Various Fun Photos From Utah

For Family Home Evening we sometimes play hide and seek. It's fun because there are so many places to hide at "Magra's" (Magra is the nickname for Diona, my mother-in-law, because one of the oldest grandchildren couldn't say "Grandma" and it stuck for all the rest of the grandkids).

Andre fit perfectly in the linen closet. But I must say, I had the best hiding spot of all. Hunter and Maren couldn't find me for 10 minutes and were starting to get pretty worried when I finally gave away my spot behind the coat-hanger. You couldn't see me at all with all those winter coats hung up and piles of boots at the bottom. Ha! I'm the winner!


This is when we saw MegaMind 3D at the theater. It's a really funny movie. I laughed out loud several times. I had not expected it to be that good. Poor Andre, who can't sleep through movies, had refused to nap that day, and it was a 7 o'clock show--the crazy things I do to spend time with my busy husband--Anyway, the moment the credits started rolling, he finally gave in. Poor thing.


The other day, Paulo said, Mom, I want you to be beautiful. You should dress up in a dress with nylons and wear red lips. I was surprised that he'd say such a thing, and reluctant, but I made a deal with him that if he wouldn't complain and get into his pjs, I'd get dressed up "really beautiful". Afterward I forgot I had the lipstick on, and planted a bright red lip-print on Andre's cheek. Here you can barely see it. Andre's funny. We have a tradition of making funny faces in the mirror.

Some afternoons when school is out, I walk the kids over to Westridge elementary in the wagon, and we play at the park. Actually, the kids play, and I walk around and try to get some exercise. It's been pretty muddy. Andre wiped out at the bottom of the slide. Once I even let Paulo drive Maren's power wheels jeep over to the park and he just drove around and around on the huge pavement pad at the back of the school. I love days at the park.



Andre loves being around his cousins. Here he is blowing bubbles with Roman. Cute little boys.


My sister, Selena, visited recently and she had a coupon to a new restaurant in Provo called Pirate Island. The waiters and hostesses are all dressed in pirate costumes. Paulo was in character the whole time scowling down everyone and grunting and yelling whenever he had something to say. He'd even slam the table from time to time. It was hilarious. Don't you love his home made mustache?


The Orem library has a pretty good movie collection with new releases and all. You can borrow a movie for $1 and keep it for a whole week. So Hunter and I have been watching a bunch of David Lean films. Hunter just loves how beautifully filmed Laurence of Arabia and Dr. Zhivago are. Now we're going on to watch a bunch of movies from the Criterion collection. We watched the first documentary made about an Eskimo family that lived near Hudson Bay a long time ago. I think it's called Nanook. It was so interesting! Even the kids sat and watched the whole thing with us. Then we just had to build an igloo afterward. Hunter did it. Isn't it great?


I've needed to give the kids haircuts for a while. They actually sat still this time! Thank you, Toy Story 3!

Valentine's Day

On Valentine's Day, we had no one to babysit, so we brought out the nice china and I put together a nice candle-lit dinner. Hunter bought me a beautiful CD of Michael Dowdle's primary songs on classical guitar. I love it.


The boys bought me Fererro Roche. I love these hazelnut chocolates. My mom always had these and would give us a little taste. I guess now that I'm a mom, I get my own box.

The boys got treats of their own...too many.

By the way, Hunter took me to a movie the following week. Maren got us in for free since she works at the theater. Hooray for cheap dates!

Paulo's 5th Birthday!

Can you believe my boy is five years old?! I was looking at some of his old photos, and I realized he's losing some of his baby fat. His chubby cheeks aren't so chubby anymore. At least the dimples won't be disappearing along with them.

Paulo has known for a long time that he wanted a space party. He helped me with the invitations and the idea for the space room and everything.

Hunter pulled the space room together with two black light bulbs and lots of glow-in-the-dark star speckled poster boards all over the walls. The kids just went crazy in there running and dancing around to the space music.

In keeping with tradition, I just had to make a special cake to go with the theme of the party. This is my first 3D cake, though. They were just baked in some metal mixing bowls.

Paulo was blowing his hardest and the candles didn't even flicker. Don't you love Andre's face in the background?

Opening presents from all his generous cousins and a few special friends.

My eldest nephew, Elias, finally busted the space shuttle pinata. Are you surprised? Look how tough he is. The twenty cousins immediately swarmed the pile of spilled Milky Way bars, Pop Rocks and other cool candies. It was rather chaotic, but somehow only one child got trampled. Sorry DJ. He's okay, though, don't worry.

What a fun party! I love you, Paulo! My big boy!

White Christmas

It's official. We've left our lovely life in Pasadena to return back home to Utah and begin yet another adventure! Hunter has started his own business named Dyvergent. We now live in Provo in my good mother-in-law's basement.

Christmas was cold and white. The boys didn't seem to mind. They immediately wanted to play in the snow and would often just sit and watch the snow flakes fall. I guess seeing the snow was a big deal to them, especially for my California boy, Andre, who probably doesn't remember when we visited last Christmas.

Charging up the stairs to the Christmas tree.

Digging into the stockings for goodies.

A Christmas orange, in memory of Grandma Mann

Andre's main gift, a set of Bob the Builder die cast vehicles. He opened them one by one. He loves these characters.

Paulo overjoyed to be opening his main gift, his very own space helmet!

The visor opens at the touch of a button, and another button says "Mission control to pilot, all systems are go. Prepare for countdown. 5-4-3-2-1-Blastoff!"

Hunter had the idea to make these space PJs instead of buying the full costume. I just bought a white sweatshirt for both the boys and sewed on the patches that Hunter got from JPL.

I may just have to prepare myself for sending Paulo into space one day. He's quite determined.

Somehow Santa knew my kids get nervous at the doctor's office. This toy medical kit should help with that. ;)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Well, for the first time in my life, I hosted my own Thanksgiving dinner. We figured since we're moving in a few weeks, we shouldn't spend the money on traveling home for Thanksgiving.

Since there are just five of us, we made a mini feast. We made half recipes of our usual potato casserole and sweet potatoes. We made a nice salad and had stuffing, gravy and cranberry sauce. Since I don't know how to cook a turkey, and I prefer chicken anyway, we simply bought a rotisserie chicken from Pavilions. It was so tender, and tasty, and so easy to reheat! :)

The best parts, I think, were Jon's delicious artisan french bread, and his apple pie. We've been so lucky to have Jon stay with us. We eat like kings. In fact we were worried that our Thanksgiving feast would just seem like any other feast we've made, but we were wrong. I feel like we put way more effort into this one. I was in the kitchen the majority of the day. Anyway, it was worth it.

This year I'm very thankful that Heavenly Father's been taking care of our family. I've literally seen example after example of this. Whenever we've had a need, Heavenly Father has provided for us with specific things. Just one example is my dear friend, Corina, who has been so generous to give us clothes for the boys. Just as soon as I would begin to notice the kids needed new sizes, Corina would show up to church with a new bag of clothes for us. And when I've needed a little extra help when things are busy, or when the kids are sick, dear friends have offered to lighten my load in different ways. I'm just very grateful, because I know Heavenly Father knows me personally, and that he answers my prayers--usually through the generous and inspired actions of latter-day "saints".