Porter's {HEART}

Porter has recently used his {HEART} to refer to how he's feeling.

If he's Happy: "(gasp) Mom! You make my heart so happy!"

If he's sad: "Mom my heart is breaking! It's broken!"

If he's mad at me: "Mom you RUINED my heart!"

and any of you who know our Porter-man know these sayings come with drama, drama, drama.

Honestly though what would we do without a little drama!

If Olivia's awake...

Her brothers are right there in her face!

This one is just too cute and funny to not share. It's been pretty humid here these last 2 days and Olivia just sweats when she's eating. So the lovely hair is from a days worth of sweat used to style it:) But boy does she love her bath!

Just to make you smile

Rock n' Roll Stars

Porter, "Yesterday I was a Party Dude, today I'm a Rock n' Roll Star!"

SPRING

Spring is FINALLY here. I love the spring time, the change in the air is invigorating. I also love spring cleaning. I love to be able to clean up the "winter dust" and feel like my house is clean again. I'm not there yet on feeling that way but we are getting there. Yesterday our neighborhood did a park cleanup day, for the park across the street. Olivia had to eat, but Brandon was able to take the boys over. They had a lot of fun and met some kids around that we haven't met before. They were also given ribbons and a giant tootsie roll for participating. They thought that was pretty cool.

One bad thing about spring time is the bugs come back to life and seem to rule the place. We have the huge and I mean huge (3 inches long and 1 inch wide) centipede looking things. They are ugly, fast and ugly. Just thinking about them gives me the chills. I would take a picture but when we see one our first reaction is to just kill it and flush it.

Brandon and the boys have been growing tomato plants as well. I'm not allowed to touch them with my black thumbs. They're growing really good and we all love to check them every day to see how much they've grown.

Happy Easter and 3 Months Old

Happy Easter!! As with a lot of holidays these days they seem to last longer than just one day. Yesterday our ward did an Easter egg hunt for the primary. We were all so excited to go that we left our house with a hour to spare, oops!! Porter's age group just ran around and picked up eggs off of the floor. He loved it! He ran around the room grabbing as many eggs as he possibly could yelling "oh my gosh! Oh wow! Look at all of these eggs!" While sucking his bottom lip in and out (what he does when he's moving fast and is excited.)

Logan's age group which was the older kids had to do an obstacle course and then go put eggs in other people's baskets. He had fun, but I don't think he quite got the challenge of it. Once he made it into the middle to get the eggs he pretty much hung around there the rest of the time. All in all though they got a lot of candy, that I had to inspect:) It was all good.

After the primary activity I took the boys over to Walmart to take pictures with the Easter Bunny. They both were super excited until they saw the Easter Bunny, he obviously was a guy in a costume and Logan had no problem telling him he was a phony. He said, "you're not the Easter Bunny. You're just a guy in a suit." Luckily there weren't any other kids there so he didn't dash the excitment of the other kids. They begrudgingly took a picture and I haven't picked it up yet, but I don't think it will be super great. I also told him that they guy was the Easter Bunny's helper and that they lived in Easter Land. I can't ruin the fun yet. Some day he'll know the cold dark truth.

Then today they went on a scavenger hunt after church and found their baskets. They kept saying, "where'd that sneaky bunny hide our baskets?" They had fun and loved getting a treat. We dyed eggs once Brandon came home. Unfortunately he's been on call all weekend and missed out on the fun. That's the down side of his job though.

We've tried talking a lot this week about why we celebrated Easter and trying to put the main focus on our Savior throughout the week. Some things went better than others, but I at least think they now know that Easter is about our Savior and not candy. We'll keep working on it though.

Olivia's 3 Months Old

I look at this sweet baby girl and I can't believe that she is already 3 months, where does the time go. She has such a fun, sweet personality and we love having her in our family. Some things she loves right now are, her bouncer, baby einstein, her brothers, her daddy's arms, her tongue and she's starting to love her bumbo, (I'm really starting to love this.)

She absolutely hates being on her stomach but I put this picture in to show off her 80's leg warmers and rolls, and to show off her little mullet. Too cute!

This is one of her regular faces she pulls. She pushes our her lips and gets a huge pile of spit bubbles going. It's definately one of my favorite faces. You can't really tell that the spit bubbles are there, but trust me they are.

I do feel blessed with my 3 kids, they are so much fun, a lot of work, but a lot of fun. I was able to go to the General Young Women's broadcast a few weeks ago and loved all of the talks that were given. As a lot of you know they added on Virtue as a new value and talked a lot about what Virtue is and why they did it. Some of things that stuck out to me were, "TGhe path of virtue is less traveled but the view is SPECTACULAR." "A Virtuous life will give you the confidence and strength you need." "Have the courage to stand alone if need be." President Monson gave the Young Women 3 different goals they were, 1. To have the courage to refrain from judging others. 2. Courage to be chaste and virtuous, to maintain a proper perspective on life. 3. Courage to stand for truth and righteousness, a testimony that is nourished will keep you safe. I would encourage everyone to read these talks that were given, they were amazing. I was impressed that when the time comes that I need to make it a point to take Olivia to these meetings every time and make it an important date, just like the priesthood session is for the boys. I have loved working with the Young Women and have loved getting to know them and knowing that through all the bad stuff in the world there are good, righteous young women out there who want to be good and do strive to do what is right.

Happy Birthday... and a surprise

Today is my big sister's birthday. I just wanted to wish her a happy day. She is one of my best friends and has always been there for me when I needed her no matter what. She's one of the kindest people I know and is a great friend. Happy Birthday Beth, Love you, have a great day! (she's the shorest one in the picture:)

SURPRISE IN THE CEREAL BOX THIS MORNING

This morning as I poured Logan and Porter some cereal this is what came out of the box. I asked who put it in there and Porter spoke up, "I just wanted to get some toys in my cereal." What a funny boy!

Here We Go Again

Logan lost another tooth last night and much to his surprise the tooth fairy came again. I can't believe how fast he is growing up. He tells me that he's done being the big brother, but he does such a good job at it that I won't let him quit on me. I think his little brother gives him a run for his money.


After much frustration the other day, instead of yelling at Porter I sat down with him and asked him what his favorite thing to do was. My sweet Porter told me, "Well I love to eat, I love to drink water, and I love to play." This is the simple recipe to keeping this boy happy. Now teaching him what quiet is will be another thing and taking turns. In primary, he's in sunbeams and sits on the front row.Because he is so close to the front, he thinks all volunteer activities are directed to him. He has a really hard time if Logan has a turn, so much that he pushes him out of the way, oh my!

Our little Livey Lou is Heavenly Fathers blessing to me. My mom always said that after having my two brothers I was such a blessing. I can say the same thing for her. While Logan and Porter are constantly wrestling, chasing, fighing and playing. She just patiently watches or falls asleep to the noise going on around her. She's happy 90% of the time and easily soothed the other 10% (now saying this she's going to have a rough night, but for now it's true.) She sleeps at least 8 hours regularly now and life is good again.