Birthday Time!

With Wade's birthday and Emily's birthday a week a part, we often celebrate them together. We invited Wade's mom over for a nice lunch, and she brought Em a homemade crayon holder bag and some new Sunday shoes (which are already quite worn because she says they're her "favorite" and insists on wearing them every day! Funny girl.) Mom also surprised Wade with lots and lots of yummy snacks like oreos, pringles, mini snickers, and caramel candy. His mom sure knows how to make him smile. He was thrilled because it's all stuff I rarely buy.

Two very happy milk dunking, oreo-eating boys
When I asked Wade what he wanted for his birthday, he simply said, "a home-made apple pie." So that's exactly what I gave him. It happens to also be MY favorite dessert (with a scoop of vanilla ice-cream, of course) so I was more than happy to meet his request! ;)

Wade: Hey, I thought you were going to help me with this Em?
Em: Okay, daddy.

Sunday, Wade's dad and step-mom came over and helped us surprise Emily with a pop-up tent and tunnel for her birthday.

Can you tell she likes it just a little?

And I have a feeling that Jonny likes it, too.

It is PERFECT for cold days when they need to get energy out but can't play outside.

That night, my sisters and their families came over for dinner.

Orange chicken, ham fried rice, veggies and....

pink birthday cake, of course!

Even Taylor, Jonny, and Alex enjoyed the pink birthday cake, but I'm pretty sure our little princesses, Emily and Hailey were more excited about it. ;)

Santa Clara Swiss Days

Most of the time, I get excited about the life we're building in Sugarhouse, the beautiful community we live in, and the amazing neighbors we have. But there are some times that I get homesick and miss my family and the red hills of Southern Utah so much, I want to cry. When I heard my dad was losing weight and going to run the Santa Clara Swiss Days 5K, you better bet, it took me 2 seconds to decide I wanted to run it with him. It was one of the best experiences he and I have ever shared together. Love you dad!
The coolest part was that the route went right in front of my parent's house, where I grew up. As we ran down the hill, we were so excited to see my mom, Wade, Emily, and Jonny outside waiting for us, cheering us on. :)

At the Swiss Days Parade, we met up with my brother, Nick, and his family, and our friends, Jared and Brandi, and their kids, and Cynthia, and her kids. EJ admiring one of the classic floats honoring our Swiss HeritageJace sharing his candy with Em :)

Cheering for the whole Anderson fam as they ride by in the parade

Go Kirsten and Jocey!

playing in the water with daddy

Reality Check

1. I let my kids give their toys a "bath" in the sink all the time because it makes them happy and gives me a half hour to myself to read a book in my room or listen to some Michael McLean.
2. Last time, I left them alone to do this, however, I also had turned the stove burner on to boil some eggs, but managed to turn on the wrong burner! Aggh! So it lit my autum decor wreath on FIRE, which smoked up the whole house, and motivated us to practive some family fire drills the following days. Crazy, huh?
3. In the background in the picture above, you can see a clean house, but I can hardly believe it's MY clean house, because lately, my house looks more like this...

4. But it's okay it's this messy because I'm a nicer mommy when I'm not so anal about cleaning. ;)

5. I REALLY look forward to bedtime. They're just sweeter and nicer this way, aren't they?
6. Because I've been so busy, I haven't been doing Emily's hair as cute as often, so she resorts to doing it herself....Tell me she doesn't look like an orphan to make me feel better, won't you? haha

We have a house full!

My friend, Tara, is kind of a foster mom to 3 wonderful teenagers. They just didn't have a good home life before, so she volunteered to have them live with her. And when she went out of town for 5 days, they stayed with us, and it was a full house! Every morning, Emily and Jon would run into the living room and jump on their sleeping bags and wake them up, which I'm SURE they appreciated. ;) No seriously, they adore my kids, so they would end up getting into tickle fights at 7 in the morning. haha

Thursday, we went to visit my sister, Ruthanne, and feed the ducks at the pond by her house.

Friday, we went to the Gateway Pumpkin Festival to decorate pumpkins and cruise the mall. It's awesome hanging out with teenagers because it makes you feel like one, too. We didn't spend a dime but had such a blast! Here's Melanie, Emily, Jon, and Jazel showing off their decorated pumpkins.

They made cake and all sorts of different soups with their playdoe, every day, all day!

And we went to their favorite park with the tire swing a few times. Here's Jared, Jonny, and Wade playing frisbee.

In between watching the General Conference sessions, we made yummy sugar cookies and frosted them.
Although I think more of the frosting got on my counter, then on the cookies...

After delivering most of them to some families in our neighborhood, we went home, and ate some ourself. :)

We heart the baby elephant

Jocey came up from Utah County several weeks ago to join Kristal, Angie, and me for a day at the zoo.

