Spring Time

We had a lot of fun last spring and I couldn't let it go without documenting at least a little of it.  Beginning with Tate's Harry Potter birthday party.  He invited 8 buddies so it was ten little kiddos with Tate and Finny.  It was a little nutso but we had a really sweet YW come over to help crowd control and I think everyone had a lot of fun.

We started with an intro to the story and then student ID photos.

Then we had a potions lesson and made pet slime.

That was probably not the smartest idea.  It was super messy.  But again, really fun.
Then we did a charms lesson with wands and keeping a balloon afloat.  One at a time of course so no one got wand-stabbed.  Then it was time for presents and pizza.

And a very "special" birthday cake.  Made by Hagrid.

It was really fun to celebrate with a bunch of Tate's friends.  He's a well-liked little kid and has made some great little buddies.  I hope he'll remember the fun we had on his birthday.
On Easter weekend we had a little bit of Easter on Friday Sabbath which always seems weird since it's still two days before Easter...but what do you do?  Here are our crazies in their Easter Sabbath best.

We had the Larsons over for an Easter egg hunt in the back yard on Saturday. The two eldest Larsons came over to help hide eggs and were very sweet refereeing the consumption of eggs and making sure everyone had about the same amount.

The little ladies wanted to play too but they didn't really understand what all the fuss was about.  Until one of the eggs broke open and they got some candy chewed and sucked out of the wrappers.  And then it was very very important that they open ALL of the eggs and shove everything in their mouths.

We love our neighbors.  We got very lucky in that department.

Just a typical "welcome home" when Glenn walks in the door.

And the first swimming date of the spring in new little baby suits.  The boys took lessons from a girl in our group twice a week so we spent a lot of evenings at the pool.  Both boys improved a lot under her instruction, working on getting recognizable strokes and kicks down and building some stamina.  I think they did really well.

Just a couple of pictures from a kite flying day during spring break.

One of our favorite moments with the little ladies this spring was watching them discover flowers.  They'd pull them off the plants and then bring them to us.  I tucked one behind Kenna's ear and you could see their faces light up with this new knowledge.  "Oooohh!  That's what those are for!"  Then they spent the next several minutes picking flowers and putting them on their own heads or their sister's or bring them to us so we'd do the same.  It was pure girly darlingness.

And speaking of darlingness, every time this little lady lays her head on her high chair tray and smiles at me like that my heart melts into a puddle.

Taryn's favorite thing this spring was pointing her teensy finger at everything and saying, "ooooooo" in a tiny little awed tone.  So sweet.

We don't do a lot of painting around here so one day when Finny had sometime to paint he got VERY excited and kept asking hesitantly, "can I touch it?  Can I maybe paint one of my hands?  Can I paint both of my hands?"  And it ended up like this.  He was in heaven.

Taryn and Kenna have had so much fun this year playing with Finn.  It's been fun to have him home for one more year now that the girls are old enough to actually be buddies with him.  They adore him  and the feeling is definitely mutual.  Sometimes he'll cry when they go down for naps and say, "No, please don't put them to bed I want to play with them!"  It's been really nice that this whole transition to the middle child in a big way hasn't been too rough on him.

Tate discovered a couple of book series this spring and spent a lot of time after school buried in a book.  It's so sweet.  He devoured the Jedi Academy series and used his piano practicing "money" to buy a series from a book order called "Battle Bugs".  He also read a really big book called Grandpa's Great Escape which he really enjoyed.  Sometimes we laughed at him and told him to go outside and play for a bit.  One time when we made him go play we looked out the window and saw this.  So we had to sneak a picture.

Tate's also gotten very good at building lego creations and following the directions all by himself.  It's been so cool to see him just get completely lost in a project and come out sometimes an hour later with a new creation he is so proud of.  This one was a birthday gift from a friend and he loves that it has all the pieces to transform into three venomous creatures.

We spent way more than our fair share of sick days this spring.  It seemed like Tate or Finn were sick almost every few weeks.  The girls got sick a time or two but not like our boys.  It was ridiculous!

We had one more escape this spring to check out the other water park in Bahrain called Lost Paradise.  It's outside and much bigger than Wahoo but also much more expensive.  It was really fun to do once but I'm not sure if it will be a spot we frequent right now.  This is the only picture I took of the day.  Little Taryn winding down for a mini snuggle nap.