Darek Is Turning 3!

Sunday is Darek's 3rd birthday! I can hardly believe he is almost 3. This year has been the first year that he has really recognized that it's his birthday. Before he didn't really know what it meant or cared about it. This time we've been counting down the weeks and days. Yesterday was his birthday party. We had a total of 6 kids (including Alex and Darek). We had our neighbors Christian (5) and Savannah (2) as well as two of his buddies from nursery Truman (3) and Dylan (2). We were having a little trouble coordinating the party time with everyone we wanted to invite, so I knew it would probably not work out as the best time. But the plan was to have everyone get here at 1:30, play a little, open presents, eat some cake and ice cream and then head to the theater to see Cars 2 for a showing at 3:20. Darek loved opening presents. He didn't really care to look at what he got immediately. He would open one and then head on to the next present. He did this until they were all open, then went back to the boxes to figure out what he got. It was really funny and cute. I don't think I planned the timing out great. I didn't realize that the kids would want to open every box of every present and play with all the toys... RIGHT THEN. They were having so much fun though, I hated to put an end to it. So we skipped the ice cream, had cake really fast and somehow made it to the movie on time. Then the chaos began...

We got there with only 10 minutes to get treats and get everyone seated and situated. My parents, brother and 2 of my friends also came. When we were directed to our theater, we were surprised to find out the Green Lantern was playing. So when we asked the employees about it, they said our showing had been moved to another theater because the original had a broken reel. When we went into that theater, we found that our seats were taken. In other words, when they switched theaters, they didn't mark our seats as being sold, so they double sold our seats. The main reason my parents came was to help us out with all the kids (if needed), so we had them sitting right behind us. We had to do some adjusting with our seats. I had Ryan and two of the kids sit in the row in front of us and eventually we got settled, but still worried that someone else might come in and demand our seats. My parents were not having as much luck. A very rude older man came in and had the same seats as my parents, plus a few more. He got angry with my Dad (with my Dad trying to explain what happened) and they went to find a manager. They got an employee and were trying to page a manager. The manager would not respond. When they spotted him and yelled his name, he looked over and said, "I'm off". So the poor employee was left to handle a very unpleasant situation. And really, he did nothing to solve the problem. My parents had already had to move seats 3 times and were getting frustrated. The older man insisted the seats were "his" and demanded my parents get out of them. He was yelling at my Dad, who was trying to talk to the employee about the situation. I told the man to stop, that this was not our fault, but the theaters. He then screamed at me, "Well, it isn't MY fault!!" The guy was just a moron and a jerk. My Mom told him she was sick of hearing his mouth and got up and moved. His reply was, "Good, that's fine with me!" His daughter was telling me that if we really all wanted to sit together, that I should just get up and move down to the bottom of the theater. Sure, I'll just quickly move all 8 of us! I got a little angry with that and we got in a little yelling match. Anyway... I could go on and on. My parents ended up moving to another row, no where close to us, but gave clear instructions that we were to see a manager after the show.

The movie was great, by the way. Perfect for boys! Throw in spies with cars... every boys dream. But I was very entertained also. We really loved it and the kids were actually very well behaved during the movie. Darek and Savannah slept through about half of the movie, but that's what you get for having a party during nap time. I was bound to hit someone's nap time. Even with all the craziness going on, I'm so glad we took the kids to see it. I think Darek remembers some of it! :)

As we were leaving, I had a few people come up to me and apologize for how we were treated. It was really nice to hear that from other people. I was glad we weren't being viewed as the ones causing the problem. When we got out of the theater, my Dad was already talking to the new manager, the employee that tried to help and the manager that was "off". My Dad was pretty upset, rightfully so. He talked to the new manager about better ways to handle this kind of situation... mostly just to have someone in the theater directing traffic when they KNOW something like this is going to happen. The other manager stood there looking annoyed and bothered. My Dad asked for an email to be sent to him explaining what they would do to ensure this wouldn't happen again like this. The new manager told us he would send that as well as refund our tickets and apologized profusely for what happened. He was very nice and very courteous about the issue. He refunded all of our tickets! It helped make a bad situation a little better. The thing that made me SO angry was the man and his daughter that were so rude to us, also demanded to get their tickets refunded. FOR WHAT!?!?!?! As were getting our refunds, the daughter leaned over to me and apologized for her fathers behavior and said she was so embarrassed by him. What about her? Oh well. I came outside and found out that the manager had given my parents an envelope with 22 free tickets and 6 free popcorn vouchers!!! We split that up, so we'll get some free movies for the next little while!

