What a Weekend!

We sure did pack a lot of fun into a few days this weekend. 

With Hannah's 6th birthday and Mother's Day falling within days of each other it was unavoidable.

I started on Wednesday to make this lovely creation for Hannah's birthday on Friday.

I had quite a bit of anxiety making this beauty.  I'm not much of a "fun cake" mom.  Around here it's usually, "What flavor of cake do you want?" and I make it in 13 x 9 pan, frost it, add a few sprinkles and if they are lucky they get a couple figurines on top.  I have never used fondant and was pretty nervous hoping I could make it work.  I was extremely impressed with the end result.  It's not perfect (I kind of obsess over the imperfections) but still pretty good.  I know the Barbie cake is not a new idea but Hannah had never seen one before and she is in love with Barbie and Polly Pocket right now so I thought this would blow her away and make her feel extra special.  I made this while Hannah was at school so it was a complete surprise.  She knew I was making a Barbie cake, but remember how I described my cake making skills, I'm pretty sure she thought it would be a rectangle cake with a picture of Barbie on it.

It's kind of become a unspoken tradition that birthdays start first thing in the morning.  I always decorate the kitchen after the kids go to bed so that when they wake up it's birthday time!  I always want them to know first thing that WE know it's their birthday.  I never want them to feel like we forgot or are unprepared for their special day.   That's why all birthday pictures are in the kitchen with my kids looking splendid after restful nights sleep.  :)

That's the cake under the birthday bag.  

The other reason I wanted the cake to be a surprise is that the 

Ariel barbie I used was one of her presents.

Hannah got lots of barbie/polly pocket/princess things.  We went from no Polly Pockets in our house to an explosion of Pollys.  We gave her some, Aunt Jana gave her some and Grandma Taggart did to.  Good thing we don't have very small children in this house or we would have some serious choking hazards with all those itty-bitty clothes and accessories.

At school, the kindergarten had a Mother's Day program. 

Lots of songs they had learned throughout the year.  Hannah couldn't be happier that her show landed on her special day.

Another fun thing that landed on Hannah's birthday was the school's family fun run and carnival.  Wow!  What's better than a run and carnival to celebrate turning 6?

Well how about winning the race for your age group! 

That's right, Hannah was the first kindergartener to cross the finish line of the 5k.

Yay for families!  Yay for races!

Now I know you all know that I like running but I did not pressure this clan into running on Hannah's birthday.  It was completely her idea.  She wanted to run the 5k (not the mile route that was also an option) with everyone for her birthday.  So we all signed up, got cool T-shirts, and Ethan and I even won a little prize in the drawing at the end.

After the race we headed to the back of the school for the carnival.  And when I say carnival I mean a bunch of blow-up bouncy things and food stands run by the teachers.  

Not super fun for parents but way super fun for kids.  They had a ball.

 The best part were the friends. These are just some of the many friends she 

got to play with at her "birthday party."

It was like I had planned this whole thing but I didn't have to, the school did it for me.

What's a carnival, or party for that matter, without FOOD.

Playing sure whips up an appetite.

 

This is JayDee's "don't even think about sneaking any of my nachos" face.

After the carnival, we headed back home to finish the day with cake and ice cream.

Grandma and Grandpa Taggart, BriAnne and Joey, Milan and Eden

and some friends came to wrap up the celebration.

Oh and there were a few more presents.

A Rapunzel tower complete with a glowing haired Rapunzel.

Fancy!

I won't go into detail about the rest of the weekend but as you know Mother's Day was Sunday.

I had a lovely day.  Again presents first thing in the morning. . .lots of sweet notes, a homemade bouquet of flowers from the yard, a bowl of Corn Pops for breakfast 

and two new outfits for church including a smokin' hot pair of shoes.  

JayDee hit it out of the park this time.  He hates shopping for me (without me) because he is just convinced that he can't shop for girls but he also knows that I love surprises.  So he sucked it up and headed out to conquer and he did!  His confidence is greatly boosted as is my wardrobe.  :)

I got to take a Sunday nap (which hasn't happened in forever) and then off to my parent's house for dinner.  Any day I don't have to make dinner is a good day but when my dad makes dinner it is a real treat.  I wish everyone I know could come have dinner when my dad cooks.  

