Blue Bell Fun Run

Let's get ready to Run!
There were almost 300 kids signed up to run the 1 mile. And I think they were all just as excited as these 4.
Jared did not have a strong desire for a 5K or a 10K so he offered to run the mile with the kids.
And off they go! Jared with Phoenix and Sicily. Run, Run, RUN!!
London, coming in for his finish. 8 mins 45 seconds!
Aspen, smiling for the camera for her finish of 10 mins 13 seconds!
Phoenix, in his very fast Converse shoes, racing for his finish of 11 mins.
Sicily ran the entire race! She would stop here and there to pet a puppy or pick a flower for Mommy, but with the High School kids cheering her on she'd get right back on track and start running again. Jared thought for sure he'd have to carry her at least half way, but she made the entire race.
Crossing her finish line at around 12 mins 30 second! Good job, girlie!
Time for some Ice Cream! That's why we ran this race, remember. All you can eat.
Even the dogs that ran in the race got in on the Ice Cream action.
Which one? Which one?
A lick of this, a lick of that...
This awesome lady let me take a picture of her shirt. It says, "If you can read this, then I'm not last." How cool is that? There was also a family with matching shirts that said, "Favorite?" on the front and "Chocolate Mint" or "Cookie Dough" etc. on the back.
Ice Cream for the kids now but Mom gets some in half and hour or so, after my 5K.
And off I go!
Sicily snuck in some chocolate/vanilla while I ran. Though not very sneaky if you ask me, look at that dribble down her arm. That is one happy kiddo.
And we're all done. I finished in 25 min 42 seconds, 3rd place in my age bracket of 264 ladies. Yeah me!
We stopped by the Blue Bell Factory on the way out of town. This is the little girl and her cow that's on every container of Blue Bell. Thanks Blue Bell, you were classified by Aspen as, "The Best Family Vacation ever!"

Fund Raising for Icecream

In the nearby town of Brenham, Texas is the Annual Blue Bell Fun Run. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Blue Bell, it is a WONDERFUL ice cream that comes in more flavors than you can imagine. So add a 10K, a 5K, and a 1 mile kids run to the all you can eat ice cream at the end, and you have one EXCELLENT family weekend.

But there was only one problem. Mom forgot to sign us up in time and the price went up dramatically for registration. So these wonderful kids of mine jumped to the rescue. Not so much for the chance to get healthy and run a mile, but instead, as you can guess, for the FREE Ice Cream.

They took the Lemonade Stand in shifts and earned $20+ in just over 2 hours. London's 3rd Grade Teacher just happened by, and being the Biggest Blue Bell fan I've ever met added a good $5 to the kids fundraiser once she found out which race they'd be running.
You gotta love cute kids and 25 cent Lemonade. It's a winner for everyone.

Family Home Evening

There are lots of different activities one can do for Family Home Evening. But since our Daddy is an Early Morning Seminary Teacher we sometimes get to help out with his prep work. This weeks FHE consisted of proof-watching one of the Seminary videos on the Salt Lake Temple. To make it more kid friendly, just add Rice Crispy Treats and you're good to go.

Biking to School

The weather here has been so beautiful and so crisp and clear in the mornings that the kids and I have decided to start biking to school every other day or so. It's a good 1 1/2 miles one way and we have to cross a 1/2 mile long overpass that has train tracks underneath. So every day is kind of a bit much.

After the first morning of walking our bikes up the one side of the overpass, I promised Phoenix when he could make it up both sides with out stopping to walk we could all go out for ice cream. Low and behold on the way home from school that very day, he made it up the overpass. And the very next morning, he made it up the other side. So day #2 of bike riding we went out for ice cream. :)
Sicily gets the best end of the deal. The trailer is all hers on the way there, she brings her baby, of course, and a couple of books and juice. But this particular ride home got a little crowded with London's, literally, 25 lb backpack. It's a bit ridiculous.

Cami (flauge)

Meet our newest pet, Cami, short for Camouflage. She is a beautiful green Anole lizard that our quick as a whip, Phoenix caught in our back yard. Phoenix has been on the hunt for an anole ever since my brother, Uncle Evan, said his kids left the door open on their greenhouse and his lizards got away. Apparently they eat all the bugs and make the plants grow just a bit better because of this.

And since we're traveling up to Utah in July, Phoenix took it upon himself to find Uncle Evan a new lizard (or 2 or 3, however many he can catch between now and then). So for now we have 1, she's great at camouflage (hence her name) and we're hoping to find her a friend soon.

Constant Thumb Sucking

Apparently a blankie is a must, and if you don't have a blankie you just use your shirt sleeve. She is currently 3 1/2, this should stop by Kindergarten. Shouldn't it?

Snakes are NOT our Friends

Those of you that actually know our family, know we have quite the zoo going on at our house. Including our pet Corn Snake, Flame.

Well, this is not our pet. This is a random snake I came upon in my garden. He's close to 3 ft long, and was a bit too aggressive for my liking. I would have left him to hold his ground but he was heading straight for my new little chickens. That was not about to happen.
So after a few good whacks with the hoe, there is now a snake in my garbage can. Yuck! This is not my favorite task when it comes to gardening.

