Ol' Favorites

Janelle inspired us to create a blog about our favorite play things growing up. This is what the boys came up with. And I don't know why the entry is underlined!!!! Duh!


Landon loved his cat, Rusty, his duck, Quack, and his sea otter, Seaweed. He always slept with them.


These were Landon's super-sized jungle animals. He loved these for a time........


Batman and other action figures were always fun for Landon and Dallin. They had many make-believe battles together. Landon had a time where he loved four- wheelers. It may have been during the "cabin- fever" time. He collected various four-wheelers and was notorious for breaking them and super gluing them back together. He always wanted his toys to be perfect and he was the one who always took very good care of his toys and made sure he had all the pieces.


Landon and Easton have had a love affair with Light Sabers! You name it, we've had it. All colors, styles, sounds, and light effects. Birthdays and Christmas have always had a light saber of some sort!


Landon's turtle is probably his all time favorite thing. He has slept with this on his bed since he got it for Christmas many years ago. He sticks his feet under it while he sleeps. It takes up a lot of room and has been sent to the basement many times, but always appears back on his bed.

Easton loves his Webkinz, Rocky the racoon right now. It sleeps with him every night and eats breakfast with him every morning. Seaweed, the sea otters also sleeps with Easton every night, wrapped in his "Sinky" , his little blanket that he has slept with since he was a baby. We used to have 3 Sinkys but 2 have been lost over the years.

Dallin's childhood favorite was his kitty named, Rodo. He named it himself. As you can see by it's condition, it was loved dearly. Dallin took it everywhere and slept with it every night. It will follow him to his home when he gets married. He doesn't sleep with it anymore, but it is still special.


Some of Easton's favorites over the years are his Dora "pack-pack" that came full of Dora treasures. When the batteries were working you pushed the mouth and it would sing, Backpack, backpack just like the song on the show. He carried it with him everywhere! The little scottie dog was named, Pretzels. It was a sleeping with friend. The kangaroo, Joey with its baby was another good friend for a while.

Bye Bye Birdie!

Ashton's high school play, Bye Bye Birdie was last night. Her character was Helen who was part of the teenager girl group. She did a great job showing her fun personality and singing with the various groups. It was a fun, fast-moving play. Costumes were bright and colorful--late 50's, early 60's style. Here are a few video clips of Ashton's parts. Enjoy!

At one point in the show the teenager group is having fainting spells because they are so enamored with the rock star, Conrad Birdie. When Ashton went to faint she fell hard to the stage and hit her head at the same time as one of the girls whacked Ashton's head with her knee. Ashton said she could barely get up. She was dizzy. By the end of the play she had a grand headache and she said she was also nauseous. I thought maybe she had a concussion. I kept checking her eyes and they kind of looked weird. When we got home late her eyes were starting to be normal again. I think she'll be okay. Her play runs through Saturday night.



This is Ashton's cute scene. I loved the music. She started it off singing a solo part and then the ensemble came in. It was a bunch of teenagers singing/gossiping back and forth while they were having phone conversations.

A Sad Day

Easton experienced a very sad day on Sunday. His turtle, Dash passed away in the morning. Easton was absolutely hysterical and inconsolable all day. He couldn't get ready for church and he just couldn't stop crying. None of us knew what to do for him. He stayed home from church with Landon. He was a mess. He just kept saying that he was so sad and that he missed Dash so much. He said,"I just can't do this. I really can't do this. How am I going to do this?" It was a sad day for all of us. Easton didn't go to sleep until after 11 pm because he just couldn't settle down.

On Monday he was still a little weepy and mopey, but he is dealing with it. Dash is in a box and Easton carries it around. Eventually I hoping he will be ready to bury it or forget about it. The irony--they never played with these turtles. At one time they were trying to give them away to the neighbors! We still have one turtle left and Easton is insisting that we get another one even though he says we can't ever replace Dash.

