Happy Easter

We had a great Easter. We did all the fun activities like Easter egg hunts. Made Easter bunnies out of paper plates and made Easter eggs. We also left out carrots and lettuce for the Easter bunny, which he gobbled all up. The thing I love most about Easter is going to the Mesa Easter Pageant and taking time to remember Christ. This year we took Avery with us. She liked to see the angels on top of the stage all in white! I think Avery was a little young to really enjoy it, but I think it will be a fun family tradition to do each year together. We hope you all had a wonderful Easter season with your families!

He thinks he is so BIG!

Mason thinks that it is time for him to play with the big kids! This last week he has been trying to climb up the stairs after Avery. I usually find him when he is on the first step thank goodness! This time I decided to see how far he could get on his own. Of course Avery had to be by his side and cheer him on and I was right behind him in case he fell.

He made it to the first landing then he tried to continue on until I told him no.

So he decided to try coming down head first!!

Lovin' the weather

After each of us had the 24 hour stomach bug (all on different days) we needed to get out of this house! This week the weather has been amazing!  So we took every opportunity we had to be outside!  Avery is becoming a pro at her tricycle. She loves to ride it out on the back patio. We have taken quite a few trips to the park. These two LOVE the swings! Avery use to hate the swings when she was Masons age. She would scream and scream until we would get her out and now it is her favorite thing to do.

I have an addiction

I have a HUGE addiction to Pinterest! Probably like every girl, right? I thought I would just post some of the things that I have made from the inspiration of Pinterest.

My mom and I made the cutest stick horses for the kids. Avery really really wanted a horse for Christmas so I figured a stick horse would have to suffice. I found a great tutorial on Pinterest HERE and I put my mom to work in the Hatch sweat shop!!(she visited in the summer/Fall when it was super duper hot and she said she felt like she was in a sweat shop) My mom is an amazing seamstress. She can make anything. Every time she comes to visit I put her to work on something I need done. I thought that they turned out amazing. Avery loves her horse. She tells it to giddy up all the time.

I made this Valentines necklace for Avery after seeing it HERE! I thought it was so cute! Avery even helped paint the heart! She loves her necklace especially since she got to help make it.

We have made these stuffed shells a couple of times now. Recipe found HERE. They are delicious. I love that it makes so much. You can freeze half the recipe so you can have it another time, or its a great recipe to take to someone else and then you have the other half for your dinner!

I have seen these apothecary jars everywhere recently.(I got my inspiration HERE) I think they are so cute! I think that it was a huge craze for a while because I looked at Joanns, Michaels, and Hobby Lobby for all the supplies multiple times and couldn’t get them. They were always sold out!  When I finally got my hands on all the supplies I was a little put off, so I did the project a little at a time.  I was almost finished when all the pieces were outside drying and Levi was out cleaning something with the hose and he sprayed them all down, accidentally:( After that they sat in a box for another couple months until I got the urge to finally finish them. So here they are finished, still drying! Now I need to figure out where to put them.

I made this biggest loser recipe found HERE, not because it is healthy but because it sounded good. We all know that I am not a healthy eater and couldn’t stick to a diet to save my life. Chocolate is just way to good to stay away from! Anyways they were actually really good. I would make them again. But the recipe says 18 egg whites, well I only did 15 and I still had a lot leftover that I just made scrambled eggs from.  In the future I might only do 12  eggs or because I don’t really care if it is healthy I might just do the whole egg and use less!
Well now that you know that I am addicted to chocolate, I made these Valentine cake pops. They were delicious! They were really really rich but still good. Avery was a big helper/mess maker with the sprinkles. Most of the sprinkles ended up in her mouth or on the floor.

For Valentines day Avery and I made two Grandmas brag books that I found HERE! I thought they were so cute so I downloaded there link. I couldn’t decide on only a few pictures so I tweaked it a little and made it reversible so I could put pictures on both sides. Both Grandmas loved them!

As you can see I am loving perusing Pinterest and finding fun things to try out! There are so many other things I have tried and many other things that are still in the works! Can you say I found my new love?!?!

Phoenix Children's Museum/Arizona Science Center

Man did we have fun at the Phoenix Children’s Museum back in October. There is so much to do. We spent most of the day there. Avery had a blast. She enjoyed climbing on this contraption.

She also loved playing in the kitchen and grocery store. It was hard for us to get her to move on to the next activity.

This is a flying bath tub

There is five or six layers that Levi had to squeeze through to get to the bottom. I don’t think he realized that they were so tight to fit through and that there were so many switchbacks.

These were tubes that had air blowing through them so when you put in a foam ball or a handkerchief it would race through the tube and shoot out at you from different openings.

