Mothers Day / Summer Job Chart

So for Mothers Day Cordelle got me a cricut which I was super excited about and went to work immediately making my kids a summer Job Chart.  I know my kids will always be tortured by job charts.  I cant help it....I think its more for me than for them.  And thus far I have found out that it only works on one my kids.  Jaquelle is so unmotivated by it, its all I can do to help her every morning to do most her jobs.  Oh well. But their end reward is going to the aquatic center and they both want it bad so hopefully if I can keep them moving towards it, once they get closer they will be a little more motivated.  The Charts with their names on them were behavior charts or obedience charts and then of course if they got all their morning or Afternoon or Evening jobs done, they could move a space on their behavior chart too. There is one daily job that changes each day and then regular jobs like bedrooms, reading, and after meal jobs they do everyday.  I think it works well when I'm up and ready to enforce it.  If nothing else, it was good practice with the new cricut!

Its play time

Sometimes the princesses and the star wars characters do get along.  On this day they all were lined up taking turns getting their picture taken on our piano bench.  Seth had my phone and was taking pictures of one princess and one Star Wars guy together.  Pretty entertaining.

Cordelle is an awesome dad.  Before General Conference he printed off this packet for the kids to color and play with during conference.  And my kids LOVE to color and draw.  They color and draw all day long.  We have a sweet neighbor that visited us a few days before conference and told the kids he'd bring them something to color with for conference.  He showed up with this huge pack of markers and little clip boards and I'll tell you, my kids did not move from their markers and conference packets the whole first session! 

This is what a bunch of stay at home moms do when they get all their kids together in the middle of the day.  You have no idea how complicated this actually was.  We hooked as many small bikes and wagons and kids together as we could and made ourselves a little train.  Only one injury: Jaq fell off a bike and got drug 6 inches. But otherwise an afternoon success!

Dancing.  And of course she demands a picture any time she decides to.

My kids go through fazes about what their favorite "treat" place is.  Its Maggie Moos for a month, then snow cones, but on this night it was Arctic Circle.  I hate this restaurant and their ice cream.  But Cordelle loves it and its SUPER cheap so we end up there a lot.  This night I just brought a long the camera and Jaq was being photogenic so I thought I'd snap a few.

Jaq playing photographer.  And no that is not a real scar on Seth's eye.  I have a certain red/brown eye liner that if the kids ever come across they insist I put a scar over Seth's eye so he can be Anakin and two cheek dots on Jaq so she can be Queen Amadala like they were at halloween.

One day Jaquelle was downstairs watching Beauty and the Beast and Cordelle went down and watched the end of it with her.  During the credits he asked her if she wanted to dance with him like the Beast and Belle and so of course she did and LOVED it!  So then in this picture she had remembered dancing with her dad and went downstairs put on her Belle dress up and came up reminding Cordelle of their dance and asking him to dance again.  So this time I got the camera. So cute.

Big Bear playing the piano.  Thats right, our large stuffed animal bear is very originally named "Big Bear,"

These three pictures just make me laugh.  She really is my little sour patch kid!

There are a couple of other funny things my kids do that I want to remember.  For instance, we get a lot of packages for our wedding invitation business, so my kids see the UPS guy almost on a daily basis and he is like a celebrity to them.  So much in fact that I'll often go downstairs and see my kids taping up boxes with a big U-P-S written on the top. They'll distinguish different doors where they will drop off the packages, knock and wait for someone to answer.   Usually the boxes are filled with toys or left over invitations.  But they love playing this game and I think its hilarious.

And then, one day I went down stairs and both Seth and Jaq were re-enacting as many disney shows as they could.  I think I tried to video them, but I cant ever get blogger to update my videos well, so I'll just describe it.  They got out a blanket and sang as much of Aladdin as they could remember.  They acted out parts of the Little Mermaid, Belle and Beast Dancing, Ryder and Rapunzel scenes...I was actually quite impressed with how much of the movie lines they remembered. I love that Seth is on board with stuff like this.  I think its sweet that Jaq is the princess and that he isn't too cool to play the prince or the princess counter part yet.  There is nothing better than seeing your kids use their imaginations and playing something together....without fighting, or whining...:)

