New Years to Spring

Oh my oh my this is a lot. Here we go!

New Years Eve party at Uncle Loren's house with Aunts, Uncles, and Cousins :)

Penny and James

Anne and Benson

Fireworks

Star Wars

Aquarium

Jen got us in to do a penguin encounter!! It was awesome! They have such cute little personalities. The kids were in heaven.

Pizza Pie Cafe, our favorite

Our friend gave us a Wii for Christmas! Our favorite is bowling :)

This boy still likes baby food.

Ah, this makes me heart and brain happy.  Finally organized my kitchen closet.  Need to do this again...

I did a super de-cluttering and super cleaning of the kitchen. Got rid of a ton of stuff. :)

Nap time.

I can't remember exactly why I took this photo of Rachel...but it could be because she got glasses? I honestly can't remember when she got them.  But doesn't she look cute?

Oh I love snuggling.

The girls loved their riding lessons this winter.

Anne loved playing with the barn cats.

They all did.

I took this so my Mom could see James wearing his Uncle Gordon's sweater. But he was being very two and would not smile.

I loved my riding lessons as well. :)

Helping make James' bday cupcakes.

A new "James" train from Grandma and Grandpa Russell!

Rachel and I had fun at a department store trying on some cute dresses.

James loves his blanket from Grandma Russell.

I tried practicing this song for a couple weeks on the violin. It's hard! But so beautiful.

Love seeing this :)

The girls cleaned up their bookshelf to look like the ones at school. 

Anne's cool tower.

We are trying to eat new and fun veggies so each time I go to Sprouts I get something different to try. So far we've tried: rutabega, diakon, yellow and red beats, purple cauliflower, eggplant, kale, multicolored carrots, and some others that I can't remember. It's been fun to see what the kids like and don't like. James, oddly enough, looooved kale. The boy won't eat green beans but he loved kale.

Playdough fun

Seeing the Greatest Showman for the first time up in SL with Jennifer.

Cool happy meal toys.

Rachel and James' train creation.

Anne's field trip to the Planetarium.  That place is awesome!

My little helper.

James' Bday!! We all are so in love with this little man. He is such a boy through and through. He grunts, destroys, snuggles, shares, throws, kisses, laughs, and plays so awesome with his sisters. He loves to ride his "motorcycle" (tricycle-selfnamed, haha), play horses with his sisters, and is now an awesome eater. He still loves meat more than anything but will now eat veggies! Jet melts my heart. We are so blessed to have him part of our family.

Zac thought this bag was appropriate for his gift (spiderman underwear, haha).

Rachel made him a caterpillar puppet.

He loved his monkey...if you can't tell.

We had a rough January. We all took turns being sick...alllll month.

Zac's fortune cookie.

Fun family bowling...but a little pricey.

A rutabaga.

At the dog park with Carrie.

Superbowl party2018 at Loren and Carrie's house.

James' daily nap getting the kids from school.

Free dress day at school.

First warm day playing outside.

A letter Sarah sent to her Uncle Gordon.

We volunteered to watch our friends' kids so they could go out for Valentine's Day.  It was actually a lot of fun cause my friends have cool kids :)

Rachel's field trip to see Little Red Riding Hood at the Scera theater.

Preschool Valentine's Day party.

My little dishwasher helper.

Another favorite napping spot.

Valentine's Day dinner. The kids' favorite meal is sushi so I made a bunch and surprised them.

Later Zac and I had storebought king crab legs. Mmmmm.

Playing with our neighbors and their horses at the rodeo grounds :)

"I'm running!"

This boy also loves seaweed chips.

Playing with cousins.

First sledding! It was cold!

Fun with Grandma!

And Grandpa!

I loved this. Rachel had an icycle collection.  How awesome is that?

A tantrum wore this sucker out.

One of Rachel's art projects at school.

Why he's an awesome Dad.

Watching Greatest Showman with Grandma and Grandpa and Aunt Jennifer.

Sarah's Birthday! I can't say enough about this crazy little girl.  She is very thoughtful, grateful, sassy, temperamental, helpful, stubborn, and has the most contagious laugh in the universe. She loves to play with her siblings, ride a bike without training wheels!!, do her workbooks, and watch movies. She is over the moon excited to go to kindergarten and be like her big sisters. She has a phenomenal gift with music where she can mimic what her sisters plays on the piano just from hearing it. Sarah can also memorize lines from movies like no one's business, inflection and all. I think drama is in this girls' future. How she brightens our life, our little Sarah sunshine :)

She had a joint birthday party with her cousin Benson who also shares the same birthday! Lots of family, lots of fun.

