Road Trip to Tropic

Where you ask? Tropic - home of Dave's childhood - on the outskirts of Bryce Canyon. We went down to visit with his grandma and aunt marjorie and to hang out with his family in the place where they grew up. I was so excited to see it because I have heard about Tropic since we were dating, but I'd never heard of it until then. So here we go! Here is Bryce on the trip down. He was so happy and smiley the entire trip.

Climbing the T hill. Dave used to spend hours on this hill with his sisters and friends playing and building forts.
The VERY TINY town of Tropic from on top of the T hill. It is a tiny place, but so peaceful and quiet, that I had a really great time here.
Bryce and Aunt Pearl hanging out on Grandma Mecham's front lawn.
Bryce and Dave in the very spot where he and his dad had their picture taken about 30 years ago in front of great grandma's fence.
The beginning of the famous Mecham family hike to Mossy Cave.
Aunt Marjorie, Grandma Linda, Uncle Cameron, Aunt Coni, Aunt Pearl and Katers.
Aunt Coni, Kate and Kira at the Mossy Cave.
Bryce, finally, in Bryce Canyon.
The beautiful backdrop of the Hoodoo's at Bryce Canyon.Bryce and Grandma Linda enjoying the view.

A tunnel on the Sunset hike. We had such a fun trip and loved hanging out with everyone, and we can't wait to do it again!

OOPS! I think I forgot something!

This is what happens when I stay up until 1:00 in the morning. My brain goes to mush. Here are the pictures that were supposed to go with the last post. Thanks for the reminders! I don't know if you can tell it is brown in these pics or not, but it is all the same color and I love it!

And the final decision is...

First of all I have to say THANK YOU for all of your great advice about my ceiling painting problem. I have been going back and forth about it for two weeks, and about a hundred more times since I got all of your feedback, and I have to say that it was a hard decision, but you all helped me so much in making it. The numbers came back 4 for white and 2 for brown, and because of all the great comments, you helped me decide that what I really wanted was to get away from the traditional and try something fun and new, so last night I was up until one o' clock painting my ceiling brown, and I think it turned out so awesome! It is a little darker in the room, but it actually makes it feel a lot more warm and cozy. I'm so glad that I took a chance and dared to do something different because it turned out better than I expected. So that is my advice to you...do something that you've always wanted to do if it feels right to you, and in the end it might turn out better than you even thought. And if not you can always repaint your ceiling back to white! :)

Please Help Me!

I need help with a decision (big surprise:)). I just painted my whole upstairs this awesome shade of brown and I LOVE how it turned out. But, as I finished the walls, I had some more paint and thought that it I would paint the ceiling. Well, I ran out of paint and now I can't decide if I should go and get more brown to finish the ceiling, or if I should get white paint and paint the ceiling back to the way it was. I like the brown but I am afraid that it will be too dark. i just don't know what to do. I have a friend who has brown on her ceiling and I think it looks nice, but her house is pretty dark inside - but her brown is a little bit darker than mine. I took some pictures to help you form an opinion so that you can help me. (Here is my other helper - an apple and a chair and he let me paint for 3 hours. Who knew an apple could be a GREAT babysitter!)
The house before.
The same room after, without the ceiling painted.
Here is where I ran out of paint and you can see about how dark it is compared to the white.
Here is the room which is painted, ceiling and all, but here's the catch with this room...it is always dark already, even without paint, so it doesn't really help me to decide about the darkness factor. So PLEASE HELP ME to decided. I'd really appreciate it. Thanks!
Oh, yeah. Here is the cutest cake ever that my sister in law, Amber, made for Easter and her own birthday! It is a sunflower and it's made with peeps and chocolate chips in the middle. I just had to show everyone and tell her how cute it was. And so yummy:)

Happy Easter!

