We {heart} OUR Eye Doctor!!

Today, on the last day of Spring Break, we made a trip to Matt's office and got our eyeballs checked out. :)The kids did GREAT! Brooklyn needs a little upgrade on her glasses. I think the last time I had an eye exam was back in school???! I'll admit I'm kinda whiny about getting my eyes dilated and then having to have a blinding light shone in my eyes and trying to keep them open. Then not being able to focus my eyes on anything up close just makes me plain woozy!

Daddy doing his "thing"

A little office lovin'. How many people can actually say that they get kisses from their optometrist during a routine exam?? ;)

Barbara hooked the kids up with their "sunglasses" and we were on our way!!!
Thanks, honey/daddy, for taking such good care of our eyes!! ☺Don't I look hot? LOL!

Cabin Trip for Spring Break

I've been looking forward to this for MONTHS!!! I don't know what it is about the cabin..... it takes so so SO much prep work to get up there, but once you're there, ahhhhhh. :)

And this year, Matt even got to go with us for a couple days! I love relaxing at the cabin. It's not the fact that you get time off from cooking, cleaning and parenting, because you don't. But it's great to have the help from mother&sister-in-laws in meal prep/clean-up and collaborating on keeping things tidy and the kiddos in line. The kids enjoy running, playing outdoors and getting as dirty as they please while the adults get to play card games, chat about everything and anything under the sun, watch crazy tv shows and stuff ourselves full of junk food. I'm grateful to Grandma & Grandpa LeBaron for allowing us to use their cabin to make good memories with our family. ♥

For once, I toyed with the idea of not even bring my camera up to the cabin. I did bring it, but it stayed in it's case until Tuesday (we came up Friday and went home Wednesday). I regret not getting a few pictures, like our annual cousin line up on the porch, but overall, it was more relaxing just living in the moment rather than trying to capture every moment.

Ninja poses with ring pops

Brooklyn wanted to do this atrocious 500 piece puzzle then bailed on me. After wasting several hours of my life and only getting this far, I crumpled it all back up and put it away!!!

Bug catching galore!!!! Eek!The remaining cousins (minus a sleeping Sophie) Wednesday morning (Josh, Em and Adam left Tuesday)

Another baseball season under way!

My three little leaguers! ♥♥♥

Opening day was March 5th! Brooklyn and Blake are in AAA ball (first year of kid pitch) and Gavin FINALLY gets to start tball!! Of course they had the players' parade before the games began. Brooklyn and Blake are the Durham Bulls and Gavin is the Notre Dame Fightin' Irish.Cousin Andrew is playing Coach Pitch and poor Spencer has to wait another year to play tball.

For their first games, Preston and I started off at Brooklyn and Blake's game, Matt started at Gavin's game. Then I walked clear across to where Gavin was playing and Matt went over to watch Brooklyn and Blake's game. When Gavin was done, we trekked it back over to finish off at the twins' game, which lasts 2 whole hours!!!! The AAA games are pretty slow moving with the kids pitching and still learning how to get it precisely in the right range for the batter to hit.

(Blake is the one with his arm around the coaches shoulders here, such a sweetie)

Gavin has been so excited that he gets to play this year! We haven't really done much practicing with him but he seems to be a natural. He is definitely a tenderheart, so we'll have to work on the aggression thing as he goes along. ;)

This is a funny video of Gavin's first at-bat that I'm SO glad Matt caught on his phone!

Having three kids on two different teams has proved to be a challenge for me this year! When all three kids have practice at the same time in two different places, someone is going to have to be late and the others are going to have to be dropped off, which has been hard for me to be ok with. But what do you do??? We're contemplating moving Brooklyn over to girls softball next year, but that will create even MORE craziness!

My new favorite shirt of Matt's!! I got this for him super cheap and he got SO many comments about it during the baseball games that day! haha!

Fever, Fishies & Farming

What do these three have in common? Nothing really, just the fact that they start with the letter F and describe a few every day happenings that I haven't mentioned here yet. ;)

Brooklyn has a mild case of BIEBER FEVER!

It's interesting to hear how all this comes about since she hasn't really been exposed to Justin Bieber here at home. Her aunt Kristin wanted to take her to see the movie Never Say Never and oooooohhhhhhh boy, I've never heard her squeal so loud or go so wild when I told her!! I ended up going with them and it's fun to enjoy these things through your child's eyes! I've downloaded a couple of JB's songs to my Ipod so we can all jam out and dance like crazies any time we want. One of Preston's new favorite words is nnnnnnnEVER!!! haha

Brooklyn and cousin Andrew waiting for the movie {in 3D} to start
Can you tell how excited she was?!?

