Jeff's Birthday

Well yesterday was Jeff's birthday. He has been a little bummed lately because his work has been having him work later than he would like and the fact that I forgot his birthday when I told my visiting teacher companion that I could go visiting teaching that night(I know, bad wife). Anyway I decided that to make up for it I would take him out to lunch. So I loaded up Isaac in the van and we went and picked him up. We drove the the nearest Olive Garden and we had lunch. Jeff and I had the all-you-can eat soup and salad and Isaac had the mac and cheese and his favorite, breadsticks. We talked and had fun and I hope that I was able to relieve some of the stress that he has been feeling from his job.

After I got back from visiting teaching it was time to cut the cake and sing to daddy. Well this year Jeff is trying to loose weight and he is really conscious about what he eats, so he told me he didn't want a cake. I thought that maybe I would get an angel food cake and have strawberry shortcake, which is a little better for you. But when I told him about my plans he turned them down.

Instead he decided that I should buy a watermelon, since I had already bought one that week and it was alreay gone, and that would be his birthday cake. I took him up on the offer and so we had watermelon and cantelope for his birthday cake(we had to have cantelope too because Dallin hates watermelon). I bought candles and put them in his watermelon and he blew out the candles and made his wish.

I thought that at first the kids would be angry that we weren't having cake, but when they heard the alternative they were more than happy with the idea and in fact we had to stop them from eating a lot of the fruit because it was right before bedtime.

I took some picture so that you could see what the watermelon cake looked like:

Garden Update!

While I was up visiting my parents, my brother-in-law Andrew and my sister Debra were wondering about the seeds that I started about a month ago. So, when I came home I thought that I would post an update with some pictures.

The project has been a wonderful experience. The kids have loved to watch the plants grow. In fact, they loved watching them so much that we have had a couple of casualities. It took some of the plants less than a week to start sprouting, but for most of the plants it took the 7-10 days. While I was waiting for them to sprout they were out of the sunlight and under a lid that made it really humid in there. After some of the plants started to sprout I had the lid on only part way to help the other seeds to sprout, but still giving a little air to the plants that had already sprouted.

Once most of the plants had sprouted the lid came off and the plants were put into the sunlight for the day. After the plants grew to be about 4 inches in height I made sure that there was only one plant were pellet (this was good because some of the casualities had other plants growing in the pellets so we didn't lose out completely). After a couple of more day of that, the plants were getting too big for the little container, and since there were a lot of different plants in the greenhouse I decided it was time to transplant the tall plants into their own pots.

The pots that I bought are called peat pots. These are brown pots that are made out of peat moss, so the help keep moisture in for the plants and when it comes time to transplant them outside you just have to cut the sides of the pot so the roots can expand and the pot goes directly into the dirt. I like to not have a lot of waste when I am done with this.

So the final count of the plants that are growing are:
10 Tomatoes
5 Cherry Tomatoes
3 Pepper
2 Honey Dew
1 Watermelon
1 Seedless Watermelon

Plants that haven't grown yet (and I have no hope for these):
2 Cantelope
1 Pepper

Lastly, here are the pictures of the plants in there nice peat pots, just for those that count the pots, there is one pepper plant that is not big enough to be transplanted yet:

Easter and Spring Break

For Easter decorations this year I decided that I want to do some painted eggs. I was planning on painting them all myself, but when Dallin saw what I was going to do he wanted in. I decided that it wouldn't hurt anything to have a couple of eggs that were colored by a four and six year old. So I got the supplies, I went to the DI and spent $8 and got men shirts so the boys could get paint on them without hurting their clothes. The kids had a lot of fun coloring the eggs, Dallin more than Isaac. Isaac has decided that he doesn't like to get his hands dirty. He stopped painting his eggs early because his hands were all painted. He was more than happy to let me finish the eggs so he wouldn't get his hands dirty.

Here are the pictures:

Well this year for spring break I decided to go up to my parents so Jeff could get a little break from the kids and so he could work more on his smart phone project that he just got at work. It also happened that Easter was that Sunday so Jeff came up on the weekend. It snowed a lot while we were up there so a lot of my plans were halted, but the kids still had fun. On Wednesday we dyed eggs with my family. because we were going to have a lot of people there I went out and bought 3 dozen eggs, and then my sister brought a dozen and a half for her family, so we had a total of 60 eggs to dye. Dallin and Isaac were happy to do all the eggs, but after awhile I started to get frustrated with them so I said that it was time to take a break for a little while, so mommy can dye some eggs. It worked and they went off to play. Dallin came back later and did a couple of more. It was a fun day. Here are the pictures of the boys with their eggs:

On Saturday when Jeff was up my family went bowling. Dallin has wanted to go real bowling for awhile. He has only bowled on the Wii. Jeff wanted the kids to know how to correctly throw the bowl down the lane and he taught the boys. Isaac wasn't strong enough to hold the ball by himself so Jeff helped him a lot and he had a lot of fun just being able to through the ball down the lane. But he did great and his score was close to mine both games. After Dallin was shown how to throw the ball down he didn't want any help (typical Dallin) so his score was not what he wanted it to be, but he really improved the second game and was only a couple of pins down from Isaac, who had help from his Dad. Jeff and I had a little better games than the boys, but not as great as they once were. We have been playing the Wii too much.

On Easter Sunday, the boys spent most of the day playing with their glow stations that I got them (no I don't say the easter bunny brought them stuff. I never understood the easter bunny so I am not passing it on). After general conference got over we all went outside and we had a plastic egg hunt. Amanda, Debra, and James hid the eggs and then it was up to Dallin, Isaac, and Austin to find them. The boys had a lot of fun and Dallin was proud of the 24 eggs that he found. Isaac was a little disappointed with his 18, but it is a good number. Here are the pictures: