First Day of School

I just had a sad, sad realization.

I have only been blogging about once a month.
That is just pitiful.
Can I just tell you how busy life is with 5 little ones?
I am loving every moment of our adventures, I just need to take more time to write them down for posterity's sake.
So here it is, one for the record books.



The first day of school is tricky for us home schoolers.
The thing is, we never really stopped doing school this Summer, therefore we did not really have a first day of school, so to speak.



But then everyone started posting pictures of their kids' first days of school on facebook and I felt like we needed something to mark the turning of a new leaf for our school as well.



(By the way, you all have beautiful children and I Love, Love, Love seeing their pictures and how they are growing.)



I decided we needed our very own "back to school night".
We started with a fancy dinner, we even pulled out the place mats and Fine China.



Doodle thought that since our dinner was so fancy she needed to wear her fanciest outfit.
The boys on the other hand... well at least their clothes were clean!



At dinner we presented our theme for the school year.
Alma 37:35
"O, remember, my son, and learn wisdom in thy youth; yea, learn in thy youth to keep the commandments of God."
We posted it on the wall, and now we all have it memorized.



Mr Bird then took us into the family room where he gave each of his children a special Blessing to start out this new chapter of learning and adventures.



Then it was out to the back yard to enjoy the cool evening and a chocolate slushy.
Plus they had to endure mom taking a million photos.



Looks to me like they would do anything for a chocolate slushy!
I know I would!
We are so excited to start this new school year and to continue our fun learning adventures!

Poker Face

Dubs graduated from Joy School a few weeks ago.
It was quite possibly, the funniest graduation I have been to in my entire life.

Dubs does not like to be the center of attention.
He will not give talks or prayers in primary. He cries in the hall when it's his turn until someone has pity on him and lets him off the hook.

As you can imagine, he was a little less than willing to get up in front of all the people and sing the song his classmates had been practicing for weeks.
He sat in his chair trying his hardest to be invisible.
"La,la,la,la,la, I can't hear you!"
When it was his turn to share his talent he slide down deeper in his chair and would not uncurl or even look at me.
We moved on without hearing his rendition of I am a Child of God.
Then I got to speak.
The highlight of the entire event, if I do say so myself.
I'm sure everyone was thrilled!
I took a few minutes to share some of the fun activities we had done during the course of the year.
I did not know at the time that Mr Bird had possession of the camera.
He took a few shots of me during the magnificent, life changing speech.

I decided I look like a complete idiot while I'm talking.
Just call me Fish Lips.
Why has no one ever told me this before?
I must be much quieter from now on.

I thought I looked really cute that day, but as it turns out... not so much.
I think I need to wear my hair down more often.

And apparently I'm quite funny.
At least I seem to think so.

Why can I not decide what to do with my hands?
Ah, the age old question.
They are not in the same position in any two photos yet.

It seems I just flapped them around the entire time.
Watch out, I could take off at any minute.
Oh man, have I got a problem...

Mammoth Hill

Have you ever listened to The Great Sled Race by Bill Harley?
It's like talk theater, with his guitar.
It's hilarious.
Here's a synopsis:
"(guitar assisted story) After a debate over who received a better sled for Christmas and Hanukkah, Harley and another kid challenge each other to a race down Mammoth Hill. The tone and progression of the story reminded my wife and I of Casey at Bat, but instead of mighty Casey striking out, the kids slide wildly downhill, across an intersection and into Mrs. Tarbuckle, the wife of Mr. Tarbuckle, the school principal.

The next thing I know
Something hits my chest
I don’t know north from south or east or west
The sleds are crowded
There’s not much space
Because Mrs. Tarbuckle’s joined the race.

Not to ruin the story, but the ending includes Dead Man’s Curve and a fire truck’s ladder extracting Mrs. Tarbuckle from a tree."

This is Mr Bird's favorite story.
He made me listen to it before we even had kids.
Like 20 times.

Now that we have children, it's even funnier.
There's even a lesson plan we can do for the kids on his blog all based on this funny story.
I feel a home school lesson perfect for a cold January afternoon coming...
You really must listen to it.
Unfortunately it's copyrighted so I can't share it here on my blog, but you can download it (and all of his other hilarious work) online for a small fee.

In the story when the two kids are bragging about whose sled is cooler one boasts of his having afterburners.
Since the weather on Saturday was a balmy 39 degrees and sunny we decided to celebrate with a sledding day.
It made me chuckle when we were on the way home, Dubs says, "My sled had flames shooting out the back. They made me go speedy fast, but they did not melt the snow!"
I do have to say, the packed snow made for some speedy trips down the hill.
I'm not a speed demon.
But for Dubs, it's all about SPEED (and apparently flames)!

Let the Celebrations Begin!

I love, love, love Independence Day!

Next to Christmas it's my favorite holiday.

