New Friends

This week has been a really good week for me and the main reason is that I finally went over and met our new neighbors across the street and took them cookies on Monday. They had moved there in December while we were in SLC and I just have not gotten over there to welcome them and introduce ourselves until now(mostly due to cold weather and illnesses). I'm so glad I did though. It was an instant friendship for all of us. I had first met the grandma earlier last week and she was really nice. And then I met her daughter who looks to be about my age I think. She is also very nice and very easy to talk to. They have two kids that are close to the same ages as my two oldest kids. Nikki has quickly become very good friends with the little girl, who just turned 5. And they have a little boy that will be 3 in May. The boys don't really play that much together yet because he keeps running back from our house to his house, not really sure where he wants to go. But I'm sure him and Garrett will be friends in no time. All I can say is it is so nice to have friends for my kids to play with that I don't have to travel anywhere for them to be able to do that. Now they can just run across the street or their friends can come over here. I love it! I also love that I have been able to make a new friend as well. Here are a couple of pictures of the girls and some miscellaneous ones.


Making their own crowns.

And now showing them off.

Jack loves bread!

Garrett enjoying his peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Nikki is helping Jack learn how to walk. What a good big sister.

Visits from family

Last night my parents and grandparents came over to visit. My dad has been in Iraq working for the last 4 1/2 months and is home for a short vacation.

Nikki and her grandpa (my dad)

Jack having fun with great grandpa.

These kids were so playful and hyper it was hard to get them still for a picture but we all had a good time.

Last night I also had my cousin and her friend spend the night and the kids LOVED playing with them. My cousin came from Utah to get a picture of a painting that our grandpa painted for me many years ago. She's on a road trip to hunt down all of grandpa's paintings to get pictures of them and clean them and anything else that needed done and we were the first stop. The kids were so excited that they ended up sleeping in their sleeping bags out in the family room with the girls. They felt like it was a sleepover. Then this morning Nikki wanted to show them how she can ride her bike. This is her fourth time trying to ride without training wheels and this time she took off as if she's been doing it for a long time. She just started riding all around the culdesac and she did great! Sorry Curtis, she learned to ride before you got home. But I guess I told you she probably would :) Now she'll be ready for family bike rides, maybe even riding home from school if I take her bike to her on the bike trailer.

A good day to be outside!

The weather felt a lot like spring weather today so I couldn't miss this opportunity to get outside for awhile. So I did a bit of yard work.

Here is the side I worked on. I started out trimming the rose bush. Then I just kept going by cleaning out the rocks, leaves, and dead branches from around the bush.....and kept going. Before you knew it I was throwing old dirty rocks in the garbage and taking out the old ground cover and throwing it away as well. Then I raked up the dirt to even it out and make it look better. I think the pictures are a little dark because my battery was about to die. If you click on the picture to make it bigger you'll notice we have tulips sprouting up already thanks to my friend who planted them for me last year.

Here is the other side that I didn't get to today. That will have to wait for another day.

Garrett even came out after he woke up from his nap and wanted to help. He wore those yellow gloves and helped me rake the dirt and pick up rocks and leaves. After we finished he discovered the little trampoline and started jumping.

Then realized the big one was better. It's nice for him when he's the only one jumping. No one to bounce him down.

This was taken a few days ago. Jack and Garrett love to play under the kitchen table. Just had to share this because it was too cute.

Who says vampires don't exist?

I have two vampires living in my house!

And their teeth are yellowish green!

We've had a couple of nice days lately so last week the kids went out on their bikes. Nikki decided she didn't want training wheels anymore. However, she didn't realize how hard it would be to keep from falling over. But she kept telling herself "I can do this, I can do this". I ended up holding the back of the seat most of the time. The rest of the time she would stand there and keep trying to put both of her feet up on the pedals and end up quickly catching herself. We'll work on this some more when it gets warmer.