Easter 2011

Holidays are so much fun when you have kids. In fact, I think I have more fun now than I ever did when I was little. They get so excited and are so fun to watch. Easter was really fun this year, the kids could hardly wait for it to get here. After a fun Saturday at Nana and Papa's house, we were geared up for Easter the next day. Zach was up early and had a really hard time waiting for his sister to wake up! Once we had everyone up and ready to go, downstairs they headed to see what the Easter bunny had left them. I usually follow behind, but this year I went first and had the camera ready to capture their expressions - they were so darling!


Tate absolutely loved the little airplane, boat, and weebles toys the Easter bunny left him. He wasn't as excited about the diapers and wet ones, but that's ok, they've already been well used!


The kids loved looking through their Easter baskets at all the candy and prizes they got.


So many fun things to see, eat, and play with!


Some of the favorite toys for Zach were the bike bell he asked for and the Hot Wheels Car Wash.


Hailey of course loved the play cash register she's been dying to have. Every trip to Target was so hard as she had to leave it behind. Thank goodness the Easter bunny knew exactly what to bring her.


After going through their baskets and toys, it was time for the egg hunt. The Easter bunny is so good about hiding eggs. It took them a good 15 minutes to find their 12 - the Easter bunny is getting tricky and hiding them in really crazy locations!


Tate crawled around picking up all of his eggs which the Easter bunny had conveniently left on the floor for him to reach.


He loved grabbing two of them and just banging them together - ah, the simple joys of a baby!


We had a wonderful Easter this year. We hope you all had as much fun as we did.


Happy Easter from the Hawks Family!

Easter Egg Hunt at Nana and Papa's

For the Easter weekend, my brother and his wife were down from Oregon to visit. We were so excited to see them, so we went up to Nana and Papa's house on Saturday for dinner and to visit with them. Since it was close to Easter, we decided to do a last minute easter egg hunt for the kids in the backyard.

Here they are all ready to go.


Tate wasn't so sure what was going on. He kept wanting to just play with his easter basket instead of anything else. One thing we did figure out though, he does not like the grass!


Hailey ran around giggling as she searched for her eggs - she was so cute.


Zach, just kept being so surprised when he found one. I think I heard, look Mommy, I found another one all 14 times he found his eggs. He was darling.


Jeremiah, bless his heart, helped Tate find all 14 of his eggs and then even posed for a picture with the kids. I love this one because Tate is looking into Zach's basket - plotting on how to get those eggs! :)


After everyone found their share of eggs, it was into the kitchen to empty them.


Yummy candy!


Tate scored big time when he found a dollar bill in one of his eggs. The rest of the kids were extremely jealous!


An easter egg hunt and having Afton and Bubby down for a visit - it was a wonderful day!

Our Visitor

A couple weeks ago, I was cooking dinner and the kids were helping me. Hailey was setting the table and Zach was playing with Tate. As I was standing at the stove, I saw Hailey stop and look out the sliding glass door. She called Zach over and pointed out at something in the backyard. I didn't think much of it, so I continued cooking dinner. Here's how the next conversation went:

Zach: Mom, there's a skunk in our yard.
Me: Very funny Zach.
Zach: There's really a skunk back there.
Me: Zach, that's not very funny, you shouldn't joke about a skunk in the yard.
Zach: Mom, I'm not joking, there's really a skunk back there.
Hailey: Mom, Zach isn't joking, we really see a skunk.

At that point, I ran to the door and sure enough, here's what we saw:


A very big skunk walking across our backyard wall.



I stood there stunned for a few minutes and after getting a hold of myself, grabbed this picture (just in case no one believe us - just like I didn't believe Zach the first few times). We continued to watch it and it disappeared behind our shed and out of view.

