Mack and Sam and Aria

Taylor's last sibling and his family moved back to Utah in the spring and we have been enjoying them living right next door.

When Aria turned 1 it was an all out purple party.

Isla's favorite thing is to "help" take their dog Ted for a walk.  He's really well behaved and she is mostly able to keep him in line even if we feel a little bad for him being drug around by this little girl.

A little basketball in the driveway?  Why not!

And let's walk over to the elementary school and play since it's just so nice out.

Ethan's Birthday Party

Ethan really wanted to take some friends up to the Air Force Museum for his party but since it's over an hour away, it just wasn't going to work.  He still wanted a military theme though so I made camoflauge cupcakes with little icing clouds on them.

And we topped them with fighter jets.

And since we couldn't go see fighter jets, Ethan chose to have a party at the laser tag place which is almost just as good.  Isla was my buddy during the first game while the boys all went and played, we got the room set up.

WE got them all little camo bags with finger lasers, dog tags, tiny helicopters, and Ethan's favorite little Debbie treats.

And Ethan's cupcake we topped with a 10.  I kind of can't believe he's in double digits and I now need to buy 2 candels!

After the first game, all the boys came back to eat pizza and cupcakes.

And to compare scores of who shot who and who'd been the best during their game.

See?  Camoflage!  It actually was really easy, just color the batter 4 different colors and then spoon in.

And then it was time for the second game.  First, everyone had to line up to choose their code name.

Isla was meanwhile obsessed with this driving game in the lobby.

Until I made daddy contain her.

Yep, there's the big birthday boy.

I played the second game along with Isla and everyone else.  I tried to take pictures but they didn't turn out at all.
Time to sing!

And then the Laser Tag place has a tradition of toilet papering the birthday kid.

So Ethan got toilet papered.

And then there were presents.

And Sunday night we did the real cake for family dinner.  Ethan saw this on Pinterest with a 6 year old cake where the 6 was made by the clouds trailing a jet.  I did my best to make a 1 and 0 in the clouds.

Sadly I think I needed a denser cake than strawberry shortcake or else the fondant clouds were too heavy.  They mostly stood up straight.  But this little guy didn't care at all and was very happy with his fighter jet cake.

And even if the cake was flimsy and a little pulled apart by the 10 topper, it was delicious!

And I snuck in 10 trick candles all spread around the cake so in the end the entire family had to jump in and help him keep them blown out.

I'm just guessing

Sometimes I find random pictures on my phone and I know one of the little kids got ahold of my phone.  I'm still not sure who had it this time but this is the conversation I'm guessing Taylor was having:

"Hey! Did you just take a picture of me?  I heard the little click."

"Ok, well put mom's phone away."

"Wait, are you still taking pictures?"

"Stop, give me that."

And then there's no more so I'm guessing Dad won.

Spring Break around town

The boy's school had a weird 6 day weekend for Spring Break instead of giving them a whole week.  And it was over Easter and General Conference and the weather was so nice that we decided we'd rather stay home.  

The boys requested we spend the money on group activities instead of travel.  So Thursday was Lego day and everyone was in heaven.

Even this little girl who plays with her pink and purple legos almost more than her princesses.

Friday we loaded up tons of easter eggs for our family egg hunt.

And we went to the Aviary to see some birds with Grams, Sam, and Aria.

Saturday and Sunday we spent watching conference, eating easter candy, and relaxing.

And Sunday we had family dinner and our Easter egg hunt.  It was perfect this year because all the plastic egg bags come in 6 colors and there are currently 6 cousins.  So we assigned each a color and everyone was happy finding their own and didn't feel cheated.

Monday we headed off to the zoo with my cousins and their kids who were in town visiting.  Ethan and Wade are always great friends and they were really cute walking with Isla and giving her piggy back rides.

Monday afternoon we decided to tag along with Taylor on his work trip to Idaho Falls.  We grabbed Happy Meals and drove up to stay in his hotel room.

Tuesday morning we went on a scooter walk around the river and temple downtown.

And then while Taylor went to his meetings, we enjoyed the hotel pool and it's really fun squirters.