May in Review

Still trying to catch up...

DANCE

Elle with her friend, Alli, at their Lagoon dance competition



Elle's end of year dance recital (She is on the far left) Check her out up on her toes



Elle loves to dance! Her favorite is ballet but she likes jazz and tap too.


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SPRING SOCCER

Easton (#3) had so much fun playing soccer. He was so great at following the ball but didn't want to "take" the ball from anyone. He is definitely a team player too. He didn't really care if he scored any goals, just as long as his team won. He is such a cute little guy.




Easton and his buddy, Drake

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STORY WEAVERS COMPETITION

Elle's teacher, Ms. Yawn, had her class participate in a Storytelling Competition. Each student had to pick a story or fairy tale and then retell it in their own way by changing a few things while keeping the main storyline. Then they had to memorize it and tell it in front of their class and a few other classes and teachers. Elle chose the story "Hansel and Gretel" and changed the pebbles into nuts, the witch's house into a house of chocolate cake, and a few other things. She practiced every day. A school competition was held for the few classes that wanted to participate and Elle did such a great job. She had it all memorized, was animated, had great actions and spoke clearly. They chose four winners from that to go on to the district competition and Elle and three friends from her class got chosen. She was so excited! Ms. Yawn had helped her students a lot so they were all prepared. The Story Weavers Competition for the district had about 4 elementary schools that decided to participate and was divided into age groups. Elle was in the 1st-3rd grade level. She was the first storyteller and was really nervous but she did an amazing job. She ended up winning 1st place for the district for her age group! She was absolutely thrilled when they called her name. We are so proud of her! Congratulations Elle!


Elle telling her story



Elle with her great teacher, Ms. Yawn, and her friends from school, Allee, Macy and Hibba



1st place! She was so excited!


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EASTON'S LAST DAY AT CHILDREN'S DISCOVERY PRESCHOOL

I can't believe our little boy is done with preschool. I hate to admit it but there were a few tears, on my part, on his last day. He is growing up too fast. Next year he moves on to Kindergarten and before I know it he will be in 3rd grade like Elle.

They had a cute end of year Spring Sing. It is the cutest thing seeing all these 4-year-olds sing (or yell) their little hearts out. Easton did a great job! They did "High Hopes," a cute "Three Little Pigs" song and a few others but his favorite was the finale when they did "Octopus's Garden" by the Beatles with a black light. They all got to hold fish that were lit up and a few kids, including Easton, got to hold sharks too. It was a really fun program. Discovery has been a great preschool for Easton. He learned a lot, did a lot of fun crafts and made some great friends. He is already reading and definitely ready for Kindergarten! I'm not really sure if I'm ready for him to go to Kindergarten though. :)


"Three Little Pigs and Big Bad Wolf" at Spring Sing



Easton at his Spring Sing



Easton with his teachers, Miss Kris and Miss Kristine, on his last day of Preschool


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TULIP FESTIVAL

We took a day and went to the Tulip Festival at Thanksgiving Point Gardens with some friends. The flowers were beautiful and it was a really fun day!








Drake and Easton



Ila, Mia and Jayne


Feeding the fish


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Easton and Jayne playing



Elle and Jayne with Strawberry Shortcake dolls



Crazy sleeper Jayne



Easton with his rock people he made



Elle's Spring Piano Recital



Jayne with her new iPad. Yep, it's hers. Don and I had no intention of ever buying one but when her therapists came with them and showed us all the different apps that could help with her speech, we decided to get one. Anything to help Jayne!



Don and I got to go see Les Miserables and it was amazing!

Mother's Day

I love being a mom! Even though it is a lot of work, it really is the best job in the world! I love seeing Elle, Easton and Jayne's sweet faces every morning and laying by them before bed at night. There's no better way to start and end the day. I love reading to them, playing games and just talking to them. I love seeing their eyes light up when they are excited about something and comforting them when they are sad. I love their smiles and laughs and their cute voices. I feel so lucky that I get to be with them everyday and that I get to be their mom!

My family was all still in town over Mother's Day which was so fun! We had pizza and roasted Smores and stayed up late visiting and watching a movie the night before. On Mother's Day Don made a big brunch with yummy waffles and smoothies after we got home from church. I had a great day! It was so nice to celebrate with my mom and my brothers and sisters and my own sweet kids. The only one missing was my sister Heather and her family.



