A busy May

With the end of the school year we have been super busy. I thought I would put it all together in one big post. First of all both Garrett and Connor worked really hard in the last couple of months and both earned a new karate belt. Garrett got his yellow belt and Connor got his orange belt. They love taking karate and love being in the class together and working on it together.

Kylie had her last dance recital of the year. She did such a great job. She is the youngest (and smallest) girl in the whole dance company and just looked so cute up on the stage. They did a finale dance at the end with all the girls in the whole dance company and it was so cute to see Kylie up there with all the girls. She looked so grown up and yet so little at the same time. It will be nice to have a summer break but she LOVES dance so much and is counting down the days until dance starts up again. We also found out she got into the preschool at the elementary school next fall so she is so excited for that to start as well.

I won tickets to the Heber Creeper Days out with Thomas the Train in Heber Valley from KUTV. We have never been there before and the kids had a lot of fun. It is fun to go and do stuff like that with the kids. We road the train, played mini-golf and saw a magician along with other fun activities.

Chelton's brother Taylor got married this last weekend. His wife's name is Ruth. They got married in the Salt Lake Temple and they had the reception at a church in North Ogden. It was a really nice day and everything turned out beautiful. The bride looked extremely beautiful as well. Here is a picture with Taylor and Ruth and all of their nieces and nephews on our side of the family.

Also at the end of the school year the school does a program where each grade does a dance. It is a really big deal and they do a really good job. Kylie was so excited because she will get to be in the program next year with the preschool. Garrett did a great job and it will be his last year in the program as he will be moving up to middle school next year.

We have a lot more to come but will have to blog about it later...

Lots of fun things going on

We have been busy the last month so I haven't posted for a while. In April Kylie had her first dance competition in Parawon. She did really well. Her team got a superior on her candy dance and a superior plus (which is the highest you can get) on her cinderella dance. She is the littlest girl in the whole dance company and youngest and she is so stinking cute.

She got a dance medal for her competition and was so excited to have her very first and her very own medal (just like her boys).

Connor got the karate medal this month in karate. They choose an athlete of the day in karate. Garrett got it a few weeks back (but I can't find the picture) and Connor got it last week. This is his second or third karate medal. He is testing tomorrow for his orange belt in karate and is very excited.

Also Garrett recently received his Bear badge. He has worked really hard and got it done two months before his birthday.

Our library recently had their street fair this month and it was a pretty big deal here in Fillmore. They had a writing contest that Garrett and Connor entered. Connor took second place in his age group and Garrett got an honorable mention in his age group. They had Brandon Mull (the author of the Fablehaven and Beyonder series) come to the library to sign books and he gave the boys their prizes. Connor won a copy of the children's book that Brandon Mull wrote. Garrett is in the middle of reading Fablehaven right now and says Brandon Mull is his favorite author so he was extremely excited. I have read all the Fablehaven books as well so I was pretty excited too.

The next day of the street fair Kylie got to perform with her dance company and the boys got to perform with their karate class. They had air bud come to the street fair too. We took pictures with him but I couldn't find them either. It was fun for the kids. It was a pretty fun day.

Last week we took the kids out for a little exploration of Millard County. We had a really good time and found some cool things. We first took the kids out to some hot springs not too far from our house. We didn't get in and swim but walked to them and felt the water. We then went to a place called White Mountain. It is like sand dunes. The kids thought it was like going to the ocean without the water. We took pictures but they were on Chelton's phone and I didn't have them. We had fun jumping in the sand and playing for quite a while. The kids have been asking every day when we are going back to White Mountain. We then took the kids to some lava tubes just a few minutes away from there. It was extremely cool. The boys and Chelton hiked down to the bottom of the lava tube. We saw quite a few lizards there too. The boys loved that.

It has been a super busy last couple of weeks but we have a lot more things planned in the next couple of weeks. I will have to make sure to keep the blog updated...

April Fools Day

Every April Fools Day the kids and I always like to prank each other. The kids always threaten me with all the things they are going to prank me with and then they never do anything but I always seem to get them with some harmless fun. This year the kids had a sleep over in the family room so while they were asleep I snuck in and I painted one of each of the kids finger nails pink.

