San Diego

About a week after school got out we headed down to San Diego.  Our first stop there was Sea World.

I didn't take very many pictures while we were there, but I had to get this one of my two youngest in front of their favorite ride, the Tentacle Twirl.  We rode it over and over and they never got tired of it.

My older boys loved the thrill rides like Journey to Atlantis and Manta.  Dallin also loved the new Electric Eel ride.  I told him there was no way I was going on that ride with him, because I did not have a death wish.  He and Thomas went on it.  Dallin came off it begging to go again, and Thomas  came off it saying "Never again!"  Since we were basically walking on the rides I let Dallin ride a few more times.  He is crazy!! 

I also got this picture at the Dolphin show, which was Tad's other favorite thing at Sea World.  I think he would have been happy if we had done nothing but the dolphin show and the swings all day long.

One more picture of all my boys right after we had all gotten soaked on the ShipwreckRapids ride.

All in all, it was a good day at Sea World.

The next day we headed to the beach.  We decided to visit Coronado beach since we had not been there before.  We loved it.  It was not very crowded the day we visited and the weather and waves were perfect.

Before I get to the pictures of my boys, I have to share this picture of the Coronado sand. It is full of fools gold, and sparkles in the sun.  Very pretty!

My boys had so much fun playing in the waves and in the sand.  It was a great day.

After the beach we cleaned up at the hotel and then headed out to La Jolla Cove.

It was a pretty and fun place to hang out for the evening. 

 I thought it was so sweet how Tad had his arms around his big brothers legs.

There were, of course, tons of sea lions there and a lot of them had little babies that were so cute.

One more shot of La Jolla Cove.

We finished the evening with a stop at the beautiful San Diego Temple.

The next day we got up and took a tour of the USS Midway. I had never visited the Midway before.  It was pretty interesting.

After we finished at the USS Midway, we headed back to Arizona.  We spent the night in Gilbert, and then did some running around and shopping down there before we drove home. 

It was a good trip.

Catching Up

It has been awhile since I have updated the blog.  In an effort to get caught up, I will be posting a few posts over the next few days.

Way back in May we had a a day off from school for an unused snow day.  So, we used Jack's Every Kid in a Park pass and went to the south rim of the Grand Canyon.

We have been to the North Rim a couple of times, but this was our first time visiting the South Rim.  It was good to finally see it. Since my boys are all born Arizonans, I figure it was a moral obligation to finally take them there. :)

We saw lots of cool Grand Canyon vistas.

We took a walk over to see the Grand Canyon watchtower.

We all walked up to the top of it.  This is a picture of the boys looking out of one of the windows on the walk up.

Drake and Thomas had their piano recital in May as well.  We are so happy with how hard they are working at the piano and the progress they have made this year.  They both played their pieces perfectly!

Tad completed Kindergarten, and they had a cute little program that the kids put on for the parents in his kindergarten classroom.  He did a great job!

Dallin also had a good May. He had an end of year choir concert.  His choir did well, and he was also asked by his choir director to do a mash-up with one of his friends.  He sang really well.  I asked him if he was nervous, and he told me he was super nervous, but you couldn't even tell.  That kid has nerves of steel!

Speaking of his nerves of steel.  He had the courage to run for Student Body President at his school and he WON!!!  He is honestly so nice to everyone and I know he will do a great job.

It was a good month!

Recent and Random

This post is mostly just a picture dump, but it is the best I can do for an update on our life lately.

Tad and I changed the hook shelf in the entry up for St. Patrick's Day.

I am finally making good on my promise to share a picture of the finished fireplace now that it is decorated.  I love this simple look.

Here is a closer (if blurry) look at the decor.  I looked high and low for those candlesticks and was so happy when I found them at HomeGoods.  I still smile every time I look at them.  I realize the picture is a little fallish.  I am working on some things to hang up there during the other seasons.

The vases with the branches are HUGE!  Since this fireplace is sooooo tall, it really needed something with some height, so these fit the bill.

