Kyla's DI (Destination Imagination) Competition!

This last weekend (Saturday the 26th) was Kyla's DI team's competition.  They have been working so hard since December to get everything ready and the day finally arrived.  She had to be up to the school on the bus ready to go by 6:15 on a Saturday...UGGHH!  But she had a great surprise waiting for her when she got there.  Mrs. Green brought her a goody bag full of all kinds of great stuff for winning the design for the DI t-shirts that both teams wore for the competition.  Mrs. Green also made t-shirts for the family to wear to support Kyla...Here we all are at the competition in our shirts (except Tony...he tried to squeeze into his, but it was just a little too small!)

Their challenge was at 9:00 in Rifle and we just barely made it in time!!  I only got one picture because I was taking video of the skit.  So here's that one picture!

Their challenge was calle the Triple Take Road Show.  They had to perform their skit to 3 different "pretend" audiences.  They did a fabulous job!!  And since their skit was at 9:00a.m. and then they had their instant challenge at 1:00, but parents cannot watch that one, and then the awards assembly wasn't until 6:30 we decided to take off and do some shopping in Grand Junction and then head home.

We got a call at about 7:15 from a crying Kyla telling us that they had won 1st place and would be going to state in Denver sometime in April!!  I was kicking myself that we didn't stay, but I have no idea what we would have done there for all those hours with the boys!!  Anyway, all their hard work paid off!!  Now they have to keep on working to make it better for State!!  We're so proud of her!!

Caleb turns double digits!

It was Caleb's Birthday on Tuesday the 22nd.  We had a family birthday party on Monday night for FHE.  Caleb opened presents:

A Hot Wheels car from Rhett (Rhett picked it out himself and just had to buy the "cool car" for Caleb!)

Eli bought Caleb some Basketball and Baseball cards. Caleb LOVED them!

This was from Tony and I and Grandpa & Grandma Wilson...we wanted him to pick out his own bike so this is how we told him that's what he was going to be getting!

Here's the Birthday Boy with his cake on fire!!  Can't believe he's 10!!

Putting the candles on the cake!

Here's Caleb's Birthday Cake...If you would like the recipe head on over to Double the Deliciousness!

It was a great party and I was able to take Caleb out to lunch on Thursday for his "birthday lunch with Mom" (and Rhett!) and we stopped at Walmart and bought him the bike he wanted.  I'll get a picture of him on it and post it up soon!

Also, I've been sorting through all our photo's on the computer and came across this super duper DUPER cute one of Caleb!!  I just had to post it too! 

This was a couple of months after Caleb had turned 4 (which incidentally is about where my youngest is at now...I CANNOT believe how fast time flies!)  Isn't he about the cutest little 4 year old EVER!!

How we love our Caleb...what joy he brings to our family!!  Always happy and very loving!!

Kyla flying high!!

It looked so easy from the ground, but when Kyla and Caleb got on there they decided it was a little more difficult than it looked!!  Kyla finally ended up trying some flips and got pretty good at them!

Caleb's Turn!

We tried talking Caleb into trying a flip...He was not going to do it!!  It cracked me up!

Eli's Baptism

Eli was baptized on Saturday March 12th. What a wonderful day and it was so great to have some family here to celebrate this special day with us!! Eli was baptized and confirmed by his Dad, Tony. Grandpa, Uncle Brandon, Bishop Clark, Bro. Graff, and Bro. Shean all stood in with Tony to confirm Eli.

The program was beautiful. We sand "When I Am Baptized" for the opening sone and then had a talk on baptism by Uncle Chad, which was perfect!! Then Eli was baptized. I'll never forget that sweet grin he had on his face right after he was baptized. He stood in the font looking out at all of us with the most perfect little grin! What joy that boy bring to our lives!!

After the baptism Grandma gave a talk on the Holy Ghost, which was also excellent! Then Eli was confirmed. What a special day for our family!!

Read the next post to see his birthday celebration!!

Eli is 8!!

