Understanding Nature.

Today Will put me in my place.

This morning we acquired a new piano keyboard from some friends. It has been loud and exciting at our house. As soon as Will got home from school he was right there with the other two Mozarts pounding away. I told them multiple times to be gentle. We are working on that trait at our house.

Well it couldn't have been longer than three minutes later, that the boys somehow managed to temporarily break the keyboard, something to do with the plug and wires..... well we eventually figured out how to fix it. I was a bit frustrated and as I was in the act of putting things back together, I told the boys that they lost their playing privileges for the afternoon and if they couldn't be gentle we would put the piano away for good. Will stopped me and said, "Now Mom, don't be mad. You need to understand that sometimes nature doesn't happen the way you want it to."

Truer words were never spoken.

Easter and General Conference

I loved that Easter was on General Conference Sunday.

It made for a wonderful weekend and gave us a great activity to do during sessions Saturday afternoon. I think the boys dyed every egg in the house, those boiled and those not.

Mike's family had a great traditon of eating yummy fingerfoods on General Conference weekend. If I remember right Mutsi and Papa would ask the kids what they wanted to eat during the weekend conferences and walla, happiness was served. We've tried to do the same since we have been on our own.

Here is a shot of some of the goodness enjoyed this time around.

General Conference weekend is wonderful. Jake couldn't agree more. Here he is soaking it all up during the Saturday morning session. We think he got a lot out of it.

Look Who's One!

Happy Happy Birthday Jakey.

Our baby turned one on March 30th.

This year has zipped by so fast. Somehow this quiet, mellow, newborn baby of ours is now a walking, grunting one year old.

He is such a blessing to our family and has been the silver lining and the sunshine of our year. We are so grateful he came to our family.

When Jake woke up on his birthday, he found his new slide.

He wasn't sure what to think about it.

Eventually he liked it OK. But then he saw the balloons tied from ceiling.

They were much more impressive and the slide became a means to get a little closer to those fabulous balloons.

Later, Jake unwrapped his own box of toothbrushes. With his eight new toothbrushes he found euphoria.


Dad surprised us all and came home early from work. So we went to the Zoo of course.

The Zoo had so much to marvel at.


Including Ike's outfit he chose to wear.

(Is it wrong to take your child out in public dressed like this?)

The gorillas didn't seem to care that he was wearing his black Sunday socks, flower print swimsuit, and green and white striped, long sleeved airplane shirt.

And Jake didn't care what Ike looked like either. He only cared that Dad didn't turn him away from the Birds.

Jake loves Birds, here he is trying to flap like one.

Birds make him soooo excited.

....and we saw gorillas and tigers too.


Soon it was time to go home for cake and ice cream.

The masterpiece this year.

Mom should have known that the only person She was making this cake for was herself. When you turn one do you really care what your cake looks like? You really don't. But mom appreciated that the hours spent on this barnyard were admired by Will and Ike, Jake could care less though.

And although Mom, made him admire it for a few seconds...
...all he cared about was getting down to business and figuring out how to get that goodness in him.

so he mashed it,

smeared it,

and tried to step on it.

When he was all done he needed on of these.

And after his bath he got to brush his teeth again.

Boy Oh Boy Oh Boy!

Happy Birthday Buddha!

WE LOVE YOU!

Funny Boys

These are moments never to be forgotten.
At least I don't want to forget these Anderson boy originals.

A few nights ago I threw Will and Ike in the bath. I soon heard, "Hey Ikie, lets play Marco Polo." I had to observe this and sure enough they were playing Marco Polo in the tub. Okie dokie.

While playing dodge ball outside with my boys, I accidentally threw the ball and it hit the big picture window. Nothing broke, but there was a big rattle. Ike reassured me by saying, "Mom, its OK. All you need to do is lift your hand and say, My Bad."
Thanks for keeping me street savvy Ike.

Spring Break

Spring Break was GREAT!
It was wonderful because some of our favorite people of all time came to visit.
The Poulson and the Rarick families.
We love these families.
We miss these families.
We want to be more like these families.
They have become our family away from family.
They are the type of people you know you had to have know before you actually met them because they are so easy and comfortable to be with and things just click.
The Poulsons graced us with their company Monday-Tuesday. We were having too much fun, and I forgot to take pictures, so here is a picture of half of them with Will and Ike way back in December.


