The Heaths

Thursday, March 31, 2016

A Scooter for Clara

Clara has been so jealous of the scooters that the boys got for Christmas but she doesn't have the balance to handle the two-wheeler scooters. She finally had a stroke of luck today when I found a tripod scooter for $5 on Facebook. We picked it up almost immediately and she and Bryce insisted on playing with their scooters in the driveway. Bryce kept trying to trade her scooters, but she seems to really like her Spiderman scooter. ;) She wants to be just like her big brothers!

She's thrilled to have her very own scooter!

Bryce was really impressed with the Spiderman

Big smiles!

Bryce has really gotten comfortable with his TMNT scooter in the last few months

Round and round they go!

She is so pleased with herself. :)

Clara is so cute with her dink-dink-dink next to Bryce's smoother swooosh

Monday, March 28, 2016

Playing with Bauer

We love having the Burtons back from Utah! Bryce and Bauer play pretty well together and Baby Beckett is just an adorable pile of squishy sweetness. :) Mallory and I have been going for walks often and the kids love to be out in the sunshine. Bryce and Bauer are usually riding a bike or scooter and they build imaginary bridges over the cracks in the sidewalk.

While we were waiting for Mallory and her boys, Clara started to figure out just how close to the street she could get before I got after her. She would walk right up to the road, balance on the curb and put one foot on the street while looking back with a mischievous grin on her face to see if I would catch her. Ugh. Bryce followed her lead and, incidentally, discovered his shadow! He insisted on trying to push Clara's stroller up the steps in front of the Burtons' home. The boys discovered the fun of leaping off the raised driveway into the grassy ditch while Mallory and I were fussing with the strollers. Clara wasn't convinced, but the boys gave me some good action shots. :)

Testing the boundaries...

Check it out! It moves when I do! :D

Chivalrous big brother doesn't mind pushing his little sister in her stroller.

Banzai!

Bryce always tucks his feet waaaay up underneath his body.

Saturday, March 26, 2016

Easter with Cousins

Our Easter Celebration stretching into the afternoon, too, when the cousins got here! Nana, Aunt Amy, Danny and Aunt Val had to head out soon after that, but everyone got to say hi to everyone. ;) Tammy wanted Chinese Sundaes for her celebratory birthday dinner and that is always a delicious hit. Before dinner, I took the kids outside and had them plant some "magic jelly beans" in a patch of dirt. The jelly beans were going to grow into candy flowers. ;) Each kid planted their jelly bean, Nathan watered them and then we went in for dinner. After dinner, we pulled out Austin's applesauce stack cake (his birthday is March 11th) and Tammy's strawberry creme stack. Yum! While we ate through our slices of cake, Tammy, Sereen, and Jenna tore up strips of cloth to make arm bands for us to use during the family games.

Jenna made a list of the teams and she and Sereen passed out the arms bands. Then we took our places in the yard for the first game - the Hula Hoop Pass! Each team joined hands to pass the hula hoop down the human chain and back again. Our team won the first round, Mom's team won the second round and then we won the third!! Mom's team tried to cheat in the last round (one person held the hoop while everyone else stepped through it) and our team caught on and cheated too. ;) It was fun!

The next game was the Egg Walk. Each team member had to walk across the yard with a raw egg on a spoon and pass it to the next team member without breaking it. Each team was rooting and cheering and the kids were having a blast. It came down to me vs Liz and I came in just a few steps behind her! They won fair and square this time, though. ;)

The last game was the Egg Toss and we blew through 3 dozen eggs. Austin was paired up with me and we won with the longest toss. No idea how far apart we were, but it looked like at least 30 feet. I was the limiting factor - I can't toss very far. Our egg dropped on the ground once and didn't break, so we were technically still in! Haha! The kids were having so much fun throwing to each other and several of the eggs were almost indestructible.

After the games, the kids went out to the front yard to draw with chalk on the sidewalk while the adults hid eggs for the Easter egg hunt. The candy flowers were planted, the $5 egg was hidden and the kids were lined up! It was crazy chaos as the littles cousins went first to gather a few eggs and then the older cousins tore all around the yard. Jon found the $5 egg I hid in the wheelbarrow of grass and Derek found Jon's special little golden egg that he likes to hide in crazy high spots - this time was on the porch light.

The last activity of the day was the confetti egg party! All the kids were loaded with a confetti egg and told to smash each other with them. After their eggs were smashed on each other, I gave one to Katelyn and told her she was "It!" She smashed her egg on Isaac who became "It" and got an egg to smash on someone and so the game progressed through a few dozen confetti eggs. Good times.

So much fun! We love living so close to all our family and I hope my kids cherish this time with aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents. It is a wonderful season of life. Most wonderful of all is the time we have to celebrate our Savior on Easter Sunday tomorrow. He is our Elder Brother and He loves us so much that He suffered for our sins and laid down His own life and took it up again so that we could have the opportunity to be forgiven of our sins and return to live with our Father in Heaven again. His sacrifice and death are the most beautiful miracle this world will ever see and I'm so blessed to have the knowledge of His restored gospel and of His divine plan for me and my family.