I love all the parades and BBQs and melon and fireworks!

We have been busy little bees this week getting ready for the big day.

We made each of the kids a fun hat out of newspaper and paint and glitter. We also made fun star wavers so they can wave them at the floats as they pass.

For those we used empty cracker boxes that we cut into a star shape and painted and added glitter designs. Then we added cute ribbon and glued it all to sticks we found in our yard. Sometimes it really helps to have a willow tree. We get some pretty cool sticks for the kids to play with and for me to craft with!

If you have not made any 4th of July crafts with your kids, it's not too late. Grab some old newspaper and cereal boxes and get to work! There's still time left before the big day!
Every year our kids love to ride in the bike parade. Since Baby Cakes is still a bit too little to ride, we dressed the wagon for the occasion. Just imagine it with a cute baby waving, dressed from head to toe in red, white and blue. Oh, I just can't wait!

The kids had so much fun decorating their bikes, it took us 2 days to get all the bikes and the wagon in tip top shape.
I can't wait to post pictures of the final product on the day!

Before the bike parade Mr. Bird is running in our city's 5K. I want to run too, but I have 4 heathens to look after. I thought about doing the 5K walk with them all, but we did a practice walk this week and it did not go so well.

After the 5K the kids will start off our city's parade with the bike parade. Hundreds of kids show up with sparkly bikes and wagons and scooters and ride the parade route. It is the highlight of the day for our kids. They talk about it all year long! After the bike parade we stay for our city's parade and oooh and aaaah over all the colorful floats. Since we live so close to the air force base we usually get an F-15 buzz the parade. Although, they are always taking off and landing practically on top of our house, so we usually don't even notice the huge F-15 just feet above our heads. After the parade we head home to get our picnic items ready to have our family BBQ.

This week it will be at dead Aunt Lisa's house.

Yup, you guessed it, after dark we gather at the park with about a million other people to watch the spectacular fireworks display!

The fireworks are my favorite part. I wish they would go on forever!

Let the Parades begin!

There's Magic in the Air

photo by http://www.thegraphicgroove.com/

I love this time of the year.

The sun is out to stay and there is fun to be had.

The days are long and the kids are getting tanner and blonder as the days pass.

We spend the days eating watermelon and playing at the park with friends.

We ride bikes and horses and go on Sunday drives.

We go to free movies at the Library to get a break from the heat.

We eat our lunch outside nearly every afternoon and play in the florescent green grass and watch the silly chickens look for bugs to eat. We make homemade lemon ice and chocolate slushies for desert.

We hike up to waterfalls and find caterpillar piles and watch beautiful butterflies flutter around the spectacular wild flowers.

We find little mountain streams and take our shoes off and walk in the cool rushing water.

We find robin eggs that have fallen from the trees and inspect the oh so delicate shells and try to find the nest it fell from.

We go to farmers markets and fruit stands and buy baskets and baskets of fresh strawberries and huge watermelons and corn on the cob.

We swing from the tree swing hanging from our willow and see how high we can get before our toes start to touch the droopy leaves.

My kids are constantly climbing trees and scraping knees.

The kids play in the pasture grass that is almost as tall as they are. I look out the window and see three little heads bobbing up and down through the thick grass, waiting to be cut and dried and bailed to feed our cute horse next winter.

We bask in the sunshine and wish it will never go away.

I watch my kids as they are going through yet another season and wish that I could just push pause to make these days last a little longer. I try not to think about their babyness vanishing before my very eyes.

I relish the fact that they still see the fairy dust floating in the air and are in awe that real live fairies must be near.

They pause to listen and watch, eyes full of wonder, in hopes of catching a glimpse of their magic.

They know they are really close when the fairy dust floats over head.

It gets really thick this time of year. Sometimes it's so thick it looks as if it were snowing, it collects at the edge of the grass in white cottony mounds. Other days there are only a few specks of fairy dust floating through the otherwise clear summer sky. They flit and float on the breeze attempting to land at the edge of the lawn, only to be caught by another warm draft and pushed upward yet again through the air, floating away on a breeze and finally coming to rest on an outstretched finger or at the feet of my baby.

We went to a nearby park the other day and Dubs and I found the best discovery of the season. As we were walking through the park we found the biggest pile of fairy dust we have ever seen.

Then, we looked up.

We discovered sheer wonder.

Huge pillowy piles of fairy dust in the leaves of the tree.

This MUST be the fairies homes!
We found out where they live!
We are so lucky!
Shhhhh, it's a secret, we can't tell you where they are.
We watched for a long time to see if we could catch one unaware.
As we looked more closely we discovered that a wild cherry tree was growing above the fairy tree. That must be why they live there, they LOVE cherries. We were sad that we could not reach the cherries to have a treat for ourselves, but we felt better knowing the fairies would have plenty to eat.
I don't know if the fairies will stay there once all the cherries are gone. They may move on to find other, more delicious food. I don't know if they'll be back next year. But just for right here and right now the fairies are in full bloom.
We are perfectly content to play in the fairy dust and bask in the magic of this thing I like to call
childhood.

