Easter

We had a wonderful Easter weekend full of family, fun and delicious food.

On Saturday we celebrated in true Stratford fashion by spending the day...

SKIING!!
Powder Mountain had a family ski day for all members of the employees families, so we were lucky enough to join in the fun.

Have I ever mentioned how much I love to ski?

Well.... I LOVE IT!!! It is a huge passion of mine. I feel the rhythm of each turn in my soul and love to feel the spray of the powder.

Now if only I could still keep up with my old pappy. He is seriously KING of the MOUNTAIN!

I sure love this crazy family of mine.

Not only did I get the pleasure of skiing, but I got to ski with my boys. Seeing Tracen and Tyler doing and LOVING something Dan and I love to do, was so gratifying.
Tyler and Madi

Melanie & Madi, Tyler & Me
We got to ski for a half day and then headed back to the cabin to save my mom. She was the super woman that kept the rest of the herd under wraps so us moms could ski. This was no easy task. It included 3 nursing babies and 3 wild toddlers. Go MOM!!! Thank you.

We then ate a scrumptious Easter dinner of stuffed chicken breast, mashed potatoes and gravy, veggies and rolls. I made an strawberry triffle for dessert. YUMMY!!
We had a little egg hunt for the kiddos before we all had to head home.
What a wonderful day.

Easter Sunday came and the boys woke to find that the Easter bunny still had not come. Usually the fluffy guy hides their baskets and some eggs on Saturday, but I think he was a bit pressed for time this year. Silly Rabbit.
So we headed off to church in our Easter best. The boys sang with the Primary, I sang with 5 other sisters a lovely arrangement of the hymn "In Humility Our Savior", and Dan and I sang in the ward choir. The program was lovely.
As Sundays go these days, it took mom FOREVER to "stop talking in Relief Society" and get in the van. When we FINALLY got home we discovered that the Easter Bunny had not forgotten us. The boys were thrilled and had loads of fun searching for eggs and their baskets.

Then mom insisted on having a little photo shoot.

Here is a sampling of how well that went...

Alright already!!! This will have to do.

Sure love these boys of mine.

Then it was off to the Jacobs' side for a tasty meal of ham, funeral potatoes (that none of us thought was an appropriate name for Easter- Leah thought that "resurection potatoes" might work better?), asparagus, deviled eggs, and a different variety of strawbery triffle. All so very delicious.

We are blessed to have our family so close to be able to share these good memories together.

We LOVE you all so much.

We are grateful for the sacrfice our Savior made for us so that we all might

LIVE AGAIN.

Hope you all had a wonderful and...

HAPPY EASTER!!!

Parties Galore!!!!

Well... it happened.

Tracen had a birthday!!!

And not just any birthday...

TRACEN TURNED 8!!!!

I confess I have so many thoughts to convey about this big event, but this is not the post to do that... yet.

This post is all about the...

PARTY!

Or

PARTIES!!

I don't know about everyone else... but at our house it seems that when someone has a birthday it is not just a one day event. OH NO... the parties just keep on giving.

So I will start with his actual birthday which was on

APRIL 14TH

At our house, the birthday person gets to choose what's for dinner and their favorite dessert, that is NOT cake. Cake is for the "other" parties and I am only willing to make ONE.

So Tracen chose to have BEER ROCKS (like always) with green salad for dinner and

MINT CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES for dessert.

You'd be amazed at the volume our little family alone can produce, or maybe not, while singing

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!

Then it was PRESENT TIME!

Trev: Reeses Pieces Cereal

Tate: Bag o Jelly beans

Tyler: $5 and a special note saying,

"I am sore that your presnt did not com yet. Happy Birthday.

Love, Tyler"

(yes I can spell and type-mostly)

Tyler gave him a REAL Soccer Ball a few days later

Tyler, Tate & Trev: "The BEST Boomerang EVER!!"

Mom and Dad: BOOKS!! (Of course)

The BFG by Roald Dahl

Mega Facts about SPACE

Books 1 & 2 of the Hardy Boys
The boy seriously LOVES to read!

Side Note: He is devouring the Fablehaven series right now. He started about 3 weeks ago and he just finished the 2nd book last night. These books have about 400- 500 pages each! AWESOME series by the way.

There was a soccer game and his first day of scouts that occupied the rest of the evening.

But then, on Saturday.... there was the FRIEND PARTY!!!

He is lucky enough to have a ton of friends. Unfortunately, he had to narrow it down a bit.

He wanted a NINJA TRAINING PARTY and he wanted to do said training up at our family's cabin in Eden. So we made a plan. It was going to be THE BEST PARTY EVER!!! But then... it snowed and then snowed and rained and snowed and.... well... we decided that an outdoor ninja party full of obstacle courses and 8 crazy boys in the SNOW was just not going to work all that well. So after Tracen's heart broke a little... we came up with PLAN B!

