Edwards Haps and Mishaps

I figure if I do this in tiny increments I will actually get all the Easter photos up on here. Does it ever feel like this blog is on repeat all the time? Don’t we have have the same pictures every year?! I guess that what “traditions” are, right? Things you MUST do every year or something feels off? Egg decorating is one of them. Even though my kids won’t touch the actual hard boiled egg inside, it is always fun to dye them…and dye the table, our clothes, our fingers….everything!! Then I ate a lot of deviled eggs and egg salad…or got lazy and just cut them in half with a squirt of mustard…it’s gross, I know, but we’ve got some sort of thing about mustard in this house. We love it.

We did add in some marshmallow egg decorating this year because I found these egg shaped Marshmallows…and I am a sucker for marshmallows covered in chocolate!

I hope you all had a WONDERFUL Easter! we had a nice weekend visiting family and trying to remember the real reason we celebrate Easter! Of course, we did do some of the traditional things: Easter bunny/eggs, etc. (and I do have lots of pictures of all of that too!) but I am so grateful for my Savior and that he gave us ALL a gift we could not give ourselves and that we can be free of our sins and live again. He gave us hope.

Here we are getting ready to go to church on a beautiful Easter morning!

It’s spring break! We don’t have anything big planned, no trips or anything, but I am trying to have at least one thing each day so that I don’t go crazy! Sitting around makes me a little nutty sometimes…and there’s only so many times the kids can ride their bikes around the backyard, jump on the trampoline, destroy my flowers…before we all go crazy. I’m not even sure why I am writing about spring break right now…because none of these pictures are from this week! I’ll save my fingers and write about that later!

For preschool, we went on a trip to the fire station. I was dreading bringing Dallin because he is such a TERROR lately! He can be hilarious and sweet, where you can’t get mad at him, and then he can be such a turd! Taking him anywhere these days just gets me negotiating and sweating and I’m not sure why I even take him anywhere anymore! A few of his sassy statements include: “Knock uh (it) off MOM!” “You be MEAN!” “Don’t hurt me mom!” (which is really fun in public when he’s yelling that!)  So, at the fire station this kid just wanted to do whatever HE wanted to do, which was, of course, not what everyone else was doing. Pretty much all I remember about the trip was trying to make sure he didn’t run into the busy road next to us, lots of back arching and screaming when I tried to pick him up, and trying not to look frazzled. So glad it’s over, and maybe one day I will be the lady who looks at a mom with a tantrum throwing child at the grocery store and says “I remember those days, they’ll be gone before you know it” Even though in the moment, those words aren’t really all that comforting, I know they mean well and that it’s true. This is a phase. It wont last forever and my kids won’t be little forever. So cherish it….even the naughty tantrum times.

Someone else was ready to leave too.

Spring gets me in the mood for sidewalk chalk:

Chalk bum!

We just said good-bye to Shaun’s brother and his cute girlfriend, Becca. They came to visit us, which we love visitors (hint to any of our distant friends and family…..) so it was fun to hang out with them and show them some of our favorite spots. I’m sure I’ve post on here before about the “Newt Trail.” It’s actually called Independence Trail, and it is in Nevada City. up in the Sierras. When we were younger we’d always take this hike and there is one point where you get to this cascading creek and if you go at the right time of year, it is full of little orange newts. We go almost every year with our kids, and apparently we have gone at the wrong time because there have never been newts! Shaun just thought I called it that……just because? I was bound to let me kids play with the newts this year, so we went early and took Taylor and Becca. Well, bummer for us, we drove the hour to get there and then we saw caution tape! The west trail was closed (which is the one we take) due to a sink hole! Up in that area, during the gold rush times, there were lots and lots of mines and so now these sink holes happen when the earth just sinks into one of these mines! That kind of freaks me out, and I wouldn’t want to chance sinking into some bottomless pit.

Luckily, there is an East trail (why did i never know that?) and so we went along that. There were some really neat bridges and walkways where you felt like Swiss Family Robinson or some secret jungle tree house, but there wasn’t really an exciting thing at the end. We found a picnic table and ate some snacks! That was the end for us!

After we finished our pretty hike, Preston and Ada had swim lessons where Preston got a ribbon for swimming across the whole pool and his teacher said he’s never seen someone progress so quickly! We’ve been trying to get him to learn to swim for years now. I knew he could do it quickly if one of us wasn’t teaching him and he really has learned SO fast! I am proud :) Ada just started, and I know she’ll do awesome too!

I don’t really have other pictures from the weekend but we tried to cram in a quite a few things and now I need a nap :) Thanks Taylor and Becca for coming out! And thanks for leaving the cookies (Becca makes some amazing PB cookies) and for all the playing and fun! The kids kept asking where they were when we got out of church, like they should be waiting in the car for us.

