Playing Catch-up Again

Our house is constantly filled with the pitter patter of little feet, whether my own kids' or the neighborhood kids'. I don't mind the kids playing here ( I prefer it actually--so I know what my kids are up to...) but sometimes I feel like I spend half my day crouching toward the floor picking up the tornado that is my family. The older kids aren't great but at least can clean up themselves when I tell (read: threaten) them to pick up. But Maggie's definition of cleaning up consists of putting all the toys on TOP of her bed, as opposed to where they were before, on the floor. I know, I am working on it. But the worst, the culprit of 90% of the mess in the house is this little felon right here...Look at that innocent expression. Don't let him fool you. He knows how to make the biggest messes in the shortest amount of time. Case in point, the kitchen drawers. His favorite is this one where I keep all my rags. At least four times a day I see this. And I find rags all over the place. Maybe he just wants to be very clean, I don't know.

I decided to head down to my mom's house for a few days. The kids have been dying to go and I won't be able to go down over spring break, so the kids got to skip a couple days of school and have a mini-vacation. We were lucky enough to get free tickets to Disneyland for the day and it was a blast. I didn't get many pics though. As you can see below, getting a decent pic of my kids is nearly impossible these days. This is the best out of about 10 shots....
The best picture of the day was on the tram from the parking lot to the park. No one is tired and grumpy yet, all fed, all excited, all energized!
Tyler is making big headway in the thrill department. He went on Space Mountain with me and though I got "You're the worst mother ever" looks from people in line as Tyler was crying, begging me to not make him go on it, half way through the ride he shouts to me that, "It's not that bad." To look at our picture after the ride you wouldn't know it, but he said he would even go on it again...next trip. It was a milestone. We even got to meet Woody!
Another day at my mom's we went to a museum called Pretend City. Highly recommend it to anyone traveling to Orange County. It is a whole city, just in miniature. Includes post office, restaurant, beach, police and fire station, grocery store, farm, construction site, home, bank, doctor's office, dentist's office and more. Everything is hands on so the kids get to pretend to be the dentist and play in the moon sand at the beach, ride in little play cars around the whole place, buy groceries in little baskets, etc. It is so fun, my kids love it. The even have a craft station where the kids can make a craft.

Even Joey had a great time.
He felt even better after this... Can you tell what he is doing in this picture? I know it's gross, but I didn't even mean to capture it, I just took a pic because he was finally holding still for a moment. Look what I ended up with!
Another of Joey's favorite cabinets in the kitchen is the bowl cabinet. His favorite is this strainer. He pulls it out and wears it over his head around the house. I don't blame him considering the rough housing his brothers involve him in. Hey, little guy has got to protect himself! Guess I better wash it after this.
And I had to document Tyler working so hard on his homework. He sat down and did it without complaint--a moment to remember.
Today, between sessions of general conference, we went up Payson Canyon and had a picnic. It was beautiful weather and great to get outside for a while. The kids behaved really well and I could have stayed there all day! Eric and I actually got to sit and talk for a little! Joey loved the freedom. That's Doritos cheese on his fingers. It wouldn't be a picnic without the Doritos.
Jacob in true form, happy and smiling with mess all over his face. Yes, we even had doughnuts as the treat--bet you wish you could come on a picnic with us, huh!

Tyler built a teepee, with a little help from Jacob, until Jake got distracted collecting other things.
The finished product, complete with fire pit on the right. I thought about leaving Tyler here overnight but decided I didn't feel like driving back up here tomorrow. So we brought him home with us.
All in all an eventful month!