Happy Happy Birthday!!

Happy happy birthday Greggy dear! Happy days will come to you all year, if I had one wish that it would be a happy, happy birthday to you from ME (us!)

Ah, what fun. We needed a quick get-away. What a perfect day! Gregg's birthday May 18th! (yes, I am a month behind!) Gregg wanted to take the boat out and have a little family fun! He has the best time of year for a birthday.....mine is always cold and dreary! He already has his next years festivities planned out.......
Zeke LOVES to drive.....doesn't he look adorable!
Kaden thinks he rocks! And right after this picture was taken made the coolest ninja karate type move you have ever seen!
Jaxon likes to play it cool! gimme and apple and a water and I am set!

Gregg, well I will spare him and not share the AWESOME picture I got of him!

I love you so much! Man, I can't believe you are already 35! I guess I will have to share the 35 things I love about you!

I LOVE HOW.......
1. You are always by my side
2. You support me when times are tough
3. You bring out the good things in me that I don't always remember to bring out! :)
4. You are an awesome Father
5. You are a big teddy bear under all that gruff
6. You give awesome tickles
7. You give awesome massages
8. You are the cutest little boy who likes his big toys!
9. You teach the boys the right
10. You tell me to buy whatever I want (why can't I do it?)
11. You have no clue about the bills! :)
12. You love to be in your bliss about the real world of money! I wish I could!
13. You love your mom and dad
14. You love to take it easy and remind me to relax.....
15. You have the memory I wish I had
16. You kicked butt at school and FINISHED!
17. You always get the little boy grin when you look at your big boy toys!
18. You are the worlds best lawn mower
19. Chocolate always cheers you up!
20. I love how you love to make me and the boys happy
21. You love your family
22. You love my parents
23. You love my family....mostly! :)
24. You have the most beautiful eyes!
25. You gracefully loose your hair
26. No matter how hard I work at trying to keep you on a good diet I always seem to find chocolate wrappers and zinger wrappers hidden somewhere........
27. You would still wear your Jeff Specoli shoes but don't out of respect for me?!
28. You still listen to 80's rap (when no one is around---in the closet!)
29. You take longer to get ready in the morning than me!
30. You sit through all of the wonderful 'family' outings you hate for me
31. You secretly like the dogs we have had for 13 years! (you still would never admit it)
32. You are still jumpy around spiders
33. You would wear shorts all year....even when blowing snow in the middle of winter
34. You know all music trivia I have ever heard
35. YOU ARE ALL MINE!!

I love you even though this is so late, we had fun on your day! And that is what matters most!

Mother's Day

WOW did I get a wonderfully nice Mother's day! I loved the paint so much in the front room and family room I threw it out to Gregg and said I would like the entry and upstairs hallway painted for Mother's day! (thinking I would get the 'yea right' in reply) and to my surprise he said okay! So Gregg worked his tail off......

As I have said before Gregg does not have the best balance and because of such he is a little afraid of heights. Therefore when I suggested it, knowing we have a 18 foot entry way, I knew I would be doing that part of it! Luckily our friends have a scaffolding we borrowed otherwise there is no way we could have done it!

Well after painting the front room, dinning room and now the entry and hallway I was exhausted and did not want to do any more painting! So we stayed up LATE!!! When I got home from a friends basketball game that night I was pooped and wanted to go to bed at 9! I was so tempted to just let Gregg finish. But I knew better. It was either help him out and get it finished tonight or have a mess for another few days (we had more baseball and soccer games)!
Then after about 1 in the morning we were so tired you could tell! We were almost finished. We only had the final touch ups and this happened!

We could have died! Gregg accidentally grabbed the trim color paint and NOT the ceiling paint! YIKES! I didn't catch it either until Gregg said, 'um Carrie look at the ceiling!' So needless to say my bedtime at 9 ended up at 3 the next morning! We waited for the mess up to dry and then we painted over it in the right ceiling paint!
Oh well it looks fantastic and I could not have gotten a better Mother's day present!

Grandparents Day

Jaxon's Grandparent day program was so fun! He is the master of surprises. He is much like his dad in that he can and does go to school and learns and does so many things and NEVER tells me a thing about it. (I tease Gregg all the time because it seems as though he always has to have something under his sleeve I don't know about......).
Jaxon's class learned a whole bunch of songs to sing to Grandma's and Grandpa's:

• Grandma's Glasses
• Grandma's Feather Bed
• Grandma's House
• You are my Sunshine (Jaxon hates this one!)
• Grandpa
• Grandpa is my Favorite one
• Memories

I loved it and could not believe he learned that many songs and didn't let me know at all!!! I guess that is just part of having boys, you are always left in the dark! It was really cute! The program consisted of many of the kids relaying stories of them and their Grandparents. Then there was a slide show and at the end the kids escorted their Grandparents in a waltz! Jaxon was hilarious! He was trying so hard to get the steps just right and his steps were like 2 feet apart (huge square steps). I guess if you are going to waltz you need to make a statement right?! I even was lucky enough to dance with him too! He is such a little charmer!

FINALLY!

After

and this........
and this......

the outside of our house is fixed......
they found the cause and fixed the problem. Not as bad as we originally thought. What a relief! And to make it so so so much better look who we had working on it for us......

