April Fools, Easter and Grandma visiting

Malachi sleeping peacefully in his carseat, on our way up to Denver

Malachi and Caleb playing on the air hockey table at Dave and Buster's in Denver

Samuel swimming at the hotel pool

Travis, Malachi, and Caleb enjoying the hot tub at the hotel pool

Caleb fell asleep while waiting for our dinner at the restaurant

Betsy pushing Malachi in the swing

hiking red rock with Grandma Hardy

Samuel's first pine wood derby

Joseph and his April Fool's Day breakfast

Betsy and her April Fool's day breakfast

Malachi and his april fool's day breakfast

Austin and her April Fool's Day breakfast

Samuel and his April Fool's Day breakfast

Caleb and his April Fool's Day breakfast

Grandma and her April Fools Day breakfast

part of our April Fools day dinner "fried egg" (actually yogurt and a peach)

Malachi hunting for Easter Eggs

Caleb hunting for Easter Eggs

Malachi hunting for Easter Eggs with Daddy

Betsy, Austin, and Joseph searching for Easter Eggs in the backyard

Malachi and Daddy looking for Easter Eggs

Caleb found an Easter Egg

Joseph trying to get an Easter Egg from Malachi

All the kids piled on daddy for Easter

Travis and Malachi ready for the Easter Egg Roll

Samuel and his egg for the Easter Egg Roll

Betsy rolling her egg for the Easter Egg Roll

Joseph and the Easter Egg Roll

Caleb with the winning egg for the Easter Egg Roll

Caleb and his funny face

Malachi wearing Austin's jacket because he was cold, going down the slide at the park

Joseph broke my apple tree (I cried)

