Spring 2011
Our entire Spring was unusually cold and wet. Although we were anxious throughout for warmer weather, the moisture eventually made everything lush and green and beautiful. This picture is in early spring, before the trees and grass had greened up. We were all outside on a Sunday afternoon playing with bubbles and kites. It was freezing.
Here's a cake I made for the Relief Society Birthday Dinner. It was a competition, and I came home with a prize! Of course the Bishopric (which includes Gregg) was the judging committee. He swears he didn't have anything to do with it.
Gregg always has a project or two or three he's undertaking on our property. He has a gift for being able to take things (anything: mouths, pieces of land, Church lessons, people, etc.), have a vision for how they can be, improve upon them, and make them better. I always get excited when his creative juices start flowing because the result is always super cool. This spring he built a beautiful accent fence for our orchard. Eventually it will have raspberries and other berries growing along it and grapes growing over the arbors. It is a beautiful addition to our home. Stone helped him quite a bit with building the fence. It was quite a project!

Stone had been planning on playing Spring Football, only to find out that that wasn't happening. He contemplated playing soccer with one of a couple teams that wanted him, but decided against that. Ultimately, he decided to spend the Spring helping Gregg on the property. For Gregg it has been a tremendous relief to have his big, strong boy helping him on the property. And, of course, it has been a great experience for Stone to work alongside his dad doing man jobs. They also worked out together throughout the Spring and that was fun for both of them.

Mack turned three on March 27th! He's all about trains, so that's what he got. We've been buying Brock and Mack trains for every Christmas and birthday for the past couple years and that's still what they want! You'd think they'd get sick of them! Here he is opening a garbage truck that he was super excited about from his Grandparents Wilson.
For Easter this year we decided to have a big Easter Egg Hunt down by the pond. Stone, Zeke, and Connor Burch, our neighbor, hid the eggs. All of our family members who were in town (my mom, my Grandma Carmie, Gregg's parents, and Ben and Nikki and Cannon) came as well as several families from our neighborhood (the Burches, the VanStones, the Budwees, and the Shaws). It was so much fun to have everyone there!
After the hunt we had dinner with our family members.
This season we raised six pigs. That's the most we've ever raised at one time. Stone bought them, raised them, and reaped the profits. We kept two pigs for ourselves (they are currently in our freezer) and we sold four. It's always an adventure loading the pigs into the trailer to take them to butcher. This year it went smooth as silk. We must be figuring this thing out!
Here is my pretty little Ella at her music performance of "Goldilocks and the Three Bears." Super cute program. It's a terrible picture, but you get the idea. She kept looking at me and smiling a big, beautiful smile. I tried to smile back as best I could between trying to take pictures and wrestling with her two little brothers.
For about a year Ella has been asking to take soccer. This was finally her season! She really enjoyed running around and giggling with other little girls. I think she enjoyed soccer, too. She loved it when we'd cheer for her at her games. In fact, at her first game, she made Gregg a sign that said "Go Ella!" on it for him to hold. That was so funny. She just kind of ran around like a cutie the first half of the season, but by the end she was really figuring things out. She's quite fast and can be agressive and effective when she's focused. Effective or not, she was always beautiful and it was so much fun to watch her!
And then there's Abbie and her soccer season. It is such fun to watch Abbie play. She makes things happen. She is dynamic, effective, and, of course, beautiful, out on the field. She generally scores multiple goals in a game. But even though she has the ability to dominate, she's really good about sharing the ball, placing beautiful centers for her teammates. The competitive coaches came and watched her play, were impressed with her ability, and wanted her on their team. But the fact that the competitive teams play on Sunday occasionally has kept us sticking to the recreation league.
Here she is at her team party, receiving awards for footwork skills she mastered throughout the season.
Zeke played football this Spring. He joined a returning team and within a couple practices he became one of their favorite players. They loved his speed, the way he could stop and change direction on a dime, and they loved his attitude. He's focused, positive, and intense. He played running back, receiver, and quarterback, and loved every minute of it.
Our three geese families. It's really fun to see these little families grow up each spring. We had one pair that built a nest in the field by our house. We watched the mom sit patiently on her nest day after day and night after night. We were anxiously awaiting the goslings' arrival when we found out a coyote (we think) got to them. It was really sad.
Our garden. We planted lettuce and spinach at the end of last season and it came up beautifully this spring. We didn't plan or expect it, but we'll do it again!
The girls and I went to Pocatello for the day for Abbie's clogging competition. Here she is with her cute little team.
Ella has never had a birthday party with her friends, so this was her year. We had several cute little girls over. They painted bags, made bracelets, and ate cupcakes and other treats.
And here's our party with family members. Her birthday was on a Sunday so it worked well to have everyone over for dinner (Ella's choice: spaghetti and strawberries) and cake.
Look at this deal! Fresh Snapper just $4.98!
Mack wanted one taken of him, too.
This spring Gregg and I went flew down to Salt Lake together. Carl Bloch has always been my favorite Church artist, and there was an exhibit of his works on BYU campus. Gregg had suggested months prior that we go down together, just the two of us, and see it, but I wasn't sure about leaving the kids again so soon after our Valentine's Day weekend. But the more I thought about it, I really wanted to see the exhibit before it closed in May. So, Gregg planned a great weekend for us, and we enjoyed some time away. The exhibit was a very special experience for us. It touched me more than I expected it to. We also went to a ballet (Ballet West's "Bolero"), a play ("The Telltale Heart" at Hale Community Theatre), and a live session at the Salt Lake Temple, which we had never done. That was very cool. We ate out at great restaurants, and enjoyed being together. My parents happened to be in town at that time, so we schnookered them into watching the kids. They were wonderful to do that for us.

