Happy Birthday to Alex

Alex has been counting down to his big day for months now. To every one's relief March 20th finally came. We had a very small party on Friday, and gave Alex his gift; a rocket ship. The real fun was on Saturday when friends came over for a Mad Science party. We made exploding volcano's, slime and then lemon juice rockets. I made a lovely volcano cake, which I'm sure I couldn't make again if I tried. While we ate cake and ice cream Jeremy did the experiment where you put Mento's in diet coke. For those of you who haven't seen this before, if you put Mento's in Diet Coke it explodes 30 ft. into the air. We were lucky to have a nice day and had the party outside. Alex got several Bokugan balls (I'm still not sure what they do or how to play with them, but it's all the rage around here). Last night Jeremy took Alex to the store with some of his birthday money from grandparents. He's had his eye on a new light saber that automatically extends when you push a button. We already have several light sabers but this one is clearly superior to the others. Now Micah wants one......a few more months until his birthday though.

I can't believe Alex is 7 already! He's such a good kid with a quick smile. He's easy to please and still gives me good hugs. He's always been very smart and amazingly coordinated, strong and agile. I love you Alex!

Still working on the tile back splash.

Sunshine on My Sholders

This is attempt #2 at this post. I had it just about done last week and then Jeremy accidentally closed it without saving. So here goes again....

It is finally feeling like spring most days here in Chicago. We are actually playing outside!!! Whahooo! Gray had a blast jumping in puddles. That kid can really jump! And the big kids had a snow ball fight with the last bits of snow on the ground. I've had a chance to run outside a few times and it's all so refreshing.

Savannah sold almost 100 boxes of girl scout cookies! Way to go Savannah! I think I've eaten a few (boxes) too many; hence the running outside.




Jeremy and I decided to start a home improvement project last weekend. I'd like to know from everyone else; Is it just me, or does every project have to have some unexpected problem? We decided to put up a tile back splash in the kitchen. Simple enough, right? We pulled of the old Formica board back splash and found a giant gap between the counter and the wall. So we came up with different ideas to try to get around the problem, but in the end we just put a bunch of mortar down the hole and let it dry. Because of the set back, we didn't get to finish our project, but hopefully this coming Saturday after Alex's birthday party we'll get it done. So here are the before pictures and I'll get the afters up later.




On St Patrick's Day, the kids were very disappointed when they woke up and found that a leprechaun had not come to mess up the house while they were asleep. Wen they got home from School and went out to jump on the trampoline, they found confetti and a pot of chocolate gold coins. They were ecstatic and all is well in their world!

World's worst blogger!!!

Ok, Ok, I know I'm really bad at keeping my blog current. I get a little behind and then a little more and before I know it, I'm so far behind that it's too overwhelming so then I put it off a little longer.

Where to begin??? I guess I'll start off by saying we had a wonderful Christmas. We spent two weeks in Utah visiting family and friends. Savannah, Alex and Micah learned how to ski and they were fearless! I was impressed that they could just zip down the mountain without poles. No crying or anything!
Here they are with their cousins.


We brought our Wii with us and everyone had fun with guitar hero. Jeremy's brother, Dan was a complete addict. Jeremy had a great time staying up with him until the "Wii" hours of the night several times.
Here we are on Christmas Eve. The kids always get matching pj's.

All in all we had a great time!


