April's no fool!

For our April fools day dinner, as usual, we had our funny plates and utensils to eat with. Jared was at a meeting is Salt Lake late and missed dinner, so I saved my real trickery until later.

Jacob eating his jello drink

After Jared got home and ate a little food, I told the kids that since Daddy had missed eating dinner with us we were having another dinner. I told them to come to the table for steak, mashed potatoes, and peas. They weren't very happy about it, and even after they sat down to their food they were still complaining that they didn't want to eat any more. Also, Mackayla kept reminding us that she doesn't like mashed potatoes. After they looked at their food for a minute, they figured out it wasn't another dinner after all! It was a chocolate swiss roll, ice cream and caramel sauce, and green candy.

The boys running out to greet daddy when he got home from work one day. Last Saturday, Mackayla and I went on an outing to the mall. Jared and Bradley stayed home, while Jacob slept, and made a bird feeder. We've all had a lot of fun watching the birds all week. There are three birds that are always there. The kids have named them, Orangie, Peanut Butter, and Jelly Sandwich.

Here's a picture of Orangie.

Mackayla is becoming a true little woman. I have to record this cute shoe story. We were at Big Lots last week, and they had a bunch of cute little girl shoes. Mackayla saw this pair of pink Dora jelly shoes and got so excited. She just had to have them! We finally decided she could buy them with some of her money, so for $5 she became one happy girl! The next day she couldn't wait to wear them to school! Even though she was going to be a little cold and she had to wear band aids on both of her ankles, it was all worth it to her to wear these fabulous shoes. I took a picture of her to send to Jared and she said, "you're going to put that on the blog aren't you?!" When I dropped her off at school, another little girl was getting there at the same time. I heard the girl tell her she loved her shoes as they were walking in. Mackayla was grinning from ear to ear. When she got home, she reported that she got several compliments and even her teacher asked her where she got her cute shoes. She said she had to tell her teacher that they only had little girl sizes. It was a shoe success!!!

We spent March Madness enjoying the Jimmer thrill! We had to eat in front of the TV for the BYU games.

Our little leprechaun on St. Patricks Day

The kids had to go on a scavenger hunt again to find the pot of gold that the leprechauns hid. We finished the day off with some green sprinkled donuts.

Jacob handed me my camera, sat down, and said cheese for this picture.

We've been enjoying the few nice days of spring we've had so far.

We're trying to get a lot of use out of the nice paths around the lakes in our neighborhood before the mosquitoes and geese return and take all the fun out of it.

When Bradley was saying his prayers the other night he said, "thank you for my favorite things" and began to move on. I asked him what his favorite things were, and he said, "my favorite things are dragons and throwing rocks into the lake." I'm glad he likes it so much even though I was hoping I'd make it on his favorites list. :)

Another exciting piece of news in our house is that Bradley is becoming quite the little reader! He's known his letters and sounds for a long time, but lately he's been able to really put them together and actually read now! It's very exciting and he is so proud! He can read the beginning Bob Books now.

Jared has been VERY busy at work and will continue to be so for the next couple months. He has a bunch of full estimates to get done. He surprised us last week and came walking in the door at 3 in the afternoon. He asked Mackayla why he was home early, and she said he was taking us to the Lehi swimming pool. Apparently they had planned it the night before. We had SO much fun and the kids haven't stopped talking about it since. Unfortunately, he had to go back into work later that night until 1am to get things done.

Jared's work has been having a bowling tournament, and we get to go watch him bowl every Tuesday night. That will last for a couple more weeks. With Jared's long work days we've been trying hard to stay busy without going too many places due to the lovely price of gas. I've been trying to get some spring cleaning done as well, but the kids just aren't as entertained by that as I am. That's about all we've been up to. We're hoping for lots of great spring weather so we can spend lots of time outside!