Just so you can have a frame of reference for how tall they are, I stood Tad next to one of them.  Tad is six years old, and they are taller than he is!

We surprised Drake with a new bike.  His old one was way too little, so he was excited to get this.  He is loving riding to and from school every day, and just going out and taking a little ride around the neighborhood every now and then.

Tad and I decorated the hook shelf for Easter.  I took down the Easter egg bunting after Easter, but the rest of it is still the same for now.  I figure it is appropriate for Spring.

I also treated myself to these pretty Easter tulips.  I love Spring flowers, and these were such a cheery addition to my dining room.

Just a candid shot of the boys opening up their Easter eggs.

Finally a picture of my two oldest in their track uniforms.  I snapped this picture really quickly at the meet last week, so it isn't the best.  Hopefully I will get a better one at the next home track meet.
Dallin gets a striped uniform because his wins last year helped the Jr. High track team take the Championship.

That is it for now.  It has been busy but fun around here!

Boys' Bathroom

I know it is truly amazing, but I am making good on my promise to share my boys bathroom sooner rather than later.  It helps that the pictures were already taken, so I just had to take a little time to put them on the blog.  I apologize in advance for the picture overload, of a bathroom of all things.  I guess it is just really important to me that you all know how this bathroom looks from every angle.(haha).  Honestly though, this bathroom is long and skinny, with no natural light, so it is hard to photograph.  Hopefully these photos will give you somewhat of an idea of what the room is like.

This bathroom is shared by the four youngest boys.  Dallin has his own that I will share another time.

This is what the bathroom looks like from the door.  See - - long and skinny.

This is a view from the door of the opposite wall.  I didn't want this bathroom to be really "theme-y", so the first thing I did to get some decor in this room was make these signs with the initials of the four boys that use it.

I fell in love with these vanities online and was a little nervous that I wouldn't love them as much when they arrived, but they are great!  One of these days I will get around to showing you how I organize the drawers.  For now, there is not much in them, but I know in a few years the boys will need space for deodorant, razors, shaving cream, hair product, etc.  It is nice to have room to grow - - so different from our previous house.  I liked the shelves on the bottom of these vanities.  I pictured some baskets under there, or possibly neatly folded towels, but I haven't gotten around to any of that.  For now, one of them just holds a basket of tub toys for my littlest guy, and the other is empty.

This is the picture of the wall sconces I picked for this room.  I love them, and think they go really well with the mirror frame.

I also made this boys locker room sign.  I thought it was appropriate since we have four boys sharing this little space.

Since this bathroom is so skinny, I couldn't get a full picture of the tub/shower, so I took it in two pieces.  This is the front.  I realize that the hand-shower is a different finish from the other faucets in this bathroom, but I had it on hand when money was running low at the end of construction, and I really wanted a hand-shower in here.  It made helping my little boys wash their hair so much easier, and now that they don't need as much help with that, it makes cleaning the tub and shower surround much easier.  I wouldn't be without it.

This is the back of the shower. After living with cheap plastic tubs and surrounds (all one piece) at our previous house and rental, I knew I wanted something better for this house.  I am so happy with my Americast tub.  It hardly has any texture on the bottom, so it is easy to clean and it is nice and heavy.  I also love the tile surround.  I found this basic square white tile and when Jeremy installed it I had him put an accent band of the blue glass tile around the shower. I love how it turned out and it is holding up great so far.  I don't love the shower curtain in this room.  I used it in the bathroom at our previous house and it worked really well there, but it isn't exactly the look I want for this room.  The colors look ok though, and I like to keep it open all the time anyway to show off the tile in the shower.

I found this little piece of art at Marshall's to put over the toilet.  I think the colors work well in this bathroom, and it is fun while I still have a couple of little boys left.

Here is another look at the wall opposite the shower.  Towel bars don't really work for us, so I have installed hooks for the towels in our house.  I find that towels are about a million times more likely to be hung up if my kids (and husband) can just put them over a hook really quickly.

