April 14

We finally had a nice, sunny day! I got to hang my sheets outside and the boys got to play outside in the sandbox. They were wearing jackets/long sleeves, but they were still SO happy to be outside.

They even requested some otter pops as a treat. So I got some out of the freezer and enjoyed watching the boys attempt to figure out how to get the frozen parts up to their lips.

They both did a pretty good job. (Mommy only had to help a little bit).

In other news we also saw our first butterfly of the season. He was hanging out on the apricot blossoms, and I managed a couple of nice shots.

I am very excited for warmer weather and sunshine to stay around for a while!

Rainy Day Croquet (April 13)

Spring this year has been really cold and wet! Today was no exception. There were huge thunderstorms lurking around Utah county. While I was out running errands I took this picture of the valley:

Friendly skies, huh?

So there have been quite a few days that we have been stuck inside, watching as the rain comes down.

So this means that we have to find some fun things to do to keep these handsome boys busy!

Luckily Grandma Devereaux has sent us some fun things to play with. On this particular day we decided to play croquet inside with the fun set that we have.

Both of the boys thought that using the mallets to hit the balls around was pretty fun. The concept of taking turns was a little hard for Ephraim, but he got the hang of it after a little while.

I think that next time we will have to play downstairs, where the carpet is not so thick. Jacob and Ephraim had a hard time getting the balls rolling, but they sure had fun trying! Jacob got pretty good and could even get his ball to roll through the gate sometimes.

Before long it got to be naptime. You can always tell when naptimes comes at our house because a certain little person starts to look an awful lot like this:

While Ephraim was napping I went outside and took some picture of my pretty, wet flowers. Not too shabby, huh?

Quiet isn't always bad

Usually when the boys are being quiet it is not a good sign because it means that they are up to something they probably shouldn't be. This particular morning it was really quiet as I was cleaning up the kitchen. So I thought I should check on the boys.

When I walked into the living room I found them just like this.

So I guess this just goes to show that quiet isn't always bad! Sometimes it is very, very good!

Joe's Birthday

This year was Joe's 30th birthday! I wanted to do something monumental and exciting, but sometimes things just don't quite work out that way. I couldn't really think of anything great to get him for his birthday that didn't cost oodles of money, and Joe didn't really want a big party or anything.

So I did the best thing I could think of. For an early birthday present for my Joe, I arranged to leave the boys at the Randall's house and the two of us went for a LONG bike ride together. We drove down to the Cracker Barrel near Springville and rode around West Mountain.

It is really nice to ride down there because the roads aren't crowded. Plus we even get to drive through Benjamin and Lakeshore and past the home where Joe's Grandpa Sabey lived when he was a boy. We had a great time together, even though the weather was a little colder than we would have liked. We managed to ride about 56 miles!

After we picked up the boys we went out to dinner together too.

Then Sunday was the actual birthday. We had some yummy chocolate pie to celebrate, and Joe got to open his presents.

I got him cycling gloves and a cover for his bike chain. I also earmarked some money for Joe to spend on the nice cycling seat that he wants for his bike. My parents sent Joe a little statue of a cycling man, and his parents sent a package which included a card with $30 all in ones. It was pretty funny.

It was a pretty low-key birthday, but I think that Joe still had a good one! Happy Birthday Honey! We love you tons and bunches... even if you aren't a young man any more. :o)

SLC Trip and the Backwards Pants (April 9)

Friday morning the boys and I decided to go an do something fun. So we drove to Sandy to visit my college friend Cari. We hadn't seen each other in a while, so it was nice to visit. We went to the park for a while, but it was a bit cold and breezy. So we ended up at Cari's house.

Cari works for a vinyl company, so she gets good deals on their products. One of the coolest things I have seen was the chalkboard vinyl that she had covering one entire wall of her house. The boys thought it was the greatest thing!

Jacob loved to write on the walls and then erase them.

Ephraim had a good time writing on the walls too! After his crayon incident the other day, I was just hoping that he wouldn't get confused about it being o.k. to write on Cari's walls, but not on ours!

Then Jacob decided that he needed to color his hands too. He didn't do this by erasing the walls with his hands... no! He actually used the chalk to color his hands blue. What a nut!

We actually had an ulterior motive for going to SLC. We actually wanted to go to REI to get a birthday present for Daddy. So we stopped there on the way home.

It was a pretty good day. Later we were playing around and I took this cute picture of Ephraim. I just laughed at the way he held up the school bus for me to take a picture of it!

Then after Ephraim woke up from his afternoon nap I noticed a little something amiss with the way he was dressed.

You got it... Ephraim's pants are on backwards! Since he is only two, still in diapers, and can't exactly dress himself, I think we all know who is to blame!

Seeing Ephraim running around with his pants on wrong totally cracked me up so I had to get out my camera. I was laughing even harder when he totally didn't understand that I wanted to take a picture of his rear end, so he kept looking right at me and saying "cheese!". My kids are too well-trained!

Ephraim's Crayon Incident (April 8)

Well, it seems that Ephraim has finally had his turn to color on the walls. You may recall that Jacob did it once. I was hoping that with his older brother for a good example we could skip this childhood rite of passage. But I guess not!

