Abby in Wonderland

Abby just turned 5. We had a super fun Alice in Wonderland party. The kids went and saw the new Alice in Wonderland and they wanted to come and see the old one. They liked them. I haven't seen the new one and the old one is not my favorite, but I came across the idea for the party on a blog and it was sooo cute. I knew I wanted to do something like that for her. Abby was pretty excited when I brought it up. So we had a croquet party.

We had sunday dinner with Andy's family a few days before the birthday. I had been wanting to try this cake for awhile. It started falling apart before we ate it. But the flowers turned out cute.

This is the invitation we sent. It is pretty close to the one I saw on the blog.

We turned the dining room into a wonderland with pink, green, yellow, blue and orange. I had hoped to have this outside, but our warm weather didn't last.

This was our gift basket for the girls. They had some great things that fit our party theme at the dollar store! I made the flowers with eyes and a little bottle that said "drink me" for each girl.

I got the plans for the cake from family fun magazine. The topsy turvy thing worked out well with our theme.

The croquet part of our party didn't last long. It was too cold. But they had fun with cake and ice cream. And of course opening presents is always a hit.

We had an all girl party and invited aunts, grandmas, and great grandmas. I was sad that more of the women in the family live too far away. Just know that we were thinking of you!

Abby was so excited to get another precious moments for her collection from Grandma Haskell. Actually it kind of looked like Christmas morning when we were done. Thanks to everyone who came and everyone who was so generous to Abby.

One last shot of our group. I couldn't get one with everyone looking. I hope they had a fun time. Abby had a bast, so thanks again everyone!!!

Abby's Dance Recital- Hansel and Grettel

Abby is taking dance from a new teacher this year and lucky us we get to have two recitals. One was just last week where they actually preformed Hansel and Grettel. Abby's class were pixie fairies. There costumes were so dang cute (and hers actually fit this year!!:)) Although she was super nervous before she ended up having a wonderful time and did great.

The teacher this year worked some magic and the girls did really well remembering the dance on their own without her.

We spent about an hour curling every stand of her hair. It didn't last too long, but still looked cute. She was so excited to get to really wear some of her make up. Heaven help me when she gets older!!!

We are so glad that Abby's cousin Alyida was in the recital too. It made her less nervous. Even Stockton liked the recital. It wasn't too long and he could follow the story. Next recital is the end of May and should be just as cute as this one!!!

You can't roll Easter Eggs in the snow!

This is the only Easter I ever remember with snow. We got a good 6 inches or so over the weekend. Growing up rolling Easter Eggs down the hills at Capital Reef was a huge tradition for us. They were pretty much demolished by the time they made it to the bottom. (I have since learned that not everybody grew up doing this. It is a south-central Utah thing.) It is something we have tried to keep up with our kids so that they can continue some of my family traditions. They have loved it in the past. Usually we just go somewhere close by and they throw them until the birds come and eat them. But this year with the snow there was no way. I quietly just threw them away after all the Easter excitement was over.

These are some cute little bunny treats we made for Sunday dinner with all the Haskells. I saw them in Family Fun Magazine and thought they looked really cute.

The kids attempt to bribe the Easter Bunny with carrots and then leave a note that they wanted Zhu Zhu pets.

I guess its a good thing he takes requests.

They loved coloring eggs!!

Peyton's favorite part was putting them into the dye cups, over and over and over again. Almost all his eggs were light brown.

Abby had fun making pink and purple eggs.

Stockton was having fun experimenting with the different colors and how they combined.

Grandma Haskell had her traditional egg hunt. Only this year it was in the basement instead of outside. The kids still loved it and had a blast.

Grandpa had to help the little ones.

The kids still had a blast coloring eggs, doing the egg hunt, and getting baskets full of treats and some small toys. It was a fun holiday even if it wasn't warm enough to go outside.

April Fools-- The joke's on me!

I was so traumatized by my last years April fools joke that I could not even post about it at the time. I have had a year to recover and can now admit my weaknesses as a mother.

I saw these cute pot pie April fools desserts and thought it would be so fun to make them for my family. I bought all the extra candy and secretly made my peas and carrots when the kids didn't see. It worked out that Andy had to work late and wasn't home for dinner with the kids. I brought out the pot pies and tried to coax the kids to eat them. They refused.

