Mother Son Dance

I got to go with Eli to his school's Mother Son dance. I am so thankful that this happy, silly, fun boy is mine!

Typical Nap

This is how he sleeps: pillow over him (usually over his head), socks off, lovey tucked under his arm, and sippy, books, and animals near. 

Bear Scout

Logan has loved every minute of being an Wolf Scout and now he's ready to move onto the Bears. 

So Sweet

We were having a discussion about how in life there are things we are responsible for doing that we don't necessarily love but have to do anyway; I gave the example of how I don't love making dinner every night, but that I do it every day without complaining anyway. Then Ali says, "Can we have macaroni and cheese for dinner tomorrow?" I thought she had been distracted from our main point with the thought of dinner options, but said that yes we could have mac and cheese the following day, and Ali says, "Oh, good, because I can make that and then you won't have to make dinner for one night!" And the next day, that's exactly what she did, and I really did enjoy the night off. Thanks sweet Ali!

Happy Easter

We had a great time celebrating Easter this year. We decorated eggs (and then ate them all within minutes of the picture being taken).

My little loves in their Easter Sunday clothes in front of our pretty tulips.

The egg hunt was a hit and Jake caught on pretty quickly!

And one for tradition's sake.

We are grateful for our Savior, His life, Atonement, and Resurrection. We love Him and we love Easter because it reminds us of Him.

St Lucia Coming Home

All good things must come to an end and our end was pretty annoying. We got to the airport to find that our flight had been delayed a couple of hours, making it unlikely that we would make our connection in Atlanta. When we got near Atlanta we could see the crazy thunderstorms that made it impossible for us to land, so we headed to Nashville to refuel. Our connecting flight had been cancelled, so why not I guess. We finally landed in Atlanta at about 2am, when we should have been pulling into our driveway in Illinois, only to find out that for some reason the kiosk couldn't print our new boarding pass so we had to see a ticket agent. So we went to the end of the longest line ever and FIVE HOURS LATER we finally got to talk to a ticket agent who printed us our boarding pass. She did also put us on standby for an earlier flight home, which by some miracle we actually got on. I was so grateful to finally be on a plane heading home and glad to be able to finally take a nap (at this point we'd been awake for about 26 hours). 

We arrived home to a baby who couldn't stop hugging us and an adorable sign from the older kids (favorite parts of the sign include; "Video chat didn't help we still missed you!" and "St Lucia good? Home better!") and then after a great two hour nap the older kids came home and it was so good to be together again!

And of course a huge thank you goes out to the one person who made all of this possible: Grandma! The kids had so much fun going to movies, restaurants, watching conference and going to school, and we never worried about them a bit.

We're already planning our next trip!

St Lucia Botanical Gardens and Sulfur Springs

We spent a day wandering around the Botanical Gardens (which was very pretty, but looked very similar to our very our plantation) and the Sulfur Springs.

The waterfall at the Botanical Gardens is probably more impressive in the rainy season...

The Sulfur Springs was smelly and it was interesting to learn that the whole area we'd been vacationing in was part of the crater from a long ago eruption.

St Lucia's Pitons and Hike

Most pictures of St Lucia feature the Gros and Petite Pitons, two 2,000-feet mountains that shoot right up out of the water. We took about a million pictures of them from various places on the island: our plantation, the beaches, hikes, other places. Here are a few of my favorites.

One day we took a 5.5 hour hike up to the top of Gros Piton. It was a pretty intense hike that included lots of climbing up over lots of rocks. I was really proud of myself for being able to do the hike, even if my legs did feel a little like jelly by the time we got down!

The view from the middle of the hike were actually better in our opinion, but from the top we did get a nice view inland of the island which was actually more mountainous than I had realized.

St Lucia Beaches

Of course, one of the main reasons we wanted to go to St Lucia was to spend some time at their lovely beaches, and they did not disappoint! The first beach we went to was called Sugar Beach. Our resort had a free shuttle that took us to and from the beach, which was so nice. We found some chairs in the shade and enjoyed the beautiful views, reading, and snorkeling. 

When you were out in the deeper water, you would sometimes be swimming in the middle of thousands of fish! Closer to the shore there were amazing coral and colorful, big fish. So pretty!

 On another day we took a cab to Anse Chastanet Beach. The beach was fine, but we decided to take a ten minute walk down a path to Anse Mamin Beach and we were so glad we did-there was no one at the other beach! We had the whole thing all to ourselves! It was a "black sand beach" and while there certainly were black grains of sand, there were other colors of sand too so it looked more grey, but still pretty! There were tons of sand crabs along the shore and we had fun watching the 10-20 right in front of us all morning.

St Lucia Fond Doux

Jason and I got to take an amazing trip to St Lucia! We were there for six days and they were wonderful! We stayed at a beautiful and unique place called Fond Doux Plantation. It is a working plantation were they grow just about any fruit or vegetable you can think of, but they also have 15 individual cottages you can stay in. 

Because the cottages are individual buildings and the plantation is so big, we hardly ever even saw any other guests; it felt like our own personal retreat! This was our house:

We had this welcome sign on our bed when we got there, made from flowers that grow on the plantation!

This was the view from our front porch. We spent a lot of time sitting out there, including Sunday afternoon when we listened to general conference as we enjoyed the view!

The had an open-air restaurant for breakfast and another for dinner. One morning and one evening we were the only ones at the restaurant! The birds liked to help themselves to any crumbs at the breakfast table. Any fruits or vegetables in the meals came directly from the plantation.

The pathways were lit up at night, making it possible for us to find our cottage and enjoy walks at night!

When we arrived, there was a platter of fruit grown on the plantation, including a coconut! Jason cracked it open on a rock outside and then we got to drink the milk and eat the fruit!

We spent every afternoon at one of the resort's three small pools, and had it all to ourselves every day!

Tent Sleep Over

The kids still love their Friday night sleepovers, and on this night they talked their dad into setting up the tent in the basement for them to sleep in.

Happy Birthday Jakey!

Our baby is two!

For is birthday cake I made cupcakes and stuck some of his toy horses on top. Hey, the kid loves horses and he was happy so why do something complex?  Jake is such a fun boy who loves to read, be outside, and make us laugh. We are SO glad he's ours!

Sledding

This has to be the best sledding picture ever!

SNOW!

A couple of weeks ago it snowed here for the first time since before Christmas and Eli was particularly excited to get to take his snow stuff to school in anticipation of playing outside at recess.