Now some not so great news. My Grandma Decker passed away on February 7th. She had been in a nursing home for 5 1/2 years after having a paralyzing stroke so in some ways this is a blessing and I am so relieved that she is no longer a prisoner in her own body. But I will truly miss her. She and I were two peas in a pod and had a lot in common. I feel so blessed to be her granddaughter and to have spent so much time with her. I was fortunate to be able to travel back "home" for the funeral. (Jeremy and I had a trip to Mexico planned so I had to do some schedule switching) My sisters and I made a floral arrangement for the funeral. We choose flowers that reminded us of picking wild flowers at the cabin with Grandma. It turned out beautiful! I had a great few days visiting with them. It's not often that I get to spend time with my sisters without all the kids running around.
The funeral service was beautiful. There was so much that could be said about how wonderful Grandma was. She was an artist, great cook, immaculate housekeeper. She had a strong testimony and showed us all what it means to endure faithfully to the end. I know that I was her favorite grandchild and I'm sure the rest of the grand kids feel the same. (I really was though:)) Grandpa wouldn't leave her side during the viewing and when it was time to close the casket, he was helped up out of his wheelchair to stand and kiss her goodbye. He kissed her so gently and said "Goodbye, Bernie. I'll be with you soon." We had all witnessed a love story. There was not a dry eye in the room. We were both heartbroken for Grandpa, but so grateful for the plan of salvation and the knowledge that Grandma and Grandpa (and all of the rest of us) are sealed for eternity and will be together again. This is what it's all about.



I also had the privalege of meeting the newest member of the Wallace family. Ben and Megan had their first baby about a week after we left and we were sad that we wouldn't get to see her until....well, who knows when.

Introducing....Maria Elizabeth Wallace. She is a cutie with nice round cheeks. We can't wait to spend more time with her in the future.




From Utah I went straight to Mexico to meet up with Jeremy and his Brother, Seth and sister in law, Mandy. It was warm and relaxing and just what we all needed to thaw us out from all the snow. (ok well the truth is that Seth and then Jeremy got terribly sick with fever, chills, body aches, and then congestion and coughing. Turned out to be Bronchitis and a Sinus infection for Jeremy. Mandy also got congested. But we'll focus on the positive!) We rode on a crazy jungle buggy to some caves to snorkle. On the way back the buggy got stuck in reverse so we had to get on a different one. We went on an all day trip to the ruins at Chichan Itza and then to a cenote to swim.



And of coarse we got to go SHOPPING!!! Good thing I had Mandy with me since Jeremy and Seth were less than thrilled to be shopping. All in all it was a great trip. 10 days without my kids was not, however, great. I missed them horribly by the end and was ready to come home and be a mom again! Thanks to our amazing Moms who flew out to cold, cold Chicago for a few days each to take care of our kids. When we got home, Gray wouldn't come to me. He would cry for Grandma every time I tried to hold him. I guess that means they did a great job spoiling the kids. Yes, I was a little sad (ok, maybe more that a little!) that my little guy didn't want me, but we are back to being best buds again so all is well.

Thanksgiving Weekend

For Thanksgiving we had our good friends, the Cheneys' over for the weekend. Jeremy went to high school with Ben and we have kept in touch with them over the years. They now live in Wisconsin. Jeremy started the day by playing football with the other old guys in the ward. I wasn't there, but rumor has it that Jeremy was the star of the game! We had a delicious and huge dinner as usual then stayed up late (1:30 am) playing Settlers of Catan. Then Rachel and I got up to go shopping on Black Friday. We got some great deals and had a blast! On Saturday we kept our tradition of cutting down our Christmas tree. There are not any national forest close enough to go truck through to woods out here so went to a tree farm to cut down our Christmas tree. We saw a real reindeer, and took a hay ride to the field where we cut our tree. It was very muddy, but at least it wasn't a blizzard like last year! We also got to visit Mrs. Claus in her little house and she taught us a few things about Santa. Did you know that his favorite kind of cookies are the colorfull ones? We also got to put the kids names on the "nice" list! All in all it was a wonderful weekend.
As I was cleaning the house to get ready for company and Thanksgiving, Micah came up to me and asked if his hair looked any shorter. Of coarse that question made me stop what I was doing and look. Sure enough he had cut a lot of hair from the top of his head and he cut it SHORT!! So I had to try to even things up by cutting off all of his beautiful golden curls. Very sad, but it will grow back.......eventually.


P.S. I somehow deleted all of the blog addresses for all of my friends. Will you all please leave a comment with your blog for me? Thanks!!