Strawberry Pickin'

Strawberries, Strawberries and more Strawberries. We have now done 2 trips to the Strawberry farm and have come home with a grand total of 20+ lbs of Strawberries. Sicily is a great picker. If you zoom in close enough you will notice how red and drippy her shirt and face are. She does a bit more eating than picking. :)
So we added a little more eating to the mix. They make THE BEST fried pies at the Strawberry Farm. And their not just in Strawberry flavors. You also have chocolate, coconut, pecan, pumpkin, peach, and even sausage and onion. Yum, Yum, double Yum!!
And what goes better with eating strawberries than being one. Isn't she just the cutest little berry. :)

Crazy Sleepers

I really do feel sorry for which ever boys these girls end up marrying. Though Jared obviously puts up with my sleeping, and these girls have to get it from somewhere. You would think though that they'd want to sleep in their bed, not stuffed against the wall or on the brink of falling off. :)
My sister, Marlene, tells a story of our sister Amy sleeping with her on the top bunk of the bunk bed. Apparently she'd had a bad dream during the night so Marlene let her up. Sometime through the night Marlene awoke to a funny noise just in time to see Amy's hand disappear over the side of the bed followed by a loud thump on the unfinished cement basement floor. Thank goodness Amy was asleep and made of Jello because all she did was grunt a bit, climb back into her own bed and go back to sleep. Marlene was laughing all night and still to this day.

General Conference April 2011

I just love General Conference. Twice a year The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints holds a meeting that is broadcast to the world. In the 10 hours of speakers over the course of 2 days we are given the opportunity to hear from the Prophet of the World, President Thomas S. Monson. We then hear from the 12 Apostles and other leaders of the church.

It is always wonderful and I always learn. If you are interested in what was said you can go to www.lds.org and follow the prompts. You can either read, watch or listen to all the talks. Awesome!
Conference is held in Salt Lake City, Utah, but we live in Texas. So we get to watch it at home. I've found some excellent websites (www.sugardoodle.net) with wonderful hands on activities for the kids to do while they watch and listen to Conference. This year the activity packets were divided into age group. Nursery age (1-3), Junior Primary (4-7), and Senior Primary (8-11). They did such a good job and were really well focused towards those age groups.

Obviously the kids loved them
One tradition we have as a family is our Family Puzzles. These puzzles are about 400 pieces but they come in 3 different sizes, so everyone can help with the puzzle. If you don't get it zoom in on this picture and you'll understand. We've started to buy a new one for each Conference, it takes at least one Session to finish it (2 hrs). So we do get to listen for at least that block of time. You can buy these at Hobby Lobby if your family is interested.
One of Phoenix's activities included making a soldier out of a balloon. Well, once the balloons were out that just turned into all sorts of little crafty projects. London made about 15 balloon people. Sicily tried (with at least 6 balloons) to make a snowman. And as you can see Aspen made the Solar System. She kept asking us, "What color is Mars? What color is Neptune?" She did a pretty good job I thought. But I'm still getting really sick of tripping on balloons.

Schlumberger Family Easter Party

It's that time of year again. Candy, Chocolate and Easter Egg Hunts. We got to meet the Easter Bunny and (scary) Easter Chicken this year. Sicily is not in the picture because she was just a little too scared.
But she was happy to pose with some eggs. And though we're not all cute in our Easter clothes, it's still a cute picture.
The Annual Schlumberger Easter Party has fun stuff every year.
The Petting Zoo had the cutest chickens I've ever seen. Aspen actually caught one and tried to hold on to it for a while, but they're a lot bigger than our little chicks.
Phoenix just trapped it in the corner so he could have a pet.
They also had Blow up Slides, Horse Rides, Train Rides and an Egg Hunt at the end (we got about 75 eggs between the kids).
Here's a few shots we took before the camera died.

Sicily didn't want to get on an actual horse, so the carriage was more her style. Phoenix tagged along.
Phoenix got a little more brave when he saw the "Ponies," bigger shetlands actually. Aspen would have ridden horses all day if we'd let her.
For example. She's a farm girl at heart, minus the flip flops on the horse, and the fact that she put the wrong foot in the stirup initially so they had to lift her up so she could get on. My poor city kids.
London picked the biggest horse they had. And wanted to take it home to add it to our zoo, until I told him how much they poop. Dog poop was plenty for him apparently.
Cute little pose, with a cute little Phoenix Easter Bunny.
And the Train. Random kid in box #4, but 1, 2, 3 and 5 are mine. They always want them to go faster. If it's been my Uncle Bud driving they would have caught some air, even in the parking lot.

Soccer, Soccer and more Soccer

I swear I dream about soccer now a days.

I'm having the wonderful experience of Coaching Phoenix's soccer team this year. Why, you might ask? Well, I kind of got roped into it. And though I don't really know soccer too well, we're having a lot of fun.

One practice a week, one game every Saturday. 6 little 6 year olds, 2 girls 4 boys. No goalie. Pretty basic and right at mine and Phoenix's level.
Phoenix is the little red head right in the middle of the screen. We're the "Green Dragons," and we're loving this.

Movie Night

I co-hosted a Baby Shower for 2 of the ladies in my Ward the night of April Fools. London and Aspen (thank goodness) were invited to sleep-overs. So Jared took Phoenix and Sicily upstairs for a movie night. Sicily, as you can see did not make it all the way through the movie.
Phoenix braved coming downstairs amongst all those ladies to tell me to bring the camera upstairs and help Dad. This was too cute to not document. Apparently Jared's bottom makes a pretty nice pillow, she is completely zonked. And to make matters worse, Jared couldn't move with out waking her up. :) So after a little maneuvering he was free, and she was still asleep.

Poor LIttle Chickey

When you have chickens it's almost as nice as rabbits. Any table scraps that are meat obviously go to the dog, but everything else goes to the chickens. This time around it was bagget bread that was just a bit too hard to be eaten by people.

The chickens went crazy. But one little black chicken got a little carried away. Notice the little one on the back right. She made herself a necklace. The poor thing was just peeping and crying till I pulled it off of her. I'm not too sure if she ate any more after that. I'd be scared of my bread too if it had tried to strangle me.