What I Have Been Up To...

Cleaning and Organizing! This has been so much fun and a lot of work, but my spring cleaning is coming along beautifully. I am not finished yet, mostly because I took a week long break and I decided that Saturdays are not a good day for me to do my cleaning, also, my kitchen has taken me about 5 days!


Easter! We went over to Allan's parent's house for Easter and (like always) his mom put on an amazing easter egg hunt complete with a "store" of prizes in the basement!




Here is cute Natalie running out to start the hunt!



Here is Hailey finding and egg.


Here is Ally discovering money in one of her eggs!

And here is Lilly trying to eat a plastic egg (because everything is to eat!)

Here we are decorating real eggs!

And spending some time with our cousins!

Another day we went with Ally's Joy School to the Zoo.
We had a lot of fun seeing the animals, although in true Idaho fasion, it was a little too cold.

Lilly also had a fun time, this was not her first trip to the zoo, but I think it may have been the first time she noticed that there were animals there!

Hailey had her Spring Musical, she is the shortest kid in her class so of course she was standing on the back row. This may be more of a "Where's Waldo" picture to find her!

Lilly Turned 1!!

She had her traditional own cake! I am taking her to the Doctor today, so I will do a post just for her once I figure out how big she is!

It was teacher appreciation week so I made Hailey's teacher this banner and a set of thank you cards. I also decorated her door and Ally's teacher's door, brought them all flowers.

Last weekend went down to Utah for a family reunion, it was at The Legacy Center so we also went swiming!
If you follow the link you will see a sweet picture of me doing Rock Band with some of my cousins!

Here is Allan and Natalie getting off of the water slide.

And Hailey and Ally on a different slide.

This reunion was a little bittersweet for me because my very closest cousin (pretty much like a sister to me) is leaving next Tuesday for Germany to live with her family for 2 or 3 years. This was the last chance that I got to spend some time with her, although I am trying to convince Allan that we should go and visit them for our 10 year anniversary!

Oh, speaking of anniversary's, Allan and I had our 8th on Sunday.

I have also been doing a lot of crafts and here is the birthday banner that I made to hang up on the girl's birthday.

It is really long so it needed 3 pictures, but it turned out really cute! I was happy to embrace the fact that I have all girls and go with some very girly designs!

This is just a picture of Lilly last night, we made sugar cookies and decorated them and then Lilly got a hold of the frosting container!

Lastly, I have been learning to coupon shop. Last night I went to the store for the first time armed with a lot of coupons. As I was checking out the grocer said, I think this reciept is going to be taller than you are... and it was!

And, here is the bottom line, total with tax: $133.77, total saved: $178.77!

PLUS: I got a voucher for $10 to spend on my next shopping trip

AND two free movie tickets to go and see the new Star Trek movie when it comes out this summer!

I purchased 137 items for that price and my total would have been over $300!

I saved almost 60%, and even more than that if you took off the $10 that I will use next time I go!

YEA ME!!!

Spring Break

When I opened my garage door, at Noon today, this was what I saw. Granted I took it at an angle to really see the snow, but there was like 6 inches! I guess instead of pouting we should go out and make a last snowman of the year or have a snow ball fight because it is really sticky wet snow.The kids were out of school Friday through Wednesday for Spring Break. On Friday I packed up the school's book fair in the morning and Allan's Sister Jeni and Brother David came to visit so we started scrapbooking Disney and then went out to dinner at Plum Loco (by the way it is really yummy mexican food) with his whole family. Saturday was our ward's Spring Super Saturday and I only got to stay for half because I had to get back to scrapbooking. Grandma Staker took the kids and dad's to Monsters vs. Aliens while the mom's scrapbooked. Sunday we went to church and then over to spend a couple more hours with David and his kids before they had to leave for Boise. Sunday also started the rediculous weather that we have been having this week, there was a literal blizzard and in the morning Monday there was a sheet of ice over all of the roads several inches thick. It melted by noon. Since then it has been snowing and melting and snowing and melting and snowing some more. On Monday I went over to my friend Arin's house and we made these cute Easter Wreaths while the kids played. I am so glad that our kids play so well together, it makes it easy for us to do fun things together!

On Tuesday I met Allan's cousin's wife and kids for lunch at Leo's. These are just a couple pictures of the girls being silly. I had felt sick on Monday night, and then it really hit me after we got home from Leo's and I spent Wednesday in bed. Luckilly Allan took the day off to help with the kids so I didn't even come out of my room most of the day.

I was thinking we didn't do much and I didn't have much to blog about but I guess I was wrong, it really was a pretty good little break.

Christmas in....April???

Christmas is another thing that never got blogged about with our busy December and January.

We had a really nice Christmas. The first event was the school's Christmas Program.

Here is Jaden singing and dancing.

Hailey and her "All I Want For Christmas" Smile

Jared above and Justin below.

Another day we went to a FABULOUS party at our friend's house.

My mom always has to work on either Christmas or Christmas Eve, so my parents came up to spend the weekend before Christmas with us. They brought lots of presents including cameras for Hailey and Ally (big hit) and a Leapster for Natalie (the other girls got them last Christmas)

I took pictures with their camera that night and so they are not on this computer,

maybe I will add them later.

Our Christmas began (of course) by seeing what Santa had brought!

This year we took each of the kids to the dollar store and had them pick out presents for eachother. It worked out wonderfully because the kids not only got to learn about giving, but also had 3 extra presents to open.

Here is Lilly enjoying her new ball!

Aunt Robin was nice enough to make Hailey Ally and Natalie Scripture Bags for church. After opening all of the presents we headed out to Allan's Parent's House for a Staker Family Gathering! Allan is the baby of six so we always have lots of fun getting together with his BIG family. This year Jonathan's and David's families were not able to be there.

Here is Hailey showing off some of her new makeup.

Allan's parents always get everyone new pajamas and the last two years they have had a Disney theme in honnor of our upcomming vacation!

This year we also got Disney Scrapbooks so we could all Scrapbook our vacations. We actually did this last Saturday but I didn't take any pictures, darn it!

Spring Cleaning!

I was sent a link to this organization blog. She is doing a spring cleaning challenge which I am really excited about. Unfortunately I have been sick for two days, and I am still not feeling great, so I am starting with a messy house! The challenge starts today, so I guess I will have to spend today tidying up and do a small cleaning zone! Unfortunately as I write this it is snowing outside, so it doesn't much feel like spring! Wish me luck...I am going to need it!