I Love This Kid!!

Talen is at such a fun age! Almost everything that he says and does cracks us up. I wanted to do this post so that I could remember how funny 4 year old's are. My older boys used to do the funniest things and I always thought I would remember them... I don't... so now I will record it for Talen. The picture below is him "snorkling" in our bath tub.
Talen is such an "artist". He loves to do many different kinds of art- coloring, painting, cutting pictures, singing, etc. One random thing that he loves to do is hang up weird things all over the house. Lately he has been hanging this big string from anything he can find to tie it to and then he hangs things off of it. This time it was a Spiderman glove hanging from the string... Oh yea- and he tries to WEAR the Spiderman glove wherever we go too... gotta love it!

A picture he drew and colored just for mommy!

This is one of his "creations" that he had to hang on his door. He usually makes me write on his drawings saying that his kids (Tegen & Tray) can't come in his room.

Another colorful picture that he hung from his wall in his room. Hmm.... And I wonder where all my tape goes?

Talen the Painter.....

Talen the entertainer~ He was singing "Circles, circles, stars, stars, triangles, triangles, squares, squares" all while strumming the guitar.

Yet MORE painting....

Oh- He doesn't just color on paper. Oh no- this fabulous artwork happened to be on our armoir in our family room- Nice! (Yes, that was sarcastic).

A few funny Talenisms:

1: He got out a notebook and pen the other day and sat down to write and I asked what he was doing and he said "I'm just mapping my prospects" Me: "Huh?" "What's that?" Him: "Mom, I'm just making a plan." Yea... so how old is this kid, 4 or 40?

2: Today he said "Mom, you can be my friend ALL day because I'm a winner!" There's definitely no self esteem issues with this kid.

3: "I love you- We are best buds!"

I love my kids SO much. They mean everything to me and I love how happy they make me. Talen really cracks me up! What a blessing!

Easter

Easter weekend was so busy!!! We started out on Saturday morning going to a neighborhood Easter egg hunt. The boys loved it- and I have to give credit to the women who organized it. They did an awesome job. It was so organized and non-chaotic. I know we've all been to an Easter egg hunt where it's total chaos and the kids get upset, but not this one. They did a fantastic job!

Then the boys had a football game and afterwards they went dirt biking (more to come on that later). Here's a picture of all my handsome men on Sunday morning before church!

Here's me and my sweet boys- I don't think they were enjoying the mini-photo session- so we didn't get very many good shots. Oh well!

I teach 8 and 9 years old's each Sunday so sometimes its hard to really feel the spirit but on that day I truly felt so lucky to be there. The kids sang some really good songs about the Savior and there were a couple of talks that gave me goosebumps and brought tears to my eyes. What a great day! Then on Sunday after church most of Ed's family came to our house for another Easter egg hunt and some dinner. Here is a picture of most of the grand kids. We had over 400 eggs for them to find! Our backyard looked like a candy factory that exploded! The kids had a great time though. My boys love playing with their cousins. Talen kept saying "I hit the jackpot!" because he had so much candy. And I was SO thankful for beautiful weather- it's always iffy (is that a word?) this time of year!

We decided that the kids shouldn't have all the fun so we decided to do adult eggs too. Each participating adult put $5 in and it all went in ONE egg then we all picked an egg and one person got it. There was a piece of paper in each egg and they all said LOSER except one that said WINNER. Our nephew Paul got the loot. It was fun! This is us all holding up our eggs and hoping to be the one with the lucky piece of paper inside.

Ed has 9 brothers and sisters so it's always a party when we get together. I think that I got so lucky to marry into such an awesome family! I never had sisters growing up so when I got married I instantly gained 6 of them! They are all so much fun and it's so fun to have so many cousins our boys' ages for them to play with. After we did the eggs the girls played cards and the guys just talked. What a perfect way to spend a holiday- food, family and lots of FUN!

Conference

I realize that I'm a little late in posting this seeing as how conference was 3-4 days ago but I guess it's better late than never. I so look forward to conference every October and April. I think that as I'm getting older I am finally realizing how important conference is and just how lucky we as members of our church are to be able to hear these great men and women speak to us. I feel so uplifted and inspired to be a better person and make better choices after listening to all of the great talks! I wish that I had the words to express how I really feel; unfortunately, (and those of you who regularly read my blog know this) I am not eloquent nor do I have a great gift with words and expressing my feelings. I really hope that everyone who was able to watch it felt as inspired as me and for those of you who didn't but would like to hear more about what we believe you can go here.

The one thing I always find stressful as my family and I sit down to watch conference is how wiggly and loud my kids can be. They move and wiggle and talk and giggle and play (or try to anyway). And really, who can blame them? It's like 4 hours of church! I always try very hard to find things to entertain them but it never fails... they get BORED... every time. I have tried coloring pages, the conference packets, word searches- basically anything that should be able to hold their attention for awhile but this time I found something that ACTUALLY worked for us! I was so amazed that I thought I would pass this along for any of you who struggle with the same thing. I typed out a couple of lists of random words that are likely to come up during talks: Jesus, temple, prophet, scriptures, missionary work, etc. I did about 20-25 words and then set out 4 or 5 bowls of different kinds of treats. Each time they would hear one of the speakers use one of those words they got ONE small treat from the bowl. They seriously hung on every word those speakers were saying. I cannot believe how well they paid attention. Even my four year old listened. He even got some of the words before the older boys a couple of times. I think that next time I will do some small pictures for Talen since the older two can read and he can't. He picked up really well on it though and I was thoroughly impressed with how well they did! They sat still for almost the entire thing except for about the last 10 minutes which was a serious accomplishment for our houseful of crazy, wiggly and at times exceptionally loud little boys.

I loved feeling the spirit last weekend and hope to carry that feeling with me as Easter comes this Sunday. I hope to teach my boys about the real meaning of Easter and pray that we can focus more on Christ our Savior and the Atonement and less on Easter bunnies and candy. Happy Easter everybody!!!!

You Might Be a Redneck If.....

On Saturday night we took the kids to the monster truck races. No offense to anyone... really... but wow! there was a lot of interesting people at these races. There was a woman behind us with her 3 kids who was hooting and hollering as if her child was graduating from high school or something. It was hysterical- she screamed at everything! We seriously thought that maybe her husband was one of the truck drivers... except, if that was the case why would she be sitting clear up top with us? Hmmm.... One of the main reasons that we went was because in between the monster trucks was motocross races and my brother Cody was racing. It was so much fun to watch!

The races seemed SO long though. Talen fell asleep about the last 15 minutes but I have no idea how he slept through the noise! The boys loved the Tyrannosaurus Rex that breathed fire and "ate" cars. Those trucks rolled and flipped and did wheelies and basically got destroyed. The boys absolutely loved every minute of it. I guess I could handle being a "redneck" for one night just to watch my boys' eyes light up each time one of those trucks did something crazy!