Strawberries!

We have wanted to do this for a while now and finally did it! We planted Strawberries in our backyard. We have massive snails and wanted to keep the strawberries from being eaten so we got hanging baskets to put on our fence. Since we can't have a standard in the ground garden we figure this is the next best thing. We are excited to see how they grow.. and to eat the strawberries too! I am sure they wont be as yummy as the stawberries from the patch in Georgia, but I am sure they will do! We had lots of fun!

Daniel being a goof ball as always!

Who wants to check out the plants when Daniel is so much fun!

Happy Birthday and Congratulations!

Today is Sterling's Birthday!

Happy Birthday honey! We love you lots!

10 Things I love about Sterling!

1. He is extremely patient!

2. He is a GREAT dad!

3. He is very good at taking care of me!

4. He honors his priesthood!

5. He is extremely hard working!

6. He has a very positive attitude!

7. He loves our family endlessly!

8. He is honest, almost to a fault!

9. He is a great example for my boys!

10. My very favorite thing is right after he shaves and he smells so good and is soft and .... you don't want to hear the rest. But it is by far my favorite!

Happy Birthday Sterling!

_____________________________________

This is a little late coming, but last Monday Feb 2nd Sterling was promoted to "Major"!

This is Colonel Penha giving the "you're a great soldier speech"!


Daniel "pinning" on Sterling's new rank.


Colonel Penha pinning on his rank on his hat.

James was melting down, so the good daddy just held him, while he was getting promoted.

Sterling and Jon and their kids who had to be part of the picture!

Congratulations Major Packer!

More pictures of the PCC

The whole family got a tatoo in one of the Indonisian Villages. It was pretty fun. Sophia, my little baby who can tan, got some really cool tan lines out of it. It was just paint that washed off in the bath tub but the kids thought it was fun. You can't tell that from this picture.. for some reason none of them are smiling!

This was Daniel's highlight of the day.. Because of the suns angle you can't see the big muscley guy who was beating on the log with him. He thought it was so great to get to beat the log drum too!.. He is going to be our drummer when he gets older!


This was James' and my highlight of the day. Sterling and My Uncle Tom wanted to go see the Imax movie. My children don't do very well in theaters.. mostly it is just sensory overload. James saw some ladies making something and really wanted to give it a try. So James and I sat down and learned how to make lei's. It was really fun and James did it all by himself. He did awesome! It was so much fun and it was the prefect thing to hold over the time!

Here is the finished product. James and I both made our own Lei!

Sophia loved Daddy's Pina Colada drink. It was super yummy and of course as big as she is!

Here is the whole group at the Luau!

Uncle Tom's Visit to the PCC

My Uncle Tom came to visit and we have been having a really good time. Yesterday we went to the Polynesian Cultural Center in Laie, Hawaii. It was amazing! Of course we didn't make it to see everything. It takes more than one day to see it all! We had a really great time and it was beautiful, sunny, 80 degree weather the whole day, actually a little too warm for the Canoe Pagent, but a great day over all! (Sophia didn't want to wear her lei!)

Cartoon of Daniel

He even has the same little rooster tail in the back, no matter what we try!

Sterling reads to the kids most nights before bed, well last night he found this story, " Too Many Bozos". It is about a little boy named Danny, who wants to have many different animals as his pet and he names them all Bozo. However, his mom tells him he can't have the dog, or the frog, or the ants, or the mouse. It is such a funny story, because the pictures look just like my Daniel. With the bright red hair and the cute freckles, and the serious love for all animals, just like my Danny!

So now his favorite story is the one about him!

A little bit of everything!

My friend Tina called today to make sure I was still alive since I haven't blogged in a while. I am alive, but not feeling so great (hopefully in 2 more weeks I will be feeling better!) so we haven't been out and about doing a lot of spectacular bloggable things. Mostly we have been hanging around the house. Sterling has been working lots of hours and I am trying to keep the kids going. Here are some random pictures from the last few weeks of the kids!

James had his first baseball game! He was pretty excited. He is once again playing t-ball. This is his 3rd year of t-ball. They wouldn't allow you to play your kids up so he has to do t-ball again. Sterling is the coach and is allowed to pitch to the kids if they would prefer. So Sterling pitches to James and he does pretty well. James gets frustrated because a lot of the kids on his team are still learning the rules of the game. He is really ready for "real" baseball!

That is James on Second base. His team is the Kentucky Wildcats. Mostly James just loves that his team is BLUE! In t-ball you can't still bases or run more than one base on a hit, which isn't James' favorite thing either! He is really ready to "play" baseball, instead of just go around the bases! Next year James!

This is the countdown, the only way to get Sophia to leave things in her hair is to hold her hands. James loves Sophia so much and she loves him right back!

Our family got a Wii this year for Christmas. Here is the whole family, but mom, trying to play the Wii.. It was pretty cute, even Sophia was right in the thick of it. Of course, we didn't tell Sophia that she wasn't playing. She thinks she is just as big as the boys!

Here is a video. By the time I got around to recording this they had been playing for a while and Daniel got tired and just wanted to watch Little Einsteins. They had a good time!

Sterling thought this was pretty funny. Sophia took this ziploc bag and was wearing it like a hat! We can't get her to keep a real hat on her head, but she would wear the ziploc bag..

Whatever!

Crazy little girl!

This is today.

Sophia is sporting a serious baby mullet so I tried to put it into a ponytail!

It looked pretty cute, bow and all!

As soon as I let go of her hands, This is what you get..

Bow and ponytail riped right out!

I guess I deserve this. When I was a baby I wouldn't let my mom do my hair either!

I just get to live with my crazy straw hair mullet baby!

Daniel and James building a tower, while Sterling is building a new entertainment system. We got a new TV after Christmas, which of course didn't fit in our old entertainment system. (You can kind of see the TV and the entertainment system in the picture of Sophia above!) Daniel was very creative in his building style. He will quite the architect when he is older! Daniel really wanted it to be taller than him, but we didn't have quite enough blocks to achieve it and keep it standing!

Saving the Snails!

This morning we heard the engines start up and new they were on their way to our house. James had been monitoring the progress of the landscape people as they came down our street and we knew they would make it to our house today. James was very concerned for the safety of our monster snails, so today we "harvested" them!

Before

After

Hopefully it grows in quickly.. this is pretty ugly all cut down!

James and Daniel searching as quickly as they could for the big snails before the workers made it to our yard. They had already started on one side, but there was still time!

These are the snails that we found, 2 small ones and 4 big ones.

So, we made a new home for them for a little while, until our front yard grows back enough to protect them!

James giving them plenty of leaves and protection to eat and to hide in!