Three Signs of Spring

At our house, we have a few traditions with the start of Spring. These are probably ones that you wouldn't normally think of, but they are constants at our house.

1. Flowers

Every year, I'm showered with these gifts of "flowers" from the kids. Once they determined these were flowers and not weeds, they run around outside and pick every one they can see. This was the pile I got the other day. Ironically, our yard only has a few, thanks to our early application of fertilizer, so I'm grateful that it's only a handful every once in a while. There are others in our neighborhood who seem to be "breeding" dandelions and although I'm sure it's not on purpose, I'm sure glad that isn't our yard or I'd be getting a whole more!



(They get so excited to give me their gifts, I couldn't help but take a picture of them in front of their bounty!)


2. Strawberries

And more importantly, our favorite dessert of strawberry cake. Our local Smith's had strawberries on sale for 99 cents a pound this week, so we picked up a couple and make ourselves a yummy treat. The kids couldn't stand the wait while we baked the cake, waited for it to cool, assembled it, and then let is set up in the fridge. It was almost to much to stand, but when they both got a huge piece a few hours later, they couldn't stop telling me how good it was.



(They almost couldn't stand sitting right behind the cake while I took the picture, but Zach insisted on taking a picture and putting it on the blog.)


3. Spring Cleaning

Now most of you may not think this a good thing. I would agree during the actual cleaning part, but afterwards, I'm always so grateful I spent all the time and energy doing it. This was my list this year. I'm definitely a list person and love to see thing checked off, so you'll see a few places where I added things later - ones I added after I did them, just so I could check them off. Silly I know, but it makes me feel good and helps me remember what additional things I've done as I was going along.


(You'll notice I'm almost done with my inside cleaning - actually I just finished the last few things tonight, but the outside is still yet to be done. This is because of the all the rain and wind we've had the last few days. I hoping to get to the outside stuff in the next few days.)

Luckily for my family, spring cleaning is something I pretty much like to do myself. Not that I don't think anyone else can do it, it's just something I like to do so that I know what's been done and when. Jeremiah is definitely happy about this little fact, although in his defense, he does offer over and over to help out and even gives me tons of help when I'm moving around the heavy furniture and vaccuming behind and underneath everything. This year to show his thanks, he and Hailey came home from the store with a little gift of flowers for me.



It was quite a surprise and made me consider doing this "spring cleaning" thing more often if flowers were going to be given. After 3 full days of cleaning - 6 hours on Saturday alone, I decided that it wasn't worth it. But I was extremely grateful for the thoughtfulness of my husband and his showing of appreciation for my efforts. Do I have a wonderful husband or what?

Well, those are our sign of spring. Maybe not the most obvious or logical, but definitely things we enjoy and look forward to (or look forward to having done in the case of the cleaning) every spring. Hope you all are enjoying your spring!

Fun Filled Weekend!

This last weekend, we went up to spend a couple of days with my sister and her family in Malad. We went up Friday afternoon and got back on Saturday night. It was so much fun! They have 40 acres up there, so there's plenty of room to play, play, play! They have four wheelers, other motorized vehicles, a sandbox, trampoline, horses, and anything else you can think of that's fun to do outside.

The kids had a blast! They rode on everything they could over and over and over. Once I looked over and saw Zach sitting on Ashton's four wheeler by himself. When I asked him what he was doing, he said he was just waiting for Ashton to rest and then go for another ride - he just couldn't get enough of it!

In addition to all the kiddie activities, the "men" + Afton did some shotgun shooting, then a bunch did some golfing, and a few even played horseshoes!

Now you're wondering where all the wonderful pictures of this fabulous weekend are right? Well, isn't it just like me to drive 2 hours, have a weekend full of fun, and remember everything but the camera? Yep, just like me. So you'll have to jont over to Afton, Michelle, or Holli's blogs to check out all the pictures (they were smart enough to remember their cameras!).

I guess the only other things we forgot was the sunblock. If you were in church on Sunday and saw us, there was no doubt whose children were ours - the two with the sunburns so obviously matching ours. After all the snow and the fact that we were headed north, sunblock seemed to be the last thing on my mind. It was probably enjoying being home with my camera! :0)

But regardless of the sunburns, we had an absolute blast! Thanks Brian, Michelle, Ashton, and Branson for such a fun weekend. We can't wait to do it again!

What in the WORLD???

Ok, I realize it's spring. But doesn't that mean rain, rain, rain? Then why in the world did we wake up to snow this morning?





And this is at 10am this morning, so a portion of it has already melted. We probably got about 2-3 inches. Which I guess I can't be too unhappy about since other portions of Lehi got between 6 and 7 inches, but since when does spring think it's ok to dump snow in the middle of April? Especially after teasing us time and again with 60 and 70 degree weather on other days?

We don't know about all you, but the Hawks Family needs warm weather DESPERATELY BAD!

