Happy Birthday Calvin and Tyrese!

Calvin and Ty, birthday brothers, enjoying some cake and ice cream!

Shiloh is REALLY enjoying her dessert!

Colin and Calvin were at a Board of Reviews before we did dessert...that's why he's in his uniform! Colin kind of got jipped on his birthday because we were packing to come back to UT from NV, and things were too busy that day to make his favorite dessert. So, we decided to have his traditional Strawberry Shortcake (doesn't sound very manly, but it sure is good!) for Calvin and Ty's birthday.

Ty's 3 candles are in a little group, and the other 13 belong to Calvin!

Happy Birthday to my sweeties!

So, remember the boys opened the FREE pocketbike for Dev's birthday? For Calvin's birthday we decided to let them actually ride it. They had a blast!

After about 40 minutes of riding, it broke! (maybe because it had been in a box for 3 years...could it have expired like canned food does?). At least they got a little riding time in.

Baby Chicks

Calvin and Devon helped out our neighbor with his Eagle project entitled "a day at the farm." It was a fantastic Eagle project with many different farm animal stations and volunteers to explain all about them. I even watched a goat being milked for the very first time! It rained most of the day, but miraculously just before the event began, the rain stopped and everything was dry for the Eagle project. It was very well attended. Calvin and Devon were assigned to volunteer at the baby chick and duck station. Here they are holding two very cute baby ducklings!

Calvin won the drawing for 2 baby chicks! He proudly named them "Kronk" and "Kusco". Can you tell we have "The Emperor's New Groove" theme going on in our farm? We put the chicks in our old lizard cage, set up a light, some food, and water. This morning, the triplet saw them for the first time. "Bird! Bird!" were the excited cries. Of course, all they wanted to do was pet the birdies, which we let them do for awhile, but it started to get out of hand, and now the chicks are up on the kitchen counter out of the triplets' reach. We still take them out occasionally for them to pet, but just not on a constant basis!

Tiffy the hair stylist

Tiffany was quite pleased at how well she accessorized her doll's hair!

Pretty!

Lizzard Hunting

Colin, Calvin, Dev, Em, and Uncle Dan went lizard hunting. They rigged some sort of lasso attached to a fishing pole, and when the lizard walked into the trap, Yank! They caught 'em! They caught quite a few- large and small ones. Colin said they would be driving along and Dan and Calvin would spot all kinds of lizards from the car! "How do they do that?" he marveled. I love Em's blue fingernails in this picture.

This is the catching contraption. Poor fella, didn't have a chance.

Trip to NV

This is a long-standing tradition whenever we go over to Ma and Pa's house. Popsicles on the back yard swing! Coconut popsicles are one of their favorites!

Pictures with Great-Grammy!

Uncle Kirk giving the triplets the run-down on something!

Ty, cousin Kian, and Pa giving camera lessons!

Kian and Emily. They have a cute little bond!

Annie, Daisy, and Emily! We had a yummy dinner with great friends, and played a fun FHE game about the pioneers. The triplets enjoyed their first ever ice cream cones! They weren't sure what to do with the cone, so they simply said, "more ice cream!"

Dev, Mike, and Calvin.

Jane and Jen!

Scouts!

This was Devon's first day as an official 11 year old scout! Colin is the 11 year old scout master, and Calvin is troop guide, so he goes every week as an assistant. They have a blast!

Extentions

I decided to put extentions in the twins' hair before our trip to NV. Almost 4 hours later I was done, and so was my back! It was worth it though...they're adorable! If one of the extentions comes out, Ty will pick up the extention and put it on their head and say "Iffy's hair" or "Shiloh's hair!"

Devon is Eleven!

Devon's birthday began around 8am, and didn't end until around 10:30pm! He had his birthday activities all planned, written down and posted on the fridge for the day which included: playing a few games on Dad's I-phone, breakfast made by Dad (pancakes, eggs, sausage, bacon, and strawberries) presents, play, lunch (backyard campfire with roasted hot dogs and bratwursts, chips, and soda), tomahawks, geocaching (they did 11, and I stayed home with napping triplets), dinner (Dev's choice- pot stickers, rice, and eggs), then birthday brownies!

We've had this pocket-bike for 3 years! It came FREE with our Excursion! The boys have been wanting to open it ever since we got it. Our original plan was to try and sell it, but we finally gave in and let them open it on Dev's birthday. Nobody has ridden it yet, and there will be helmets and serious protection gear when they do (the max speed is 15 mph), and supervision of course. They enjoyed putting it together, and now that it's out of the box, nobody has talked about it much! I'm sure we'll have a future post of the boys riding it though.