Connor's finger



Connor asleep



Garrett's finger



Garrett asleep



Kylie asleep



I also toilet papered the family room entrace so they were trapped in. They had to break through the toilet paper to get out. They loved it. They didn't realize their fingernails were painted until about an hour after they woke up.



I also tried the jello cup with a straw and tried to fake them out that it was orange punch but they were not fooled by me. They knew it was jello. The only pranks they pulled on me was Garrett emailed me an email that said You Stink and Connor put a sign outside my door that said "we are going to get you" and kylie hung a hat on my door. Last year he hid all my pillows which was a pretty good prank but this year they were kind of disappointing. I am a little scared when they get older cause they might come up with a little better pranks but for now I think painting their fingernails was pretty good. Maybe next year I might have to paint their whole hand. I love April Fools day and getting those kids. Nice harmless pranks!!!

70 fun summer activities

Being inspired by a few fun activities I found on pinterest, I decided to make a list with my kids of fun things we want to do this summer. I decided to make a list of 70 things we are going to do. We are going to print off the list and do one thing every day. I am going to make sure I have everything ahead of time so I can be ready to go with each activity. Most of the activities are free but a few of them require making a stop at the dollar store. I always want to do fun things with my kids and then the summer comes and goes and I always end up working too much or not doing any of the fun things I planned on doing. I am starting early this year so I can be prepared. Some of them are as easy as making cookies or just eating lunch that day as an indoor picnic and some of them require more of my time like visiting our local pool which they have been asking to do for months now which will require me to adjust my work schedule a little but I need to make sure to enjoy my time with my kids while I can. I will have them draw each week 7 at the beginning of the week and I can fit what they drew depending on my work load for that day. I am glad to have compiled a list based on what I found on pinterest and my kids fun ideas as well.

