Happy Leap Day!

What did you do with your extra day this year? We went on a field trip to the zoo with Christian's class. We enjoyed doing normal zoo things like looking at giraffes, lions, elephants, cheetahs, baboons, etc. We did some not so normal things, too. Like nursing Jessica with one arm, pushing the stroller with the other, chasing Declan and trying to keep up with Christian's group. :) Fun times. Then we also saw a show in the enchanted forest with live animals up close and personal that was pretty neat. It's the first show I've ever seen at the Phoenix zoo. This is a picture of Jesse, Christian, Declan and Austin just after eating lunch.
Because it's 'leap' day they had a lot of festivities to kick off a year long special exhibit about frogs and other amphibians. This is Christian, Declan and Austin with the big frog. Christian graciously agreed to pose even though 'it's not a real frog, mom, there's a person inside' (imagine him rolling his eyes at me while you read that) We also got to see the rattlesnakes, which is the animal Christian chose to do his big report on next week.

Okay, cute picture of Jessica time. Here she is happily playing with her feet laying in the hallway waiting for her brothers to finish their bath tonight.

Can you tell they're brothers? Declan just adores Christian and wants to do everything he's doing too. I can hardly believe Declan will be three years old next week. Time is flying by!

Fun Dip

Andy made it home before Christian got out of school today. It has now become a tradition that every other week or so on a day when he gets home early he will pick up Christian from school. Then they go to Water and Ice to refill our water bottles and pick out a special treat from the dizzying array of candy they sell. Today Christian discovered Fun Dip. The candy where you dip a stick made of sugar into different colors of sugar and lick it off before repeating. He was quite proud of his green "dinosaur tongue".

Declan doesn't have a green tongue but he wanted to show it off anyway. I thought I would take a picture to show off his mad dressing skills. Yes, that is the tag from the back sticking out from under his chin. The shirt was right side out when he got it from the closet but somehow he managed to turn it inside out before putting it on.

4 Months Old

Today's the big day! 4 months old. That should mean she's wearing 3-6 month clothes, right? Nope, our cute little chunky monkey is wearing 9-12 months.


Declan had a lot of fun playing with lincoln logs this morning after Christian went to school. (Yea! He's all better!) He wanted me to take a picture of his building so I grabbed the camera. If I had been a split second later you would not have seen this masterpiece, because my darling baby girl in the background rolled over so fast and kicked so hard it didn't survive. This photo actually captured the beginning of the kick. You can see the section of roof with the flag on it starting to tip.

Then she rolled back over just as innocent as can be. Who me? I wasn't anywhere near my brother's toys. Luckily, Declan thought it was just as funny as I did.

Sick Day

Christian had a fever Sunday night and all day Monday, but when he woke up on Tuesday he felt fine and didn't have a fever so I let him go to school. When I went to pick him up he said he felt horrible and his temperature was 102 degrees. He said he asked to go to the nurse at lunchtime but was told to get back in line. So I immediately called the school to tell them he was not coming back the next day and why. So today he is at home having a sick day. The fever has come down a little and while the Motrin is working he feels fairly good. But having a sick day means you stay in your pj's all day, drink lots of gatorade to stay hydrated and rest on the couch watching pbs shows like 'Super Why' and 'Word World'. We also did a craft project - little statues that you can only paint with crayola color wonder markers. (side note - as a mom I LOVE color wonder) Christian painted a fish and Declan painted a seahorse. It actually brought back fond memories for me of when we lived in Orem. There was a large store that my mom would take us to on State Street that sold unpainted ceramics. She would let us each pick one out and then we would come home and paint them. With real paint! The boys are going to take naps now so maybe I'll get one too.

Sweet Treats

Grandma Lucy brought us some sweet treats on Valentine's Day to enjoy after dinner. The photo shows all the fun frosting on top but it does not do justice to the enormous size of these cupcakes. They are sitting on a very large dinner plate. They are larger than the big muffins you get at Costco. I'm talking BIG. Grandma Lucy is our neighbor who lives across the street from us. She has been another grandma to our kids since day one - We love you Grandma Lucy!

The next sweet treat is a picture of Jessica. I can hardly believe she'll be four months old in a few days! (On Feb 22)

Gut Bomb

Okay, it's been a few days since my last post. We have been enjoying having Grandma and Grandpa Hedges here for the weekend. (Becca's mom and dad) We got to spend lots of time with them and with Becca's brother Nate. We're leaning on him pretty hard to start a blog of his own but it may be awhile. I told him he just needs to send me some pics of all the exciting stuff he's doing so I can post them. Then we teased him that we'll just start one for him with his name on it, but he won't have any control over the content so we can go hog wild :) Enough with the teasing, we got together for a family dinner on Sunday night and enjoyed an old family favorite for dessert: Gut Bomb. Horrible name, yummy dessert. Once upon a time it had a nice normal name, like 4-layer dessert or Chocolate Pudding Dessert but those were boring names, so Becca's Uncle Dave re-named it gut bomb many years ago and the name stuck. The whole pan was gone in less than 24 hours. So here's the recipe -
Crust: 1 1/2 cups flour
1 1/2 cubes butter, softened
2/3 cup chopped nuts
Cream Cheese layer: 1 cup powdered sugar
8 oz cream cheese, softened
1/2 9 oz tub Cool Whip
Pudding layer: 1 pkg instant vanilla pudding
1 pkg instant chocolate pudding
3 cups milk
Cream layer: 1/2 9 oz tub Cool Whip

Combine ingredients for crust and cut together as for pie crust. Press into a 9x13 inch baking pan. Bake at 325 degrees for 10-15 minutes or until light brown. Remove from the oven and cool. In a bowl, beat together sugar and cheese until fluffy. Add one half tub cool whip and spread on cooled crust. In another bowl, mix the puddings and the milk together blending well. Spread on top of cream cheese layer. Chill until set. Spread rest of cool whip on top. May use other pudding flavors as desired.

