Life comes at you fast!

I swear I just posted yesterday about the kids turning 9, and then today somehow McKay and Makenna are leaving for college and Cooper was baptised? Ok, maybe not quite that fast, but honestly, where has the time gone? I unintentionally took a blog hiatus, so I figured its time I get back in touch.

First, I'll take you way back to May 4th, Brooklyn's 4th birthday! She decided to have her (first official) kid party at Bouncin' Off the Walls. The great thing about that is they don't charge per child and so you don't really have a limit to how many kids you can invite. The bad thing is, you don't know how great limits can be. We invited way too many kids! It was fun for Brooklyn who made out better than two years of Christmas put together. However, not so good for the parents who got to supervise 20, 3 to 4 year olds on blow up slides and jumpers that are guarnteed to produce bodily injury! None the less, we managed to get some cute pictures amongst all the chaos!






Next we had Cooper turning 6 months. He's growing way too fast! Only the weeds in the yard can keep up!





That gets us almost through May. I am trying to learn how to do the picture collages and I will update more DowDell family happenings, as soon as I get that down. If anyone has any good suggestions, please feel free to share. BTW- The date at the top of this post is proof that I have tried to keep this blog thing up to date. I originally started this post in June, and three months later, I sorta finished it! Compared to some other projects I have going, like getting through my long list of "favors" I owe my cute hubby, that was fast!

The Twins Turn 9!

McKay and Makenna are finally nine! I'm so happy about it because it means a couple great things for me. I can stop saying "Stop acting like a 2 year old...Your almost nine." Now I get to say you ARE nine and it will mean so much more! It means they are one year closer to "legally" being able to babysit!! Yea!! It means they have been accountable for their actions for one whole year now. It means it has been nine years since the best day of my entire life..the day I became someone's mom. Wow, nine years has flown by. I got the kids birth video out the other day and cried for two straight days after. Where has the time gone? What happened to the days when my kids actually thought I was pretty great, and were as happy to see me as I was to see them? I just have to say though, McKay and Makenna have been pretty darn great kids to have for the last nine years!! I can't complain at all about raising twins. They have made it so fun for us, and I still think having twins has been so awesome! I can tell they love it too!

Ok, enough sentiment. Lets talk birthday. Turning nine is an "off" year for us, so the kids did not have a party. But I think they still did pretty well for themselves. Tyson and I love the Jazz, and the kids have become attatched themselves, so we took them to a Jazz game on the 28th (their birthday). We went really early so we could watch the team warm-up. A friend of mine from high-school works with the Jazz so he hooked us up and we got to sit on the front row while the players had their shoot around. The players were so cute with the kids. We took a sign that said "It's our 9th Birthday" and so they got a lot of attention from everyone. McKay even got to go out on the court and shoot a 3 pointer with the team, and barely missed it. It was so great. They also got to meet the Jazz Bear and have their picture taken with him. We let them take turns sitting in our 5th row seats and they were so thrilled. It helped that the Jazz beat the Clippers. What a great night for all of us.




Sunday, we had family over for dinner, cake and ice-cream. Grandma Kathy made her famous lasagna and the kids opened their presents. We got both of them the Wii and guitar hero. They were so surprised and so excited! Turns out you don't have to have a party to have a great birthday after all. I've learned that lesson the hard way!

Happy Easter!! (belated)

As always, we had a great Easter at our house. The Easter Bunny showed up yet again, and the traditional Hintze family home made cream puffs (yes, puff, filling, and chocolate sauce are all made from scratch) were as good as I remembered. Hopefully next year it won't sneak up on us so fast again and I can actually enjoy the process of getting the Easter outfits coordinated and the yard looking like a yard instead of the neighborhood trash collector. But hey, any sign that spring is here is a welcome distraction to me!!

New Years Eve in Cedar City

So, as you can tell by the title, I'm backing up a little. I just picked up my computer from the Apple Store yesterday, where I finally had all my pictures transferred from my old computer to the new one. So I can now tell you (and show you) about the fun few days we had over New Years Eve in Cedar City with Tyson's family. We also blessed Cooper while we were there since most of Tyson's family was coming for the weekend.

