2 Allie turned FOUR in a big way

The decorations:

The birthday girl:

The gifts:


We haven't ever really ever made a big deal of birthdays at our house, but this year I decided that Allie could have a party...and a party she got. On the eve of the big day she got to have a daddy-daughter date complete with sleepover with Aliyah. Then, thanks to Smithfields annual Health Days Celebration, the festivities started with a real parade. Boy did she like seeing all the 'princesses' (royalty). Most the party ideas were hijacked from our neighbor (sorry Hayley), but Allie wanted a PJ party just like Adyson. We kept the party simple:

• pass the Hot Teddy Bear to Strawberry Shortcake soundtrack
• Pillow Case hopping races
• Night Sky art project
• Duck-Duck-Goose lead by daddy
• Real Strawberry Shortcake for the cake
• Open gifts - talk about spoiled!
• Watch new Strawberry Shortcake Princes DVD

After the guests left, the fun continued with a trip to the Health Days carnival.
Nate & Allie, Uncle Troy & Aliyah, Uncle Brent & Laura
Good think the men took them since the mommies never would have sprung for the price of the rides...however we might have got pictures of the grins.

Making the invitations:


The Parade:


The Games

The race:

The art:

Duck-Duck-Goose

The Cake:
(everyone had to help blow out the candles)

The Movie


Enough pictures already...

1 Take me out to the ball game

Nate is back to playing softball.
The men on his team have been playing together for years.
This season they are 4-0 so far!!!
Nate's the pitcher.
The girls LOVS it.

1 Sister time

A few weeks ago I was cleaning up breakfast and looked over to see this:

0 Neighborhood Cookout

We live in one of the best neighborhoods ever!
Here is a cookout we had a few weeks back.
The kids LOVED it!
Us grownups got to have some real conversation, too.
The men talked motorcycles and us ladies discussed Twilight.
In fact, the party broke up so that the moms could put all the kids to bed and meet back up at Teresa's house for an impromptu viewing of Twilight.
Nice evening!

3 A New Do

Kylie was NOT happy to have her hair cut!


Too cute!

1 Albies Doublers

It took an hour and a half and 8 "shopping trips", but I was able to get all this today. I spent $26, but full full price would have been $125. That means I paid about 21% of retail prices. Not my best run, but respectable.

1 What good is stats?

"Study: Older mothers live longer"

Click HERE and HERE to see KSL's article on a study of one of my colleagues. I was actually on an-across-the-globe conference call regarding a different study with the sited Ken Smith this morning. He had to leave the call early to do this press release. Pretty interesting stuff!

0 Okay, so I'm excited!!!!!

(see countdown to the right, yeah its been there for months already)

This wicked trailer gives me shivers!
Anyone else want to go to the midnight release with Hanne, Britney, & I?

2 Got some free time?

CLICK HERE

for clips and updates on: "NEW MOON"



but be forewarned...

it got me all excited &there is still a LONG WAIT!

like over 200 days (see countdown to the right)


UGH!

1 Our new pool

Its just the right size for us!

Last week was so nice we had a picnic on the grass, too!

Here's Allie shaking the water off. Too cute!

1 Summer in April?

2 Willow Park

Last week when it was warm and sunny, we had a picnic in Logan.

The girls ran and giggled, sang and wiggled.
Even though our pathetic little "zoo" is basically a bird park, the girls like seeing all the different species. I even taught Allie a song I learning in preschool about 5 little ducks. We've been singing it all week long.

1 Morning fare

Our girls LOVE cold cereal!
Allie always requests Frosted Flakes.
Kylie always requests Rasin Bran.
Silly girls!

1 Watch out for worms

My trusty laptop failed this week due to a nasty virus, most likely the Conflicker Worm. If your machine starts misdirecting Google search links take immediate action! This thing is no joke! In an effort to ensure I was rid of the trouble, I attempted reformatting my entire hard drive and reinstall Windows XP. I was unsuccessful due to missing drivers and ended up having the nice guys at USU's help desk fix it up.



As I stared the marathon of reinstalling all my programs and files (thankfully I didn't lose anything!) Nate and I decided to pull the trigger and get my new laptop now based on the unofficial word that more grant funding is coming to support my job. We've been shopping for months and Nate has been patiently waiting to get some computer time to himself. Mostly, I really didn't want to put everything on the old laptop now just to turn around in a few weeks and take it off and set up a new machine. So here is my first post from my new brain. I feel like I'm 5 and its Christmas! Here's to learning Vista!

3 Since I thought I was going to be board this summer...

Last fall my wonderful father-in-law offered my sister-in-law, Maho, & I a strip of land on his Amalga farm to plan a garden. It sounded great back then, but now I'm getting a bit scared. The garden plot is 35 feet by 140 feet! Maho & I decided to split it down the middle and went to Anderson's Seed and Garden to get our seed yesterday afternoon. We were helped for TWO HOURS by the most helpful man. If you have any questions I highly suggest asking for Dan. So, what are we planting? Well, here's my half:

• 210 feet of corn (3 rows): half yellow Sugar Buns / half bicolor Optimum
• 34 tomato plants: half Better Boy / half Roma
• 3 zuchini sunner squash
  
• 3 fancy crookneck summer squash
• 3 Sweet Meat winter squash
• 4 early Butternut winter squash
• 3 Spaghetti winter squash
• 4 Watermellon
• 3 Cantalope
  
• 3 cucomber
• lots of Onions
• tons of Carrots
• 30 feet potatoes: half yukon golds / half reds (early & late)
  

If that sounds like not enough, don't worry...I still have the following at home:

• miles of strawberries
• letus
• cilantro
• peppers
• cherry tomtoes

Guess what I'll be doing all summer long?

Did you know corn needs to be planted 3 rows deep so that it will cross polinate itself? I didn 't.

6 Allie got a haircut

Our great neighbor and friend Hayley cut Allie's hair this week. I think it is darling and she loves it too. It doesn't get nearly so tangles as it used to and it looks so much thicker and healthier. I should have done it sooner!!! Now I just have to get Kylie taken care of. The poor kid looks like she has a mullet.

Here's our best buddy Ray over to play after preschool and the best shot I got of the sisters together

1 Drum roll please...

Here it is, the slide show from Baby Animal Days last week. I ended up uploaded my pics to THREE sites:

1. Picasa: love the program for basic photo fixes, and you can make movies, but not click-able
2. Flickr: after uploading the pic and making the show, it displayed 'images not available' when I put it in the post-ugh!
3. PictureTrail: finally success

Next time I'd like to try slide.com!

1 Must include this pic of my sisters and I

Somehow I missed posting this picture of me with my sisters for the day we did my grandfather's temple work last week.

We are in birth-order from right to left:

Ellen, Abby, Maren, Sarah

2 Good for a laugh