Singing again

Finally a post about ME! I've been singing with our Stake choir for a couple of years now. We had our Spring concert over the weekend. Saturday and Sunday evening. It was a fantastic patriotic program with some beautiful music. The Gwinnett Community Band played with us on a few songs. That made it cool. We also had a number with three bagpipes, Amazing Grace. The concert was dedicated to a fallen soldier who was a member of the church. He died last year 12 hours after his wife gave birth to their first child. She was in the audience with his family. It was very emotional, but a nice tribute. They did a powerpoint slide show during one of the songs with pictures of the soldier. It really makes you appreciate these amazing soldiers and the sacrifices they make, as well as their families. They are so brave and courageous.

Our next concert is on Memorial Day. We were just "booked" to sing with the Air Force band at our Suwanee Town Center park. We sang there last year, but the band we were supposed to sing with got deployed to Iraq so we sang with some lame little 4 member band. Should be really cool this year, unless this band gets deployed too!

Kickin' Up Some Soccer

Stephen and Easton are having fun playing soccer with the team, "Predators". Stephen is the coach of Easton's team this year. I was finally able to go to the game last Saturday and see how Easton is progressing during his first season of soccer. He enjoys running around and takes it pretty serious. Stephen takes it too serious. I have to remind him that he is coaching 7 year old boys who are very easily distracted! I heard Stephen yelling advice during the game and Easton yelled back from the field very emphatiacally, "OK, Dad!" Notice the picture of Easton climbing the fence. That's what you do when you are bored and done with soccer.

Spring is in the air

My nose definitely knows that Spring is in the air. Even though my family suffers with allergies during this season, we can still appreciate the beauty of the new, green leaves popping out and the beautiful blossoms that cover the trees. Right now the dogwood flowers are blooming and the trees are covered with them. They are one of my favorites and they make the woods come a live. These pictures are from a dogwood tree in my front yard.

A New Tent

Landon and Dallin had a Scout campout over the weekend and broke the zipper on their tent. While Stephen and I were shopping at Wal Mart last night a new tent was purchased. At 11:00 pm the boys set the tent up in their room to see if it would be an acceptable new tent for their campouts. It was great and Easton promptly put his blankets in it and said he was sleeping there. Landon, of course, joined him. Aren't boys great? Dallin opted to sleep in his bed since he didn't get much sleep on the campout because of rain, thunder, and lightning.

Day Five, Five Days of Fun!

Our final outing for our Five Days of Fun was really fun and relaxing. We chose to go up to Lake Lanier and have a picnic and fly kites. It was a beautiful 80 degree day with a few clouds and a light breeze. We stopped and got hoagie sandwiches on the way. Our meal was great as well as the scenery. The boys loved climbing the rocks down to the Chattahoochee River. We even saw some Mountain goats climbing on the cliff area. Cool!

Yummy food! Dallin, Landon, and Easton picked sub sandwiches, chicken fingers, jello, and chips.
Check out the cool mountain goats. They were quite a ways off on a rock cliff.
Cool dude Dallin!
Mom and her little Easton!

It was a perfect day for kite flying and each of the boys was able to get their kite up and flying. Dallin let all of his string out as far as it would go so it took him along time to get it wound back up. This was Easton's first time flying a kite and he did wonderful. Thanks for joining us on our adventures. We can't wait until Spring Break next year!
Landon and Easton

Dallin and Easton working hard to keep their kites flying high!

Day Four, Five Days of Fun!

Day four's activity for our Five Days of Fun is now finished. Because the pollen count is outrageously high and Mom's nose just won't stop, we decided to do an indoor activity today. Sooooo, we went to a great bowling place and played a few games. We invited our neighbors to join us and had a grand time. Watch the blog tomorrow to see what we do!

Easton was a crazy bowler and so much fun to watch! He would grab his ball out of the ballholder, then with no hesitation would throw the ball down the lane. One time he threw it so hard that it bounced out of his lane and into the next lane--it kind of ruined a ladies score because it counted on her score. Oh well. It was quite comical!

