A Whole Lot Of Just About Everything!!!

So, I haven't blogged for a long time, and I thought I would do just one big blog to catch up! First of all, I can't believe that it has been almost a year since we moved to Wisconsin! We really have adapted well. The most important thing to me is that my kids are totally happy here. They wish that we could see more family or that more family would come and see us, but they really do love it here.

I kinda just uploaded pictures and then I was just going to write about the pictures, so I don't know what this is going to look like when I am done.

I am so shocked when I look at my kids and see how big and old they are getting! Brahnson is going to be a teenager in September! That is totally unreal to me!

Jorden's favorite thing to do is smile at the camera!

Sydnee has been learning how to do her "happy face" and her "sad face"!

Easter was fun this year!

We told the Easter Bunny to not go overboard with our kids Easter. We loved the idea that he chose to do buckets and shovels instead of baskets.

Sydnee really got into it! I think her candy was gone the first day!

Brahnson was happy to get his marshmellow Peeps! He traded a lot of his candy to get more. Mom likes them too, but dad can't understand why we do.


All in all, the Easter bunny did very well. We also invited a family from our ward that has two kids. We thought that we would ask the Easter Bunny to remember our friend Margaret too. That is why there are so many Easter buckets!
General Conference is always another holiday that we look forward to. General Conference has always been a fun thing in my family growing up and because I can't be there with my extended family we do everything they do plus some! One of the extra things we do is that we do a chocolate fountain. It has become a favorite with all members of my family. We also do our traditional "General Conference Breakfast" which includes; breakfast casserole, homemade scones with honey butter, and orange julius. We also do "General Conference Bingo" with candy for the markers and candy bars for the prizes. The minimum you have to have to get a candy bar is three bingos! One bingo is just too easy! It is an exhausting day, as you can see from Jorden's picture, but very fun. Sydnee totally loved it! I think she got more on her than in her

Everybody got into it! Having traditions like this make memories. My kids, with everything that we do for General Conference, actually sit through all four sessions quietly! Even Jorden! Chad and I think it is so important for them to hear the prophet's voice and then have them feel the Holy Ghost testify to their hearts that what they are hearing is true. We have a DVR now and we put General Conference on our DVR. For Family Home Evening each Monday we play one of the talks and discuss it. It has worked really well for our family. I am so happy that we have the gospel in our lives to help us teach our children the way that Heavenly Father wants them to live. We have also started to get up at 5:30 in the morning to read family scriptures together. We are doing it a different way this time. We have gone through the Book of Mormon cover to cover several times as a family. This year we are taking it verse by verse and pondering why Heavenly Father wanted that particular verse in the Book of Mormon. Sometimes we read three verses sometimes we read more or less. We started this I think in December and we are almost finished with first Nephi chapter 15. We have found a lot of things that we have never thought about before in our scripture study. Our family has really benefited from this.

We went to the Madison Children's Museum. It wasn't the best Children's Museum that I have been to, but my kids were glad to get out of the house.

Jorden liked the Dinosaurs!







The older kids liked the crane!

Sydnee liked it all and if you asked her to show you her teeth this is what you got!

Brahnson just liked being silly! Sydnee would not get into that fish's mouth!



Anyway, this was the biggest blog that I think I have done yet! We are so grateful for all our friends and family that comment and do blogs too. We are looking forward to a busy summer. I am so glad that the kids are back on the tradition school schedule instead of year round school. We are going to be spending about 5 weeks in Utah this summer and staying at different family's' homes. It will be over a year since our family has seen most of our family. We will be there from July 1-Aug. 10th. Chad will be there off and on during that time. Hopefully we will see you soon and hopefully I'll be better at blogging! Love you all!