Not the best day ever

Feeling a bit like this today:

bllleeeerrgh.

Anicka is four today!

I can't believe that my little Monkey is four years old. Where does the time go?

Some things you might not know about Anicka:
- She has two special puppies that she sleeps with every night. There are hysterics if she can't find them when it's bed time. And that's most of the time. She lost one of them last year, but Santa managed to get her a replacement. That guy is amazing.
- She loves to color, and does at least half a dozen drawings every day. Her favorite things to draw are rainbows and flowers.
- Currently her favorite movies are WALL-E, Madagascar, and Mulan (which she calls 'Chinese').
- She is a big goofball and makes me laugh every day.
- She loves to 'help' me cook, fold laundry and wash dishes.
- She loves learning and is always asking me how to spell things or how to say something in Spanish or Sign Language. She asks me almost every day whether she's big enough to go to school yet.

I love my Anicka!

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

Happy Birthday, Monkey. Now I'm off to make some cupcakes!

Spotlight

I wanted to do a quick spotlight on www.kevinandamanda.com
Perhaps you've noticed the sweet new fonts all over my blog? Those are courtesy of Amanda. She has tons of free fonts that you can download from her site, as well as a tutorial on how to apply them. She's so crafty and clever, I'm loving her blog. You should go check it out.

Under Construction

Sorry if my blog is a disaster for the next few hours (...days...?) I am working on revamping things.

Meanest Mom giveaway

There is another awesome Giveaway going on over at The Meanest Mom. All you have to do is comment to be entered to win, and there are lots of prizes. Check it out.

The Epic Easter Egg Hunt

Every year for Easter my parents hide hundreds of eggs all over their property, some filled with candy, others with vouchers for prizes or money. It has always been one of my favorite traditions. This year we were missing a couple of members of our family (Eric works at IHOP and is gone most Sundays and Crystal is in Logan for school) but the egg hunt was still a lot of fun. There were over 270 eggs to find, and the most coveted prize was an entire bag of Starburst. Good times, good times.

Evie wants to be an easter egg, too:

A ghost of eggs from Easters past:

Dividing up the spoils. I'll trade you a bunny crisp for your starburst:

Anicka now has enough candy to last us until Christmas. It has been in a bowl on the counter for the past two days, but I'm ready to hide it in the closet now. Out of sight, hopefully out of mind. I don't need the temptation!

Gun control

As someone who has grown up around guns and gun-toting cowboys, I am adamantly against gun control. I believe that our forefathers meant just what they said when they wrote the second amendment: 'The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.' And yet our government is slowly taking away our right to bear arms. They constantly impose stricter laws and regulations on people who own firearms, with the excuse that they are trying to keep guns out of the hands of those people who would use them to harm others.
It makes me angry.
You know what else makes me angry? The way the media vilifies firearms and those who choose to own them. I was pretty disgusted with 'If I Only Had a Gun', the 20/20 special that aired last Friday. They seemed to be trying to make the case that since a majority of children and teenagers (and even many adults) don't know how to handle a gun correctly, then nobody should be able to own a firearm. What I think is that since a majority of children, teenagers and adults don't know how to handle a gun correctly, they should BE EDUCATED. For instance, as a child I was taught that you should NEVER point your gun at any living thing unless you plan to kill it. Even if you think that the gun isn't loaded. Guns are NOT toys and should not be treated as such. I believe that there would be a lot fewer accidental shootings if children were actively educated and taught respect for firearms.
Kellene of Women of Caliber has some good points about the 20/20 special. I like what she has to say, and I especially love point #3, where she talks about freedom. Check it out: http://womenofcaliber.wordpress.com/2009/04/13/2020-shoots-blanks/
And for those of you who missed the show you can find it in pieces on YouTube.

It's all about Family (TONS of pictures)

As some of you may have heard, my Great Grandma passed away on March 31st. last weekend was her funeral. As much as I hate funerals, it was great to see all of our extended family and to hear stories about grandma. I will definitely miss her, but I'm glad that she's back to her old self and no longer in pain. It's such a wonderful thing to know that you can see your family members again after this life.
I love you, grandma.

This is the only digital photo I have of grandma. I know my dad has some 5 generation pictures of us somewhere, if I can remember to get some from him I'll post them up here sometime.

After the funeral I wanted to do something fun with my family, instead of dwelling on the sadness of grandma's passing. So we went bowling.

Now, I'm not really a big bowler. I actually used to hate bowling because I was so bad at it, and I was always too embarrassed to let people see me bowl. Now I've decided that I just don't care. Because it's more fun that way.

Actually, I think I had just as much fun taking pictures as I did bowling.

Anicka loved hanging out with her cute aunts, Sienna and Kaycee

Evie takes her bowling very seriously

Crystal and Eric don't...


And yet Eric blows us all away by bowling a 217

Sienna studies the scores intently

Why can I not just smile normally when pictures are being taken?

My brothers should be Aeropostale models...

My family is so cute :)

Adventures in Motherhood

Here are some random pictures just for Crystal, who told me it was time to update my blog. Too true. Hopefully I will have time to put up something with substance and better pictures later this week.


Ryker thinks he's a big boy. He thinks this, and yet he forgets that I am the mother and I get to say when he's allowed to grow up. Oh, wait. It doesn't work that way? That's too bad.
He likes to pull himself up on the furniture now. His favorite place to stand is at the gate to the kitchen, because when he shakes the bars they make this awesome rattling noise, and it isn't annoying at all. Not at all.

Here we see that Anicka has discovered the wonder of milk bubbles. I actually don't care if she blows bubbles in her milk, as long as she drinks most of it and doesn't get it all over the carpet, which is good, because since I took a picture of her doing it she now considers this Acceptable Behavior.
Anicka sure loves to play with her brother. When she's not trying to pick him up and put him in her doll stroller or piling every one of her stuffed animals on top of him, they usually play "build 'em up and knock 'em down" which can result in either gales of laughter or earsplitting screams, depending on whether Anicka was finished building 'em up before Ryker knocked 'em down.


And here we have documentation of Ryker's first trip into the laundry area. He noticed that Mom was spending an awful lot of time over in a certain part of the hallway one day, and decided to explore.

(What's so interesting about this thing, anyway?)

(This really isn't all that exciting, mom.)

(Hey, look! A sock! Nom nom nom)

There never was a child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him asleep. -Ralph Waldo Emerson