Catch up!!

Kids with the coats we collected.

I'm playing catch-up now.
We had a fun Halloween with the trunk - or - treating and the trick-or-treating! I was able to help out at Savannah and Alex's class parties. Then we went to our friends, the Temples' house for a party. All the kids went trick - or - treating together then we ate and chatted with everyone. When it was over we lugged at least 25 lbs of candy home (ok I'm exaggerating a little but they really got a lot of candy). The candy is now gone.
For our family service project in November we did a coat drive in our neighborhood. We colected over 20 coats along with some hats, snow pants, gloves and boots to donate to a family shelter service. The kids had a great time and learned a lot.

It's getting colder!!

Fall is in full swing around here. We need jackets to go out, the leaves are changing and we're busy with all sorts of fall activities. I've always thought of Halloween as the kickoff of the Holidays. After Halloween it's just a blink of an eye until Thanksgiving and then comes Christmas!!!






We hosted a Halloween party on Friday for Savannah and some of her girlfriends. Alex also had a friend over. The little boys were running around yelling and screaming but they were nothing compared to the girls who were playing a clean version of "Truth or Dare". Jeremy was amazed at how crazy girls can be. They all had a great time.






Saturday we had family pictures taken. Hopefully they turned out well. It was a lot of work to get the kids to cooperate all at the same time. It will be worth it I'm sure!

Tonight we took time to carve the pumpkins that we picked out last Family Home Evening (or Family Out Evening). It always amazes me at how exited the kids all get at the smallest things. It is always such a huge ordeal, I can't imagine not following the tradition. The pumpkins are carved and sitting out on the steps and the mess is finally cleaned up! The kids are in bed and I'm sure they are dreaming of their Trick-or-Treat buckets overflowing with candy!

Other news: Alex lost his second front, bottom tooth. Gray is now in the Nursery at church, but he won't go alone so I'm going with him. He looks like such a baby compared to all the big kids who will be Sunbeams in January. Hopefully he'll do better once they have all moved on.

PS Could someone please tell me how get a cute background for my blog, put slide shows and music on? Thanks!

Conference Weekend

I was planning on updating every week, but............well, you know how it goes. We had a wonderful weekend listening to General Conference. I loved the talk by Elder Wirthlin about how to handle adversity......."try to laugh". I also enjoyed the talk by (??? can't remember now) about living in the here and now and being thankful for what we have. The kids did great and stopped to listen to our Prophet whenever he spoke. They kept entertained with their "Conference Packets" which had lots of fun activities and pictures to color.

I did have to pause the tivo a few times on Saturday to take Savannah to ballet class and pick her up and I had to take Alex to a football game (he made a tackle!!!). A few weeks ago, Jeremy and I went shopping to buy the supplies we needed to put together 72 hour kits. During the break between the Sunday sessions we assembled our kits. I'm amazed at how much stuff we needed for a family of 6!!!! Hopefully if anything happens that we would need those kits, we'd be able to use them at home or use our car because I don't know how far we'd get on foot. Hopefully we'll never have to find out, but it a peacful feeling to get that taken care of. (It only took us 12 1/2 years.)

As for other news for the past few weeks......Savannah has been doing lots of homework. I finally cut Alex's hair. He also lost his first tooth and is $1 richer!!! Micah got his foot caught in the spokes of a bike while getting a ride from a bigger boy. It is gruesome to look at but he's ok. He and Gray have been playing a new game where Gray lays on a blanket and Micah pulls him around on the wood floor. Gray got some new teeth in and has been busy finding pencils and writing all over the walls with them. He also had his first hair cut and is big enough to wear the much loved "cow suit" !! ( I thought you'd like to know that Ben and Megan!) I've been busy cleaning walls (and everything else). I'm also attempting to make "quiet books". Wish me luck!! Jeremy, well, you can guess what he's been doing. Working and crying over the Cubs.