Stopping to smell the roses

Here are my three babies today in an impromtu photo shoot. Their hair isn't done and they aren't in matching clothes but they are just as beautiful to me as ever because this is what they look like in real life. I love when they are all smiling and together in a picture, mostly because it doesn't happen very much because usually one of them is either napping, crying, running away, or throwing a tantrum. But this morning was a good moment. Leah asked if she could hold Porter for a minute and if I would take a picture of it and at first I almost said no because I had breakfast to clean up and diapers to change and phone calls to make and a million other things to do but she seemed so happy and really wanted to hold her baby brother so I pulled out the camera and was just going to take one or two but then Porter was cooperating and Abbie wanted in on the action too so I kept snapping away and got the picture above.

For the picture below, Leah was so happy to be holding Porter all by herself since I usually have Abbie hold him when I do sibling shots. Even 5 months later she's still so proud to be a big sister!
Good thing I stopped to "smell the roses" and take some pictures today so I'll remember these days of soft baby skin, little chubby hands, pudgy bellys, and big blue eyes. I love my babies!
Here are some more pictures of the kids together that I took a couple of weeks ago. They love hanging out with Porter on the playmat and helping him with tummy time.

Easter and General Conference

We had a great Easter this year! I took the girls to an Easter egg hunt that our ward was putting on at a park and they had great fun getting their dozen eggs and opening the eggs to see what surprises were inside.

Here's Leah going for the pretty colorful rainbow ones

Abbie's strategy was finding the bigger pink or orange ones

Leah's basket

Abbie's basket

Enjoying their bounty

General Conference was also Easter weekend and so the night before, I put together these little conference journals to hold all the papers and activities I had printed off for Abbie and Leah to do while listening to the sessions.

I found most of these ideas online and just printed them off and then included markers, scissors, ribbon, glue, and snacks/candy for the Bingo game. It was so easy and the girls really enjoyed them and stayed busy most of the time with all the different activities. For those who are wondering, I had a temple sewing card, lots of pictures of prophets and apostles to color, match the tie to the speaker, prophet finger puppets to color and cut out, Easter eggs to color and glue to a basket, color by number (topic), Conference Bingo cards, etc. Most of the ideas I found here: http://www.alittletipsy.com/2010/03/lds-general-conference-easter.html and http://lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=ae20e975d2a2b010VgnVCM1000004d82620aRCRD&locale=0

Leah loves to color so it was easy to keep her entertained with just markers and paper

Abbie loved cutting everything out and is getting better at it everyday

What a great way to spend conference, at home with the ones we love

Happenings this month...

We've had a lot of fun this month with the kids. We've fished with cookies, played outside in the nice weather, painted pictures, raced cars at the annual Pinewood Derby, and jammed to music. Here are pictures of all the fun:

How do you catch a little girl? Dangle a cookie on a string!

Finally got it!

Abbie found this picture of these cookies the next day and kept talking about the fishing game we did with them. She loved it!

Leah trying out Porter's carseat

Breaking out the bikes

Leah loves the swings

I love that you can see the flowers on the bottom of her shoes

Abbie is starting to get the straighten then bend legs thing down

They both love the sandbox the most, they usually come home with their shoes and hair full of sand each time we go to a park with a sandbox

Teeter-totter-ing

Another day at a different park and guess where they are most of the time? In the sandbox!

Building cabins with the Lincoln Logs, Abbie is pretty good at copying the picture on the box and making most of it by herself

One of the few times I got out the painting stuff. They love painting, coloring with markers, crayons, pens, etc., anything with lots of color but I just hate cleaning it all up so we don't do it very often. I know, I'm mean! This is at the beginning while it was still pretty clean. By the end of this session, there was paint all over Leah's clothes, the floor, their hands and faces, and about 50 painted pictures and it took me almost an hour to clean up everything. They loved it though so I should let them do it more.

Leah spelling her name with pretzel sticks. What a smartie-pants!

Jared and Abbie with their Pinewood Derby cars

Abbie loved having her own car to race this year instead of just watching Jared race his mousetrap car from last year

Jared's Death Trap car which was a motorized car with wires that were conducted through the mousetrap part. It actually worked pretty good and he had a lot of fun making it.

Just for fun he added a glow stick to the bottom to make it light up underneath when it was on the track

Like last year Abbie and Leah loved racing up and down the track following their car

Porter studying Daddy's car, getting an 8 year head start on designing his own car

Jammin' with the "Real" Butler Trio featuring Abbie as the lead guitarist

Leah as the lead singer

And Porter on the keyboard!

Whew, we've been busy! Hope you enjoyed seeing what we've been up to!

Grasshopper Pie anyone?

For April Fool's Day this year we had some friends over for dinner so I decided to play this joke on them. One of these slices of pie is not what you think it is. Can you guess which one is not real and what it might be made of instead?

Scroll down for the answer...

It looks pretty real, right? The fake pie is made out of mashed potatoes, crushed oreos, and food coloring! I gave our friends and Jared a slice of the mashed potato pie and me the real one and as we ate it, I started saying things like "Oh, this is so good, yum, etc" and Jared took a bite for good measure also (he was in on the joke). After 1 or 2 bites, we said "You don't have to eat any more, April Fools"! It was pretty funny and our guests took it well. They said they were prepared to eat the whole slice, just to be polite so I'm glad we stopped them. Of course, I got out the real pie and we all enjoyed eating that after laughing about it and seeing how similar the real and fake slices look.

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I can't take credit for this joke, though. We had this played on us by some other friends a few years ago and I've always wanted to try it so this year it worked perfectly. Did you or someone you know play a good joke on someone or get April Fooled? Tell me about it, I might want to try it next year (not on you, though, don't worry)!

Cute countdown!

Leah recently learned how to count backwards from 10 to 1 and it's just so cute. She's asking at the beginning of the video if the countdown starts with 1 or 10 with but then can do it all by herself after that. What a smart cookie! (she's only 3, btw!)

When life gives you lemons...

Make lemonade!

Abbie's been begging me for weeks to make lemonade and let her sell it outside like they do in a Max and Ruby episode and so finally we gave in and let her make a stand inside (since it was too cold outside at the time and I don't think anyone on our street would buy it anyway). Anyway, here she is, open for business!

Pouring some lemonade for Leah. We used a recipe that Abbie had in a "Little House on the Praire" cookbook and it was pretty good.
Leah paying her a penny (we're pretty cheap around here!)

My little entrepenuers!

Enjoying the "fruits" of their labors. Abbie had to pee twice as much as usual that day since she drank so much!
Now if I could only turn that enthusiasm for selling lemonade into cleaning their rooms and finishing their dinner...hmmm.