Avery is in the boat with legs

Last weekend we went to the Arizona Science Center. I got free tickets from the library and we took advantage of it. I think Avery was a little young for it,  but we still had a good time!

Avery being raised up on a bed of nails!

Avery stretched herself

And Mason was good as long as he had food!

Tim “The Toolman” Taylor Taught Me To Add More Power

Levi here, writing a post to thank Art for donating his old subwoofer and giving me something to do for a weekend or two.
Art told me to take his old sub from our parents house to use at my home, but when I hooked it up no lights came on and no sound came out. I pulled out the amp and saw that some components were fried but after I replaced them it still didn’t work. The fuse would blow immediately after I plugged it in. That’s when I discovered that the voice coil on the driver was melted and I decided to rebuild the whole thing.
Avery is in all of the pictures because she wants to help me any time that I take on a project around the house. Here is the sub enclosure before the changes with a 10” driver that is mostly foam and a 120W amp.

Avery helped me enlarge the opening for the driver to fit in this beast that I have had sitting around for a few years. After each cut with the jigsaw, Avery would pull her fingers out of her ears and ask if I was done yet. She had to be right next to me every step of the way; holding the screws for me or holding the glued pieces in place as they dried. A little side by side comparison of the surface area and magnets on the two drivers.

I picked up a nice little power switching 300W amp from parts-express pretty cheap. I also scavenged some gnarly wire from an old sub box that was labeled 12 GA but looked a lot closer to 10 GA. Most of the work on this project went into converting the square opening on the back of the enclosure into a rectangle of different dimensions and framing in the amp on the inside of the box while working around the internal bracing. The great thing about working with MDF is that you just glue all of it together; no fasteners required.

All finished, looking and sounding good. The new driver is so large that the old screen won’t fit on the front anymore, but I like to see its face lurking in the corner. It gives a good rumble during the movies. To test it out I put in my copy of Step Into Liquid and went to the last scene where the guys are tow in surfing at the Cortes Bank. It isn’t the greatest bass soundtrack but it is really cool to have the deep bass match the awesome visuals of the monster waves crashing down.
Thanks to Art for donating his old sub enclosure, Avery and I enjoyed reworking it.

Kiddos

Avery 2 ½

Just some things that Avery has said or done the past few months that I think are entertaining.
After waking up one morning, after having woke up in the middle of the night a couple of times, I asked Avery what the heck was going on last night? Her reply, “Mom don’t ask me any questions.”(With serious attitude) So what do I do... I ask her again what was going on? She said, “Mom I don’t want any questions!” What??? Where did she get that from? I don’t think Levi or I have ever said that. After that morning she has been saying it all the time when I ask her something!

Levi doesn’t like it but I think it is funny. After I have asked Levi something that started with his name Avery will mimic me and call him Levi and ask him the same thing. Levi then says my name is dad to you!

I think this is cute. I will randomly walk into the room and Avery will have her arm around Mason while they are watching cartoons or she will be holding his hand.

I guess our house is pretty boring because every time we leave the house and we are on our way home from our excursion,  Avery always says she doesn’t want to go home. She knows directions too. Every turn we make she will point the opposite way of home and say lets go this way. As we get closer to home she comes up with other places that we need to go.

Avery thinks all dresses and shirts with ties are called nursery clothes. Every time Levi comes home from work Avery says, “Dad, you are in your nursery clothes.” She LOVES nursery!

Avery just started saying, "Hi everybody" and she says it exactly like Dr. Nick Riviera on The Simpsons. It is hilarious!

Mason 8 months

Mason is starting to scoot around on his belly and do the army crawl. He can get anywhere that he wants to be. He especially loves to get under the tv and play with the xbox controllers.

He could watch Avery for hours! He will sit anywhere for a long time as long as he can see what she is doing.

Mason is totally a mamas boy and I love it. Others might not enjoy it as much as me but I could cuddle him all day long. He gives the best cuddles and kisses ever.

Mason loves when I clap to him and he will start clapping. He also likes to through his hands up over his head like  he is signaling a touchdown and then he keeps his hands in the air waiting for us to mimic him. Then he does it over and over again.

Mason eats and eats and eats. He would eat all day long if I let him. He will eat any baby food plus we have recently started giving him other things and nothing has ever came back out. Maybe a few odd looks, like what is this? But then he gobbles it down.

Mason has the best giggles in the world! I could tickle him all day long just to hear that sweet laugh of his. He is about the happiest baby around!

 

My favorite time of day is when its bed time. Levi puts mason to bed most nights so he can have a few cuddles too. Levi will get him all wrapped up in his blankets and he will bring him around for his good night kisses from Avery and I and every time I give him his kiss he gets the most precious smile on his face and lets out the cutest little giggle. It makes my heart happy!

And I just LOVE their BLUE BLUE eyes!