Landon's injured arm update

With a lot of Neosporin and band aids galore, Landon is on the road to recovery. We're all surprised at how fast his arm is healing.

Day 3, Five Days of Fun!

Hey! We made it through our third day of fun with flying colors. The pollen count is extremely high right now-we all have itchy eyes, runny noses, and sneezes. I was physically worn out last night from allergies. Dallin is having a rough time too.

On the third day of fun we went with Landon and Easton to the Yellow River Game ranch. Dallin opted to stay home with a friend and Ashton opted to stay home with her bed and tv. They're both weird, but whatever! The ranch is a sort of reserve for animals that are being rehabilitated and can no longer live in the wild by themselves. We were able to bring our own crackers, peanuts, apples, and carrots to feed the animals. We saw deer, chickens, bunnies, sheep, donkey, ponies, goats, foxes, bears, rooster, pigs, quail, pot bellied pigs, mountain lion, bobcat, racoon, red-tailed hawk, peacock.

I took Dallin and Landon here when they were little and thought that it was a good idea for Easton to enjoy it. It was quite crowded because of Spring break and the animals had been sufficiently fed before we even got there. You can always count on the goats to be pigs and keep on eating. It really was exciting for the boys to be able to hand feed them. Too bad all of the animals weren't hungry. We still had a great time--a trip to Wendy's for lunch ended our outing of fun. What are we doing tomorrow? Stay tuned!



Landon and Easton are buddies!




These donkeys were the biggest pigs. They loved the apples and carrots.

We downloaded a couple pictures of Landon, Ashton, and Dallin when they were little. See how much they have grown since we last went to the ranch. Aren't they cute?Landon and Ashton are shown in this picture.
These were taken June 1997.Landon is by the deer, Dallin in the white shirt, and Ashton.

A little bit more from day two!

Landon and Easton loved riding the Dahlonega Mine Train. Here's a little snippet of them. Don't blink of you'll miss it!

Day 2, Five Days of Fun!

Day 2 of our Five Days of Fun was a blast! We ventured out for the entire day to Six Flags--the great amusement park. We piled the kids in the Expedition and drove about an hour away. Six Flags was open just this week for Spring Break. We enjoyed fantastic weather--couldn't have asked for a better day. The lines were pretty decent, couldn't complain. We went with our friends, the Baumgarts and Molly and Conner Day. Every family member had at least one friend. It kind of ended up being the big kid group and the little kids group, each group doing what they wanted to do.
As we walked into the entrance they checked each of our backpacks and then let us go into the park. Dallin was the last one of the group to be checked and they told him that he couldn't bring outside food into the park and that he would have to take it back to the car. That didn't make sense to me since they had just let our whole group go through even though they had observed our food. I kind of made a little stink and we were escorted off to the Public Relations Office to talk to the big wigs. Duh! My friend, Michelle said to let her take care of this. She went in the office and I watched the little ones. The big kids had already taken off to get in ride lines. Well-long story short, we were able to keep our food and they gave us fast passes for the rides. That means you can go through the exit of each ride with your group and get on really fast. No waiting in lines. Everyone was able to ride more rides than they could possibly handle. They even got to ride the really popular rides quite a few times without having to wait in the huge lines. Thanks to my friend, Michelle for smoothing everything over with her calm personality and great verbal skills!
Easton and Landon loved riding the Dahlonega Mine train--a tame roller coaster. I think they rode it five times and could have done more. We were all very tired as we rolled into our driveway at about 10:30 pm. Sorry you had to wait until today to hear about what we did yesterday! Be on the lookout for our Day 3 post.


Easton just arrived in Six Flags over Georgia! We're ready to have fun.
Easton and Landon hanging out with their friends.
Cool, we got to hang out with Batman and Robin!






At the end of a very long and super fun day.