The girls started ballet this week. They had really been looking forward to it. They are required to have their hair completely pulled back. This is difficult for Tansy considering her lack of hair. I did manage a ponytail, and a barrette held the rest back, but it still looked really funny. Sydney is almost too old for the class that she is in, but I thought that Tansy would do better her first time around with her big sister there. They had a lot of fun and can't wait to go back this week. I forgot the camera so I'll get pictures another time.

Sydney finished up her soccer season this week as well. She is quite the little player. I have had parents from the opposing teams come up to me after the games and comment on her ability. A far cry from the joke of a soccer player her mother was. She is going to play coach pitch baseball this summer.

Ben had a down day on Friday after a big exercise, so we decided to head to the temple. It is three hours away, and we don't have the money in the budget to spring for a hotel, so we go out and back in one day. Our friends, the Fosters, go too, and we take turns going in while the others watch the kids. We grab some dinner afterwards then head home. It is exhausting, but definitely worth it. We hope that if we go regularly, the Lord will bless us by sending us to a base closer to a temple. We'll keep our fingers crossed.

On Saturday, Sydney got to participate in Operation Spirit with Ben. It's an activity for elementary school aged children to experience what a deployment is like. She got a phone call at 8:00 a.m. instructing her to report to the Deployment Center between 8:45 and 9:00. She got to have a briefing, get a pretend shot, check out a lot of equipment and tour some vehicles. She had a really fun time and really loved her face paint.. On Saturday night, I was still pretty sleepy from Friday's adventure and was trying to get kids in jammies as quickly as possible. This is what happened:Poor Tyler. The girls thought it was hilarious. I must admit, I found it pretty funny too. Once everyone was ready for bed, we settled in to watch Megamind. Fun family night.

This morning the kids decided to be superheroes. Sydney was Animal Girl, Tansy was Flower Girl, Zack was Stripe Man, and Tyler was Green Man. Creative names, huh?

Sometimes Zack and Tansy just can't take any more of the busyness of their lives. That's when Tyler gets to finally be in charge. The kids had been watching Netflix on the Wii. Tyler knows that he is not supposed to touch the remote. Do you love the look of glee as he finally gets a chance to watch his choice? Tyler has also discovered that when he is in trouble, he can smile very sweetly at me and it totally works. I hate that it works. On Friday, I had had enough. When he ripped a book I had told him to put down, I was upset. He tried the smile again, but I held firm and told him he was going to time out. Being the fourth child, he knows what this means. Here he is in his very first time out. He looks a little less upset than he did most of the time because he was interested in the camera. He looked appropriately remorseful and did sit there the entire time.

Yesterday was beautiful weather in the 80s. Once we finished what we had planned, we were going to pull out the swimming pool. However, the air pump is missing in action. We looked everywhere except, of course, in the one place it is. While we were looking, we discovered a bag of water balloons we had purchased last year. After thirty minutes of water balloon prep, it was all over in about two and a half minutes. Zack started chucking them two at a time once he got the hang of it.

Fortunately, our neighbor across the street had a sprinkler on so the kids got good and wet after all.

Ben is working 12-hour shifts, seven days a week right now. Not terribly fun, and even more frustrating with the government shutdown talk. Congress has managed a bill that lasts until April 15, so we SHOULD get paid. I'm not holding out a lot of hope that a budget that was supposed to be finished six months ago is going to magically be finished in a week. We will see.

On Monday I firmly planted both feet in my 30s when I celebrated my 32nd birthday. My mother sent me a card that was supposed to sing, but the batteries were dead when it arrived. Ben decided to pull it apart and rewire it to a D battery to play the song. The kids thought that was awesome. Sydney's first grade music program was Thursday night. It was a lot of fun since they were singing Disney songs. Be Our Guest was hilarious because, no matter how many times they got back on track, they would quickly get ahead of the music by a full line.

General Conference kind of blindsided me this year. March just went by to fast. I don't have stuff ready for the kids, but I'm going to print some things off this morning. Thank goodness for the internet.

A couple of my friends and their kids came over last night while our husbands were at the priesthood session. We made doughnuts last night right before the guys came home so they were nice a warm when they got here. Making doughnuts during priesthood session has been a joke between me and Ben for most of our marriage (which is approaching nine years, so it's been a while). In his talk at the priesthood session in April 1999, Elder Russell M. Nelson gave a talk which started like this:

It is a joy to be with you tonight, brethren, and wonderful to see so many young men with their fathers. We are assembled because of our desire to hearken to the leaders of the Church. But this congregation is unique. I don’t see any mothers. Not one of us could be here without a mother, yet we are all here—without our mothers. Tonight I am attending with a son, sons-in-law, and grandsons. Where are their mothers? Gathered in the kitchen of our home! What are they doing? Making large batches of homemade doughnuts! And when we return home, we will feast on those doughnuts. While we enjoy them, these mothers, sisters, and daughters will listen intently as each of us speaks of things he learned here tonight. It’s a nice family tradition, symbolic of the fact that everything we learn and do as priesthood bearers should bless our families.

The part about the doughnuts stuck with him and we would always joke about how sad it was that no one was making Ben doughnuts. I decided to give it a try this year. I found a yummy recipe on allrecipes.com. I'll have to make more next time. They were so good. Yet another tradition to add to our conference weekends.