Eli's 8th birthday was last Thursday March 10th. I still can't believe he's 8 already...I'm feeling old! We had family come in (Grandpa & Grandma, Uncle Chad and Aunt Melinda and there kiddos; Makenna, Madison, Landen and Logan, and Uncle Brandon and Aunt Elyse and little baby Isaac) and were able to celebrate this special day with Eli.

We had a fun pizza party for his birthday and cake and ice cream. Here's the Oreo Cake we had for his party...If you'd like the recipe, head over to our recipe blog!

He got some great gifts that he was pretty excited for!
Here's his remote control monster truck (that does not work and needs to be returned!!), fantasia (the movie) that he's been wanting for months!, and some red vines licorice which he also loves!!

His favorite books are the Magic Treehouse series, so Tony surprised him with the ENTIRE set!! He was pretty excited about that one!

He got this cool magic tricks thing from Grandpa and Grandma too. He's been learning how to do them and has even given a magic show!

Friday we were able to spend the day in Telluride with Chad and Melinda and family and Grandpa and Grandma!

The highlight is always riding the gondola...it never gets old, and not just for the kids, Grandpa said he could just ride it all day!!:)

This picture cracks me up!! This is when the gondola "takes off"...just take a look at Eli and Rhett's faces!!

The kiddo's shoving themselves into the phone booth!! How cute are they?!

Landen and Rhett posing for a picture!!:)

Makenna, Madison, Makyla, and Caleb all tried the bungee thingy!:) They were all pretty excited to try it but then when they got them they all were pretty scared, well, except for Madison!!:) Here's Rhett and Landen watching the fun!!

Makyla was pretty scared at first but towards the end we finally got her to try doing some flips...which she was able to do. I've got it on video if I can ever get this thing to work I'll post it on here

And here's Caleb...he was too chicken to even try a flip, and I thought he would be the one to go crazy up there and try all kinds of things...guess I was wrong!

Kyla's finished room! FiNaLlY!!!

We finally finished Kyla's room last weekend!! It was a big chore and took more work than I thought it would (don't projects always!), but it is now complete except for the chair rail, curtains, and some more "art" for the one huge blank wall!

Here it is...from the beginning!

The "before" of the closet

The "after" of the closet!

This is after 3 coats of white paint (holy cow...I didn't think it would take that much paint to do white over beige!!) and 2 coats of the red! (we ended up having to do 4 coats of the red!!)

And this is after lots of trial and error on these stripes...at first we wanted to do a red metallic paint for the stripes but just couldn't get that to work so we decided just to do a darker red of regular paint. I think it turned out awesome!!


And now for the final project!! Kyla arranged (with a few pointers from me!) her room by herself and organized all her little nick-nacks! She did a great job!




Makyla was a huge help with this project which was really nice! I had to "fire" her a couple of times, but then always put her back to work! It was acutally really nice working with her. Good bonding time for Mom and daughter!!

Reason to not play basketball in the house!

We bought a little mini pro basketball hoop for Rhett that hangs on our door in our dining room. That kid has spent countless hours shooting hoops and pretending he's anyone from Jimmer, Emery, Foster, Deron Williams and more that I can't think of right now to being the Boston Celtics, the Utah Jazz, and many more teams (I think he just might know more NBA teams than I do!!)

Anyway, he and Caleb were playing around this evening and there was a "loose ball" and Rhett went for it...right into the corner of the wall!! The wall was fine, but here's what it did to Rhett...
(don't worry I hugged him for a while before I took the photo:)!!)

The poor kid...as soon as he hit I knew it was going to be a bad one. It instantly started swelling and bruising. He sat on my lap all through dinner and I held some frozen corn to his bump. The swelling went down but still looks bad...but it didn't seem to bother him too much! Here he is about an hour after the "incident"!



Also, since we're talking about basketball, I've got a little story! Today Rhett was asking me if we were going to be doing something (I can't remember what it was)...and I told him "no, we're not going to today". He looked at me funny and said "What?? Ogide?" (If you follow Moutain West Basketball you'll understand...my little 3 year old does!!:))