He insisted on making his own invitations. Unfortunately I didn't think to scan one of them in to perserve its greatness, but... this is the original picture he drew to go on the front.

He draws these ninjas on everything!!!! The invites really turned out pretty darn cute. But most importantly Tracen was proud of them.

Then it was on to the decorations.

I confess, I am not one of those creative and talented birthday party throwers, but I do know where Zurchers is. So this is what we came up with.

Hooray for NINJAS!!!

We decided to have all the boys meet at our house for...

Much better than Little Cesear's according to Tracen.
And of course...
CUPCAKES!

The Ninjas in Training

Presents!

Silly boy.

We then took the crew to the Classic Fun Center in Layton!!!

I so wish this picture would have turned out. I was holding a baby and in a hurry.

They were all lined up waiting for the fun to begin.

Classic.

They played at the arcade for a bit.

It was pretty serious business.

Trev sure enjoyed all the lights, sounds and goofy boys.

My job was to take pictures.

Dan's job?

Let's just say... he fit right in with the crew of 7 and 8 year olds.

Tracen was having a BLAST!

For some reason the big purple dinasaur was a BIG hit!

See how happy it can make you?

But the BEST part was when they hit..... JACKPOT!!!

The tickets just kept shooting out!!!

And then.... it was JACKPOT 2 mores times!!!

I am sure you can imagine the excitement of all those boys as they got to trade in a total of

1200 tickets

for all kinds of "cool stuff"!!!

They spent a good hour on the bounce houses perfecting their ninja training....

and then it was on to

LASER TAG!!!

They had to wait a whole 15 minutes for their turn, so they made good use of some of their prizes.

This crazy crew got to play against another birthday party of boys about the same age. I should have attempted to get some pictures of them playing, because they seriously had so much fun.

The SCORE: 16,200 to 200

Our boys ROCKED!! At least they all thought they did. :)

The "PLAN B" party turned out to be a SUCCESS!!!

Dan talks about vividly remembering his 8th birthday party and I will say that this party will definetely go down in Tracen's memories as one of the GREATEST! So much fun.

Then it was on to the FAMILY party.

This is the party that the birthday person gets to choose a CAKE for.

He wanted the cake to be red.... so he got a red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting... yum.

And of course it had to have a ninja on it.

So we took a ninja that Tracen had drawn and Dan re-created it onto the cake.

Then the family arrived. Tracen is so lucky to have so much family living so close. Our home was full to the brim. AWESOME!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to OUR AMAZING TRACEN!

Love you lots.

Rockin' the 80's!!!!

We totally ROCKED!!!

A good friend of ours turned 30 (such a youngster) and threw a

ROCKIN 80'S PARTY!!!

And look who made an appearance....

I LOVE YOU Michael..... !!!!! It was a night full of 80's music, dancing, 80's movies, Pac Man, and some

TOTALLY TUBULAR ATTIRE!!!

It was totally our scene. We pulled out moves we forgot we had. Like the worm, the electric slide, Boot Scootin' Boogie, the running man... Oh Yeah!!!!!

And we had a BLAST!

On a side note, Dan really wished he had pulled out this costume from years past...

Good old Gene Simmons..... KISS!!!

What color do YOU see?

Wearin' O The Green

That TRIXY little leprechaun struck again!!!

(to be honest, I was worried he would forget)

BUT... by the looks of it, a fairly good sized one came and trashed our house.
He knocked over chairs, and furniture, and left his hat and..
...his footprints all over the house!
He even got hold of some of our clover cups.

And as usual, he raided the fridge, turning our milk and... is that cauliflower green?

Tate was pretty upset about the mess and exclaimed,

"Mom, we need to call the POLICE!!!

That naughty leprechaun needs a REALLY BIG TIME OUT!!!"

Then the boys were off to school with their eyes on the look out for any signs of that mischievous little guy.

But much to their dismay, he left no tracks until they returned from soccer practice. It was then that they noticed...

... a much smaller...
...and NICER little fellow.

Check out the SURPRISE he somehow snuck in!

He even set us a GREEN and RAINBOW table for dinner!!
(Don't you love the rainbow plates?)

So... as is tradition... we had us a GREEN meal.

Chicken and green mashed potatoes with green gravy, green homemade rolls, and green cauliflower. The boys loved it.

Speaking of boys... here is one I thought was particularly CHARMING all in green.

Oh and of course there was the WEARIN' O THE GREEN.

Tracen and Tyler wore these shirts...

Tate and Trev wore these...

They really are a CHARMING LITTLE HERD...

Aren't we just the LUCKIEST?

Trev 6 months already?

**Remember to pause the music on the playlist so you can hear this video.**


I simply love this little man of mine.

Friday Moment

(this moment)- a Friday ritual. A single photo- no words- capturing a moment from the week . A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.