Our new toy...

I got a new bike and bike trailer today! It is part of my new found commitment to exercise and not looking like a cow this summer :)
Anyway, the boys were super excited and wanted to go for a ride, I told them no way, it has been raining hard here all day.
But, Lance is an awesome dad and they talked him into a ride when he got home from work :)

Max's Blessing... the actual reason for going to California :)

Of course day 3 of our California trip was darling little Max's blessing. Chris gave a wonderful blessing and we had lots of fun at the "after-party" at my sisters house.

A few of my closest cousins were able to come that I haven't seen in forever (Hanna lives in Canada, and Sara live in Minnesota? But was in China before that) it was so great to see them.

My grandma Leah said she had 19 of her 45 (now 46 Cami!) great grandbabies there, wow!

What I want...

I have been thinking a lot about being a mother, I know that I have a lot to work on, but I am doing my best. It brought up the question...

"what, as a mother, do i want?"

i want my kids to be safe, happy, healthy, successful in whatever they chose to be. i want my kids to be able to handle their trials and learn from them. i want my kids to have healthy relationships, i want my kids to think i'm the coolest person alive, i want my kids to learn to work hard, and enjoy the fruits of their labor. i want them to think about their future at a young age, i want my kids to be smart with their money, their education, their investments. i want them to hold tight to what we try to teach them, that God is good. i want my kids to stay close to the church. i want my kids to have faith that good can prevail. i want my kids to be able to stand firm in the storm of wickedness that this world is offering. i want them to be smarter than the average American thought of "you need this now, and you can pay for it later." i want my kids to be safe from porn, i want my kids to be safe from an abusive relationship, i want my kids to have great friends. i want my kids to not be bullied, i want my kids to value school, i want my kids to want to be good. i want my kids to want to stay morally clean. i want my boys to be loving and hard working fathers. i want my kids to always want to be sort of close but not too close so they have healthy relationships with their spouses and their family as an entity. i want them to be able to fix their own problems because of what i taught them. i want them to not do drugs, i want them to not drink, i want my kids to be best friends, i want them to be goody two shoes till their wedding night. i want my kids to basically be in a bubble that will protect them from anything harmful, anything wrong, and anything that will bring them pain.

as my thoughts swirled into a chaotic mess, and as i started to hyperventilate at the thought that my kids are going to have face so much before they move on from this earth...i stopped. wiped away the tears, i sat and i stared at my beautiful kids that i would lay down my own life for, and the final answer came to me:

"what do i want?"

"i want to be a good mother at every stage of their life. i want to be there for them and to be able to handle the choices (good and bad) they make with grace, humility, and love. i want to always be able to love them, and forgive them, and to always have open arms when they need me. i hope to be a good example that they would want to do what is right and good not by my words but by my actions."

so scratch all that other stuff.
i just want to be good for them.
that's all that matters.
nothing else can come close to that in my world.
i just hope to be a good one.

and that makes me nervous just the same.

Discovery Science Center...

Part 3 of our trip to California at the first of March...

We had planned on going to the beach, but the weather wasn't cooperating with us. SO we all went to the Discovery Science Center that was only about 10 min from Suzie's house.

I haven't been to the discovery museum at Gateway, but I really want to, and I think this is a pretty similar kind of thing.

Anyway, all the kids loved it and we stayed there for a long time because there was so much to see.

This thing was the coolest, Parker is in the middle (crying :)

Lance laid on a bed of nails.

A tornado tunnel, the wind in it got up to 80 mph, Layton and Isaac thought it was cool. Parker was trying to escape...

This was Parker's very favorite thing. They had a play area that kids under 5 couldn't go in. I wish we would have found it sooner because Parker loved it. The other things were a little old for him...

Whew! One more set of pictures blogged, stay with me, I will be caught up soon! (hopefully :)

Disneyland!

On our California trip it didn't make any sense to go all that way and not stop in at Disneyland for a day, besides that some of our best Friends were there already.

So we meet up with Matt and Jamie and their cute girls and had a really fun time. I love Disneyland, I'll never turn down a chance to go!

We went at the perfect time, it was warm but not at all hot, and right before the spring season so there was a lot less people then I have ever seen.