EASTER to the camping degree

Here it is again!  Every year.  Its Easter and you'll find out on the desert a campin! So this year we went back to "Falling Rock." Sounds like a cool camp spot right? Really its just a place just off a high way somewhere in between Green River and Hanksville in the San Rafael Swell (in the middle of no where) where there is a big rock that looks like its falling so my great aunt affectionally calls it "Falling Rock."
  This year really was incredibly nice!  Let see who was there?  Tallie and Jim got there Friday morning, Neal and Britt got there Thursday night, Scott and my parents of course were there.  Krista's family could not make it this year, which was really weird and made our family seem really small.  And then of course Brett and Mark couldnt come because of work and illness.  Anyways much of how Easter goes, depends on the weather (remember last year?) So I'll give a quick recap.  The night we got there was so warm and the moon was so bright that even though it was dark and close to 9pm, we had to problem setting up our tent.  We roped Scott into helping us set up camp and he willingly agreed because he had to tell us all about his new girlfriend, Breanne.  He is so twitterpated it was cute.  This is his first real girlfriend. (Ha! Real?!)  So excited for him. 
  Anyways that night turned out to be a little different than the hours before.   When we went to bed it started getting breezy, by 1AM I could have sworn we were going to be lifted up and carried off like the house on The wizard of Oz.  It woke Cordelle and I up multiple times scaring the crap out of us.  Wind in a tent is Loud!  Luckily the kids were zombies through the whole thing. 
  The next day we did Easter baskets in a cool morning and spent the afternoon driving to our old camp spot "Snoopy"  (again affectionally named after a rock in the shape of Snoopy the dog off of Charlie Brown.)  We can't camp there anymore because of lame new BLM regulations but we ate lunch there and climbed the ultimate sand hill that brings back so many memories of my childhood.  It takes a fit person about 20 minutes to climb to the top of it.  But even me with my pregnant belly (and Tallie pushing me up the entire way) made it in about 30 min!  So fun!  It was hard watching Neal and Tallie running down it at full speed like we used to when we were kids.  There's even a part at the top that is really steep that you can jump off a sort of ledge and get some serious air into the sand.  It was fun.  Cordelle stayed behind with Jaq and Gaven, and I took Seth with me.  He did great!  At the top is a huge rock cliff that we would hike when we were little and I took Seth with me and it scared me to death having him there with me.  I don't know how my mom did it with all us kids.  I think I have some pictures of this little 4-5ft ledge we walk on to get to the adjacent mountain, with a HUGE drop off to the side.  We did a little rock climbing which was very humbling for me, because for the first time in my life I had to have my little brother pull me up a a crevace in a rock cause my belly got stuck and my stomach didnt have the muscle power to pull myself up.  Probably should'nt be doing stuff that intense while pregnant anyways :)  Theres this little nitch in the side of another enormous cliff that we spent a lot of time when we were little we called "Echo" (thats right because you can hear your echo like 4-5 times because of all the surrounding cliffs and mountains.  So I really wanted to show Seth.  Unfortunately it was so windy, we could barely stand (which does not make for a good combination for an unbalanced, over protective pregnant woman an a 5 year old boy! Besides the wind made for a zero echo effect.  Bummer.  But still stoked to do the little climb after probably 9 or 10 years!  Actually we figured the last time we were here was when Cordelle and I were engaged.  We even hid a little treasure under a tree that we tried to find but had no success with.  :( 
ANYWAYS....we spent the rest of the day at Dead Horse Point and driving around before heading back for dinner.  It was a good day to be driving cause it really was pretty cold still.
  The next day was perfect.  We had decided earlier that no matter what anyone else had done, we would travel Friday but chill on Saturday and chill we did!  It was the perfect weather day and we stayed at camp playing games and eating our brains out!  We made a scavenger hunt for the kids using the GPS on my phone.  Their prize was Chipmunks Chipwrecked, which they were extactic for!  They got to watch it in Grannies trailer and we got a non kid interupted game of Settlers in with Scott.  We finished the day making a perfect dutch oven meat and potatoes dinner and had Grandma and Grandpa Durrant eat with us. (My dad left for the day to work at the temple, and Neal and Britt went with my mom on a day long hike....that ended up being a REALLY long hike cause they didnt get back till 9:30!) 
  Sunday we woke up went to the usual sunday easter meeting, had lunch with the extended family and packed up and went home.  It was weird not having Krista and her family there but overall, I thought we had a fantastic easter outing once again!  Here's pics from the weekend! (Of course)

only 3 kids this year at the easter basket trail head! (Gaven, Jaquelle, and Seth)

Easter baskets

Everyone from the family that was there: Tallie, Jim and Gaven.  Neal and Brittlyn.  Our family.  Scott (taking the pic) and Grandpa and Grannie Annie

At snoopy on the sand hill.  Its kind of hard to see but right in the middle of the pic are the cars.

Grannie on the hill!  She is awesome!

The ledge that we as kids ran up and down over and over again...which I bravely took Seth on all way up.

Recovering after the sand hill climb....(I tried to get Neal to turn around)

Tallie and Jim

Heres a good picture of the cliff.

And here's ECHO!  Our little cove where normally we can hear our echo 4-5 times!  The ledge is probably hundreds of feet high and its super steep to get down there.

Windy Wendy...:)

Helping Brittlyn.  This is what it looked like when I was climbing through the crack too, (I just didnt have my camera out to take it of me...)

I pulled down Seth most of the sand hill and then videoed people running down (Note:  This is like 1/10 of the way down)

Dead Horse Point

Of course there is a Easter Egg hunt...and boy did they score!

The end of of the scavenger hunt Cordelle made for the kids....x marks the spot.