We got the kids their goody bags and took them home. They really had a lot of fun, but I was sad that Dareks first real birthday party was tainted by this situation. The nice thing is that the kids didn't even know what was going on and probably won't remember a bit of that! After we got home, all the neighborhood kids came in to play with all of Dareks new toys. They stayed until about 7:30. Then we all got in our jammies, our pizza was delivered, we put on Harry Potter 4 (we're trying to get through all of them before the last Harry Potter comes out) and enjoyed the evening together. It was a great end to our day. We're going to have another small little celebration on Sunday and I'll post more about Darek at that time. For now, here are a few pictures of Dareks party.

My CUTE boy!

Not to brag, but I think I might have been able to do a better job on his cakes. But he loved them, which is all that matters!

Everyone, except Dylan. From left: Christian, Alex, Savannah, Darek and Truman.

I don't think the photos can even come close to capturing the madness that was happening!

Cake faces!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAREK!!!

Lagoon Pictures

I took the boys to Lagoon the other day. It was fun to just hang out with them and have some fun. While we were there, I took out my camera and got a few cute pictures of the boys. They weren't exactly cooperating, but it was still fun to get a few pictures.








They might not always be on their best behavior, but they sure are cute!!

A Few Random Things

So there have been a few things that normally I would have posted about, but since I'm catching up, I'll just do it all in one post. Not many pictures, just thoughts.

1...

RSL season began!! We are lucky enough to have season tickets again this year. We have already been to some amazing games, sad games (like when Javier Morales was injured and is out of play until at least October), disappointing games and most recently extremely frustrating games. But we love our RSL and have really enjoyed seeing our guys play!

2...

Nate graduated! My little brother (ok he's taller, but he's still my little brother) Nate graduated on May 24th! It was such a huge moment for him and I was so proud to be there to cheer him on! He has had a lot of difficulties to work through, but he has done so well and I am so proud of him. He is now living at home again and my boys couldn't be happier. In fact, Darek has found a new best friend! Anytime we're upstairs, he immediately is looking for Nate and wants to play with him. It's so great to have him back and I love him so very much!

3...

Daycare ended for the summer. The nice thing about the majority of my daycare kids is that their parents were employed by the school district. So I get the summer off with my kids! It's happy and sad. My kids miss having the other kids around and I do too! But it's nice to sleep in (sometimes) and be able to go on vacations and such whenever I want to. I may have one little girl off and on throughout the summer, but other than that, it's truly summer vacation for me!

4...

School ended. This has been such a bittersweet thing this year. Usually Alex has really looked forward to the summer and all the fun activities we are planning. We had a hard decision to make this year. Alex was offered a placement at West Bountiful Elementary in their spectrum program for next year. This has been very exciting, but terribly sad at the same time. We have come to love Adelaide Elementary and Alex has so many friends that he loves there. As parents we had to decide what would be best. This was one of those times I really didn't know what to choose. Ryan and I thought a long time about this and finally made the decision to move him. There were two main reasons behind our decision. The first was of course the education possibilities. We knew that if we didn't do it, 2 years from now we'd look back and regret not trying it. The second reason was due to the fact that we were planning on moving anyway. We were going to try our best to stay within Adelaides boundaries, but the chances of us being able to rent a home in our price range and get the size we wanted in the boundary was not good. Moving him to the spectrum program will give us a larger area (like all of davis school district) to look in. So the last day of school was really hard for Alex, knowing it would be his last day at Adelaide. Honestly it was really hard for me. I've been involved with the PTA these past years and gotten to know many parents and teachers. It will be hard to start over at another school. We have already been over to the school and walked around it so Alex could get a feel for it. He does love the huge soccer fields at the school, but he is still not thrilled about the idea. And I really don't blame him. I remember how hard it was to move and I hate that I will be doing that to him... and might have to do it another time after this. No matter what I want us to be settled where ever it is we will be by the time Alex reaches Junior High.

5...

Even though changing schools has been on Alex's mind, we have been keeping him pretty busy. Right now he is involved in baseball (which he doing really well in) and he's doing a more competitive soccer this year, which means soccer practice during the summer. It has made life pretty busy, but it's been really nice at the same time. We're very excited because Darek will be old enough to play soccer this fall. We already have him signed up and cannot wait to see him play this fall. Cutest thing ever!!! We also have a lot of trips planned for the summer. We kind of get June off, but July is going to be fun! Darek will turn 3 on July 3rd and then we're off on our first camping trip of the summer July 5-7. We'll have about a week home and will head down to St. George July 15-18 to spend a long weekend with my sisters. While there, we'll be taking a day trip to the Grand Canyon! I've never been there before (sad, huh?) so we can't wait to get this experience! We'll be home for another week and then we're taking a nice, long trip to Yellowstone!!! This is another first for me! Ryan has been before, but I never have. We'll be leaving the 27 and not come back until the 1st of August! We are tent camping it the whole time and I truly can't tell you how excited I am for this trip. I know my boys will love it... we just have to figure out how to keep our tent warm at night. Any tips??? Then we're home another couple days and I'll take the boys on another campout from Aug 4-6. Then we get a few weeks home before our last camping trip the 17-19. WHEW!!! I love that this is an outdoors kind of summer! I think we'll just keep our tent and camping supplies in our van the whole summer!

