Question: Do you make green smoothies?

Hello friends, lately I have had a bunch of questions I've wanted your input on.  So I decided to just start posting them here.  I would really appreciate comments on these posts in particular!

So my question is 

do you make green smoothies?  

If you do, 

what combinations of fruits and vegetables do you like? 

I've been trying to eat more fruits and vegetables, I'm struggling with my appetite though, so smoothies seem to be the best way for me to get a good amount into my day.

I use spinach in just about every smoothie, but haven't branched out to many other vegetables yet (avocado and carrots being the only other veggies I've tried).  I've also been adding flax seed.  I'd really like to make a smoothie that tastes totally awesome but is full of all the goodness I'd need to replace a meal.

Do tell...

Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day to you all!  We love you so much and are grateful for your friendship and love. 

This was the first year since the kids started school that I feel great about the valentines I sent with the kids.  For someone who really values homemade goods, valentines have always caused me a bit of a headache.  This year I was turned on to this brilliant idea!  I actually let the kids choose what they wanted to do out of a handful of ideas.  Bryant and Jonas chose the mustache.  We made a mustached for each of their class mates that was attached to the card, but when they took off their mustache, it revealed these awesome pictures.  Sure love my boys!

Bolton wanted in on the mustache action too.  These mustaches remind me of my favorite novelty tee shirt of all time.  "Guns don't kill people... Guys with mustaches kill people."

Levi chose a Tic Tac Toe card that we gave out with two colored m&ms for x's and o's.   I just had each of the cards (for all three boys) printed up at Walgreens at $0.10 a pop.  Not bad for how easy and awesome they were!

Hope your Valentine's Day is just as awesome!!!  Love you all!

So excited!

We are so excited we finally know where we are moving this summer!!!  We are headed to Northern California!

We can't wait to give all our family members great big hugs!  And more often than we have for the past 5 years!  Yay!

Actually we'll be living a tiny bit closer to family than we have since we first moved away from Utah almost 9 years ago!  Thank you Air Force for getting us back in the west!

Visitors!!!

My mom and dad flew in for Abe's blessing.  We decided it would be fun to surprise the kids.  We were just going to Panera Bread for dinner because the kids did such a great job helping clean the house, but when we got there...

Bryant was the first to notice... if you look below, you can see the tip of Jonas' head, he knew what was happening, but check out Levi... 

...no idea.

Now he's got it.

Jonas was just dumbstruck.  And Eliza still is clueless.

Hugs for everyone!

After we ate the boys got to ride back to our house with Grandma and Grandpa.  Then the kids went to bed and the adults worried about Baby Abe.  He had come down with the dreaded illness that had hit others.  And he was having a hard time breathing.  We weren't sure if we would be taking to church or the hospital the next morning.  Ethan and my dad gave him a blessing.  Ethan told me to be sure to remember that my dad was the one who actually gave Abraham his first blessing.  Thankfully, Abe slept great through the night and was well enough to go to Sacrament meeting in the morning.  

After everyone got home, the kids began their romping on grandpa.  They were all in heaven, grandpa included.

My kids watched the first half of the Superbowl for the first time (actually it was the first time they've watched any football game on tv).  We ate lots of bad for us, delicious food.

Poor Abe was pretty miserable. I felt so bad for him!  And was still a bit worried, though his breathing sounded ok (not great), he just had a terrible cough at this point.

The boys had to get up and go to school in the morning and Grandma and Grandpa were going to be gone when they got home.  They each took a turn crying that morning.  The littles were only too happy to not have to share!

They had so much fun!  Grandpa is a great jungle gym.

Grandma was feeling left out, so Eliza comforted her with some snuggles.  The "tears" were to get Bolton to give her some love, but he still wouldn't have it.  My compassionless boy. ;-)

Abraham didn't sleep well that night, so we were both pretty tired.  But we wanted to take advantage of the little bit of time we had left with my parents, so we took one for the team (well, Abe got a nap).

  We are so, so glad we got to have some time with Grandma and Grandpa! It was so much fun and we feel so blessed they took the time and money to come for Abe's special day.

Just so you know, Abe continued to have a bad cough and I worried maybe I should take him in, but his two month check up was on February 7 so I decided to just wait to take him to make sure I could see our doctor.  The doc thought he could have RSV or Croup.  I'm guessing it started as RSV and went into Croup (cause the internet says Croup can be caused by the RSV virus, and you know you can totally diagnose these things online) ;-)  His cough is no longer a bark, he isn't hoarse anymore.  He still has a bit of mucous he is coughing, but on Saturday he was back to feeling well.  He is his sweet, smiling, content self again.  And he is finally sleeping well through the night again!  Last week was a tough one on both of us, I'm so glad he's healthy again!

Abe's Blessing

On February 3, 2013 Ethan took our sweet baby in his arms and gave him a name and a blessing.  It was a very sweet blessing for a very sweet baby.