Our boys would really prefer to be in the Poulson family. I don't blame them. The Poulsons know how to have fun together and their home is a home filled with love, happiness, understanding, patience, humor, health and the spirit of the Lord. Annette, (The mom) is one of my all time hero's. Our paths collided in a big way when we both found ourselves in Manhattan, Kansas for graduate school. Both husbands were in the Stats program. We were both about 8 months pregnant, she with #6, I was expecting #1. Both of our families were staying with the Gardners (another family in the ward who neither of us knew before arriving and who no doubt have their mansion in Heaven secured) while waiting for our housing situations to stabilize. I watched Annette interact with her kids, with me, with her husband, with Martha, with being pregnant, with her new environment and situation and admiration grew in my heart for her. After almost 7 years of knowing her that admiration has grown exponentially and I'm truly a better person because of my association with her. I love her kids. It's been fun to watch them grow up. They are good kids.
In fact, after their stay, Will and Ike caught a butterfly for a pet, they named her Kalli (after the beautiful Kalli Poulson who is almost 15! Wow!)
Kalli, the butterfly died today, it was tragic and sad and should be reserved for another post.
We love you Poulsons and it's not right that we have to leave without you.

Then on Wednesday the Raricks showed up and cheered us up.
Did I mention we love these guys!
They moved to Kansas 2 1/2 years to late. We feel jipped that we only got to spend 4 years with them. But then again, these are the friends that you will always stay close too. My big plans are to eventually live next door to them and when all the kids are grown up, the Raricks and Andersons will sit on the front porch rocking chairs, eating ice cream, talking about the good old days and cursing BYU. By then Tim will be the Human Development Department Head at the Y and we will have the inside scoop. Won't it be fun....

Some pretty tuff kids.

The only reason I have pictures of this visit, is because Jodi is on the ball, has an awesome camera, takes amazing pictures and is willing to share. I love this picture of Naomi or as we like to call her.....Wyoming. She looks like a little Who perched up there on her rock.

The G-Force and C-Train wearing their matching school shirts. Sometimes I think they have a love-hate relationship. I like to think it's mostly loving, but they can get each other going. And since we've been here Will has cried over missing Carter the most.

While they were here, we had fun hiking the massive mountains of Oklahoma, flying our purple colors in Downtown, watching Tim use his charm and get on the 6:00 news, making fun of Face Book, letting the kids jump to their hearts content and enjoying the chance we had to chat.

Ike and Molly, they are good friends. If I had a daughter, I'd want her to be a Molly clone. I love this little girl. She has some mean Michael Jackson moves too, which only adds to her charm. I would love for Ike to grow up and marry her, but then I think her heart belongs to Woody. Oh well.

We love the Raricks for so many reasons, one of course being their feelings for BYU. I miss Jodi, and the thoughts of not being able to raise my kids by her and her kids are too sad for me to even think about. How I miss hearing that red wagon come pulling down the side walk, I miss the walks home from school and the hours clocked at the park. I miss those Sunday's we just happened to bump in to each other, the hours at the pool, the hours of catching firefly's and dancing at Arts in the Park. I miss it all. Jodi is such a Kindred Spirit. I think we both want the same things for our kids, we both like playing with our kids and being hands on involved with them. She is a great example of a wonderful mother. She is so thoughtful. After Jake was born, she would just come pulling up, sometimes with the red wagon and sometimes in the van and just pick up my two big boys and let me take a nap. It was heavenly having a chance to take a snooze and even better not worrying at all about your kids, because you trust completely the person they are with. She is organized, something I really admire. We got to work in the Young Woman's together and she and she alone motivated me to finish my 10+ hour Personal Progress project. She should probably could count those quilts we made for my boys her project too.

We wish Spring Break would have lasted a little longer. Thanks you guys for making the trip south and for driving home in a snowstorm. We can't wait to see everyone again.