Just Me and My Lover

Hello my lover!

This one's for you.

I love you for all the fun family camping trips we have.

I love you for the grueling hikes I never thought I could finish.

I love you for staying by my side during natural child birth.

I love you for getting me bowls of cereal in bed during morning sickness.

I love you for your fix it attitude.

I love you for the horse rides that made me fall in love with you.

I love that you make me laugh.

I love you for rescuing me from all the nasty eight legged home invaders.

My knight in shining armour.
*sigh*

I love you for the steam rolls and doggie piles and piggy back rides.

I love that you will not let me stay mad at you.

I love you for your music.

I love you for Tuesday nights and Sister Saturdays.

I love our Forever Family and Forever Foots.

I love that you are so quick to forgive.

"I love the way you love me."

I love you for the family we are creating together, forever!

I love you for the Sunday drives and spontaneous picnics.

I love you for eating my cooking, even when it's bad.

I love you with 3 hand squeezes.

I love you for loud music and wild dancing in the living room, with the blinds closed of course.

I love you for your kisses.

I love you for date nights and milkshakes.

I live for your hugs.

I love you for feeding the stinky chickens in the squishy, rainy, sloppy weather.

I love you for thinking I'm beautiful, even when I was 9 months pregnant.

My love for you has grown each time we have welcomed a new baby into our home.

Our love has seen us through the deaths of loved ones.

Our love has seen us through many happy summers full of BBQs and watermelon.

Our love has seen us through heartbreaking disappointments.

Our love has grown deeper with each passing year.

Together we have seen 9 Christmases, 9 Mother's Days, 9 4th of July's, 9 Easters, 9 Fathers Days, 9 St Patrick's Days, and 35 birthdays.

And now, 9 anniversaries.

Happy Anniversary my Lover!

Here's to another life time of memories and camping and birthdays!

I know it will only get better.

Nature's StairMaster

How was you memorial day?

Did you do anything fun?

We had a blast.

We met our family at Mr Bird's mom's grave in the morning. We also visited Mr Bird's grandparents graves and had fun listening to his dad tell fun stories about his parents.

For lunch we all came back to our house for a potluck lunch.

We played in the sunshine with cousins for hours.

Look at our baby chicks. They are not quite babies anymore. I guess now they are considered pullets (hens under a year old). have you ever seen a chicken sit so happily in a cup holder before?

My little niece, marina was fascinated with the little birds.

Of course grandpa could not let our horse, Shadow, sit in the corral all by herself.
He so graciously offered to hold onto her so she could join the party too. She did a wonderful job of mowing our lawn which, by the way, is shamefully long right now.
But hey, who has time to mow when there is so much fun to be had?

My niece Jordana's philosophy is that life is a photo shoot. She is always posing for a photo. I think we finally caught her off guard with the chicken on her shoulder.

What's the matter Jo, afraid she'll poo on your cute outfit?
Michael was determined to get her to fly.
She was perfectly happy to roost right where she was.

Baby Cakes was so funny with the birds. He'd barely touch them them giggle and hide his face.

How about a chicken hat?



Doodle had so much fun with her cousins. Moriah loves horses almost as much as Doodle.


After we were done eating and playing we all loaded in the car and headed for my favorite hiking trail.

Waterfall canyon is gorgeous this time of year.

Most of the trail goes right past the river. At the very top is a beautiful waterfall.

We call this section nature's StairMaster, although this is much steeper than most stair cases around. Talk about a good bum work out.

My kids love their aunt Lisa. She has the most beautiful smile. We were looking back at pictures from about 4 years ago, when Doodle was just little. Lisa was holding her but had sunglasses on. I asked Doodle who was holding her. She looked for a while then finally said,

"LISA! I can always tell it's her by her pretty smile!"

This really is a tough hike, but as you can see we stopped often to take pictures.

The kids did awesome.

They had so much fun with their cousins and climbed those rocks like little troopers.

At last, the falls. The spray from the waterfall was so nice and cool on our hot tired bodies.

This is the biggest I've ever seen these falls. I think it's the earliest in the season we've ever gone and all the spring run off is still coming down fast.

The view down the canyon of the Ogden valley was also breathtaking. This photo does it no justice.

We had a few bumps and scrapes along the way. Here are my little troopers showing off their battle wounds.

Kid quote of the day:

Beano: Johnny got two mosquito bites today.

Dubs:Two?!? Well I got 51 mosquito bites today.

Beano: Dubs (insert his real name), if you had 51 mosquito bites you would be a mosquito bite!