I was busy cleaning up the kitchen and Ephraim proudly came into the room and told me "crayon... pishurs!". I instantly suspected there would be trouble and I said, "Uh-oh!What did you color on Ephraim?" It wasn't too hard to find:

He colored on the walls a little bit and a couple of the doors in the living room. What do you think of his art work?

Of course we had the discussion about how coloring on the walls is a no-no and we only color on paper. Then I had Ephraim try to clean the crayon off the walls. Of course it didn't come off easily for him, and his cleaning efforts didn't last very long... but I think I got the point across. Look at the face Ephraim gives me when he gets in trouble:

Could that bottom lip stick out any further?! It's as if he is saying "How could you be upset with this face?"

What a cute boy!

Easter Weekend

We had a pretty fun and laid back Easter and Conference weekend at the Devereaux Household. We decided to do our Easter egg hunt on Saturday and save the Easter baskets for Sunday. At first we were afraid that it would be too cold and wet for the Easter bunny to hide the eggs outside. It was a cloudy day, but it didn't rain so after the first session of conference while Daddy was giving the boys their haircuts the Easter bunny made it to our house!

The boys had a great time looking for Easter eggs. Of course Jacob was really fast! He ran around gathering as many eggs as he could.

Ephraim did a pretty good job too! He found almost as many eggs as Jacob did. Mommy and Daddy may have helped him out a little bit.

They both found tons of eggs filled with all kinds of yummy surprises. Jacob did this last year, so he knew what he would find inside the eggs.

Ephraim wasn't quite sure why he was picking up all the eggs, but if Jacob is doing it... the Ephraim wants to do it too.

Apparently the Easter Bunny can even hop pretty high up to hide those eggs!

After the hunt was finished we let the boys sit down and enjoy some of their eggs.

Ephraim caught on pretty quickly once he figured out the eggs were filled with CANDY! Yum!

After the egg hunt we finished up the cute Easter cupcakes that we made for our friends. I think they turned out SO cute! The boys loved them too.

When the afternoon session of conference was over, we payed a visit to the Randalls. We wanted to give them some of our cupcakes. We also wanted to try out Melinda's new photo backdrop that she generously offered for us to use.

I think I managed to get a couple of pretty nice pictures of the boys for Easter. The most difficult thing was to get nice pictures of both of them together, but with Melinda's help I got some!

Aren't these boys just SO handsome? We sure got some cute ones.

We worked on getting a few pictures of the boys by themselves as well. Jacob was pretty easy to photograph. He will sit were you tell him to and then if you are silly enough you can get him to smile at you.

Ephraim was a bit more difficult. First of all you can't get him to hold still... and then there is the fact that he is going through the uber-CHEESE-y smile stage. You know, where you get this HUGE, goofy grin with closed eyes?

Anyway, Melinda helped me out and I got two that turned out pretty well, as well as one of both boys that I really like.

Ephraim is quite the character, but he sure is cute!

This one of Jacob and Ephraim is my favorite one. Aren't they adorable?!

Thanks Melinda! It was nice to take some pictures of the boys without having to go outside... especially because it got colder overnight and then on Easter Sunday it snowed! Yuck!

Luckily the boys had tons of fun stuff in their baskets to keep them busy!

The only bummer was the Easter Baskets contained a lot of outside toys. But since we don't usually play outside on Sundays anyway it turned out ok.

Jacob and Ephraim loved the big rake and shovel for the sandbox, as well as the little cement mixer.

They also both got pinwheels, which were tons of fun.

I laughed so hard at both of the boys trying to get their pinwheels spinning inside the house. They have the best puffed up cheeks!

They also loved the instruments that we got for them. Now when we go to Music Makers we can bring out own instruments. This will be SO nice because we won't have to worry about anyone getting upset that they didn't get the instrument they wanted!

We had a nice quiet Sunday together and enjoyed listening to conference. The boys were pretty well behaved during conference so I actually got to listen to some of the talks! It was nice!

Easter Egg Dye (April 2)

The Friday before Easter I decided it would be a good day to let the boys help me dye some Easter eggs. Jacob has been very excited about it. Last year Jacob dyed eggs with me while Ephraim napped. This year I decided that Ephraim was probably old enough to help us out.

First of course you have to boil the eggs. Both the boys wanted to watch, so I had to make sure they didn't get too close!

Then we got down to business. I read somewhere that an easy way to dye eggs with little kids is to use a whisk. So I got whisks out for both of them and put the eggs inside. The boys found this an easy way to dip the eggs in the dye.

Actually the only person that cracked any eggs was Mommy! I ended up cracking two of them, so we had egg salad sandwiches for lunch that day!

Ephraim had a fabulous time dying the eggs. Luckily I had spread out plenty of paper towels because he liked to dip his eggs in several colors... often within moments of each other.

Jacob was pretty good at dying the eggs. He liked watching them turn different colors. This year we used rubber bands to make it a little more interesting. It was pretty fun and only a little bit messy.

I think our Easter eggs turned out pretty neat and the boys had a great time!