I tried nicely and jokingly for awhile, but they still would not even touch the pudding and candy pot pies because they hate real pot pie (even though they have never had more than a nibble of crust because that is all they would try). After several tries and still no takers I got mad and lost my temper. I started screaming at them and tried to tell them it was really pudding. By then we were all crying and I resolved that I couldn't try anything else like this until I could be a grown up when my fun food got rejected (just like my real dinners every single night). Or until Andy is home to help me keep my sense of humor about my many rejections.

Tootsie roll peas and carrots.

Pudding, "peas," and "carrots"

The finished products. They do look pretty realistic.

So I guess I couldn't handle it, because I didn't do anything for them this year. Stockton got me good though. He came home from school and said, "Mom, can I do my reading now?" I was shocked and ready to drop what I was doing to hurry and get his reading done. It is usually like pulling teeth to get him to do it. Then he quickly smiled and said "April Fools." I knew it was too good to be true!!!!

All good things must come to an end.

We ended our cruise with one last day at sea. Even though we didn't do much it was eventful. Someone on our ship had a medical emergency and so we got to watch a coast guard helicopter come land on the front of the ship to pick them up and fly away. Apparently we were in Cuban air space and they wouldn't let the helicopter come to us, so we had to change course and meet it. The rest of the day we tried to soak up a few last rays of sun. The guys all took one last ride on the flow rider. They were getting good enough to start trying tricks. When we ported, we had half a day to kill before our flight home, so we drove to the Everglades and took a ride in a swamp boat. We didn't see any gators because the weather was windy and cold. (still much warmer than here) But we have no complaints because that was the only bad weather on our whole cruise.

It was a long time to be away from the kiddos, but it was so awesome. I am so glad we went. Thanks to our Moms for watching the kids and making it possible for us to go!!!!!!!!

Halfway through a 360, but he didn't quite make it.

Look at his concentration.

Our boat driver was a real red neck! It was pretty fun to listen to him talk about the everglades. He even had a cooler full of frog legs for sale.

Labadee, Haiti

When you hear we stopped at Haiti you are probably wondering if we saw any of the earthquake areas. No we didn't. Labadee is Royal Carribean's own private beach area. Everything there was really nice. They did have one little area where they let locals come to barter and haggle while they sale their hand made items. But other than that, most of the people there were workers from our ship.

I was really surprised when we got off the boat it was a hot and sunny day, but it was like it was so humid that there was a foggy look to the mountains around us. You can kind of see it in this picture. I will have to ask Justin about that. He lived in the Dominican Republic for two years. (the other half of the island where Haiti is)

On the corner of the property there were these really cool rock formations. It was called Dragon's breath because the rocks kind of look like a dragon head from the side. Inside the maze of rocks there is some kind of a blow hole thing that makes a hissing noise every few seconds. It kind of sounds like what you would imagine a breathing dragon would sound like. I thought it was cool.

Sorry everyone, I had to put at least one kissing picture in.

Trying to be artsy.

Not long before we had to go, we found some other trails that lead to this pretty area on the edge of the beach. It had this patio kind of place with railed wall and some covered picnic areas. There was a great view out to the ocean.

We had a great time snorkeling, swimming, and relaxing. This part of Haiti was very pretty too. This was our last port, so we were sad to think that our vacation was wrapping up.

Puerto Rico

Our third port was San Juan, Puerto Rico. It is a photographers paradise. There are two old forts there that you can tour. (I think that might be where they filmed the end of Romancing the Stone) They were so old and cool looking. I had a blast taking tons of pictures. We had and extra short day there, but we had a great time looking around. Sorry, you are going to get stuck with some architecture pictures. It was so cool, the pictures don't do it justice.

This was just another cool old rundown building. I think maybe you had to be there for this one.

A view of our ship from the fort.

Archways around the main square inside.


I just loved the old patina of something that has been here forever.

There were lots of cool tunnels to travel to different areas of the fort.

There were tons of these places where the old cannons had been facing out to the ocean. Andy was giving me paranoid mother moments by hanging out on the edge to a very long drop.

Just more old building stuff that I loved.

The walls on the inside of the fort had the coolest yellow patina. You could tell they were really old with lots of history. The rest of our group was nice to put up with my lagging behind to take pics.

It was really hot, so we caught some shade and checked out the instructions on how to fire a cannon. The last step on the instructions involved praying to a patron saint.

There was this huge grassy area around this fort. There were a bunch of school kids having field trips that day. They had picnic lunches and then some of them were flying kites. It was so relaxing and looked like such a fun place to hang out.

There were a bunch of guard towers that were really pretty looking. We all got pics there.

I loved Puerto Rico. It was my second favorite stop on the trip, but nothing beats St. John.