As I have mentioned before, I feel blessed for so many reasons! I am always trying to show my gratitude to God for all the blessing I have and all the people I have in my life, though it seems that I can’t do enough to show that gratitude! One of the things I feel so blessed for is my, and Shaun’s, parents and grandparents. Up until fairly recently we have had ALL of our grandparents around to see their great grand children! Though two of them have passed on, we still have 7 grandparents here with us! They have all been such amazing examples to me, even the ones I have only known since being married to Shaun. They’ve all shown great strength through trials, lived lives of service and great faith. I only hope I can be as amazing as many of them are!

A couple Sundays ago we fixed dinner and all went up to spend time with my mom’s parents. If anyone has lived a selfless life, it’s my grandma! She cannot just sit still and do nothing. She must be doing something for someone or helping in some way. The day before she went in for open heart surgery, she was feeding the missionaries from our church! Amazing. I’m glad I brought my camera so I could get a picture of 4 generations of girls. One day Ada can have this picture and I hope she realizes the importance of families. I love all these girls :)

Okay, this is getting ridiculous…but I am hoping this is the last post!!!

(If you haven’t started with the original “phone pics” post below, I just unloaded a bunch of pictures from my phone, and my old phone as well and so I am posting a bunch…or more than a munch…here. These go way back.)

Maybe this is just me thinking I am hilarious, but seriously, don’t you think this when you see this photo?

“Avada Kedavra!”

More of Preston’s meal planning.

Bathing beauty.

This one is from a LOONG time ago.

Hiking at the Biblical Gardens in Auburn

Going to grandma’s in Utah…fun park in Battle Mountain

Another fun stop in Lovelock.

Remember this face?

Shaun being sworn in.

My friend Brooke and I have started getting together when she is in town and ROLLERBLADING! It’s fun. You should try it, even though it isn’t necessarily as cool as it was in 1992. She forgot which side her brake was on and ate it. Luckily she slid into the mud and not on the cement…or it wouldn’t have been as funny and I’m sure our rollerblading experience would have ended 100 yards from the car that day. Also, we don’t rollerblade on gravel. So don’t try it.

AND that sums up a few of the hundreds of photos that were loading up my phone!

 

 

I have been trying to post all these pictures on here for several days now, and I keep getting frustrated because I am getting an “error” message…I have realized that if I do shorter posts then I think I can get all the phone pictures up that I want to. You didn’t really need to know that. But I told you anyway. So you may want to start with the post below…

But here are even MORE pictures that I’ve unloaded for my phone!

Dallin got into Preston’s birthday cake last year before he had a chance to see it…so I added a few extra globs of frosting to fill in the holes!

We wanted to feel young again so we went to an outdoor concert with John Mayer and Phillip Phillips!! I’ve only watched a season or two of American Idol and i watched the Phillip Phillips season so I was pretty excited about that :) And the night was great except for the drunk girl behind us who, for the last half an hour, I couldn’t even hear the music over my own thought of what I would do the next time she stepped on one of us.

Dallin asks Preston for hugs when he gets in the car after school and it’s precious.

Tooting my own horn here…I went to my parent’s ward Chili cook off and when we were in that ward I had won two years and I didn’t want to enter into a ward that wasn’t mine…but dad insisted and woot woot…I won again! I’ve made the same chili every time! It’s a pork hominy chili recipe I found in a Cooking Light magazine from about 10 years ago! I think it’s the hominy.

Can you guess what they built?

Ada, asleep with a gram cracker in her mouth.

Ada was naughty and was sent to her room. This is what I found. She stayed in there a lot longer after that so that no one was hurt.

Halloween games at school.

Preston took it upon himself to plan dinner. Can you guess everything?

 

I like pictures. It’s no secret. I take lots with my camera..but also lots with my phone. Rarely do I put the ones from my phone onto the computer, but since my phone has become overloaded and has no more memory I’ve decided it’s time to delete some off the ol’ phone. Now I am wondering why I didn’t do this sooner and post some of them on here! The phone pictures are the funniest because I always have it handy. So here are some of the things my phone sees.

I also have a few from my old phone too…so these may go WAY back. Like maybe years…so get ready.

And I am a caption on the top kind of a person, so don’t get confused.

We woke up to our fence on fire at about 2 am right before Christmas…it started in the neighbors garbage can and then spread to their house. Luckily everyone got out and most of their belongings inside the house weren’t terribly damaged, but this was taken from inside Preston’s room and I hate to think what would have happened if we hadn’t heard a Fabreeze can explode! No one would have woken up!! So, that was an eventful night! We were evacuated until about 4:30 on a December night! I know our North Dakota friends and Iowa family think we don’t know cold, but for us California kids, we thought it was pretty chilly :)

Ada’s preschool ornament…still freaks me out to look at it.

Dallin, being his cool self.

Jamba Juice date with mom.

Checking out Folsom lake at its lowest point. We probably hiked a mile from the beach parking lot to get to the water!

Snuggling Nana.

I thought I just took you out of the bath, dried you off, and put a diaper on you…

First day of swim!!

Finding geocaches with the cousins!

Ada sharing the tape measure for show and tell.

All that bath tub and they all cram to the front still!

Our princesses :)

And for some reason this is all my blog will let me put in this post…so I will have to do another! Poor you.