For this room, I put different fabric loops on the boys towels so they can easily keep them straight.
Jack loves these hooks because they look like the letter J.

Now onto these shelves.  I am sharing this picture so you can see that they are situated behind the door in the room. 

Here are the top shelves.  The white basket on top holds first aid supplies. The next basket down is obviously empty. (Yeah!  Room to grow!)  The next shelf down holds extra hand soap, and a basket of extra TP.  And, as you can see the next shelf down holds extra towels.

From there you can see that we have a basket with extra soap, and extra hand towels.  The white basket on the bottom shelf holds washcloths and extra shampoo.  Finally, you can see that our little blue stool is tucked away neatly under the shelves, but it is easy for the little boys to get out when they need to brush their teeth, or wash up.

One more look at the bathroom shelves.

This is a look at the front of the bathroom from the shower area.

This is a look at the faucets that I chose for this bathroom.  I put them same ones in my master bathroom. They are all metal with a high neck and so nice.  I love them.

I also love the cross handles.  They were something I knew I wanted and I was so happy when I found these.

For the sake of full disclosure, I have to include a picture of the laundry basket is in this room.  I removed it for pictures, because it was getting in the way, but we need it in here, since this is where the boys change 90% of the time.  Now if I can just get them to always get their clothes in the basket and not just in the general vicinity.

One last look at this cute bathroom space. 

Well that was fun.  If you made it all the way through this post you are a real trooper.  Hopefully next time I will take less than a year to get pictures of another room up here on the blog. 

Catching Up

It has been awhile since my last post, so I am throwing a few pictures up on the blog to give a little update on what we have been doing the past two months.

Jack turned ten!  Ten!!!

Thomas turned 12!  That was a pretty exciting birthday for him.  I miss having him in Primary though.  When I was called as Primary President all five of my boys were in Primary.  Now I am left with only three!!

Jack finally won a show award in the Pinewood Derby.  He has tried every year, but his cars were always too fast and took speed awards, so they wouldn't let him win for show.  He was glad to finally win a show award his last year.

This was Drake's first Pinewood Derby year and he took the top prize - - first place in speed. His car was simple.  Last year, we tried to get Jack to use an Ipod sticker we had to make an Ipod car, but he wouldn't, so Drake told us to save it for him.  We did and that flat little car was super fast!  This was the 10th car that Jeremy has helped the boys build.  Only five more to go!

I snapped this picture of the boys putting together their Valentines.

And speaking of Valentines, I snapped a few pics of our Valentines decor.  I just used the same stuff from last year and it took about ten minutes to put it up.  Plus - it was a good excuse to dust off my hook shelf.  I am telling you, Arizona is, by far, the dustiest place I have ever lived.

We also hung up the banner that Tad and I made last year.  I still need to show you this fireplace in its entirety now that I have finished decorating it.  I will try to get to that soon.

Finally, Jeremy brought these pretty flowers to me on Valentines day.  He knows I love having fresh flowers in my house.  I am still enjoying these.  They still look great, thanks to what we learned from Thomas's  science fair project.  We tried a bunch of the popular methods for keeping your flowers looking fresh longer, and the clear winner was to add some citrus soda (like 7-up or Sprite) to the water. We couldn't believe how much longer those flowers lasted over the other things he tried.  His science fair project was one of the winners at his school, but I couldn't get there that day to take a picture.  Maybe I will set the board up one of these days and take a picture to share.  It was a good project and he did a good job.

I came home from Dallin's basketball game the other night to find this on my couch.  I love how close my boys are.  Everyone loves to comment on how I must be crazy to have had my kids so fast, but moments like this make me realize that there are definite advantages to having my boys close in age.

One of my goals for this year, was to get more pictures of the house up on the blog, for anyone who might be interested in seeing it, but lives too far away to visit.  As you can see, I am failing miserably at that goal.  But, I did manage to take some pictures of my boys bathroom the other day, so hopefully I will get them up on the blog before too long.