1. Bug catching day. (Kylie will only catch black ants).
2. Write the ABCs with long red licorice.
3. Cloud watching. Find pictures in the clouds and for older kids what kind of clouds they are.
4. Fossil digging. Get dinosaurs bones from dollar store and bury them and let the kids dig them out.
5. Sponge painter. Get sponges from dollar store and paint with them.
6. Make mini rainbow volcanos. (baking soda, water color and vinegar)
7. Make their own book with illustrations.
8. Balloon tennis. (Paddle is paper plate taped to popsicle stick and hit balloon back and forth).
9. Ding dong ditch neighbors. Get some Ding Dongs (yum) and put a note on them that says "You've been ding dong ditched" and leave them on their front porch and run.
10. Teach the moon phases with oreos and then eat them.
11. Make hand shadows (at night).
12. Do a puppet show.
13. Play pretend. (my kids wanted to do a pretend store with pretend money).
14. Make an annual silly holiday (like on the site I found every August 20 was annual doughnut day so that day would be annual whatever you came up with day.
15. What floats or doesn't float. Get a big tub or pool of water and see what floats or doesn't float.
16. Let the kids plan the menu that day and help cook and let them serve you. (pay for the meal afterward with pretend money).
17. Make necklaces with fruit loops or other cereal that has holes.
18. Name painting. Tape out your names in tape and then paint over it. When the paint dries, your name will shine through.
19. Lava floor. The floor is lava and you can't touch the floor. Have to try to not touch the floor and stand on things. (might be easy with a dirty house) My kids apparently do this all the time.
20. Simple water painting.
21. Rock painting. Turn them into bugs or friends or people or whatever you want.
22. Balloon faces. Use a marker and make faces on balloons. We decided to put a glow stick in them so they shine at night time. (hope they don't pop).
23. Carve a watermelon. We heard this idea around Halloween and couldn't wait until summer to try and carve a watermelon. Hope it works.
24. Have an indoor picnic.
25. Opposite day. My 7 year old came up with this one. The kids have to do the adult stuff like make dinner and the adults do the kids stuff. (we will see how this one goes over).
26. Play school. Let the kids be the teacher.
27. Make a band.
28. Write letters to family members. Use lots of stickers. Draw pictures on them. (grandmas will love this one).
29. Just Dance day. We love the video game just dance. We do it all the time but decided to make a day out of it.
30. Crepe paper obstacle course. Put crepe paper down the hall and the kids have to go down the hall without touching it. Kind of like laser beams guarding a safe.
31. Act out a story (use home made costumes if you can think of them).
32. Make dino fossils out of play dough. Press toy dinos into play dough and let them dry.
33. Fly a kite. Buy some from the dollar store and fly them. Cheap.
34. Have a tea party with mini food. The boys thought it would be fun but had to remind me we didn't drink tea. I had to tell them it was called a tea party even if you didn't drink tea :) Good for them!!!
35. Play dress up and see what the kids come up with.
36. Treasure hunt. Set up a treasure hunt for the kids. Connor asked if the treasure at the end could be real money. Man that kid loves money.
37. Pick wild flowers on a walk.
38. Make a popsicle stick puzzle. These are real fun.
39. Make Giant bubbles with solo cups. Just cut a hole in the bottom and stick the other end in the bubbles and blow out of the holes.
40. Go swimming at our local pool.
41. Trace and color leaves.
42. Have a kid and mom idol. We had a kid idol when we lived in plain city (like american idol for kids). Our kids loved it and always want to do it again. We will each sing a song and judge each other. Would never do it in front of a big crowd but great in front of family.
43. Ice cube paint. Freeze ice cubes with food coloring and tooth picks and then paint with them on paper.
44. Make home made lava lamps. This is found on pinterest. It consists of oil, water, food coloring and alka seltzer.
45. Go on a hike.
46. Sleep over day. We have a sleepover in mom's room. (Chelton will love this one)
47. Mini marshmallow contraction. Use mini-marshmallows and tootchpicks and start building.
48. Pain and roll marbles. Dip marbles in paint and roll.
49. Make cookies. Let them do a lot of the work.
50. Write in chalk on the driveway. Get creative.
51. Have a picnic outside.
52. Have marble races with a pool noodle. Cut it in half and use it to race the marbles down the middle.
53. Balloon toss with hula hoops. Anchor balloons around the yard and write numbers on the balloons that are different points (helium in balloons). Toss hula hoops around balloons and whatever balloon you get it over that is how many points you get. (nice that I have a helium tank for these balloon games).
54. Ninja balloons. Make ninja faces on balloons. Anchor them around the yard and get your water guns out. Let the kids go crazy trying to squirt at them knocking them over.
55. Make a hovercraft CD. This consists of a CD with a bug juice lid or a dish soap lid glued to the top. You then blow up a balloon and set it on the top and it will hover across your tile or hardwood. My kids saw this and have been begging to make one.
56. Make a water pinata. Hang water balloons from a string and them pop them over your head. Instant hit and cool from 100 degree weather.
57. Have a paper airplane competition. Hopefully when Chelton is home because I think boys are born to know how to make airplanes and girls just aren't.
58. Have a show & tell. Kids just love to do this.
59. Go to the park. Better go early before the slides get too hot.
60. Have a movie scavenger hunt. Make a list of things they have to find or do and film themselves doing the things (like someone doing a handstand or a sock with a hole in it and they have to film everything...then you watch it when the movies are over. They get funny and the kids get a kick out of watching it. Iphones work great.
61. Play board games.
62. Make your own movies. Split in teams and have a theme or just let them make any movie they want. When it is over watch the movies and eat popcorn. Fun to see how creative they get.
63. Rent a movie from Netflix (a big treat at our house) and eat popcorn (another big treat).
64. Have an indoor snowball fight with socks.
65. Make a racecar track around the house with masking tape and play with the 1000 cars my boys have. They will probably never want to take this down and will probably play with those cars they never play with.
66. Play monster in the middle. Line up the pillows and they are safe and the carpet is lava. Jump from pillow to pillow and if the monster touches you then you are in the middle.
67. Play red light/green light, mother may I and other fun outside games.
68. Play indoor bowling. Stuff socks inside toilet paper rolls and line them up. Use a ball and then knock them over.
69. Set up indoor mini golf course (luckily we have little golf clubs so we don't need anything for this).
70. Give them $5 and let them spend it at the dollar store. Heaven for a little kid.