Blake and Brooklyn had their little 2nd grade musical performance at the school. It was called "It Sounds a Little Fishy to Me" and had various songs and speaking parts about different ocean animals.

~the whole 2nd grade~

The day Matt and I got back from California, there was a need for volunteers to help in the ward garden so we headed on over to do our part. The kids got busy digging up weeds and planting seeds.Preston screamed until someone gave him a rake. He's serious about his gardening skills!!Then we had McDs ice cream cones for dinner! Preston ate his from the bottom up.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!! ♣

Once again, I find myself falling behind on the good 'ole blog. It's only been a little over 2 weeks since I last posted but SO much has gone on!!! There will be lots of updating done in the next few days!

The kids and I were all decked out in our festive green for the day. I even made sure Matt wore a green dress shirt to work to avoid being pinched by patients. ;) I wish I was more creative and set up some leprechaun mischeif for the kids to find this morning, but I figure it would be weird to start that tradition when my oldests are 8 years old and leprechauns have never visited our house before. :/ Matt made me feel bad because I didn't make any GREEN food for breakfast. There was broccoli in our dinner and I did make a pistachio cake for dessert.

This picture of Preston makes me smile. He's such a cheezer!

Brooklyn was assigned to unload the dishwasher today. Although I would normally scold my kids for climbing on the counters, I couldn't help but think this time it was cute to see her little body up there, getting the task accomplished the best she could.Stay tuned!

Time for a GetAWAY!

Where else would we have headed to but Disneyland!!! I love that place and would go several times a year; Matt thinks I'm insane. We had planned a long weekend trip (no kids!) with our best friends, the Barneys. They have annual passes so when she asked if we wanted to meet up, that's all it took! We drove out Saturday, met Weston and Jennie at Lucille's BBQ for lunch. Good stuff! After we checked into the hotel, we headed out for a little window shopping at The Block.

Just a little sidenote here... just for grins and giggles, I grabbed a pair of jeans at American Eagle to try on. I used to shop there, in COLLEGE, before I birthed 4 kiddos and my body went all whack on me. Anyhow, I was highly doubtful that the jeans would actually fit my thunder thighs so image my surprise when they DID fit!!! Any they were comfy! I was ecstatic!!! I couldn't bring myself to pay $40 for jeans right then, so I did a little personal victory dance and put them back on the shelf. ;) Seriously made my night, though!

We make a quick stop at the grocery store to pick up a few odds and ends, including a little Ben & Jerry's for dessert. We all went back to our hotel room for some chatting before calling it a night.Both Sunday and Monday mornings, we slept in (by mommy standards), took our time getting ready before heading to breakfast then off to Disneyland and California Adventure for the day. I love love LOVED just being able to do what we wanted without having to worry about whiny children, six thousand potty breaks or navigating a stroller through the crowds. Matt and I held hands a LOT. Made me feel giddy! ♥ We rode all the big rides -- TOGETHER.Gluttons for punishment, riding the Grizzly River Run over and over and OVER again! I'm just glad we brought our ponchos. ;)One thing we pretty much all decided is that we can't handle so many fast/spinny/simulated rides as well now that we're getting so OLD! haha!

We got to see the new World of Color show at California Adventures on Sunday night. It was pretty cool! I kept thinking the whole time how much the kids would love this.Matt really, really didn't like me making him pose for a *few* self-taken couple shots.....

California Screamin' -
the very FIRST ride we did upon arrival and the very LAST ride we did before heading home. Matterhorn -
squishing together in one "seat" really doesn't work when you're both close to 6' tall!
Matt was worried about jamming my knees, I was worried about squishing his manhood!!Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters - will always be a favorite! Matt is crazy good at this one!Toy Story Mania - another new fave!

Raft ride over to Tom Sawyers island - have never done this one before now

What else do you do when you're picture-taking crazy and you don't have kids to take photos of???! LOL!

And, we saw a celebrity!!!! First time EVER in all those times we've been to Disneyland!!! Nicholas Cage, just sauntering his way thru the crowds with his kids. Wow!! So cool seeing someone famous!We had such a great time, hanging out with Jennie & Weston all weekend. We're already brainstorming a bigger and better trip in the near future! We love you guys!

And special thanks to my sister-in-laws Jen and Kristin for dividing and conquering the kiddos while we were gone!!