Here was the first sign of Easter at our house. (really I am just showing off my talented girl's artwork). Kira brought home the Easter Bunny from preschool. I thought it turned out so so cute. Easter Eve: Last night I wanted to bring out the spiritual side of Easter so that the kids understood that Easter is about more than bunnies and candy so...after we dyed eggs, which was lots of fun...
...we talked about Christ's death and resurrection with the aid of some salt dough puppets we made the day before. I made the tomb, Kate made Mary Magdeline (the blob on the left), and Kira found the big rock to put in front of the tomb, made Jesus (the one in the middle) and made the angel (on the right-see the wings:)). I think it went over really well and they loved that they were able to participate in telling the story. Then we watched a fun family movie and went to bed...eagerly awaiting the Easter Bunny.
Easter Morning: First we woke up find our baskets with lots of fun things inside...
Bryce got hot wheels to play with...
the girls got Ariel movies #2 and #3...
and they all got new swimming suits. They also each got a book with pictures of the scripture stories that they can take to church or just look at at home or do FHE with. (these were only $3 at the distribution center).
Next we found all of the eggs hidden around the house. Kira was really good at it. She found a ton of eggs. Kate didn't really understand until she found out there was candy inside, and Bryce just loved to hold onto the eggs. We did find out that peeps are his favorite, just like his mommy:)And here are their new Easter outfits...Kira picked a blue polka dot,
Kate picked a brown and pink cute frilly dress with flowers on it, and Bryce is in a cute little pastel colored shirt with cute shorts. It's been a fun Easter Morning and we are excited for the Easter Egg Hunt at Grandma Jane's later. Happy Easter from all of us!

A day at the farm

Yesterday we went to the American Heritage center in Logan for Baby Animal Days. We went with my sister, Amy, and it was so much fun. They had all sorts of baby animals. Cows, chickens, bunnies, lambs, goats, pigs, you name it. You could pet and hold all of them and the girls had a blast. Here is Kira riding a miniature horse. She was loving it:)
Kira was too afraid to hold the animals, in fact she kept dropping them -oops!, Kate on the other hand loved it. Here is her and Amy holding a little baby chick.

Bryce didn't really get into the animals, but he sure enjoyed his twinkie! Thanks to Amy for a fun day!

(I thought this lamb was so cute)

8 random things about me (I couldn't think of 10)

Here are some things about me. I tagged myself from Marissa's blog. (I've done this before and if you are interested, here is the link for that

1. I never had a date or a kiss until I was in college. I was pretty shy, especially around boys. I am surprised, still to this day, that I ever got married:)

2. I love to eat raw potatoes. I just had one while I was making dinner. Yummy!

3. My toenails always have to be painted. It's just the way things work around here.

4. I hate to shower and I hate bathing my kids. I think it more stems from the ENOURMOUS amount of time I have to spend drying all of our hair. What a waste of time. But I do it because it is socially acceptable and, it's gross not to! (I do like a nice, long, relaxing bath though)

5. I don't like roses. I think they are ugly flowers. Wierd, I know. My favorites are forget-me-nots.

6. I can never make up my mind. Making decisions is like life and death for me. I just can't do it. I can't, I can't, I can't. It drives Dave crazy. One time I had to pick a children's book to buy from Kira's preschool and it was taking me forever to pick one because of this reason and that reason and I just couldn't decided. So I made Dave pick for me and I ended up crying, at her school, in front of everyone, because I couldn't make a stupid decision. How lame can I get!

7. I love paint. Sometimes I go to Home Depot or Lowes just to look over the paint samples and dream of all the wonderful things I could decorate with the paint. I just painted my house a beautiful brown color and it is so much more homey and nice inside.

8. I admit to being deathly afraid of bananas. I hate them. I have been known to run screaming from someone who had a banana and chased me with it. I don't know why this is. I'm just mental. I finally decided that I needed to at least be able to touch one so that my kids could eat them. It took me 10 minutes at the store of putting my hand out and pulling it back before I could even pick one up without a bag over my hand. I have trained myself to be able to touch them, and now I can even peel them if I don't have to touch the inside. But if one of those stringy things gets on me or near me, it's over. I can't deal.

Cute Finds

I have two things that I wanted to share...the first is this cute book of "Kate's Colors" that I made for Kate to learn her colors. Giving credit where credit is due, I got the idea from Little Wonders, which is one of my favorites for cute ideas and things. Hers turned out so cute and I just tried my best to recreate it. Each picture has part of Kate in it (i just used pics i already had), and the color. Then I put each picuture in a little 4x6 album so she can flip through it and learn. I think that it turned out so so cute and Kate LOVES it. I didn't want to post them all so here are some of my favorites.
My second thing is that one of my favorite digital scrapbooking sites, GG Digital Designs, is having a celebration for their 2nd birthday and they are giving away all of these cute freebies on a "blog-train" that you can follow on their blog or on the Little Wonders blog (link at the top of this page). Here is what I did with one of my freebies. They had the layout done and I just added the picture and text.

Then, I thought the kit was so cute that I bought it, and made this second layout to go with the first. They are both of Bryce's first birthday and I love how they turned out. So go check these things out if you are interested. There are so many cute creative things, and people, out there to be inspired by:).