I can't believe Ben's week of leave is over. We were fortunate that the nature of his current job didn't require him to come in this last week. When things went crazy with Libya, we were worried because everyone we knew was working 12-15 hour shifts. However, Ben got to stay home and enjoy a break. We didn't do anything very exciting. We ran some errands that we have been too busy to do, got the garden started (good thing we are using pots since the snow probably would have killed our stuff if we hadn't brought it in the garage), and just hung out. Ben and I each got a turn to have lunch at school with Sydney, which she loved. I squeezed in a couple of doctor appointments. Sydney scored a goal at her soccer game on Thursday. I love to see how excited she gets when it goes in. She plays so hard and is such a good sport. It's nice to see her have that success. Tansy got to go to the open house for the preschool she will be attending in the fall. She is so excited. She would have started right away. Everything was amazing. She was practically dancing the entire time. We've had a good time here.

Picking up where we left off last week, we had Tansy's birthday cake on Sunday night. Her birthday was Monday, but with soccer practice and Ben's long work hours, we moved it up to give ourselves enough time.

Tansy loves Pinkalicious. It is her favorite book. She even has a Pinkalicious doll. For those of you who don't know, this is Pinakalicious:

After being set on a Santa Claus cake for weeks, she changed her mind to a Pinkalicious cake. This is what I came up with:
Not bad if I say so myself. She loved it but was confused when she couldn't find her S in her name. Next year, no cursive.

We invited her best friend, Lily who lives across the street to join us.

We saved presents for Monday. We had to do SOMETHING on her actual birthday. Since Sydney had a fever and was super congested, she was home from school so we opened presents during Ben's lunch break. They were a hit. Especially the pillow pet from Grandma Olsen, the puzzles from aunt Kristen, and the always popular cash from Grandma Bennion and great-grandparents.

I managed to capture one of my favorite faces during the festivities. Such a funny kid!

I lost track of the date and realized that three of my four kids were wearing green on March 16. We managed to find more green for everyone the next day. I told the kids that if they didn't wear green I would have to pinch. Zack pointed a finger in my face and said, "No, Mom. That not nice." Something is sinking in.

I had a Relief Society activity that evening, but I made green eggs, green muffins, and green milk for dinner. I only had gel food coloring so I had to shake the milk really hard to get it green. Because of that, it was really foamy and the kids refused to drink it. Two out of three ain't bad.

I feel like we just wrapped up basketball, and here we are at Sydney's first soccer game. She had a good time. I just love that she likes being active.

On Wednesday night, Ben surprised me by telling me that he had taken leave this entire week and asking me what I wanted to do. He is usually gone by 6:40 a.m. and gets home around 5:30 p.m. so I have really missed him while he has been on this assignment. At first I was speechless and couldn't think of anything. Don't worry. I have since compiled a list. Too bad Sydney has to go to school, but we need to stick around here right now anyway. I'm so looking forward to this.

Life has been blissfully boring around here. So much so, I didn't even blog last weekeend. However, on Monday, Zachary did this: I was sure he was in the family room watching a show with Tansy. When I looked in there, Tansy was alone. I called for Zack a couple of times, but didn't get an answer. I went upstairs and this was the face of the little boy who came running out of my bathroom. Isn't he pretty? What's sad is that all of the makeup is in the right place. Silly boy.

I forgot to take the camera yesterday so I have no pictures. After lunch, we headed to Independence. We went to JCPenney and had Tansy's portraits taken. Tansy wouldn't part her lips so most of her pictures have a strange, closed-mouth smile. We picked out some good ones then headed for Chuck E. Cheese's.

That place was crazy. We got $20 worth of tokens and told the kids that when they were gone, we were done. We were there for over an hour. Tansy was so happy. She has been asking to go there for her birthday since December. They redeemed their tickets, then we headed to the kids' favorite restaurant, Pizza Street.

After filling up on pizza and ice cream, we came home and went to bed. I was trying to get ahead of daylight savings time. Curse you, springing forward!

Sydney woke up with a fever and a headache today so I only sent Tansy and Zack to church. At least I only had to get two kids ready this morning. It made things a little easier.

Anything else worth mentioning has been lost in the fog of my brain. Hope I got everything important!

On February 12, I had my first piano recital. These are my four little guys. They did such a great job. The two in the middle had done a recital before with a previous teacher, but the other two were a littel nervous for their first one. I was so proud. I'm still surprised that people actually let me teach their kids. I am so not qualified, but we have a good time.Zack convinced me to let him try out the potty. After about 10 minutes of this, he was done. It's a start.

Sydney finished up her basketball season. She did a great job and is a lot tougher on the court than anywhere else. She is number 2.

We went to the bowling alley on base for a birthday party for a friend of ours. Sydney is the only one of our kids who had been bowling before. Everyone had a good time, including Tyler who ate pizza for the entire two hours. Seriously. He put away three slices.

Valentine's Day finally arrived. Sydney couldn't have been more excited. You would have thought it was Christmas. The night before, she said, "We'd better get to bed so Valentine's Day can come." Here she is all dressed for her party at school.

This is just another example of Tyler the Monkey Man. He climbs on everything. Can you see his awesome haircut? It's shorter on top than I would like, but what can you do?

And here is our latest edition. His name is Aslan. Some friends of ours are moving to Alaska and don't feel like they can take both of their cats with them. We were going to take both, but the other one didn't seem to like us, and my friend really missed her. We gave her back, but we got to keep this guy.

Tyler is just now coming around. We got him Wednesday evening, and Tyler has been terrified any time the cat was in his field of vision. Today he was crawling right up to him and making happy noises. Just don't ask him to touch the cat.

Sorry about the gap in posts. I missed one Sunday just because I was busy, and the last two weeks I have been sick. My cold tricked me and started getting better only to slam me with a nasty sinus infection. Yucky.