Well that's about it. I know that more has happened that I have missed, but that kind of catches us up. I do have one more post to do about my wonderful trip to Park City with the girls. But that needs a post all on it's own. I will try to be a little better about my updates from here on out!

Ryan's Graduation!!!

Ryan finally graduated on April 22nd!!!! A week later he went back to school. :) But honestly he is just about done. Weber State allowed him to graduate and walk after Spring semester even though he still had to go back for Summer semester. Summer semester ends at the end of June, so he really is almost done. Just a week left to go! So he received his Bachelors of Science in Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). It feels good to finally (almost) be done with it all. The only thing left will be for him to take the official MRI test to get licensed. He'll do that sometime this summer. Then the job hunt begins! We're not sure what our plans are exactly. We want to move ASAP, especially before school starts up. We're thinking we'll stay in the area, maybe somewhere around Centerville, but really just don't know yet. I just want to be certain that Ryan has a full-time job and then we'll go from there. But I'm so proud of Ryan for all his hard work and dedication throughout school. He graduated with honors, which totally amazes me! It's been a long road and now we can finally get on with our lives. We have many plans for the future and can't wait to get them started!!!

I didn't get the best pictures, so I apologize for that... but here is my man!

Alex's Baptism

I am still sad to this day (and probably forever) that I did not get more pictures at Alex's baptism. I didn't even get any of him in his baptismal clothing. But even with a lack of pictures, it's a day I will always remember. I feel lucky that the stake we live in does baptisms on a ward level. I didn't want Alex to have to be baptized with a whole bunch of kids he didn't know and feel like a lemming waiting to be dunked. And it just so happened that he was the only one in our ward getting baptized in April, so we got to plan the whole program. It was a little nerve wracking, since I had never done this before. But thanks to the internet, I was able to figure it out. My favorite thing was getting to do the program. I really went crazy with it. My computer doesn't have many programs on it, so once I figured out what I wanted it to say and the pictures I wanted on it, Ryan took it all and made it look beautiful.

Here is a picture of the front and back of the program.

This shows the inside.

After doing the research, one of my favorite things I had found was a little section that talked about the child's favorite things. And I got a lot of comments about that little part... and the adorable pictures of my handsome boy!

Alex got to pick out who did what in the program. He decided I was going to play the piano... and I'm not sure if it was a good idea or not. The bad things about it is I wasn't right up close for the musical number and it was hard for Darek to listen well to other people while I was back there. The nice thing about it was no one could see me crying my eyes out when Alex was singing (more on that in a minute). He chose the prayers and the talks. The one thing I requested of him was the musical number. When I was baptized many years ago, the musical number was "When I Am Baptized". My siblings got up and sang the first verse and chorus and then I sang the second verse and they joined back in for the chorus. I loved that and I really wanted Alex to do the same. Only since he doesn't have older siblings, I asked his cousins to sing with him. Darek got up there too and knew some of the words, which was really cute. But when Alex came in by himself on the second verse, I totally lost it. He has the sweetest voice and sang beautifully! I was SO happy to be back at the piano and take a minute or two after the song was over to regain my composure again. I was so impressed with him to sing by himself though. He was so nervous and I wasn't sure how it would go. But it was perfect! The baptism and confirmation were perfect and the talks were also amazing and just for him. Our bishop commented that it was the most spiritual baptism he had been to and I would have to agree with him.

After the program we went to another room and had a little luncheon. It was fun to visit with everyone who had taken the time to come. We had most of Ryan's family there and all but my brother and his family from my side of the family. There were friends, neighbors and primary workers there as well.

I was so proud of my Alex and the choice he made to get baptized. He is such a wonderful son, brother and cousin. He sets such a good example (most of the time) for others... even me!

Alex's Other Parties

I just had to post a few more pictures with Alex's other parties. He had one party with all of his neighborhood friends. We had a "movie night" themed party. Each kid was given a celebrity name and told to dress up as much as they could. We set up Alex's room for a movie night and the kids just got to play and watch a movie. It was very relaxed and fun.

Sami was Miranda Cosgrove

Reilly was Johnny Depp

Christian was Jack Black

Ava was Selena Gomez

and Alex was Dan Aykroyd

In case you couldn't figure it out, Alex picked out all the names for everyone. And Dan Aykroyd was because of Ghost Busters... in case you were wondering.


The next (and last) party was with Papa and Grandma. It was just simple with a cake and a few presents. Since going to Disneyland, Alex has really loved the idea of the pin trading they do at Disneyland. So when we got home, that's all he wanted. So both me and my mom ordered some disney pins in bulk off ebay for his birthday. He was so excited and he can't wait to go back to Disneyland, so he can do some pin trading with the cast members there.