It is always amazing! He missed his calling in life.  He should have been a chef.  Seriously.

I love being a mom.  It is the absolute most challenging experience and though it changes as the years go by it never gets easier, the challenges change too.  But when I have a weekend like this one, with good solid quality time with the people that I love and see those beautiful smiling faces I can't think of one thing I want to do more in life than be a good mother.  I fall short of that goal some days but I constantly rededicate myself to my job because my children deserve it!

The Worst Easter Ever!

Our Easter 2011 started out like any other Easter.  It was a lovely Sunday, the sun was shining (a miracle really considering our crazy wet/cold April), the kids were ready for church early and we headed outside for a few quick snapshots before church.
 

Just precious

 

Church was great.  The kids came home with almost as many treats as they got in their Easter baskets.  We decided to take a little stroll down the street after church to enjoy the lovely weather when we happened upon some neighbors outside.  We stopped to chat and that is when disaster struck!  Hannah skinned her knee.  It was terrible, her life hung in the balance and she was not to be calmed.  We had no choice but to go inside immediately to search for a band-aid.  No sooner had we administered the healing power of the band-aid when Ethan came running inside screaming that his head was bleeding.  Well it wasn't hard to see that he was right but it was hard to get him to tell us what happened.  You see, when Ethan is upset about anything he is just too traumatized to talk.  He can verbalize that he is bleeding, he can cry, he can even tell us that he can't talk but he can't actually say what happened.  Ironic isn't it?  

We finally got the story from Ryan, Ethan's friend.  He told us they had been messing around (as boys do) threatening each other that they would hit each other or push each other down, etc.  During this time Ethan had been inching his way backward and caught his foot on the edge of the window well and fell in backward head first.  Ouch!  The saddest part really was that we were all inside.  No one was really there to help him out.  So with his head split open and bleeding he had to hoist himself out and come and find us.  Poor guy.  

With one swift look I knew we'd be visiting the doctor's office.  Ethan's a fairly tough kid.  He got a shovel to the eyebrow 2 years ago and had to have stitches so this head wound wasn't going to be that bad.  He can handle stitches.  Little did he know that the doctor would decide that staples was the best form of treatment.  Staples?!  Metal, sharp objects, poked into his head?! That was not going to happen.  He got so worked up about the prospect of having staples in his head that the anticipation was worse than the real thing.  While we sat and waited for the doctor, waited for the numbing gel to kick in, waited for the nurse to come assist, he sat frozen, silently crying over the torture that would ensue and dubbed this day "The Worst Easter Ever!"  

 Here's my attempt at documenting the staples but you can't really see them under all the neosporin they slathered on.  Right at the top of the goop you can barely see the staples.

9 in all

 And yes, I did make him wear that shirt the rest of the day.

I don't think I could get him to take it off anyway, a little touchy about the owey.

Needless to say, he was happy when it was all over and couldn't wait to get out of there.  We were late for Easter dinner at Grandma's house and when we walked in Ethan became the center of attention, a place he does not like to be.  He was pretty shaken up and didn't eat anything the rest of the night and kind of kept to himself.  He did however join in the Easter egg hunt but he took it slow and was the last one to find all his eggs even though he was oldest hunter out there.

 

Oh and by the way, just look at that adorable Eden.  I may have taken a dozen pictures of just her.  Yes, I know she is not my child but do you blame me?  The dress she's wearing is the one I bought for Emma to wear at BriAnne and Joey's wedding (Eden's parents). So it's not just sentimental for me but for her too!  Awwww...

 This Easter was a combined celebration:  Easter, BriAnne's birthday, Eden's birthday and Hannah's birthday.  As is tradition in the Taggart family, the birthday people get to choose the menu for their birthday dinner.  BriAnne chose the meal and Hannah chose dessert.  Eden just had to live with the choices this year.  She'll get her say soon enough.  Hannah's choice?  Stawberry Shortcake.  Mmmmm... 

Grandpa Taggart always likes to add a little spice to our dining pleasure so we had the choice between regular shortcake and chocolate shortcake.  Delicious!

Here's our birthday girls!