Happy Valentine's Day!

We hope everybody has a happy heart day!

Yucky Stuff!

Well, it's Valentine's Day, and when you have young kids, that means candy, candy and more candy. Declan had two girls bring him a valentine, Jenna and Claire. The boys are still in the kitchen chowing down on every piece of candy while I'm typing this. They're more sampling than chowing down. Unwrapping a piece and tasting it before unwrapping the next. Declan pounced on a Hershey's kiss and went over to the trash can to unwrap it. (Can you say well-trained?) So he's standing there and unwrapping it while HOLDING IT OVER THE TRASH CAN. (You can see what's coming next, can't you?) All of a sudden I hear "OH NO! MY CHOCOLATE CANDY!" as he looks up at me with those wide eyes and half the foil wrapper dangling from his fingers. No Hershey's kiss anywhere to be seen. I hurried over to see if we could 'save' it -ewwwww- but it had fallen below the top layer of trash down into the YUCKY STUFF. (I had just cleaned out the leftovers from the fridge.) BIG tears ensued. But then Christian saved the day by sharing another chocolate candy - a butterfinger heart so all is well now. The top photo shows Declan pointing to the yucky stuff that robbed him of his chocolate candy. The bottom photo shows that Christian made out like a bandit at his valentine's party at school.

What a Fun 'New' Toy

Jessica has been enjoying her 'new' exersaucer this past week. I say 'new' because it's new to her - Christian and Declan also enjoyed using it when they were little. Declan decided he might still enjoy using it - he just had to climb in and check it out for old times' sake. He sure has grown quite a bit since the last time he used it.

Mill Avenue

We were able to go out tonight to Caffe Boa on Mill Avenue with our friends Dave, Tami, Brian and Lori. We had been getting together monthly for dinner at our homes for a long time and then Lori, Tami and I were all pregnant at the same time. Lori and Brian were able to leave Jack and Maddy at home and enjoy a baby-free evening. (It's a good thing, because their babies are so cute they would have upstaged everyone else in the photo) :) Many, many thanks to Uncle John (Becca's brother) for watching Christian and Declan for us so we could go out. It was so nice to spend time with our friends. Time flies when you're having fun - it took about 4 hours to have dinner and dessert.


Here's a pic of the whole group

Lori, Tami, Becca

Brian, Andy, Dave

Year of the Rat

Happy Chinese New Year! It is the year of the Rat. We celebrated by taking the kids to their first symphony at the Chandler Center for the Arts. A friend of ours, Robert Luster, plays in the Chandler Symphony Orchestra. Last night they had a special program with all the music by Chinese composers and with professional Chinese soloists. They had lion dancers before the performance and they danced right in front of our row - We could have reached out and touched them if we wanted to. Christian and Declan thought that was really neat. Cameras were not allowed inside, but we were able to get a picture of Andy and Declan with the lion head afterwards. The boys loved the music and sat on the edge of their seats for most of the performance. I wish we could have taken pictures inside, even if just to take one of the boys. Declan had both of his pointer fingers up and was pretending to conduct the orchestra. The first soloist was Joy Jia Ye Pan who played the violin. Then Youliang Zhou played an instrument called the Erhu which was really neat. The last soloist, Jian Liu, played the piano.

Cutie Patootie

Jessica's new trick is to stick out her tongue constantly. She loves it if you stick your tongue out at her.

Near Miss

If this is a "near miss" I don't want to see what would happen if Andy actually got hit. This is how he describes what happened at work last Tuesday - "It was just a near miss" No, the 200lb aluminum gantry did not miss him as it fell, but merely grazed him. OUCH!!!!! I am so happy the injuries were not worse and he came home to me alive. I had spoken with him on the phone during the day but he didn't mention anything about it until he was home because he knew I would worry about him all day until I could actually see him. It makes it very difficult to hug him without hurting him. It also grazed his shoulder. Of course, all the guys at work think that 'chicks dig scars' so it's pretty cool.

Biker Boys

We had a busy morning today. Austin, Cayden, Devrin, and Kayla came to play while their parents went to the temple. We got a taste of what it would be like to have a large family. A large, YOUNG family. 7 kids age 5 and under. I'm happy to report that they were all absolutely wonderful. Of course, if we had 7 kids all the time, I know they wouldn't be angels all the time. They played hard all day so our boys took really good naps this afternoon. Afterwards we got to go on a bike ride. I think you can just barely see Declan in the trailer behind Andy. I had Jessica in the stroller and tried my best to keep up. We did the 2 mile loop through El Dorado. We took this picture at the end of the bike ride. Christian loved it!

How do YOU spell relief?

I spell it b-e-n-z-o-c-a-i-n-e which is the active ingredient in baby orajel and similar products. Yes, we have a little teether in the house. The signs have been there, I just didn't want to believe it. The constant drool, gnawing on her hands for relief, an inability to sleep for long periods without waking up screaming. My goodness, she's only 3 months old - she can't be teething yet, can she? After a really, really rough night on Wednesday I broke down last night and bought some benzocaine cream. RELIEF! She went from only being able to sleep from 15 to 45 minutes at time ALL NIGHT LONG to a gloriously long 4 hour first stretch.