The first ride we went on was Autotopia, I know for sure that I have waited 2 hours in that line on more than one occasion, we waited for FIFTEEN minuets!!! Layton and Parker both got to drive a car by themselves (with Lance and I pushing on the gas for their short little legs :)

If you can't tell, Layton was super excited about his drivers license

We had been watching "The Sword in the Stone" or as Layton calls it "Who is strong enough to pull the sword out?" a lot, so the boys were pumped to see the sword right there in the middle of the park!

The Carousel is the most simple ride there, but was one of their favorites :)

Layton just barely barely met the height requirement for splash mountain, so i decided to take him on it...

um yeah, he did not love it :)

Really he was okay until the end, which is of course the huge drop off. He saw it coming and freaked out!

I am so mad that this guy put his hand up EXACTLY over Layton's little face, I would love to see what his expression was.

After such a big day (and no desire to stand in lines to meet the characters) we took the boys to Goofy's Kitchen, which is a restaurant in the Disneyland hotel that has all the characters come around to your table.

Big mistake, they HATED HATED HATED it! Lance told me that we will not do something like that again until both boys are okay with sitting on Santa's lap. "If they can deal with Santa, they can deal with Mickey" is his thoughts.... He is probably right :)

We didn't want to leave on such a bad note so we headed back the park for one more spin on buzz light year (their favorite)

And went over to California adventure to go on the toy story ride that I hadn't ever been on, super cool by the way!

Whew! If you made it through that whole long thing I am impressed! Just wanted to document the fun :)

Oh my goodness, I am so far behind...

Wow! I really forgot about how far behind I was, I was about to post some Easter stuff and saw these pictures and realized I never posted about our California trip.
So here goes :)

We went to California the first of March for my sister's newest baby's blessing. The kids did A.M.A.Z.I.N.G.!!!
Our only stop on the whole 9 hour drive, was in Vegas at the Bass Pro Shop. We just went in and let the kids wander around and see all the neat stuff they have in there, I hadn't ever been either and it really was super fun.

Parker loved it, if you can't tell :)

Poor Layton was really sick with croup, he had just been in to the doctor getting some inhaled steroid treatments that morning. So he wasn't as spunky as usual, but he still enjoyed it.

After we wandered around for about and hour, we sat down in the parking lot and had some yummy lunch that my cute sister-in-law Nancy had packed for us. The we got back on the road again and got to our hotel at about 10 that night.

Yay for us! This is one reason why I am a little torn about having more kids right now, we are finally getting to the point where we can DO things...

FarmhouseWares...

First of all thank you guys so so SO much for all your sweet comments on Parker's birthday, I had lots of fun planning it and used http://karaspartyideas.blogspot.com/ for lots of inspiration, also http://www.celebrateexpress.com/ is where I buy all of my party supplies, I have used them every time since Layton's first birthday and am always so pleased with their stuff.


Anyway, thanks again. Your comments mean a lot to me, I get so sad when people can't come to the parties I throw. Most the time I understand... sometimes I don't :)



Now onto the topic at hand. The super cute blog sherbert blosom is doing a giveaway from this super cute store called farmhouse wares. Just so you know (hint, hint honey :) I would LOVE pretty much anything from here... for mothers day, birthday, just cause you love me... or a gift certificate would do just fine :)




a few favorites...

Parker's Construction Birthday Party!

Just so you know, there are about a Million pictures in this post... :)

Saturday we had Parker's 2nd birthday party! I had lots of fun planning and throwing this party for him. Parker loves anything construction so it was a fun theme to go with.


(the invitation)

- the welcome sign for our party guests! (he didn't stand at it the whole time :)

- The whole concept was that the guests were hired onto Parker's construction crew. So we had these cute little lunch boxes that the guests filled with their sack lunch...

- chips...

-peanut butter and jelly or ham and cheese sandwiches...

-water and an apple...

- each guest got a hard hat and stickers to decorate it with. plus a ... blower? (not sure what to call them:)

- his dump truck cake (I made it!)

-the cones were the candles

- the big orange cones were drinking cups

-the crew, hard at work :)

- I made everyone wear a hard hat... isn't my grandma cute :)

- I laid out blankets to eat their lunches on

- the birthday boy!

- isn't he the cutest?

-We had a bulldozer pinata

- the kids were super excited to take their turn

-Parker was super excited to find all the treats and put them in his lunch box

- everyone helped Parker blow out his candles with their blowers

- still working...

- opening presents, he was so spoiled :)

-one card had a $20 dollar bill in it and he saw it and hurried and put it in his pocket :)

-his gift from Lance and I

-and there never was a happier birthday boy!!!