A minute or two later, Jeremiah got home and heard at least 3 versions of how we saw the skunk in our backyard. I was glad I snapped the picture, because he looked skeptical during all 3 stories. After dinner (which was very long and crazy due to the amount of questions we got about skunks, where they came from, what they do, and if they will hurt you), I sent Jeremiah outside to see if he could see it behind the shed. After looking and throwing a few rocks, we determined it wasn't there. So he proceeded to actually go back behind the shed to see if it happened to be hiding (I was mentally trying to determine if we had any tomato juice in the house!). When he got behind the shed, he saw that the dirt underneath the fence on the side of the yard had been dug up (and the same was true with the other side fence) and that the skunk had probably just gone under both fences and had just walked along our backyard on his way who knows where. Well, we quickly put some wood, rocks, and anything else we could find to block the holes, hoping we wouldn't have a repeat visit.

We haven't seen our little "visitor" since, but the doesn't keep the kids from mentioning it every once in a while when they look outside. And the best part is listening to them tell the story to anyone who hasn't heard it - I swear the skunk gets bigger and bigger every time Zach tells it! Yes, I think that was one visitor I don't EVER want back!

Pictures with Dad

Since we were all dressed up early for Zach's baptism, I decided to grab some pictures of the kids with Jeremiah to go in a frame he got for Christmas a bit ago. They turned out so darling - we really do have cute kids.

Here are my four monkeys!



Zach and his Dad (notice the matching ties!).


Daddy's little princess.


And what would we do without this little one?


These pictures turned out so darling and I love how each of them really shows the kids' personalities. What a beautiful bunch they are!

Zach's Baptism

I swear, I am NOT old enough to have a son being baptized! Where did the last 8 years go? I know I keep saying that, but every time I turn around, I realize how fast time is going and slipping away from me. But regardless of whether I was ready for it or not, Zach was baptized last Saturday.

It was a memorable day to start out with as we woke up to snow - on the 9th of April! Welcome to spring in Utah, it will never cease to amaze and surprise.


I laughed as the kids ran to the front window to see if there was snow out front too - as if it would just snow on one side of the house! They really make me laugh sometimes!


The night before his baptism, we gave Zach a brand new suit to wear since his old one was WAY too short. He looked so handsome all dressed up.


At 10:30am, we headed over to the church and Zach got dressed in his white clothes. I love this picture behind him - so appropriate to have him standing in front of the Savior on such a special day.


Even though they had practiced many times, I was worried he'd get nervous. But he was all smiles and happy.


Here's Jeremiah with him. Two of my three handsome boys. Tate was there by the way, sitting on the floor and grabbing my skirt as I was trying to take the picture, which is why it's a little blurry.


After that, Jeremiah and Zach headed for a little instruction and Tate and I headed to the chapel to meet up with the family. When 11:00am arrived, we had opening exercises with talks on baptism and the Holy Ghost, then a presentation of those getting baptized. There were 3 wards from our stake in our baptism session - a total of 8 kids getting baptized. We were one 1 of 3 sessions, so you can imagine how many kids were getting baptized in our stake - probably around 25 or so. We have a stake with a lot of young families, so this is pretty normal.

When it was our ward's turn, we all went to the font where the 3 boys from our ward were baptized and then confirmed. Zach did great. Jeremiah said he wasn't nervous until they got in the water - which they said was a touch cold. Anyway, even though there was much practicing, Zach panicked as he got to about his ears, then he tried to push back up. Since Jeremiah's hand was holding onto Zach's that was holding his nose, that was the only way for Jeremiah to push him all the way under. He said he didn't think he pushed that hard, but when Zach came up and then they were walking out of the font, he noticed that Zach's nose was bleeding slightly. It stopped almost immediately, but Jeremiah really felt bad. Zach didn't seem to care and he was all smiles when he came back from getting cleaned up.

Once all 3 boys were confirmed, we wrapped up the meeting. All of our family headed back to our house for lunch. The first order of business was for Zach to open up all of his gifts from everyone.


He got so many gifts and loved every one:

Hailey and Tate gave him a bible
Nana and Papa Downs gave him a triple combination
Nana, Papa, and Troy Hawks gave him a baptism book
Jon, Holli, and Family gave him a tie tac and toys
Michael and Afton gave him a CTR basketball tie tac
Michelle, Brian, and Family gave him scripture markers, book marks
Kylie, Jedd, and Libby gave him a scripture case
Both Great Nanas sent him $5
(I hope I'm remembering all the correctly, please forgive me if I've remembered this wrong!)