I guess it's fair to say that this Easter probably won't be ranked as our best but it certainly didn't feel like a worst either.  We have so many blessings to be thankful for and now, as I am posting this, I can see them all so clearly.  What a marvelous gift life is, and family, and the gospel, and our Savior Jesus Christ who gave us the greatest of all gifts - eternal life, because of that I'd say this Easter and every Easter is the greatest!

Idaho

Now I know with that intriguing post title you all just couldn't wait to read what I have to say about Idaho.  Well not much actually.  We visited our neighbor to the north to give us something to do during our kids' Spring Break.  It just so happened that JayDee was scheduled to teach a bunch of landscape design classes in Idaho that week so we decided to tag along.  It turned out to be anything but adventurous due to the very poor weather but the kids loved going from one hotel to another and rating the rooms and pools.  We don't do hotels very often so that was a super big treat for the kids. 

According to the ratings, the Best Western in Pocatello came in first.

If anyone out there finds themselves needing a place to stay in Pocatello, I would highly recommend this hotel.  It is not much to look at from the outside but the inside must have been redone fairly recently because it was really nice. 

P.S.  We spent less than $100 a night in all our hotels.  Bonus! 

 At every hotel without exception, the first thing the kids did when we checked in was to get into their swimming suits to head to the pool.  Isaac was quick and found jumping on the beds to be a good activity to pass the time until everyone was ready.

 The others soon joined him because Mom and Dad are "so slow!"

 They have a nice pool area but this pool only came in 2nd in the ratings.

After a bit of swimming and a lot of Disney channel I told the kids it was time for bed.  We had a suite in this hotel (which is why it scored so high in the ratings) so I told the kids that 2 of them would have to sleep on the couch.  They immediately started arguing over who would have to sleep on the couch until I told them the couch could turn into a bed.  What?! They had never heard or seen anything like it.  (Does that make me a bad mother?)  So now instead of fighting over who HAD to sleep there, they started fighting over who GOT to sleep there.  Ethan and Emma won.  They all thought that hide-a-bed was the coolest thing they had ever seen.
 
Before heading more North to Rexburg, we made sure to visit the world famous Idaho Potato Museum in Blackfoot.  Unfortunately, there wasn't much to see here.  It's a tiny museum and the best thing to see is outside. . .

 Next stop:  Super 8 in Rexburg
We knew what we were getting booking a Super 8.  We weren't looking for the best place just a nice, clean hotel to spend one night.  This hotel fit the bill but did little to impress the kids (especially after coming from a couch bed) so this one rated dead last, in both room and pool.  Not that my kids didn't spend a great amount of time in this pool, because they did, it was just the only thing to do when there is a snow storm outside.

After taking a self-guided walking tour of BYU Idaho, we said good-bye to Rexburg and headed South to Idaho Falls.  Last year about this time we drove through Idaho Falls and stopped to take in the Idaho Falls Temple and the famous falls but I didn't find the city very impressive.  So we decided to stay quite a distance from downtown, close to Ammon, and found that part of Idaho Falls to be great!


We stayed in a Holiday Inn Express.  This hotel was very impressive!  Also, just recently remodeled.  It would have come in first in the kid ratings had it been a suite.  It came in second by just a sliver.  If I was doing the ratings it would have won.  The pool got a first place rating however.  

Isaac loved the hot tubs.  He told me they were his favorites 

because they were just the right size.  He spent most of his time here.

After almost a week, Ethan was plum tuckered out by all that swimming.

Like I said, unadventurous, but if you like indoor swimming and the Disney channel then you would have loved this vacation.  We had fun.  It certainly beat staying home in the dreary weather and being fatherless all week.

Out With the Old and In With the New

It was time.  There were just too many little aches and pains to make me worry.  The road was feeling just a little too hard with every step.  We've been through a lot together. . . summer heat, winter snow and ice, rain, puddles, tendonitis, missing toenails and miles and miles of road - around 350 miles actually.  I hate saying goodbye to a good pair of running shoes but  it just had to be done.

You say goodbye. . .

And I say hello. . .

I changed brands, which scares me a little, but I have high hopes for these new runners.  They've got big shoes to fill.  Hopefully with these babies I will have less aches and pains, I'll be able to keep more of my toenails thanks to the longer toe box and have a bit more spring in my step.  We've got a long way to go together and I hope they're up for the challenge.