Updates

I haven't updated the blog in a few weeks but not much has been going on so I thought I would just update with the craziness of every day life that we have been going through.

I guess you can consider us an official karate family know. Garrett decided to join the ranks and started taking lessons now. He seems to be really enjoying it and was excited that after two lessons passed off his first move and got his first stripe. Connor is excited to be able to help teach him all the things that he has learned too. They are excited to be able to do it together.





Connor is also excited to earn his third stripe as he passed off a move last week that he has been working on for a while called 'short one' which wasn't short at all and was a really long move and was a really involved move. He did great and was so excited to get it passed off. He just has to pass off his defense moves and will be moving up belts.



Kylie has been still taking her dance lessons and is getting ready for her first dance competition in a few weeks down in Parawan. This is how you can find Kylie most days.



She absolutely LOVES listening to music and will walk around listening to their ipod all the time. Once in a while we will ask her to put the earphones on but most of the time she just blares it out for all of us to hear. She loves to sing and dance.

The whole family has got into dancing lately. We recently purchased the wii game Just Dance and have been using it to exercise and have been having so much fun with it and have been getting some really good workouts in with it. We will turn on the game and end up dancing for 60 to 75 minutes without even knowing it. When I first started I would wake up the next morning hardly able to walk or move and sore as could be and now I have been dancing with the kids so much that we can dance for 75 minutes or so and I am to the point where I don't hurt anymore. There are still some dances that if we do they make me extremely out of breath and I still sweat my butt off but I feel like I am getting in great shape just by playing a wii game plus me and my kids are having a blast spending time and having fun together. It has been a great find.

We also had a family party with my side of the family a few weeks ago and we played just dance and it was a blast. My kids told me it was the funnest family party we have ever had. We started off with a family competition where each family had four people represent their family and they had to choose a song and go up and dance and we added up the scores of their dance and each family took their turn. My sister Halley's family was one member short so we even got my dad to join in. Seeing my dad dance to a Kesha song was the highlight of my night. The two families with the highest score went to a finale round. It was the Spendlove's and the Lund's and I'm sad to say that the Lund's took the title and it was their first time ever playing but at our next competition we will win it back. Then we just took turns dancing for a few hours. We even broke out Abba just dance and got me and my sisters all doing a dance and then we got all our husbands to do a dance. That was another highlight of the night. I can't wait to do another party like this again. Our family has definitely been practicing up to beat those dang Lunds!!!

Last Sunday I got ready for church in a new dress I bought (zebra print) and when Kylie saw I had it on she immediately wanted to be twinners. She has a shirt that kind of has a zebra pattern and had to put it on with a black skirt so we both had a zebra theme and when I bought the dress it came with two free necklaces so I bought me and Kylie one that said "love" on it (since we are spendlove girls) so we both put them one so we went to church in (sort of) matching clothes and Kylie asked Connor to take our picture to send to grandma. Do you think when she is 16 she will still want to be twinners with her mom?



Garrett has also been working hard in scouts earning what he needs to in order to advance to the next level by his birthday. He really enjoys going to scouts and has a great time going. He is a good example to Connor and Connor can't wait until he turns eight so he can go to scouts too. He loves when they have pack meetings and the family gets to go.



We are excited for Easter coming up soon and we get to spend some time with both of our families. We have had a TON of snow down here in Fillmore so we are very excited for spring to come. The kids are anxiously awaiting the day when we can set the trampoline back up and they can go outside and jump again.

Valentines Day

We had a quiet and fun valentines day this year. Chelton had to work so we celebrated on the weekend too. We rented some movies which is becoming a real treat for us lately. We used to rent movies all the time. Chelton cooked us some yummy steak which is definitely becoming a real treat for us. I made the kids scones too which is their FAVORITE and they ask for it all the time and gave them one of their valentines treat (a tootsie roll bank) since they would get so much on the actual day. On actual valentines day I made a valentine for each of the kids and gave them a valentines treat (their favorite candy bars). Connor has been gearing up for valentines day for about two weeks now. He really gets into it and makes sure he has homemade valentines for everybody and more than one. He has given me valentines for about a week now. He has been asking everybody if they got his valentines ready for him. It is funny what kids really get into. So when the actual day came he was excited to give me my "real valentine." He came in and handed me a card. Here is a picture of the card.



I recognized the card right off the bat because it has been sitting in my scrapbook tote for about 3 years. I was trying very hard not to laugh but just opened up the card and sure enough....this is what I find.



Garrett's handwriting is about what Connor's is now and Connor's handwriting is about what Kylie's is now and Kylie's is just scribbles so it was written about three years ago. So they gave me the card they gave me three years ago and didn't even write a new message in it. I asked him where he got the card from. He said that he just found it in the drawer and he knew it would be perfect because it was already addressed to me and already had their names in it and he didn't think I would remember the card at all. Oh...I guess it's the thought that counts. I immediately thought of Alvin and the Chipmunks when he wraps up Dave's wallet and gives it back to him because he knew he would like it because it is something he uses every day. Gotta love kids....but Connor did give me like 10 Valentines that had A LOT of love and time put into them...this just made me crack up and it is something I will NEVER forget. This is just Connor to a TEE!!!!

Later that day we wanted to send Grandma's a valentine but being three hours away it is kind of hard so I told the kids to think of a picture valentine that we could text so they came up with these all on their own!!! We also sent them to Chelton because he was at work.



Kylie sent this one with "Happy Valentine's Day...XOXOXO"



Connor sent this one with "Bee my Valentine" (this is the Valentine he made for Chelton)



Garrett sent this one with "Aiming for you Valentine"

The kids were excited to receive special Valentines from their Great Grandma Spendlove with money to share to buy a treat which they bought fruit rollups and already ate them all and special valentines from Grandma and Grandpa Spendlove with money in it which they are saving for their trip next year....I have never seen kids so excited to get money instead of candy. They have been so good with saving their money. I think it is starting to sink in about saving their money and what they need it for and how far money really goes. It has been a good teaching tool (and a great learning tool to keep their rooms clean---for allowance to go towards vacation).

Later that night I asked the kids if they wanted spaghetti (because it's red) or pink pancakes. The boys wanted pancakes so 2 to 1 I was going to make pancakes but Kylie freaked out so I ended up making both (yeah for me). We ended up not having red food coloring so we ended up having green pancakes. Well I guess you could say we got a head start on St. Patrick's Day and Kylie had her red spaghetti.

We had a pretty good Valentine's Day I would say and there was a lot of love spread in our house!!!

Vote Team Spendlove

I entered my family in a Disney contest called the I Love my Family Photo contest. The top 10 vote getters win $500. It goes until March 22 and you can go in and vote once a day for a photo!! So if you love me and my family (which I just know you do)....you should totally go on this link and vote for my family but not just once...go back every day. The thing about it is the top person has like 90 votes but the top 10 person only has like 16 votes...I know I can get in the top 10 easily if I can get the people I love to go in and vote for me every day and I can stay in the top 10 and win. Super easy right. I think you have to register but it is easy and if you are registered in anything disney (like disney movie rewards than you don't have to do it again) but if you aren't it takes like 20 seconds and if you uncheck everything they won't send you any spam mail. I registered and vote for myself and then registered under Chelton's email but can only vote twice a day. Wished I would have entered the day the contest came out then I would be that much ahead and probably would have about 20 votes by now. We want to use the $500 to use towards spending time with our family. Chelton has been working towards going on the road more and as many of you know how precious time is especially in a law enforcement job and any money we can earn towards our family spending time together is a bonus for me!!! So don't forget to vote and vote for us every day!!!! If clicking on this link doesn't work then copy and paste it in your browser. Love you all!!!

http://family.go.com/i-heart-my-family-contest/favorite-family-photo/law-enforcement-family-loves-to-spend-time-together-82860/