Anne and I on one of our many trips up to Primary Children's Development Center for testing. She loves when we get sushi in the food court for lunch or stop for french fries on the way home :)

A couple of the horses at the stables where the kids look lessons, had babies! So cute and fun to see such new little animals.

That lip.....

Zac and my's Valentine's crab dinner.

Walking over to the rodeo grounds.

We only got a couple good snow storms this year. This was one of them.

More Sarah's bday!

She wanted to make slime for her birthday.

Benson and Sarah and the Russell and Thatcher cousins.

Baby Horse

Cute new haircuts.

What James gravitates towards at DI

Fun new car track from DI

Fun new game from DI, haha

Crazy Hair Day at school

Crazy hair day at home :)

Date night. Super comfy luxury loungers. That is the way to see a movie.

One night after FHE the kids went downstairs to play bowling on the Wii. Anne jumped up on our little ottoman footstool thing and accidently stepped off and caught herself with her arm. Later that night we went to the ER and found out that she had fractured the neck of her radius. Five weeks in a cast. She was a trooper through it all.

Sarah, James, and I went on an adventure with Aunt Jennifer and hiked around on the frozen Tibble Creek Reservoir.

Anne was sad about having to take time off of riding lessons, but she still had fun snuggling with the barn cats.

We had such a blast doing preschool this year with Sarah and our neighbor buddy Isaac.

Anne's cool purple cast.

It was heart-warming to see all the kids that had signed her cast at recess.

Sarah loves puzzles.

The kids working as an assembly line to help stack firewood in the greenhouse for the winter.

We had some fun with some temporary purple hair dye.

Even Zac joined in the fun.

Our neighbors, the Taylors, let us come bottle feed their new baby lamb. Also very cute.

Shopping with the four hooligans.

A local taco restaurant had a day that they did this in memory of one of their own that died suddenly from cancer. It was packed from opening to close. When I went in to get our order you could feel the Spirit that was there. There were tears and hugs and smiles. It was truly beautiful to see and be a part of. Plus it was really good food :)

We got baby chicks! They were the cutest little puff balls. They were also well loved by our kiddos who each named one.  We have Ellie, Ella, Peck, Black Beauty, Fluffy, and One.

Reading time with the chicks.

Preschool painting.

This was a funny family night. I remember one time growing up that we tricked my Dad with the whole filling up a clay pot with oreo pudding mix made to look like dirt and then starting to eat it and him wondering what in the world we were doing. It was hilarious so I did that with the kids. Such a funny night.

Day date :)

He also gravitates towards puddles.

Happy Easter! The girls got some cute new Easter dresses.

Handsome men.

Oh yes. The guys had matching ties.

Anne's next cast color choice.

Anne's field trip to the Aquarium.

I posted on facebook looking for ideas of things to do or places to visit over spring break and Zac's awesome cousin Dylan said "Hey, why don't you come visit me in Laguna Negal and I'll take everyone to Disneyland!" Sure enough three days later we left for a fun trip to California to see him as well as the rest of the California Thatchers.

Rachel had fun playing soccer with her cousin Luke

Sorry for the skipping. Back to feeding the baby sheep.

Easter

Back to the California trip. Decorating Easter Eggs with Grandma Thatcher

Easter Egg Hunt

Cute snuggling

We drove past my old house in Santa Anna. I lived there from when I was 1.5 to 5.

Where I started kindergarten with Mrs. Wolven. My only two memories are of walking to school with my Mom and Loren and there being an earthquake. And Loren convincing me to steal some colored dominoes from my teacher's class.

Poor Anne at the beach. We had to wrap up her cast so sand wouldn't get in.

Beach Day at Hunington Beach with Uncle Dylan and Sandie.

Disneyland!!! We had so much fun :)

Right as we walked in the park Minnie Mouse came out and got pictures right away.

And Pluto.

The kids loved the Star Wars show.

They also loved roller coasters! Their first one was the Materhorn!

Nap time.

When we got home we  built the chicken yard and coop. Then I let the kids paint it.....They actually did a great job, just very messy.

The finished result. It took the chicks a few days to get used to sleeping in the coops. We even rigged up a nightlight for them and put them in every night for a couple days. They're good now.

Rachel and Dad date night.

At Anne's Poetry Tea day at school.

My last riding lesson. Everyone came to watch.

Me and Rose. She was such an awesome horse that loved to go! I'll miss riding her.

A cool community yard sale to earn money to help a lady in our ward pay for her brain surgery since she doesn't have insurance. It was awesome to see how much everyone participated and helped out.