Travis taking Austin and Betsy to the Military Daddy/Daughter Ball

I need to stop taking so long in between blog posts, way too much happens and I can't remember it all.  The last weekend in March Travis had a single solider retreat in Denver.  We came with him since it included two nights in a hotel room and all meals.  That first day was crazy, first of all that morning Travis had  a prayer breakfast for his troop and spouses.  He put me in charge of all the food and the music, so I spent a lot of time preparing, and the night before had spent hours making 100 ham/egg/cheese sliders.  We woke up early Friday morning and took all of the food over to the chapel on post.  I got all the food set up, and starting heating up the sliders, a few other ladies showed up, and helped me with the food.  Then I made sure the sound system was set up, and starting playing prelude music.  Instead of 100 people show up, we only had about 30, but it turned out really nice, everyone loved the food, and even though I was really nervous, I did fine singing the special musical number "let him heal your heart" except for forgetting to turn on my mike, and having to stop and restart.  We ended up having a lot of food leftover, and gave a lot to the soldiers, but we still ended up taking a lot of food home.  So Travis went to finish getting everything ready for the retreat, while I went home, and helped the kids get everything packed and loaded into the car.  We got ready and met Travis and his soldiers over by his work, after he got everyone situated we drove up to Denver.  There was another chaplain family there, as well as one other family that was looking to become a chaplain.  So after dropping all the husbands off for their training, the other moms and I drove over to a park and let the kids play for a while.  All together we had 14 kids between the three of us.  The kids were having fun, except for Betsy who fell shortly after arriving and her back was hurting.  She laid down on a bench, while I rubbed her back with deep blue for a long time.  One of the other mom's little boy (age 2) wasn't feeling good, and had a fever, so she was holding him the whole time.  After the park, we drove to go check into the hotel and unfortunately hit rush hour traffic, and what should have been a 10 minute drive, took 45 minutes in stop and go traffic, we finally got checked into the hotel after I spent a good 30 minutes figuring everything out at the front desk for our group, meanwhile all 14 kids are running around the lobby, and one of the kids even got in the elevator all by himself and ended up taking a ride, fortunately another family got on his elevator and brought him back down to the lobby for us. After getting our rooms figured out we took all the kids down to the pool, except for Joseph who forgot his swimsuit, (well actually he doesn't currently own one, because he outgrew all of his clothes recently) and Betsy who needed to lay down still due to her back hurting.  So we were all down at the pool, and the kids were having a great time, when the other mom's little boy, the one with the fever, started having a seizure.  He had never had a seizure before, and it was pretty scary for the mom.  After his seizure stopped she called the dr. who told her to bring him into the hospital, so she left her other four kids with us and left.  The other mom helped her get everything she needed and stuff for her others kids, while I watched 11(10 of whom were 8 and under) kids in the pool, thankfully Austin is a great helper, and helped me watch them all.  The other mom and I got all the kids out of the pool and dressed.  I called Travis' assistant and had them bring dinner to the other mom and her kids, and took mine back to the training center to eat dinner.  Starting when we were at the pool my stomach was hurting, so as soon as Travis was ready to leave, we drove back to the hotel,,and I layed down while Malachi proceeded to put everything he could find into the toilet, including all of his toys, and the only pair of shoes we brought for him.  Thankfully the mom with the sick little boy made it back to the hotel, and said the her little boy should be just fine, Travis helped give him a priesthood blessing.  Caleb had taken a late nap in the car ride to get dinner and Travis from the training area, so he didn't want to go to sleep until almost midnight.  So I stayed up with him, while everyone else slept, and discovered once again that I'm so glad we don't have cable T.V.  Travis left early Saturday morning to go to the temple, I was going to go with him, but after my late night couldn't drag myself out of bed at 5am.  So the kids and I all had a great breakfast in the lobby area, until at the end, when everyone was done eating except for Samuel and I.  Austin and Joseph were taking everyone else back to the room.  Apparently Samuel looked up from his plate of food just in time to see Malachi walk into the elevator, he didn't realize that all the other kids were in there with him, and thought that he was there by himself.  He started yelling and screaming and freaking out because he thought that Malachi was in the elevator all by himself.  I tried to calm him down, but to no avail, he was making such a big scene.  I finally sat down on the ground, and pulled him into my lap, and told him to calm down, and promised him that Joseph, Austin, Betsy, and Caleb were all with Malachi, and had my permission to go back to the room.  He finally calmed down enough to go back and finish our breakfast, where I studiously avoided eye contact with anyone else in the room.  We finished our breakfast and went back to the room, where he ran to hug Malachi and told him how happy he was to see him, and that he was okay.  Travis made it back and we all drove back to Dave and Busters which was where the training was at.  Travis managed to get some free play cards for the arcade area, so the kids played there until lunchtime, where we had breakfast for lunch.  After lunch, Travis was done with training so he stayed with the kids in the theater room while I went to the temple.  It was really nice and peaceful to go to the temple, after the chaos of the last couple days.  After I was done, we went back to the hotel and took the kids swimming again.  