Easter Morning

Today we celebrated Easter (complete with bubbles) just with our little family and had a wonderful time. It was so fulfilling to be able to listen to the Prophet and leaders of our church during our semi annual General Conference. It completed the Easter experience with a renewed feeling of gratitude for my Savior.

So here's Kaylee as of late. She is SUCH a character lately! I mean one minute she is super shy and will hardly talk to the speech therapist and then the next she is acting like a CRAZY girl as hyperactive as can be. The Easter bunny came and left some goodies for the kiddos this morning. Because we are all battling strep...(yes I know) Andy and I took the opportunity to sleep in this morning very seriously. We SLEPT until 8:30am, I know someone may laugh at that but seriously I CAN'T sleep in anymore, 7:30am is usually my MAX, my body just won't let me. Anyway, by the time we rolled out of bed Kaylee had eaten all 15 pieces of candy that were in her basket. I'm kinda stingy when it comes to candy, so I don't think I've EVER seen one of my own children on a sugar high. Well, today that changed. KAYLEE was a psycho path! I mean full on crazy girl. She was literally bouncing off the walls. At one point Andy took her downstairs for a snack and gave her a bowl of yogurt. Literally 2 minutes later he came down to see THIS (above). Notice the shiny legs and toes...yeah, that yogurt (AND they are on my table!). All I can say is GOOD NIGHT Kaylee, it's time for bed and I'm glad you're in it. Love you, but a red flag will forever go up when there is chocolate near by. Sweet Kaylee.

Fossil Rim Safari

Right next to the Dino State Park is a place called Fossil Rim. It is a driving safari, where you actually feed the animals as you drive. I don't think we realized how REAL the feeding part was :) Andy took out the middle seats of the van and everyone hung out the windows as we slowly drove for 4 hours through out the safari. It was a blast though! The only animal that we were disappointed in was the giraffe...they never came to our window; although we got pretty close.

Here is an example of how 'in your face' the animals were. I mean talk about a kids dream come true! Hello Zebra!

We had hand sanitizer readily available as these animals were not exactly clean eaters...SO FUN!

I mean...seriously...that's a little too close.

Dinosaur State Valley Park

Dinosaur Stake Park = SUPER FUN for all ages. We had a fabulous time and plan on going again sooner than later. We had never heard of the park and it is a bit of a drive (5 Hrs) in a small town called Glen Rose, TX.

Right before the state park is a museum that has a fossil dig and several other activities for the kids. A bit pricey, but worth every penny for the kids. They each got to find and take 3 fossils home. It doesn't get better than that.

Audrie inside a T-Rex. AHH! She doesn't look overly concerned though now does she?

Then my favorite part came. The actual Dinosaur Stake Valley Park was awesome. Above is the cute and wonderful Bush Family. Don't they look so happy? I wanted to show you the River we had to cross. It was so fun. But we had to cross it in order to see.....

....THESE! They are REAL Dinosaur tracks. Can you see it? There were lots, but this one was the most obvious. COOL HUH?!

Tyler was such a good sport. We almost cancelled the entire trip because he started getting sick the day before. He was sicker than a dog, but was putting on a really good face and trying SO very hard to have fun. This picture hurts me because his glands are so swollen here his face/jawline looks heavier. Audrie on the other hand was modeling in the mud :)

The Bush family. Our good friends from College. They are family to us!

All of us...a little muddy.

My feet were hurting a bit, so I sat on a rock and put my feet in the cold water. Kaylee thought it was a good idea and decided to join me.

And finally THE RESCUE. I told Audrie several times not to go past this area we were in because the rocks would be slippery and she would fall in. So what did she do? Exactly that, she fell in and completely FREAKED out. Here is Andy saving her; it was actually quite humorous.

Whicker's X2 Visit

They CAME! They finally Came :) My family came to visit me AND they are coming AGAIN in JULY!!! It was so fun to have them. I loved every second of it even if I seemed tired and a bit under the weather. I wish it could have lasted longer...but so is the life of living far away. While they were here Great Grandpa and Grandpa (my Dad) fixed my kitchen light as well as a couple leaky faucets. Mom helped me cook, clean up and get the kids ready, she is always so helpful. She also made the kids some really cute outfits which Tyler wore the next day to school and the girls to church the following Sunday. They were very proud of their handsome new outfits! Thanks Mom for working so hard on them.

Kaylee was so dang cute with Great Grandma Whicker. She would go right up to her, hold her hand and say, "Play song Gama?" and then would pull her toward the piano. Then they would play together. That will go down in the history books

Katie of course loved the dog. And the dog loved her even more...The kids absolutely had a blast with Katie, I mean how fun is it to have an Auntie that is so young and into some of the very same things you are! They can't wait to see her again.

Great Grandma Whicker, Audrie Hart and Great Grandpa Whicker. Had to include this one :)

Why they called us the wacky Whicker's I'll never understand....

Projects

Once upon a time and far away (Omaha, NE) Tara and Andy got murried....and were very poor. Upon their marriage they were given a very old bedroom set, which has been in their bedroom decor ever since. They fixed up rooms and bought countless things for their children, but never felt justified in purchasing furniture for themselves. Thus the brilliant and scary idea. Enough with the third person. So I came across this blog where this woman had almost EXACTLY the same bedroom furniture as us and she decided to refinish it. It was BEAUTIFUL. And I thought, 'I could do that'...so after several hours of sanding, a dozen spray cans later and few dollars spent I got the result I wanted.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

(To all my sisters: yes that is THE VERY same alarm clock that I've had since I was 10, I was able to update the furniture...still working on the clock.)

Next project: For a very long time I've wanted to do something in the front yard. I am not a horticulturist, or anything close...I'm just not very good at landscaping or the artistry of anything outdoors. So I tried. I bought rocks, dirt and mulch. I weeded, pruned and trimmed. Then I carried 2100 lbs of rock and strategically placed them around the front and back yards... (Andy took care of the other 1000 lbs of rock). Then I shoveled and wheel burrowed dirt and mulch to various parts of the yard. It may not look like much, but this was the end result:

Then I planted flowers...now On to my vegetable garden! Better late then never right?

Audrie the Teacher

So normally we take baths Saturday night to avoid any extra chaos on Sunday Morning, but due to a busy evening that didn't happen. Audrie is the teacher in our house...she knows everything about anything...if you doubt her, just ask. Anyway, both girls had to blow dry their hair to be able to get all prettied up for Sunday meetings. The all knowing Audrie took it upon herself to show Kaylee just how things were done. I LOVE Kaylee's face in this. It's all too telling. Then Audrie decided to show her how blow drying was really supposed to take place....it involves singing at the top of your lungs while blowing into the very wide open mouth with only the excess air blowing the hair. Didn't you know?

Saturday Morning Pancakes

So Saturday morning seems to be unofficially dubbed pancake day at our house. Well Tyler REALLY wanted to get things moving quicker than I was a couple of weeks ago, so I decided to let him. For some reason it's really, REALLY hard for me to let the kids do anything by themselves (I know, serious control freak), especially when there will inevitably be a mess involved. Well needless to say there was a big mess, but he the fact that he was so proud of his creations and had so much fun being left "in charge" of breakfast quickly replaced my anxiety of the mess with pride and happiness in my son. Here are the tasty pancakes; obviously he got very creative with their shapes :)