Here we are on Temple Square.
Spiderman's all tuckered out.
Brock and Mack and I took our little rowboat out to the island on our pond, dubbed "Otter Island" by the kids. It was pretty and green, and the boys loved playing on it and throwing rocks into the water
One of my favorite things in the world is when we all go somewhere together as a family and every seat in our car is filled with a beautiful person! Here we are heading out to visit Grandma and Grandpa Wilson one Sunday evening. The boys are still in their white shirts, but have changed their suits for jeans. Super handsome.
Here are some of the beautiful spring flowers from our yard. Columbine are my favorite flower. Gregg took all these pictures.
In May we went down to Utah for Abigail's clogging competition at Lagoon. After leaving home, we headed straight for Thanksgiving Point's Dinosaur Museum. Brock loves dinosaurs right now and we thought it would be particularly fun for him right now. The kids had a blast. It's a really cool place.
Lagoon was a particularly fun experience this year because all of my family in the area came. Mikah and Shelley were there with Kasen and Aidan, Kelsi came up from Provo (her husband Brian was out of town), and Rusty and Joe'll and their six kids were able to make it! Their kids are all the same ages as ours and it's just a blast when we're all together. Plus, Rusty has the enthusiasm of a two-year-old when it comes to amusement parks, so it made it a super fun day! We stayed at Lagoon until 9:00 when we all met over at Rusty's and had pizza and watched "Despicable Me." It was such a fun weekend! It was fun to stay with Rusty and Joe'll and learn from them. The've acheived a love and respect between individuals (sibling to sibling, parent to child, child to parent) that is extremely impressive. It was good for me to be around them!

All these pictures were taken by Shelley who is always great at taking wonderful pictures. I found out when I was stealing them all from her Picasa Album that she labels all her pictures by the people in them, from left to right. Brilliant! I love learning things from people who are better at stuff than I am!

Here's stunning Abigail, all ready to rock it on stage.

With so many people and so many ages, we probably spent half our time planning out what we were going to do, who would go where with whom, etc. But, it didn't matter. When cousins are around, it's always fun!
I don't remember what this one is called, but it shoots you up into the air at super fast speeds. Mikah timed it on his watch to make sure they were accurate. Kelsi said she was pretty sure her seat was wet from a scared person before her. Gross.
The little boy cousins' favorite ride of all was the train. They were so cute! Shelley and Joe'll and I all had our last two little boys at the same time, so Kasen, Alex, and Brock are all the same age and Aidan, Carson, and Mack are the same age. We had quite a group of handsome little men running around!
I thought Abbie looked particularly pretty during Sacrament Meeting so I had to sneak a picture of her.
I was in the process of deleting this picture when I realized I kind of liked it. I was texting a picture of shorts to Stone to see if he liked them. (Those teenagers get a little picky about their clothes!) I like how my big boy's shorts dwarf my cute little boy who's holding them!
Near the end of May Abigail and Ella both had clogging recitals. Abigail had a Percussion Group concert at the same time in a different town, so it was a crazy night. These are the only pictures I got of the evening. Ella wasn't feeling great and I was getting her settled and happy in the dressing room prior to the performance.
Here is Stone receiving an award for the top History student in the 8th Grade.
That's my boy. All the kids ended their schoolyears well. And what's even better, the schoolyear ended in May, instead of spilling over into June. Hooray for budget cuts, I guess! Spring was great and now we're on to Summer!