After swimming was over, we went out to dinner at a place called cherry cricket.  Both Malachi and Caleb fell asleep, and even when we were seated and sat Caleb down at his seat, he quickly fell asleep sitting there waiting for his food.  The food was yummy, but my stomach once again started hurting when we were at the pool, so we went back to the hotel after dinner, and just watched t.v.  The next morning, we got everything all packed up and ready to go, but Travis had to meet with a solider in the hospital in Denver, so he dropped us off at a park.  It took longer then we thought, and we had to go back to the hotel, because I left Travis' clothes in our closet.  So we ended up missing most of church.  But all in all, it was a very adventurous weekend.  My Mom came into town on Monday, I tried to get the house clean, but just didn't have enough time, especially since I took Malachi and Caleb to the park to feed the ducks some stale bread.  The next morning after we dropped all the other kids off at school, we went hiking around the red rock area and had a great time, it was a beautiful morning.  My mom helped me with the kids, helped with some yard work and cleaning.  She also wasn't feeling very well, but she still works hard anyway.  Malachi also had a cold and wasn't feeling very well, so he wouldn't go to her, which was sad, because he normally so sweet and cute.  For April Fool's Day I got up really early, because I had a special breakfast planned, and Travis had to leave by 5;45am.  I made breakfast pancakes that were decorated to look like each person, using strawberries, apples, yogurt, blueberries, papaya, bacon, cucumbers, and raspberries.  It was fun to make them, and the kids all liked them, it definitely seemed to confuse Malachi though.  I didn't do anything for lunch, but for dinner my mom made us "fried eggs" (made out of yogurt and peaches) and gelatinous milk, and "chocolate chip cookies" made out of mashed potatoes and black beans.  She made the food while we went to Samuel's soccer practice, it was really windy, so it wasn't very enjoyable.  Travis had to work late, until almost midnight that night.  The next night was Caleb's first soccer practice, I think I mentioned in my last post, that I am crazy and volunteered to coach Caleb's team.  My mom wanted to take us out to dinner, so we went to a place called Sarge's Grill.  It was a cool place, the kids and I ordered what they called the breakfast challenge to share.  It was three huge pancakes (each one the size of a large pizza) 6 eggs, 6 bacon, and 6 sausage.  It was so much food, we could only eat one and a half pancakes, I wish I would have taken a picture of it.  We had to hurry and eat, because my soccer practice was starting soon, and I was supposed to be there early.  Travis left to take Joseph his choir concert, and my mom dropped of Caleb and I, it was so windy, that we could barely see anything, and it had gotten really cold.  Apparently everyone else was smart and cancelled their practices.  It was so cold and windy the kids were crying and not very happy.  We managed to practice for a few minutes, and then sent everyone home, it was just too cold and it was so windy it was blowing the little kids over.  Travis had the weekend off which was nice.  We took my mom to the airport on Friday, we were sad to see her go, but really enjoyed having her here.  I was helping with the ward Easter egg hunt, so we hurried to the church after dropping my mom off at the airport, and I got to help hide the eggs, while Travis got to pick up dead squirrels with a stick and throw them in the dumpster.  The kids loved finding the Easter eggs, and had a great time.  Saturday was General Conference, but we had two soccer games that morning so I missed most of it.  Samuel did a great job at his game, and was the only one on his team to come close to making a goal (the goalie caught it).  Caleb had a great time at his game, and the kids did really well, for not really having a practice yet.  Caleb is so tiny compared to all the other kids that he can just squeeze between them all and get to the ball and kick it.  At one point during the game he yelled to me that he had to "pee" so I quickly sent in a sub for him, and took him to the bathroom.  All the other parents thought he was pretty cute.  In between conference sessions we had our own Easter Egg Hunt.  Travis and I filled up the eggs with Chuck-e-Cheese tokens, coins, and a little candy, and hid them all in the back yard.  The kids had a great time finding them and loved getting coins and tokens.  On Easter we had our Easter Egg Roll in between conference sessions.  It was a lot of fun as usual, with Caleb ending up with the final egg and won!  I realized after boiling all the eggs, we didn't need to color them, because they were naturally colorful due to being our chicken eggs.  We had a yummy Easter dinner that night, and enjoyed relaxing and playing games.  Travis was off on Monday so we worked on our front yard some more and cleaned out the rest of the rose beds, it was a lot of work, we also brought in stones for a wall, and mulch to go around the trees and roses.  On Wednesday I also got some strawberries from a lady in the ward and planted a bunch our front flower bed area.  I couldn't plant them in the backyard because the chickens eat them.  Friday I took dinner to three other families, it was a little crazy, but felt good to help other people.  Yesterday we had two more soccer games and pictures.  I had all the kids with me except Joseph, so they were playing at the skate park area next to where we were taking team pictures, and Samuel fell and hit his chin on the concrete scraping his chin and under his lip, and almost biting through his lower lip.  He was crying and making a big scene, just like Samuel does.  So after the pictures, and kind of turned the practice over to my assistant coach so I could take care of him, I was able to get him ice from the concession stand, but he was whining so much about it hurting, I called Travis to come and get him, After taking him home to get him a real ice pack he came back at got his team pictures and played in his game.  That afternoon, Travis took Betsy and Austin to a Military Daddy/Daughter Ball, they had a great time, meeting "princesses" , watching a show, and riding in a horse drawn carriage.