Olivia, Regan, Emily, Jon, and Andee hanging like monkeys
seeing the new baby elephant for the first time.
She is so stinkin cute. We heart the baby elephant.
I just can't imagine being pregnant for 2 years like her poor mama! Sheesh!

Andee, Gage, Jonny, Brea, Sophie, Emily, and Regan

Utah State Fair

Alright, friends, I know I've been slacking with my blog. I've been updating my preschool blog weekly for the parents of my preschool students, so then I haven't had as much time or energy to also update our family blog. I've enjoyed reading YOUR blogs in the meantime, I just haven't done much with my own. Then last night, I thought it would be fun to show Wade some of my posts from last year, and we were both laughing at some of the experiences we've shared together. I realized again how valuable blogging can be to help me journal. And since we've had a lot of crazy and exciting things happen lately, I decided to get on the ball and finally update you all!

After we watched my sister's kids for a few days in September, my parents came in town to take over for us and stayed with them over the weekend. That Saturday, my dad decided to treat us all for a day at the Utah State Fair. We had a blast!

Hailey and Emily held hands everywhere we went. They are such good little buddies. It cracks me up!

Wade and Jonny, in their matching checkered shorts, checking out the cows

Emily picking apples at the Little Hands-On Farm

Jon and Em planting their seeds in the vegetable garden

You should have seen their faces when they saw what "their seeds" produced on the other side: dozens of carrots, potatoes, onions, the works! They were thrilled!

Wade, Emily, Cath, and Hailey on the big yellow slide

Wa-hoooooooooo!

Jonny didn't want to ride down it at first, but then he saw how much fun we had so he asked Grandpa to get him a ticket...

big mistake

He was not "wahoo-ing" to say the least!
"Daddy, don't EVER let me do that again!"

such a sad boy

The funniest thing about this picture is how appropriate it seems. Now before you get the impression that I THINK my husband is a PIG, believe me, that's just not the case. HOWEVER, Emily and Jon call him that, since they insist we all be characters from the show, Super Why. Jon is Super Why, Em is Wonder Red, I am Princess Presto, and Wade is Alpha Pig. So whenever they watch the show or see a pig anywhere, they say, "Hey, that's my daddy." I know it sounds awful, but it's kind of funny. Wade even has a sense of humor about it. haha

Cath, Hailey, and Em on our way up the ferris wheel

Thanks dad for a wonderful day!

Let the Wild Rumpus Start!

Last month, we had a lot of fun with cousins at a little family reunion in Orem.
They shot candy out of a sling shot for the kids. You can see that everybody's ready and waiting anxiously, except for Jonny, who's just sitting there, not knowing what the heck is going on.
Then BAM, he gets nailed in the head by a hard piece of candy! So I go to comfort my little guy, trying REALLY hard not to laugh because the whole scenario was quite hilarious, to be honest. haha Does that make me a bad mom? ;)

The next 4 days after that, we watched my sister's 3 kids while she and her husband were on a cruise. So that's where I get the title of this post, "Let the Wild Rumpus Start" just like from the book, "Where the Wild Things Are." Sunday night, Taylor and Alex pulled out all their old clothes and played dress-up with Jonny. As you can see from this picture, he didn't mind too much. He also didn't mind sleeping in their bunk bed with them! He liked it too much in fact, that he DIDN'T sleep, so by 10pm, we finally took him away from the fun with the boys, and had him sleep on the floor in our room. He REALLY loves those boys and all three of them could have stayed up all night laughing IF we let them.
Hailey and Emily put on dancing shows for us every night using some cool tunes from Hailey's pink CD player.
And when they weren't dancing, they were sliding down the stairs in Emily's sleeping bag. Good times! :)
Of course they insisted I do their hair the same everyday and were just happy and silly all the time together. Here they're peeking out the window, pretending to hide from the bad guys.
8 year-old Taylor made a KILLER fort! He brought in the soccer net from outside and used that, the kitchen table, 9 chairs, and every blanket in the house to create it, and it was just awesome. I was proud of his ingenuity, but Alex was even more proud of his older brother. He kept saying, "My brother, Taylor, he's the best at making forts, huh?" It was really sweet to see how much Alex admired him.I was a cool aunt and mom and let them eat their lasagna that night on blankets in the fort. Of course, after dinner, everybody did their part to help clean up the fort.

Then for the activity during Family Home Evening, Taylor, Alex, and Wade thought it would be fun to make another mess and build a huge tower. I wasn't too sure about it, but I gave the go ahead, and I was again impressed by my nephew's hard work and creativity.

Way to go boys!