Happy Birffday, Big Boy...

32 big ones, and your look hasn't changed a bit. Hope you had a great birthday, Nox. We all love you so much and feel lucky that we get to have you as part of our lives for yet another year. Happy Birthday Daddy!

Good Times, Good Times...

When we first moved in the house, we were in heaven. Not only because of the house, but because we had a backyard with a free swingset and makeshift fort-house in it for the girlies to play in. Over the years, those two playsets have been so good to us.

Last summer we were pushing our luck everytime the kids played on them, because they looked like this. . . (Not THIS bad, I'm not that bad of a mom to make my kids go out and play on stuff that could hurt them! I just took these pictures after this winter's snow melted, and they look worse now, but you get the idea.)

We just knew it was time to say goodbye to our good friends, fort and swingset. The girls and I sat one night while we watched Dad take apart the swingset piece by piece. I was surprised to see Malia start crying, which in turn made Lose start crying, and so on. I guess I shouldn't be all that surprised. These are the same girls that wouldn't stop hugging the suburban when we traded it in for our first minivan! Malia turned away before I could get her tears on camera, but Lose wasn't all that shy about sharing. She's smiling while crying because Naki and I were teasing the girlies, which Lose can never resist smiling from.

Eli, by the way, seems to me the only one not sad about this. I think it's because she secretly holds her own vendetta against said swingset and readily tells anyone who will listen that "yesterday" (every day besides the current day is "yesterday") she cut her finger on that swingset, and that's why we're getting rid of it. She's right. That was my last straw. However, she was not supposed to be playing on it in the first place, so that's what she gets for not listening!

I started hunting for some replacements, and knew that most were way out of our budget. I finally found a STEAL on KSL and Naki was a wise man and listened to me when I told him we could not let it pass us by. It was in someone else's backyard up in Sandy, and so bless his heart and all those that helped him with lending labor, trucks, trailers, time, etc. He had to go take it apart in chunks and drive a couple of trips to get it all here. Here are a few of the pieces.

Naki's family came over for Family Home Evening this past Monday night and spent a good chunk of time putting it all together, and they were even succesful despite me asking them to move it to a whole new location after they were almost finished in the first location. (Made me think of Mom and Matt and the little green couch...anyone else know that story?) It's now in it's new home, and we are loving it! It still needs a good staining and a couple of missing bolts screwed in, but we are in heaven. Thanks again to all of you great people out there that helped us get this thing into it's new home. We're super excited to give it it's proper place as the newest member of this Maile family. I have pics of it completed and will post those after we stain it. Yay!

Easter Eggs

Coloring Easter Eggs is always so much fun. The funny thing is that when you start to have more than 2 or 3 kids, you realize that you're going to be eating some hard boiled eggs for a little while because they all enjoy coloring the eggs so much that you have to make sure you have plenty for everyone. We just barely finished eating them last night for dinner. I remember smashing them all up for egg salad sandwiches for dinner when I was a kid. It was always a little strange seeing the pastel colors in our egg salad from the dye that got through some of the shell to the egg white, but tasted good nonetheless. We decided to just slice up the eggs and eat them as a snack instead.




Umm, what can I say...it's Malia! She was enjoying the vinegar smell a bit too much.


I was home without Naki during the only window of time that I had before Easter to do the eggs, so I stuck Ane in her crib during that period of time. Wasn't her usual nap time, but it made things a bit easier. She graced us with her lovely cheerful napped presence at the very end.

So behind...

I am so far behind. I have a million loads of laundry to do, tons of blog posts to post, (thanks for the great weekend St. George Mailes!) dance shoes to go and buy, grocery shopping that DESPERATELY needs to be done, primary baptism programs to gather info for, type up, and get printed, baptism towels to get embroidered, birthday presents that need wrapped, grass that needs mowed, weeds that need pulled, TONS of laundry to do (did I mention that already?), all the toilets are disgusting, the house seems like a tornado hit it, I really need to exercise, the baby still hasn't had a bath this morning, I need to get the girlies ready for dance today, (hopefully I can since their clothes are probably dirty downstairs in the laundry), and a gazillion other things to do today. None of this matters, however, because I finally have a happy baby!
She must have been starving, but was too stubborn to take that bottle. Little did she know, she has a mom who is even more stubborn than her. After 2 WHOLE MONTHS of trying to convince her that bottles aren't the enemy, she finally figured it out. Whew. Now that she's actually feeling what it's like to have a full tummy, she is such a happy baby. Whoo-hoo! Now all the little mommies around here are having way too much fun feeding their "baby".


Now I just need to get a jumpstart on all of that other stuff.

I'm SO done with this, I really am....

Just to give you all an idea of what the weather was like just this past Easter Sunday, this is what Eva wore to church, and we walked it was so beautiful and warm.


And THIS, is what we've been dealing with for the past 2 days here.


PLEASE! C'mon, weather! Don't you know that just the day before this glorious spring snow I had just done my huge change-of-season-project of dragging all the winter clothes out of the girls' drawers and closets, pulling all the stored summer clothes out of the basement, and putting all the spring and summer clothes in their drawers and closets, and PUTTING AWAY all winter boots, clothes, pants, etc? This is ridiculous, or ridonculous, as Rhino in Bolt says. It's definitely time for a quick trip to warm and sunny St. George, Utah. Here we come Kolei and Nisi!

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday