Dancing in the Rain

On a recent rainy day, Lexi and Dylan geared up to play.

April Rain Song

Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby.
The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk. The rain makes running pools in the gutter. The rain plays a little sleep-song on our roof at night ---
And I love the rain.

Langston Hughes

I love to watch the rain, to smell the rain, to listen to the rain, and I love to see the joy on my children's faces when they play in the rain.

Alexia's Graduation

A BIG congrats to Lexi on her preschool graduation!

Our precious Lexi with her pre school teacher and class mate.

Lexi did a fantastic job singing her heart out. She was filled with great animation, facial expressions and actions for each song. She was so fun to watch.

After the graduation, we enjoyed Flourless Chocolate Cake with a fresh strawberry sauce at our house with a few extended family members.

Lex was excited to get a couple of congratulatory gifts. Our little model wanted to do a photo shoot with her new treasures.

We love our Lexi!

Hip Hip HOORAY!!

Staff Sargeant Caleb Fifield returned from Iraq on Memorial Day, May 26th. We had a fun time in the hanger with famiy as we waited for his arrival. We drew flags on faces and ate free food. But of course, the best part was when we greeted Caleb!

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Once again, some of my picture descriptions are cut off. You can try clicking on "share" below the slide show to go to "my album". I'm not sure if it works, but it's worth trying!

Here's a clip of Caleb and Britt on the news. Copy and paste the url below.

www.abc4.com/mostpopular/story.aspx?content_id=B7A787F7-2A8F-42FE-841E-9A8880D517DA&gsa=true

Click on the play button on the upper right. There are actually two clips of Britt and Caleb that are slightly different from each other. As you go to click the play button, there should be a row of 4 pics at the top. Caleb and Britt are the first and second squares. I like the first clip the best. If you look close enough, you can even see Parker and Lexi.

Welcome home Caleb! I can't think of a better way to spend a Memorial Day.

Local music faves

The Young Women's (youth group for teen girls in our church) President that I work with, Brooke Stone, has recently published some fabulous music with two other women.

Mercy River is a great new inspirational music group. This trio all met and sang in a Jenny Phillips choir. Now they have put together a beautiful harmonic album with lyrics by Jenny Phillips.

http://www.mercyrivermusic.com/

My next shout out goes to my sister's friend Kat Tingey. I love Kat's song titled "Undone". This song is based on the Twilight books by Stephanie Meyers. "Undone" deserves a spot on the upcoming Twilight movie. It's one of those songs that makes those of us who can't sing wish we could so we could sing along with the music without massacring it. Even if you're not a Twilight fan, give it a try.

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=74689264

Let me know what you think!

Dylan's World

LONG AGO, our friends Becca and little Owen tagged Dylan, through me so everyone can take a peek inside Dyl's world. I thought just having celebrated his birthday, this would be a good time to look inside our sweet boy's world.

Our Dyl Pickle is always producing laughs from us whether it be from what he says, does, or even a simple look. Sometimes he makes us laugh on purpose, but often times it just happens. He's full of fun little antics.


The day before Dyl's birthday, I asked him what his favorite breakfast was and told him we could make it in the morning. Dyl said, "Fish." I look at him to see if he was serious. He has a blank look on his face. I said, "Dyl, you don't like fish." A huge smile stretches across his face and we all begin to laugh.




One day I was asking Rob a question and called him "Love". I usually call him "Babe" but this time it was "Love". Dyl looks at me and says, "Mom, Daddy's not Love." I said, "He's not? Then who is he?" Dyl's reply, "He's just Rob!"


Rob was doing Dylan's hair one Sunday before church using mousse to style it. As Rob is squirting the mousse into his hand and placing it in Dyl's hair, Dylan says, "Dad, is that whipt cream?" Rob-"Yup!"




One busy morning, I was frantically getting ready in my bathroom. Dylan quietly comes in, pulls open a drawer and pulls out two q tips. He carefully sticks one in each ear and turns to me, "Mom look! I'm Shrek the 3rd!" (He always refers to Shrek as "Shrek the 3rd" not just Shrek.)


I very much needed that laugh!









As we were driving in the car to Lexi's preschool one morning, Dylan made Lexi and I laugh. I said to him, "Dyl, you are a crack up!" Dyl-"No Mom. I'm TWO crack ups!"

Often times, Lexi and Dyl like to eat spaghetti noodles with melted cheese on top for lunch. One afternoon after eating this, Dylan tells me he's done. Now, Dylan is not a good eater. I look into his bowl and his noodles are all gone! I get very excited and then look in his lap. He really did eat a lot of noodles, however, there were also many in his lap. I show Dyl his lap full of noodles and I reach down to clean them off. Dyl bursts out, "No Mom! Don't clean up the snakes! They are going to eat you!" I love his imagination.

Dylan loves the typical little boy things. Balls, cars, and his train set will keep him entertained for a long time. Here are some funny action shots. Rob and Dyl were playing catch at one of Parker's baseball games.


I love the look Dylan gets in the summer time. The sun bleaches his hair to a lighter blonde with natural highlights and his skin becomes beautifully sun kissed. Dylan tranforms into our little beach boy. I love to hear his little giggle. It is very contagious. Dyl is a fun little snuggler and loves to cuddle up with you to read a book. Dylan loves to dance and has no hesitation in doing so. He and Lexi often times put on some music and dance, dance, dance. Dyl does has some awesome dance moves.

Dylan decided to decorate his face for Cinco de Mayo--with marker.

Our sweet Dylan isn't of course always so sweet. He has his difficult moments and does his fair share of pouting.

This is just a taste of our scrumptious Dyl Pickle. We are so in love with Dylan! Dyl is very good natured and has a fun personality. He lights up our days and brings sun into our home and we are so grateful he is ours. How did we get so lucky?

Our little Pickle is 3!

Happy Happy Birthday to our sweet little Dyl Pickle!

Dylan turned the big 3 on May 25th. My sis-in-law gave me this great idea for his "cake". I filled the back of the dump truck with the kid friendly worms in dirt dessert (brownie pieces in chocolate pudding, topped with crushed oreo cookies to look like "dirt", with gummie worms crawling out of the "dirt"). It was fun and easy and a fabulous idea. I do have two suggestions for those who want to try it for their own kiddo:1)Create some type of a stopper for the back of the truck. Maybe cardboard wrapped in tin foil. The pudding was slowly oosing out the back of the truck. Comical, but not so pretty. 2) I made the mistake of using store brand pudding. Stick with the Jello brand! The few extra cents is worth it. I'm sure the kids who had it didn't mind, but some adults did have some as well. No one complained, but when I tasted it, I was unhappy with the quality of the pudding.

On Saturday May 24, Rob and I took the kids to The Living Planet Aquarium in Sandy.

Dylan was very excited to find Nemo!

We enjoyed the new experience of petting the sting rays. Parker and Rob described them well with, "They are kind of slimy and spongy." Alexia was having a hard time reaching the sting rays to touch it. I went over to pick her up and help her reach deeper. This is when my cell phone took a quick dip with the rays. In the process of helping Lexi, the bag I had on my shoulder dunked into the water. My cell phone was in the side pocket. Unfortunately, some of the buttons didn't work after this. When we got home that night, Rob took my phone apart and we let it dry by a fan and occasionally used a blow dryer. I checked the phone periodically to see if it would work. Finally, on Monday, all of the buttons worked just fine. Hallelujah! Now back to the bday festivities.............

The kids enjoyed there time driving a boat, discovering sea creatures and playing in the

coral reef.

I love this picture of Dylan with the jelly fish. I like the color and his reflection in the glass.

These are some of the magnificent creatures we enjoyed watching at the aquarium.

An eel.

Two different species of beautiful jelly fish.

On our way home we stopped in nearby Kaysville for a birthday dinner at......

DYLAN'S!

Saturday was a great fun filled day. Dylan zonked out with his package sent from Hawaii by Grandpa Donigan. He couldn't wait to open it. He kept calling it his "surprise box". Only his word for surprise was "cumprise". Very sweet boy.

On Sunday, Dyl's actual birthday, there was a family get together at my parents house. My sister and her two kids were visiting from Oregon and we celebrated all of the family May birthdays. While most of us were downstairs laughing hysterically at old family movies, Dylan was indulging in this luscious fluffy white frosting. His uncle caught him in the act and then went downstairs to report the great fun Dyl was having. I have to agree with Dyl, this fluffy white frosting is very irresistible!

Kerli

This is Kerli. Kerli is 21 and from Estonia. She has a recent release in the U.S. called "Walking on Air". You can listen to it below on our play list. It's a different but great song about believing in yourself.

We went to what Kerli said was her first performance in the U.S. It was a free and brief performance that a local radio station was promoting. Yes, the same radio station that Rob is fortunate to win freebies from. But no prizes were won in relation to this event.:)

They handed out free sample CDs with 3 songs on them. Rob seemed to like all of the songs, but I don't like the other songs nearly as much as "Walking on Air". After the concert, Kerli signed them. We didn't fight the crowd for a signature.

Yes, this is an authentic Kerli tear streaked face. She became emotional after her first song. Kerli claimed she was taken off guard by the support she received at her first U.S. performance and the beautiful surroundings as we were encircled by the mountains. Kerli's cellist, seeing her tear streaked face, kindly offered her a tissue. Kerli gave her a sweet thumbs up to show her she didn't need it and was OK. I'm sure once she left the stage and looked in the mirror she desperately wished she would have accepted the tissue.

Nonetheless, it was a fun performance and neat to see how touched she was. There was other fun things to keep us entertained before and after the performance. Face painting, balloon art, and a giant blow up slide for the kids. As well as free food and drinks.

Our spider faced Parker.

The start of our budding butterfly.


The end result of our beautiful butterfly.

Lexi loves to take pictures of herself. This is one of her finest portraits.:)