Roasting Smores






I got the sweetest cards from my kids!

You are nice and kind to me. You are helpful, loveing, happy and sweet. You are the best mom in the whole wide world! You look lovely all the time. You help me when I am sick. You are always happy. You help me with my homework when it is hard. You buy me stuff I need. Your hair feels like silck. You always comphort me when I am scared at night. I love you mom! Love, Elle Adamson

Grandma Smith

My sweet Grandma, Darla Jean Anderson Smith, passed away on April 30, 2011. She was an amazing woman! She was sweet and kind and never had a bad word to say about anyone. She happily served everyone around her and never expected anything in return. I have so many fond memories of going to visit her as a little girl--a cookie jar that was always full, the best homemade jam and pickles, eating rhubarb from her garden, Grandma bringing lemonade to us in our haystack fort, going into "town" for a treat, coloring pictures of the horses, playing on the farm equipment and playing Dominoes and Rummikub for hours. She loved games! And, just recently, calling her to see who her favorite was on "American Idol" or "Dancing With the Stars" which she watched regularly.


My Grandma and Grandpa on their wedding day and while dating



Celebrating my Grandma's 80th birthday last summer


My brothers and sisters were all able to come for the funeral. They came to Salt Lake and then we all drove to Rupert, Idaho together. It was so nice to be with them and my dad and see our aunts, uncles and cousins too. It was a quick trip so we left the kids with Don's parents, knowing that it would be hard for them to sit still so much.

The funeral service was really nice. The grandsons sang "I am a Child of God" together and even though it was off key, there is something neat about a bunch of men singing. My sister, Sena, and cousin, Susan, did a great job at the life sketch and made us all laugh and cry. All the granddaughters did a medley of Primary songs and then the oldest, cousin, Kevin spoke. It was a nice tribute to Grandma Smith.


Grandma's house and the farm



My dad and all of us kids



My brothers and cousins-Pallbearers


My dad and his siblings







After the funeral, we all went back to my Grandma's house and each of the granddaughters got to pick out a few pieces of my Grandma's jewelry to remember her by. It meant so much to all of us. Then, my Uncle Jack went and put on my Grandpa's old World War 2 uniform because he was the only one that could fit in it. It was nice to be together, share memories and laugh.

I will miss my Grandma but I am happy that she finally gets to be with my Grandpa again, who passed away 9 years ago. I know she missed him so much. We love you Grandma!

Lesson Learned: Back-up your Back-up

I am obviously really behind on blogging. Partly because it is summer time and we have been busy having fun and trying to fit it all in before school starts again. And partly due to the fact that towards the end of May, the drive on our computer with ALL of our pictures crashed.

One day, while trying to upload to Picasa, I couldn't access our pictures folder on our media drive. I told Don (aka my technical support) and thought that for sure he would know how to access it, because he can pretty much figure out almost anything. But he couldn't get it either. Don said not to worry because even if it failed, we still have a copy of all of it on our back-up drive. Unfortunately, after checking the back-up drive we learned that it was making a perfect back-up of everything on Don's computer but only backing up the short cut to the media folder, not the actual pictures or video. Seriously, back-up your back-up. Computers are amazing but not totally reliable. We thought we had all our bases covered but we didn't. I didn't want to worry yet, because this sort of thing probably happened all the time, right? Somebody would probably have an easy fix. Don said he would take it to one of his tenants that did this kind of thing for his job. This guy opened up the drive, scanned it and found nothing. Then, we both started to panic. Our media drive has everything on it--pictures of both of us as kids, our dating, our marriage, our kids being born, first steps, vacations and every event from the past ten years. Plus, all of our videos--including our kids' births and their first words and giggles--were on it too. I was sick about it. Those memories are irreplaceable. If we had a fire, that is what I would grab. We decided it was worth the cost to try and get them back. We checked into some data recovery places and found this place in Logan that does a lot of work for the colleges and big corporations. They told us that if there was any information on it, they would find it. They had to take it into a clean room and go through the whole drive. After a couple of weeks of wondering and waiting...thankfully, we got it all back. We are both so grateful! Lesson learned. We now back-up into the cloud, have burned DVDs of each year of pictures and have learned that the external drives from Costco were not meant for that amount of data storage. I'm just so glad to have all of our pictures back. The only bad thing is that now I have a lot of catch up to do. :)