Other April

 April was a month of colds, Carrie is laying down here not because she is sick (at this point anyway) but James was laying down because he was sick so she had to join. 

 The kids had a fun animal rodeo

 We tried curlers a few nights with Carrie- it turns out cute but a little out of control

 We had a branch BBQ that got moved inside because it is spring in Monument Valley, so it was windy- no surprise there.  The windy season has actually not been too bad this year- knock on wood.

 This is what happened to the Hogan in the huge snowstorm in February.  Hopefully this has never happened when someone is inside a hogan.  They look so sturdy!

 James and Spencer love to jump and have Devon take pictures, he got some good shots.

 Carrie has almost grown out of the Mexico dress that I couldn't resist buy when we went to Mexico 5 years ago, although we didn't have any girls at the time.  She didn't mind showing it off to everyone!

When we look back at our blog the kids mostly want to watch the videos, so we are trying to take and post a few more.  It is unfortunate that all of the ones of James dancing are too big, he has some moves.  We do have some pretty cute kids.

Easter

 We had our annual complex egg hunt the Friday before Easter.  It must not have been a good day for it because not very many people came, but we still had fun- and since we had more eggs than ever my kids got to find a ton!

 Our Easter bunny comes Saturday morning.  The kids got stuffed bunnies, chocolate bunnies and small Book of Mormons with bags they could decorate to be their scripture holders

 We tried a few new things with dying eggs this year.  The first batch i tried to cook in our veggie and rice steamer, I did not cook them long enough, so they turned out to be very soft boiled and only good for coloring.  Then Devon cooked another batch and we colored them with Kool-Aid, which worked really well and I don't think I'll buy another egg kit, the colors were bright and smelled good too.

 We just let Carrie do one egg since she liked to continuously drop it in the dye and smash it with a spoon, she also stuck with yellow dye to minimize damage.

 I have not really bought Easter clothes before, but the girls Easter dresses are so cute i couldn't resist.  The kids were not into getting their picture taken and poor Devon had to do it on his own since i had morning meetings.  This is the week after Easter too since Easter was on General conference weekend.

April Fool's

Devon was prepared for April Fools day this year.  For James he got a peanut can filled with spring snakes.  We don't have a video of it, but it was pretty fun, so fun the kids had to take it to school to try it on their teachers- don't worry I wient with them and took it home before school actually started.  Some of the kids reactions were soo funny.

For Spencer Devon bought some fake cockroaches and put them in the tub at bath time.  Spencer's reaction was pretty classic.  And then being boys Spencer and James wanted to play with the fake bugs in the bath, but Carrie would have nothing to do with them. She was so terrified of them that for the next few days she would cry when she saw anything remotely the size and color of those things.  We put them away pretty quickly but still had a few nights of nightmares- I really didn't expect that.

St Patricks Day

 March was a very busy and exciting month for us.  St Patrick's day is a pretty big holiday around here since our biggest holiday celebrator Spencer's favorite color is green we really can't skip this one.  We build leprechaun traps and the leprechaun's left stickers, and bubbles.  They also spit in our milk so it turned green to eat on our Lucky Charms.  We had the missionaries over for a traditional St Patrick's meal of corned beef.  I's say it was a thorough celebration.  And of course we wore lots of green.

Holi Day Celebration

 We also decided to enlighten our cousins to our family tradition of celebrating spring with a color festival.  More neighbors joined than ever before, so it was an awesome party

 If you come to visit us we promise to pack in just as much fun.  Spencer enjoyed being with Aurora so much that he started a fund the next day to save up and be able to visit her, it was super cute.  I wish we lived closer together!

Bluff Fort

 One day with cousins we went to Bluff Fort to see the home of our ancestors.  We had fun dressing up

 and riding like cowboys.

 Aurora would be a great pioneer, look at all that weight she is pulling!

 And Benton is ready to ride!

Sand Dunes

 One day while the cousins we here we went to the sand dunes.  Of course we had to get some pictures running and jumping in the sand.

 My boys are quite adventurous and were able to convince Jemma and Lily to join their rock wall scaling. 

 We of course had to bury everyone and come home plenty dirty, but it was so much fun!

Corkscrew Canyon

 So on the same day that we hiked Teardrop we also hiked the slot canyon called Corkscrew.  This canyon is amazing because it changes so drastically every time we go.  We took Rebecca and Jason there in Novmeber and we had to use a ladder to get up most of the piles of rock, and there were some wet spots.  This time all of us went into the beginning just to see how amazing it is, then we stopped when the climbing really started, but the first wall, which was about 12 feet tall when we went in November was only about 5 feet tall because so much silt was washed in with the recent snowstorms.  the canyon was completely dry and they only used the ladder once, as compared to probably 8 times only a few months before- crazy!

 The girls were troopers and had a great time sliding down the rocks and testing new heights!

Visitors!

 The week after spring break we were lucky enough to have Kelsey and Grandma and Kelsey's kids come visit us.  We don't get to see these cousins too often, and they have not visited us since they were babies, so we packed a lot of fun in.  One day we hiked tear drop.  One of our neighbors was nice enough to let us borrow her 4 wheel drive car so we could get our whole crew up there. 

 The cousins were a little nervous about the hieghts and hiking, but they really did great.  Sometimes I wish my kids would feel a little caution.  We climbed into the ruins- well everyone but me, my baby dind't like that plan.

 Benton loved the sand here,  he laid down on it whenever he found a soft patch, it was pretty funny.

 The braver crew went clear up to the top of the rocks using the toe holds and braving more heights.

 These kids were troopers, we packed so much in that we did two hikes on one day, they did awesome.