April

I realized that I haven't posted hardly at all in April.  So, this post is probably going to be long. 

The first weekend of the month was General Conference.  During Priesthood Meeting, my sister Halee and I like to take the kids and do something.  Usually we take the kids to see the Easter Bunny at the mall.  This year we took the kids to see the Easter Bunny, the playground at the mall and then the pet shop.  My kids are really into dogs right now because we told them that we would get them a dog after we get back from my brother's wedding.  Anyway, here is a picture of the kids with the Easter Bunny.

I took the kids to the Desert Botanical Garden on their free day again.  The kids love the Desert Botanical Garden.  They love the butterflies and the Indian stuff.  Here are some pictures from this trip.

 A pomegranate

Because Aaron works for a dutch company, he gets Good Friday off of work every year.  This year we took the kids to Payson for the day.  We went to Payson because Sterling had been begging to go fossil hunting.  He is really into fossils and dinosaurs.  He has been wanting to dig for dinosaur bones in the backyard and so instead of letting him do that, I did some research and discovered that there is a Paleo site in Tonto National Forest that allows you to take any fossils you find.  We weren't terribly hopeful that we would find anything and so we spent the ride up warning Sterling that we might not find anything and that it would be hard to find anything.  When we got there, I looked at the ground and realized that there were fossilized sea shells everywhere.  We found a lot of fossilized sea shells.  The ground was made of shale and we could just dig through it and take out the shells.

Aaron and Sterling discovered that some of the rocks had crystals inside.  They started hunting for crystals and Sterling realized that the inside of the fossilized clam shells were full of crystals.  Sterling wanted to collect crystals because he is worried about being able to afford an engagement ring when he gets older and he figures that diamonds are just crystals (my younger brother's wedding has gotten him thinking).  The first thing Sterling said, when he got back in the car, was that he wanted to take the crystals home and make them into a ring.  We had to explain that diamonds are a special type of crystals.

Avalon had seen a picture of travertine arch in Tonto National Forest and she really wanted to go see it, so after we found fossils we headed over there.  The hike wasn't bad to get down under the arch and the arch and the cavern inside it were pretty amazing.

 The picture above is of the lodge by the travertine arch.  The guy who discovered the arch was chased into the area by some Apaches and he had to hide in the caves inside the arch for three days before he could escape.  Once he escaped, he had his brother move from Scotland and they all settled in the valley above the arch.  In order to get their stuff into the valley, they had to use ropes and burros to lower it down the steep walls.  Once they were in the valley, they built a lodge that became a five star accommodation up until the depression when the family had to sell it.  It was a pretty cool place.

This was a waterfall in a valley near the arch.

Easter -

We had a really fun Easter this year.  Aaron decorated eggs with the kids.

 Sterling got an Optimus Prime Transformer and some Tag books from the Easter Bunny.  Sterling loved Optimus and played with him for at least an hour.

 Avalon got makeup, a Tangled bracelet and some Tag books.  Avalon has been makeup obsessed and is constantly asking if she still has makeup on.

 After church we had an Easter egg hunt for the oldest two.

 In the evening, we had my sister and her family over and then had another Easter egg hunt.

In other random news / pictures, Aaron and I have been working on the house.  We repainted the front room, repainted a giant mirror that I found at Goodwill, reupholstered the couch, hung curtains and made a magnet board.  I don't really have any before pictures of any of this.  Our front room was the color of snot and didn't have curtains.  The couch was striped (I'm pretty sure I posted pictures of it when I reupholstered it the last time.)  The mirror had a pale purple frame on it, but it was only $44 and it is huge, something like 6 feet by 4 feet.  I had been looking for a big magnet board to hang the kids artwork on.  We have stainless steel appliances and magnets don't stick to stainless, so the kids had been taping their artwork to the wall.

Avalon has gotten into painting.  She will go outside and paint for hours on end.  She paints on paper, the wagon, her shoes, the house, rocks and anything else she can get her hands on.  She is very proud to be a painter.

I have also been busy working on some stuff to take to my brother's wedding.  My mom bought the little girls' dresses and since they had dresses that match the wedding colors, I decided to make little neckties for the boys.  I made eight of these little ties. Oh and of course, I had to make giraffe a dress to wear to the wedding.