"I skewered a worm!" Dev was practicing his tomahawk throwing skills at our backyard range and sliced a worm clear in half! He didn't mean to, the worm was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Great shot, Dev!

Happy Easter!

We're glad Calvin, Devon, and Em still enjoy dying Easter eggs!

This baby chick became the object of much interest, for which we were wishing we had 2 more of them. It was one of our older decorations and was missing a leg. Chicky got banned and went night-night back into the Easter box!

Sharing eggs.

It's fun to hunt for eggs, but it's much more fun throwing them! There were plastic eggs whizzing all around the room!

David and Goliath

David. I'm doing this post in reverse...first what's on the inside of the egg, then how the eggs looked before they got cracked. It's for more dramatic effect. (Actually, it's because I don't know how to switch pictures around easily when the order gets mixed up!)

Goliath. It's a twin!

We just had to do another "chicken digest" update after one of our hens layed these! We got a super huge egg that was more the size of a duck egg, and wouldn't even fit in our egg carton. We couldn't find our Pinewood Derby scale or we would have weighed it. A few days later, we got a super small egg. I guess that's all she could do after the massive one!

Goliath, regular-sized egg, David, a quarter to give you an idea of the size of David.

Chocolate Root Beer Float

My mom sent this recipe to Devon: 1 Cup root beer, 1/2 C milk, 1 scoop chocolate ice cream. This recipe is from a cookbook called "Wendy's Kitchen". My grandfather gave this cookbook to my mom when she was 7 years old, and she still has it! The BYU chocolate ice cream made the drink extra tasty!

Ship-Wrecked

Remember that Pirate Ship? Well, here it is after some serious high winds. We stood by our back door watching boards literally fly through the air and into trees, and our neighbor's yard. It was pretty amazing! Emily is proudly holding up the only surviving element in the ruins- her mud balls! They were still completely intact. The kids have started building a new pirate ship/fort, and this time they decided to dig about a foot underground to secure the large poles in so hopefully the winds won't destroy it again!

Conference Morning

As I was insisting on taking pictures of Colin's homemade breakfast, he said, "Jen, you really don't have to blog this." But there's just certain things I want to remember, you know? This is one of them. So, here's Colin's traditional Sunday breakfast (except today is Saturday) of homemade whole wheat pancakes, home made strawberry jam (fresh strawberries, fructose, and lemon juice blended up), and eggs. Pancakes just smell really homey and cozy, don't you think? Ty ate 4 or 5 pancakes, each time requesting "more!" with a mouthful of them.

Here Ty is reprimanding Shiloh by saying "no, no!" as she's standing up in her chair and getting ready to climb onto the table. It's a good thing he never does that!

All snuggled up for General Conference. Alas, if it had only stayed this cozy and peaceful throughout the whole 2 hour session! It lasted about 10 minutes, and then T, T, & S got a little antsy. So, for tomorrow's session, we're contemplating watching the morning session while they nap in the afternoon(good ol' technology that allows you to do that), and the afternoon session later tomorrow night, or for FHE Monday. Great talks today...the parts we heard, that is!

Notice the projector, speakers, computer, and a whole lot of wiring Colin rigged up so we could watch conference! I'm lucky to have such a smart husband who just knows how to do things like this! We thumb-tacked a white sheet up on the wall for our screen. Worked out great!

BYU Volleyball!

So, it had been "one of those weeks" with the "triplets" getting over colds and the crankiness that goes along with that. We all needed to get out and have some fun! We headed to a BYU volleyball game, and Colin was able to get us all in for $11 (as opposed to $20) using extra vouchers the ticket people already had (how did he do that?), plus a man in line gave him an extra voucher as well. Nice! In this picture, the twins had been begging to see Cosmo the BYU Mascot, or "Pooh Bear" as Tiffany called him. Tiff was pretty fascinated, but Shi cried the whole time! Colin is telling Pooh Bear to look at the camera while Calvin took the picture, but he just wouldn't. I don't think he can hear very well through all that stuffing. He must get really hot during these games. What a trooper!

What a cute little man! The "triplets" did great throughout the game, even though we didn't get home 'till 10:30! They are used to their 8:00 bed time, but they stayed awake and pretty happy for the duration of our adventurous evening. Of course we had to swing by the creamery and get some BYU ice cream after the game since we were in the area :)

We really need to learn the BYU fight song...anyone want to teach it to us? We're Aggies. "Utah State, hey! Aggies all the way! Go Aggies, go Aggies, hey, hey, hey!"