HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!

I love being a mom! I am so very grateful for my wonderful children and amazing husband. It's so much fun every Mother's Day to get all of the fun little things that the kids have made you at school and church.

I can't believe just how quickly the girls are growing up. Kennedy will be 13 in July, Morgan 10 in August, Emree will be 7 May 26th, and our little baby birdie is 1. She just started walking this week! Pretty soon she will be cruising around the house. How I love my little girls and wouldn't trade them for anything in the world!!!


Brackon is so sweet to always let me buy my own presents, even though it drives him crazy. He wants to be able to surprise me, but I'm always finding things that I want and letting him know that it's for my birthday, or Mother's Day, or Anniversary, when they roll around. I need to be better about letting him surprise me. I love you handsome!! Thanks to my sweet family for always making me feel so special and loved. Mommy loves you!



I'm also so very grateful for my own mom and what an amazing person she is. I learned all I know from her and want her to know how special she is to me. She's an angel in my book. Any women who can have 7 kids in 9 years and still be as sweet and loving and wonderful and strong as her she is (and also be an absolutely amazing grandma to 23 grandchildren) deserves to be crowned the world's most amazing mom! Thanks for everything you do for all of us mom! We love you!!!

Now, we also have another amazing mom in our life, mom Curtis. What an awesome mom and grandma you are. You are such a rock in the family and we are so grateful for all that you do and stand for. Thank you for raising such an amazing man and teaching him in the way you did so that he grew up to be the person he is today. We would be lost without him and are so appreciative to you for instilling the qualities that he has within him. We will forever be grateful!

To both of our mother's, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, "All that I am and hope to be I owe to my Mother."

4th Grade Pioneer Trek

Every Year the fourth graders at Cherry Hill Elementary have a 2 mile pioneer trek to go along with their Utah history class. They get real handcarts and have them dress up like pioneers were dressed back in the day when they were on the trek from Nauvoo to the Salt Lake Valley. Even the chaperons have to dress up! It's a good thing my mom had pioneer clothes that I could borrow. My younger sisters had a trek that they went on once upon a time (I think when they lived in Michigan) so she made clothes for them then.

They gave us groups of 7-8 kids. I had a group of 7 kids, 3 girls and 4 boys. We were lucky and had 5 adults in our group.

Morgan (right), Elle (left), and Maria (center) are best friends and were in a group together.

Morgan and I getting ready to go! I was worried when I posted these that people who weren't Mormon would think that we're FLDS - WERE NOT!!! Fabulous look isn't it?! For as many layers as they wore it's surprisingly cool and comfortable, though towards the end I was dying to take the 'wig' and bonnet off, but we all know that that was not about to happen. I would've terrified everyone! I roasted my rear end off at the end!

We started at the front of the school and as we got towards the back of the school they had all of the other grades out on the lawn waving goodbye to us. It was so cute!

There were 3 check stops that we came to along the trek. There were 10 handcarts altogether and the first 6 or 7 'families' lost their boys to the Mormon Battalion.

The boys in the Mormon Battalion had to go a different route that was a lot longer than the original trek. They even had wooden guns to carry. By losing their boys, the girls were left to pull the hand carts by themselves. We were handcart #9 so we didn't lose any of our boys, but 2 of our boys broke their legs and the other 2 were shot, so they had to ride in the cart. Our poor girls are so little and we had some big boys so parents had to help pull, especially through the field.

At the second check stop they told us that Morgan had fallen ill and needed to ride in the handcart. She was so excited!

Our third check stop was at Strong Hollow. Mr. Strong is one of the 6th grade teachers at the school whose property we used. His family owns all of the surrounding homes and they share the beautiful backyard known as Strong Hollow. Mr. Strong set our 'entry' up and once we got to the back we set up leantoo's (sp?) that our 'family' would eat in.

We all parked our handcarts.

A gentlemen that specialized in pioneer history from St. George came to talk to us and brought a ton of fun things for the kids to do. They made butter.

They had old tools for the kids to see how they did carpentry work back then. These particular ones were tongue and groove tools.

They had a really fun rope swing. The kids had to climb up on a huge rock to be able to get on it.

They made rag dolls that were adorable!

The gentlemen who came told the kids about the first capitol building that was built in Filmore. The building was made out of sandstone so he brought some so that the kids could see how hard it would've been for them to build.

They dipped candles.

All together there were about 10 different centers that the kids could go to. Every time they completed a center they would get a special colored bead that they would put in their little leather bags they made and have hanging around their necks.

Finally they learned a little dance before we headed back to the school. It was really a fun activity, one the kids will never forget.

A Trip to the Zoo....Or NOT!!!

On May 2nd all of the 1st graders were going to the zoo. Emree was so excited! All week long their class was making different animals with moving heads and tails and talking about it. I was one of the chaperon's and they had us at the school at 8 am. We were waiting for the buses to get there and one little boys dad who worked at the zoo was talking to the kids about all of the new babies and what to look for. Finally at 9:30 am Emree's teacher, Mrs. Poai, went out to the office to find out why the buses weren't there yet. After about 10 min. she came back in and told us that the district transportation office never scheduled the buses for us and there weren't any bus drivers so they had to cancel the trip. WHAT - CANCEL A ZOO TRIP FOR FIRST GRADERS!!! We could not believe it! The kids were so sad.

To try and make it up the teachers had us walk to a near by park to play and eat our lunches. The kids had a great time. These are two of Emree's good friends , Elizabeth and Jessica.

The park had a big pond and the kids were thrilled to find that the ducks had laid their eggs all around in the rocks!

The girls spent most of the time exploring around the rocks. Just before we left the park we took a picture of Emree's class. When we got back to the school they had set up the gym like a theater and we watched the animated Robin Hood and eat Krispy Kreme Donuts! YUMMY!!! Maybe we should cancel trips more often. They rescheduled the zoo trip for May 9th and had a great time seeing all of the little baby animals. The albino alligator was Emree's favorite!

Visiting St. George!

It has been so nice to live close to family again. Every time we have a chance we head on down to St. George to visit the Curtis family. We had such a great time at mom & dad Curtis' house. On Saturday we had a BBQ and took in some rays while the kids all swam in the pool and played in the hot tub.

The kids LOVE the hot tub! They think it's a special little pool made just for them!

Emree and Demie

Brackon and Dad Curtis were taking care of Berkley.

Coby and Tiffany have a HUGE dog named Abby! She is the sweetest thing and the kids love it when they get to see her. Berkley loved giving her snuggles! Abby makes Berkley look like a dinner mint!!