really) for getting married 9 days after I had a baby, notice I didn't post any pictures of myself on her wedding day!;))





She makes me laugh. There is no one else in the world that I laugh with more than Emily. Any time we get together we end up crying from laughing so hard. Some of my favorite memories are from when we lived together at my parent's house. You really had to be there to understand why we were laughing in this picture--no, you had to be us to get why we were laughing!


She has two of the cutest kids in the world.



Emily is the most loyal, loving, fun sister anyone could ask for.


I love you, Emily, I hope you have a great birthday!!

10 things I learned this Easter weekend

1. Lucky will eat just about anything. Especially if you put a bowl and a spoon in front of him before telling him what to do with it. He will lick all the eggs before and after he dyes them, but he will not eat a hard boiled egg.
   
   
   
2. Apparently you don't need spoons or any other tool to dye eggs; hands work just fine.
   
   
   
   
3. After those hands have been wiped on a white shirt you should not wash it with other whites... it will turn some of mommy's underwear pink... even if you used bleach.
   
   
4. Lucky hates having his sleeves rolled up and will try to fix it himself and whine at you until you help him out.
   
   
5. My kids do a pretty darn good job dyeing eggs.
   
   
6. Dusty peels an egg fairly well for a 3 year old.
   
   
7. Ned can turn anything in to an art project... even a yolk and some mini chocolate chips.
   
   
8. Even if the Peeps sunflower cake did not turn out as cute as I'd hoped, the boys still thought it looked pretty yummy!
   
   
   
9. Lucky only likes to eat the heads off of Peeps.
   
   
   
10. Our family loves to play (or watch others play) our new game Guitar Hero III.

Bonus lesson learned: If Ned accidentally knocks over a bowl full of red egg dye on to your dining room floor, I won't care because I don't have carpet anymore. (I even thought I got it all cleaned up, only to discover in the next morning's light that the floor was red... it still wiped up!)

Flashback Friday - Nauvoo Trip 2002

I got a fun idea from my friend's husband's brother's wife's blog the other day. (Oh, come on, you know you read everyone and their dogs blogs too!) She had an idea to do Flashback Fridays, I think it is a great idea.
So, I have decided that on Fridays (not necessarily every Friday, but some) I will post about something in the past. Some will be from when I was a child and some more recent.

When my dad was here a couple of weeks ago we were reminiscing about the time we went on a long road trip to Nauvoo Illinois. Ned and I went with my parents and my little brother, R. Jay. We met my sister and her family there.

We went to the Nauvoo Temple open house before its dedication. It is a beautiful temple. We spent some time in Nauvoo visiting other church history sites as well.

We went to the John Deere museum. Ned had fun with all the tractors.

Uncle R.Jay had fun with his nieces and nephew. He is a fun and loving uncle.

On our long drive half way across the country Ned was so well behaved. There is one memory that I think all of us there will never forget. I don't know what got him started but there was a time that Ned laughed, and had us laughing, for at least half an hour. He would laugh an adorable, and contagious laugh, then sigh. The sigh would get all of us laughing again, then Ned would laugh at us laughing, then sigh...and so on. My dad almost drove off the rode a few times he was laughing so hard!

We had a great trip filled with fun memories. I think we should do it again sometime! ;)

It's all about the food...green food.

Well, it's really all about the kids, so I like to make a big deal about holidays. I don't know what to do to celebrate holidays like St. Patrick's day other than fun green food. So yesterday we started the day and ended the day green.

I made green pancakes and green scrambled eggs. The boys all loved it. I don't know why, but it bothered me, I could not bring myself to eat the eggs, they just looked nasty.

That was not a smile on Lucky's face in that picture at breakfast. He was upset that Daddy took his pacifier away for the picture and was starting to whine. This is a picture of him politely asking his daddy to give his pacifier back...


We had pizza for dinner (I know, not very Irish) with green smoothies. My friend, Michal, talked about them on her blog and they sounded fun. The boys LOVED them and Ned was sad when it was gone. I will be making them again and calling them 'Ogre Smoothies' or something like that. I had a little glass of it and even though I knew there was baby spinach in it I thought it was pretty good. I thought it just tasted like those smoothies you get at the store when you ask for the vitamin boosts and you can kind of taste it in the smoothie.



Then for dessert we had Pastel Pound Cake. I added Lime Jell-O rather than raspberry like I usually do.


We had a fun day. The next couple of pictures are totally unrelated to St. Patrick's Day other than the fact that they were taken that day. The hat that Lucky is wearing is something from McDonald's. I think it is from the Pirates of the Caribbean.

And then one of Ned and Dusty actually being nice to one another... I had to snap a picture of that!

Pastel Pound Cake

1 white cake mix

1 package Jell-O (3 oz.)

3/4 cup water

1/2 cup oil

4 eggs

Mix all ingredients. Pour into well greased bundt cake pan. Bake at 350 for 40-45 min. Drizzle with simple water or milk and powdered sugar glaze.

I like it warm or cold. YUM!