YANNI!!!

Bobble head Zeke

Spring time is endless sports at our house! Growing up in a family of all girls I had NO IDEA what sports seasons were like. The only sports we did growing up were dance, gymnastics and skiing! And as for cost, I remember my mom always saying girls are so much more expensive than boys! Well I am sure both are super expensive because if she thinks girls are expensive boys are too! On one of our many trips to Sports Authority this season we ran into this amazing bobble head Zeke! If you have never seen one, I will share.....
Here he is isn't he cute! Every time we go to Sports Authority or Big 5 the boys have to try out EVERYTHING!!! Today as we worked our way around cleats, camping supplies and basketball stuff we ended up at the baseball stuff! While Jaxon was trying to talk us into getting him his own baseball helmet (because so and so have their own why can't I?) Zeke needing to copy everything his brothers do put this on. It was hilarious! He put it on backward and couldn't see out of it. He was laughing so hard and the helmet was just bobbling around his head!
Jaxon was chasing him around! Zeke was loving it! Right down to the point where he was running so crazy (yes the employees at Sports Authority cringe when they see us coming) that Zeke ran smack into a display in the middle of the tile aisle! It was a good thing he had the helmet on or he really would have gotten hurt! :)
Kaden was also trying to work us over on the complete baseball equipment package. After all you can't use the same bat two years in a row he needs a new one. And he was pushing the helmet purchase also! Boys, they are so much fun, in such a destructive sort of way!

Easter

Easter was a blur! It went by so fast I can't stand it. I am sure it had nothing to do with the fact we were still living in a disaster area! We had invited my parents over for dinner (again thinking the dinning room would be finished) and instead we had a family room full of furniture from a front room and family room!
But we survived. It was a mess and completely embarrassing but we did it anyway. The steak was to die for (although the griller still needs to realize steak is much better pinkish red not black!). The boys had fun. The Easter egg hunt at Nana and Papas is always so much fun.
Zeke has started his new 'concentration face'! I think he was still trying to figure out what exactly we were doing!
Kaden always around and trying to help Zeke out! What an awesome big brother!
Jaxon takes this stuff serious!
Ah, aren't Terri's little girls so cute! Look at them checking out their eggs!
Aren't holiday's fun to get together with family! I love to spend time with my oh so busy sisters! (Terri you are such a brat for turning!)

I don't know why, but sometimes I let my worry of how well the kids will sing in sacrament meeting overshadow the day! That unfortunately happened again this day. I need to remember they will sing best they can and the parents won't think I stink....right? They did awesome! My boys are even starting to sing. And Zeke, what a crack up! he gets out the Hymn book and sings too! It is so adorable!

Time Flies!!

Wow does time fly. I swear it has not been a month and a half since I blogged.....seriously! I have so much to catch up on. And if the reason I had not blogged was because I had nothing to say, well I would not have much of an excuse. But believe me, so so so much has been going on. I don't know where to start.
I guess I will start with the cliff hanger I left on. First, thank you all for your advise on my paint colors. To end the suspense (I know you all have been waiting for ha, ha, ha!) I didn't pick any of those colors! Gregg and I decided I am completely color challenged. I can not pick out paint colors for the life of me. Take a look at my hideous bedroom for proof! So anyway, we started to paint only after Gregg went back to home depot and got 3 more samples......needless to say two of them were perfect. The third not so much. And I only think he chose that third one was because I asked him to pick three!
The dinning room.....ah so beautiful. It looks even better completely finished with stuff on the walls, but please give me a little break. I have a little to catch up on so those will have to be at some other time. The boys loved to help too. Kaden got to put primer on the walls and Zeke had his own little paintless paint tray.....um no it didn't really work (we had a lot of trauma from Zeke). And Jaxon was well typical Jaxon 'huh you need help?'....I wonder where he gets that from?
One of the biggest challenges for us was to paint the ceilings. OIE!!! We painted when we moved in. And let me tell you, we (meaning mostly Gregg I was pregnant at the time) had to paint, tile and do the wood floors in two weeks! It sucked. Poor Gregg, our paint job was the least of his worries at the time. So we hurried through it and have wanted to repaint and fix things up ever since. The ceilings were one of the things that we wanted to paint white for quite a while. It was such a job! Gregg painted great and I did the little fixes and got on the very high and very scary ladder (Gregg is so clumbsy I was terrified he would fall and get hurt! And I promise I am not being mean, he will admit it!).
The color in the dinning room is sort of an olive color (river bed). Gregg did a great job on the crown molding and base molding (another upgrade we have wanted for quite a while). The color in the front room was mochachino. It is a camelean color. I swear it was not even from the green color pallet yet it looks very soft green, just the color I wanted. It is beautiful! I am sure the green is reflected off the dinning room and gives off the green color to the family room and that is why but I really love it. That 18 foot peak at the top was so so scary! See that little measly old ladder in front of you? Well that flattens out and probably only reaches 14 feet or so. So yes, I had to reach and the rungs on the ladder are only maybe 3 inches wide! It was not fun! The whole project we started 5 days before easter thinking oh ya, for sure we can be done by Easter took us about 1 week and a half! The lovely mess you see in the pictures was what we had to deal with for that long. I swear baseball and soccer really suck when I have stuff I want to do! :)