He wanted a picture with Nana and Papa on his special day.


(We missed Nana and Papa from California, but knew they were with us in spirit!)

After all that, everyone changed and had some lunch. The kids all had a blast playing together and the adult had a good time chatting and hanging out.

With much angst, I was able to force the family to sit down for a quick picture as we were leaving the church. It had been a long morning with lots of pictures already, but thankfully we were able to get a good one of us.


We are so proud of Zachary and his decision to be baptized. It was certainly a special day and one I will never forget.

Time for Scouts!

With the 8th birthday comes many things. One of those most exciting (according to our 8 year old) is scouts! (I probably don't need to mention that the parents are a little less enthused.)

Zach has been looking forward to scouts since January. At the Great to be 8 meeting, one of the scout leaders came and told all about the fun things they were able to do in the program. Zach was listening, but he really perked up when the scout leader mentioned that they were able to shoot bows and arrows at their day camp last summer. Ever since then, Zach has been dying to get into scouts because he's so excited about shooting bows and arrows. We have tried and tried to explain to him that they don't do it every week and it might be something else this summer, but he's determined that he's going to shoot a bow and arrow at some point.

Well, this last month he turned 8 and was finally able to go. He got a scout shirt and book from Nana and Papa and a scout belt from Kylie, Jedd, and Libby for his birthday. Thank goodness, because the mere cost of the scarf, slide, and patches for his shirt was ridiculous! I can't imagine how much it would have been to buy it all on our own (thanks guys for helping us get him ready with so much!).

On his first night, he got everything on and was so darn cute, I just couldn't resist taking a few pictures.


He was so excited, I couldn't help but giggle as he ran out the door, pulling his Dad along.


It was so fun to see him so excited to go. He came home all smiles and couldn't wait to go again the next week. I'm proud of him for being such a big boy and trying all sorts of new things. Although, it does make me a little sad to realize how big he is getting.

Indoor Soccer

The last few years, we've signed Zach up for outdoor soccer, but every year it's overlapped with baseball for a few weeks. It's always been right near the end of school, which is crazy enough with just one sport, so this year we decided to give indoor soccer a try. It was scheduled for earlier, so no overlapping. Zach was very excited and we were excited to watch him play. He looked so cute!


And boy, was he excited to play!


Indoor soccer is a bit different than outdoor soccer and a lot of the kids (Zach included) struggled to learn how to use the wall to their advantage. Practice was 20 minutes right before the game, so it was hard to go over too much in that short amount of time. But they did some great drills.


He was always glancing up at us to see if we were watching.


There was also a lot of scoring practice. This was his favorite part!


During the game, he was incredible! He was chasing that ball all over the place.


It was hard to not get a blurry picture!


Kick-off was about the only time I him actually holding still (that sounds bad, but actually it's a good thing that he was active).


He especially excelled in defense, he loved staying back to protect the goal. Maybe there's a future goalie in the making?!?


Early on in the season, he also scored a goal. I didn't have my camera with me that day, but it was really neat to see and he sure was proud of himself.

Since the still shots don't do it justice, here's some video of him playing:



Tate spent a lot of his time in his stroller being pushed around by his older sister.


He loved every second of it.


When Hailey wasn't pushing him, she was busy watching the aerobics or Zumba classes going on right next to us.


Or playing with friends she'd made in the few minutes we'd been there (she really is a little social butterfly).


Nana and Papa made it to 2 of Zach's games and Tate loved sitting and playing with them. He loved Papa and couldn't take his eyes off of him all day!


Tate also has mastered vibrating his lips. It's hilarious to watch and after numerous tries, I finally got it on video:



As you can tell, we all had a wonderful time watching (or playing during) Zach's games. We are continually amazed at his athletic ability - which we all know he gets from Jeremiah (there's no way it's from me because I can't walk straight half the time!). We had a fun season of indoor soccer and are trying to decide if we should do that again or go back to outdoor soccer - good thing we have a whole year to think about it! Next up for Zach is baseball - hooray!