 Funny story:  The time came when they should have announced the blessing and invited Ethan up with the baby... but they didn't.  Everyone on our row and the row in front of us started looking at each other and at the bishopric trying to figure out what was going on.  The bishopric was confused by something.  I saw the Bishop say to his counselor, "I don't see them here yet..." and I was thinking "We are right here!"  After the passing of the sacrament the counselor who was conducting turned the time over to the Bishop for some business.  Whew!  The Bishop stood up and said, "You know, no matter how prepared you think you are... you know when you look at your agenda and think to yourself, 'it seems like I'm missing something' but you can't remember what it is.  Well, when we finished the ward business Pres. Colcord {he was sitting in front of us and Ethan had asked him to join him in the circle for the blessing} got a questioning look on his face and pointed behind him.  So I was scanning the crowd trying to figure out what he was talking about... when I saw the panicked look on Sister Woodbury's face I realized what I had forgotten!"

For the record we got there before the meeting started, but not early enough to chat with the Bishop to remind him and make sure we were good to go.  Learn from our mistake and save yourself some moments of stress.

I am so thankful for the priesthood and for my wonderful husband who can bless our sweet family with it.

Sickies

We have had a rough, rough winter.  Everyone has been sick.  Most have been sick more than once with more than one illness.  A couple weekends ago Bryant got a high fever, it hit him really hard.  

 And his hair was pretty amazing.

The next day he was fine, we all went to Sacrament meeting and when Bolton sat on my lap I noticed that he was really, really hot.  Not to mention that he was actually holding still... that never happens at church!  So Ethan took Bolton and Bryant (and Abe) home after Sacrament meeting.  This is pretty much how Bolton spent the rest of his day.

It actually hit Bolton harder than the rest, he was sick with his fever for 3+ days.  We ended up taking him in to the doctor for a flu check.  It was negative.  They called and wanted me to bring him in the next day, but he woke up fine!  Yay!  Of course, then a few nights later he threw up three times.  Ethan took care of clean up.  I'm so lucky. :)

Fun with the camera on my phone

Just being silly.

Abraham's 6 Week Photo Shoot

This baby is so cute!  And photogenic.  Here are a couple of my favorites from his photo shoot.

He's channeling his inner Aunt Ali, rockin' the cardio boxing. :)

Newport Aquarium

We took Martin Luther King Jr. Day to take a day trip up to the aquarium in Newport KY.  A whole bunch of other people had the same idea. :)  The drive was nice.  Then we had to find a place to park, unfortunately we had to park a block or two away... it was bitter cold walking in!  Brrrr...  I wore the baby, so you won't see any pictures of him on here (but I think you can see him elsewhere on the blog if you look closely :).  Because it was so crowded, they wouldn't allow us to take the stroller in, keeping track of Bolton and everyone else became a bit of a nightmare with the crowd.  And my camera battery died as soon as we got there (I was able to take about 5 pictures) thankfully I had my phone!  But that's all the complaining you'll hear from me about the trip. :)

It was a really fun day!

They had several tunnels we walked through different aquariums.  It was lots of fun to be surrounded by water and animals.

This was the tide pool exhibit.  The kids got to pet different creatures that live in tide pools.  Made me reminiscent of our time at the Oregon Coast.  What fun we had there!  Maybe we'll return someday!

Bryant informed me that this is an Eagle Ray.

Love how the reflection appeared in this picture!

 

This is a ginormous Alligator Snapping Turtle.  Let me tell you I wouldn't want to mess with that big guy.

And this is the biggest alligator in the US outside of Florida.

The Jellyfish room was fun.  Eliza and Bolton laid down to rest and I snapped this picture.  It wasn't until after that I realized Ethan and Levi are in the background through the jelly's tank.  Kind of cool!

 Japanese Spider Crabs.  Woa.

One of the many sharks.  The kids were in awe by all the sharks.

They even have a pool where you can pet some sharks!  The correct method is using two fingers (as demonstrated by Ethan and Bryant here) and waiting until their head passes to put your hand in the water.  Not because they'd attack it, but because they'd avoid it and swim around it so you would miss your chance to pet.

Getting the kids to leave this pool was tough.  And they were soaked when we finally succeeded!  The shark skin is really interesting to touch.  Kind of rough.

After the sharks we went to see the penguins.  Penguins are so cool!  I just love watching them swim.

A funny memory: As we finished up, Eliza had to go potty (can you tell in the above picture?) but the place had 2 bathrooms total and they weren't easy to get to... we had the option of going back through the entrance (but I didn't have the tickets, Ethan did!) or going outside in the flippin' cold weather to a closer bathroom.  Luckily, someone took pity on us and took us through an employee only door that got us to a bathroom a lot more quickly.

We had a lot of fun!  We even let the kids choose something from the gift shop.  That took about an hour in and of itself!  I'm really glad we took the day to do something fun as a family!  We are so blessed to have such a great family!