It's been a while, so I'm trying to remember all the details. We exchanged Christmas gifts the first night. Helen made every member of the family an apron with some sort of saying on it about our cooking skills. Example: Tyson's said "BBQ Boss", which isn't really true but I think Helen was going for "in an ideal world" theme? Tyson told everyone my apron said "still trying to find the kitchen". He thought that was really funny! Somehow I failed to see the humor in it.

Coopers blessing went great. Tyson did an amazing job as always, and once again he did not disappoint when it came to crying his way through. It's not very manly, but it's sweet and I love that about him. Cooper was perfect all the way through and looked so cute in his borrowed blessing outfit. I have some guilt over the "borrowed outfit" part of the weekend so I'm not going to get into that.

New Years eve proved to have both some highlights, and low lights. (Who knew a little game of Texas hold 'em and red/green M&Ms could create such havoc?) I'll stick with the highlight part of the story and say that the food was so yummy and the games were fun. But the company was what made the whole weekend a great memory! We really wish the DowDell family was not so spread out so we could do this more often. The kids loved every minute, and it was so fun for Tyson and I to "hang" with his sibling again.

I guess we're moving?!

I was talking with Brooklyn today and she had some strong feelings about this topic. Just thought i'd share some great insight into a three year olds little brain. Our conversation went like this:

Brooklyn: "Mom, I want to move!"
Mom: "Why?"
Brooklyn: "Because, I don't like this house anymore!"
Mom: "Really? What's wrong with our house?"
Brooklyn: "It doesn't have anymore good snacks or cereal!! So I want to move somewhere else!! So can we?"
Mom: "I'll definitely talk to dad and see if he will move. OK?"

The Maiden Ski Voyage!

Most of the schools around here are on a year-round school schedule. That means the kids go to school for 9 weeks, and then are off for 3 weeks (generally). We are currently "off" track for 3 weeks. Usually that means lots of boredom, wining, crying, fighting and calling the few friends who are also "off" track, to see who can tolerate them another day, because I definitely cannot!

Fortunately, McKay and Makenna are in 3rd grade and that means they are now eligible for SKI SCHOOL!! Yea! Ski school is an all-day, 8am till 4pm adventure up to Snowbird Ski Resort where they are bused up and back, fed lunch, and given ski lessons until they can't keep their eyes open, or feel their extremities (which ever comes first) anymore. The best part about it is they LOVE it! Mom loves it too, because not only are they gone all day for two days of the week, they can hardly move when they get home. It's a dream come true for everyone!

It is their first time ever skiing and so far it's a success! Our kind neighbor who shares in our joy took some pictures of the kids the first day right before loading the "big" bus with the t.v.s. They get to watch "Planet Earth" on their 45 min ride up/down the canyon, and they couldn't be happier. Unless of course they are sleeping!

Sledding

I have been waiting to post for a while because we got a new computer (it's a Mac and I love it!) and I have not been able to transfer all the pictures from my laptop I have been using for the last 2 1/2 years, to the new computer. I wanted to post all the pictures from our fun new years in Cedar City with Tyson's family, but I'm tired of looking at the same post every time I go to our blog, so I'm going to do them out of order.

On Martin Luther King day, we had a pretty good storm here in Draper, so we FINALLY took the kids sledding. We went to a park not too far from our house with a small to moderate hill (for the little kids). It was going rather smooth in the beginning. I sat in the car feeding baby Cooper with some friends, and the husbands were out helping the kids on the hill. I want to point out that I have been the one all winter wanting to take the kids sledding because I actually like to sled myself! Somehow, each time we think we're going to do it, something more important (on Tyson's list) comes up? So, when we finally make our move and follow through, I get banished to the car with the baby! What is that? Turns out, it wasn't a bad gig after all, because when Tyson was peer pressured into actually going down the hill instead of pushing everyone else, he managed to go off a jump and dislocate and break his coccyx (or tailbone, but coccyx is more fun to say)! The poor guy has been in some serious pain ever since. He even gets to carry around a very attractive, red plaid doughnut to sit on. I have a feeling Ty will be hanging out with Cooper in the car next time. I don't know that he'll be celebrating Martin Luther King anymore either? He He! But, the kids had a blast despite the frigid temps and we got some cute pictures out of it too.