Happy Easter!

This is going to be somewhat of an all inclusive blog highlighting our Easter activites the past few days. I had meant to do separate posts for each thing, but when it comes down to it, I'm just lazy and decided to put them all in one.

Our Easter festivities started out with some fun activities with the cousins at Nana and Papa's house on Thursday. The kids had a blast, they

decorated easter eggs,






decorated easter buckets,



and did an easter egg hunt (in the house since it was a bit windy and rainy, but they didn't mind at all!).



One of the best parts of the day was having Aunt Kylie (affectionately known as Aunt Awa) there with us. She had spring break and was able to be with us on our "get together" day, we miss her when she's not with us!

Also, I stole a few of these pictures from my other sister since she was more diligent with the camera than I was - hope you don't mind Michelle!

It was such a fun day - thanks Nana and Papa for the fun time, they had a blast!

After such a fun day at Nana and Papa's, we almost didn't even need Easter - almost. The kids had such a fun time on Sunday morning. The Easter Bunny dumped a whole bunch of loot at our house.

Zach's stash:

These are his gifts from the Easter Bunny





Since Jeremiah and I have so much fun buying the kids things, we got them a few little gifts for Easter too.



Hailey's stash:

These are her gifts from the Easter Bunny





And her gifts from Jeremiah and I.



They had an absolute blast finding the easter eggs the Easter Bunny filled and left for them. We left out special sport ball eggs for Zach and special hearts/flowers/etc. eggs for Hailey.




It was evident that the kids are getting better at finding the eggs, so the Easter Bunny needs to step up next year and hide them a little bit better. I think it took them all of about 15 seconds to find each of their 12 eggs, definitely not very challenging!

After we let the kids play with their toys for a bit, had breakfast, and got ready for church, I made everyone sit down for a few quick pictures. I try to do this once or twice a year to get some family pictures of all of us. After much arm twisting and threatening, I got Jeremiah to agree.



The kids took somewhat less convincing to pose on their own.



They looked so cute in their church clothes that just happened to coordinate. That happens very little since I usually let them choose what they want to wear.



So that's the end of my ridiculously long Easter post. Regardless of how long the post is, we had a great holiday and hope you all had a wonderful day as well.

More Tractors!

As a follow-up to a recent post, we had to take some more pictures of the tractors digging right behind our house.

Every day there has been some sort of digging, bulldozing, dumping activity and the kids have been thrilled to watch all of the work. This is a common position for my kids to be in quite often when a lot of exciting tractors, trucks, and workers are busy at work.



One such day, there was a huge tractor digging right behind our fence. It was amazing again to think it was so close. Zach was just sure his cousin Ashton would have loved to see the tractor digging the dirt and putting it into the dump truck, so he insisted I take more pictures to put on the blog to show him. So Ashton, these pictures are for you!







As frustrating as it is to have a road going in right behind our property, it sure has provided for much entertainment for the kids the last while and I'm sure will continue to be until they get it finished!

Pinkalicious!

My little Hailey is all girl. She absolutely LOVES the color pink! Whenever you ask anything to do with a color, she chooses the color pink.

Her favorite outfit is all pink:



She has pink pants, shirt, undershirt, socks, hair bows, ponytail holder, and anything else you can imagine - she was pink from head to toe!

Her favorite book is entitled "Pinkalicious":



If you've ever been to our house, more than likely she has either asked you to read this book to her or read it to you herself. She has it memorized and it's her first choice whenever reading is involved.

My little pink angel - she makes me laugh!

Some Great Writing

Now that Zach is in kindergarten, I am amazed daily of the different things he is able to do. In addition to learning his letters, reading, and other fun things, they are also working on writing. Jeremiah and I are probably the only ones (other than his teacher) that know how much he has improved over the past 6 months. They usually come home with activity papers that they have done in class. I couldn't help but share this one. They are learning phonics or sounds to read and write, so the teacher asked them to write the word for the picture using the sounds they hear. Here was his paper:



(Did you notice the one for table? How cute is that???)

In addition to the reading, math, and sight words homework they have, they also have to do a "writers workshop" page. This is a page where they decide on what they want to write about, draw a picture, then using the sounds, write the story. We've been talking a lot about bunnies and Easter lately and because of that, we have been watching a lof of "Max and Ruby" - a Nick Jr show with two cartoon rabbits (for those of you who don't know who they are). Zach decided to write a story about Max and drew a picture of him for his writer's workshop page. Here's how it turned out:



(If you have a hard time reading it, the swirly looking letters are e's.)

I thought these were so cute. My little boy is almost done with kindergarten and I can hardly believe it. He's growing so fast and learning so much. He loves going to school every day and has a perfect attendance record (we've been lucky to not be sick much this year, knock on wood).



Dad and I are so proud of you Zach and all that you are learning, you are our special boy and we love you very much!