Beauty and the Beast~

After 4 long months of rehearsals and hard work Zach and Mikayla performed in Beauty and the Beast at our church.  Mikayla was a cheerleader and also had small parts as a villager.  She had a lot of dialogue in a side show called 'Brittany and the Beast.'  It had scenes from a modern day high school with a moral message. Zach was a villager and had several singing lines in various songs.  

They both did so great!

Kill the beast!

As soon as I saw Zach I thought he looked like my dad when he was younger.

I dont' know where she got those legs!

Flowers for his princess!

A kiss from Jake!

So proud of my "big kids" who were sick that whole week.

With G&G Thiesen

With Papa & RuthAnn

With Grammie, aka Grandma Jono

With cousin Cameron

Mikayla with her BFF Hannah

Snugglin' with Brobro after a loooong day.  We got Zach a new book instead of flowers.

Like I said poor Zach got sick the week before the show and was mostly better by tech week, but every time he gets a virus he gets a horrible cold sore.=(  Mikayla got sick the week of the show, but the show must go on and she powered through somehow.  We are so proud of them both and they had a blast being a part of a show together.  I definitely think it helped them bond a little.  It gave them something common to talk about instead of arguing over who's going to sit in the front seat.  

My Creative Girl~

First let me just say I realize that all the names of the rides I talked about from our day at California Adventure were not the real names. =) We just didn't think the real names were very easy to say a million times throughout the day.  Also, Landen just named the rides what made sense to him and some of them stuck.  So if anyone was wondering, that's why you never heard of those names.  Mater's Tractor Tippers is actually Mater's Junkyard Jamboree, etc.  Anywho...

...So I don't think this is going to the year of the blog for me.  We were all sick AGAIN!  The 6th illness to sweep through our house I think.  It's hard to say when one starts and ends and a new one comes in.  Is it a cold or allergies?  Who got it first?  Virus or bacterial?  Gah!  I'm over it!  And Jeff went out of town again(New York this time).  There seems to be a pattern here and I am ready for summer to be here and to hopefully get out of this rut.  I don't say this to complain(maybe a little) just to explain my lack of blogging.  I am way behind so I am just going to jump in here with some of Mikayla's beautiful artwork she has in her room.  I just love it!  Makes my day and always makes my heart smile.

Chalk drawing

She's saving up for an iPod. (it says save $260 before my b-day)

Amen, sista!

Love the face!

Me too!

She's very good at chalk drawings!

One of her many paintings.  She did this one over spring break.

This last week was particularly weird.  Seemed like everyone was finally well again.  Then Landen started having a fever and then a strange, horrible rash.  Zachary has always been the king of getting every strange childhood virus, so I thought I would have figured it out sooner.  Even the Dr. was puzzled.  Once the rash got worse with sun exposure I realized he had a virus called Fifths Disease.  Starts with red cheeks which is why it's also called Slapped Cheeks syndrome.  We thought he just got too much sun.  Then he had what we thought was another cold. But after the fever the rash was just so horrible.  Poor baby was miserable!  But he is better now. Just has a little cough. Zach had this virus when he was 6 and passed it on to the rest of us then so thankfully it ended with Landen. 

 And as most people have heard there were fires in our area this week.  There is a big highway in between us so there was no threat of it spreading to our house, but we did smell smoke for days and had ash falling on us for a couple of those days.  There were also two small airplanes that crashed in mid-air and one crash landed in Calabasas and burned.  The other landed on the golf course across the highway from Mikayla's school.  Yikes!  Then on Sunday night Jeff found a black widow spider in our upstairs laundry room.  Eeeck!!!  So thankful for God's protection in it all.  Depsite all the sickness and fires and stress we are fine.  We are healthy and happy and blessed.

Happy Birthday~

Happy birthday to my handsome hubby!

Easter Morning~

I might have gone a little bit "overboard" with the presents, but most were after Christmas clearance.

This is typical Zachary.  Always wearing his blankie around like a cape.  I learned at a GATE seminar that math geniuses tend to like to have some sort of lovely.  One morning he said out loud on the way to school, "Yes!  Today we are going to learn ___ in math!"  Can't remember what it was, but I am sure he is one of the only 11 year olds in America who says stuff like that. 

Never can have enough mechanical pencils!

My smart, handsome, funny, silly, strong, athletic, loving boy.  But you know he keeps me on my toes!

Landen has been asking for Farm Duplo since he got the garden one for Christmas.  Wasn't as excited as I thought he'd be, but maybe because he finally got a space shuttle?? 

When Zach and Mikayla were little they loved watching the cartoon Max and Ruby based on the books by Rosemary Wells.  There's one episode where they hunt eggs and the winner is supposed to get a chocolate chicken.  Well I think Zach was either 3 or 4 and he fully expected there to be a chocolate chicken on Easter morning.  He was devatasted when there wasn't one.  Just couldn't understand why the Easter bunny didn't bring one.  I searched everywhere that year for one and never found anything.  Now it seems like they are everywhere.  Landen loves Max and Ruby too and we had just read the book about the chocolate chicken.  

He found the chocolate chicken!

Pretending to be a giraffe.  Aka, his favorite animal.

Oh, be still my heart!

He looooooves his sissy so much!

I think it took about 40 minutes for him to build this one.  

So sweet!

Zach patiently did this tye dye egg and I loved how it turned out!

I didn't get many pictures from our egg hunt in Bakersfield, but Landen had the best time with Austin!  Austin would give him clues and then when Landen would find it he would say, "I told you Austin!"

My beautiful *almost* teenager.

Easter Weekend~

Zach and Landen have this little game they play where they point out every Hummer they see and yell, "Hummer! Claim it! I win!" Just one of those silly brother things.  So one morning after we dropped Zach off at school Landen saw a Hummer and yelled, "Yellow Hummer!  Claim it!  I win!  Mommy!  He's tweeting and texting!  He's tweeting and texting!"  None of us have a twitter account so I have no idea where he heard that but I thought it was hilarious.  That boy is growing up in a very different world.  He absolutely hates listening to the radio because he has never known car rides without a DVD player.  He is very adept at working "his" iPad and my iPhone.  I'm not usually good at incorporating current events into my blog posts and I know years from now it will be fun to look back and see how life used to be.  So I will say that we still have the original iPad.  Like the first kind that came out and Jeff and I still have iPhone 3gs.  I'm sure someday our grand kids will read this on their iPhone 50's.

 Easter weekend we dyed some eggs and had some egg hunts since we were going to be gone on Easter.  Zach and Landen played outside all day.  Landen is so enamored with his big brother.  Zach went to put his bike in the garage and Landen was absolutely heart broken that brobro was gone for even 10 seconds and this was his reaction.

 Don't worry!  Literally a moment later he was back to this.

Doesn't he look like such a big boy!?!

Mikayla wasn't too interested in dyeing eggs this year, but even though Landen remembered doing it last year it was truly magical for him this year.

 When the first egg came out of the dye he gasped with amazement at the change in color.  

Ignore the huge mess on that counter behind Jeff.  Although, you can see the original iPad back there. It's the equivalent of carrying a boom box around on your shoulder.

He kept shouting, "Wow!!!"

Of course, Landen loved the green ones!

Zach had spring break last week and Mikayla has it this week, so we really couldn't do anything.  Not even really a stay cation.  Some of us are also getting over another cold.  Ugh!  Dealing with all this sickness this winter has definitely been challenging and we've all had our fair share of crankiness because of it.  I feel like it has been a good lesson in grace for us as a family.  And really that is what Easter is all about.  We received grace we didn't deserve, so the least we can do is extend that same grace to each other.  We are still learning!