Classic Fun Center

Grandma Bartlett took the grandkids to Classic Fun Center for some bouncing and skating.

Here is Serenity looking sweet.


Nate came and decided to rent some rollerblades. After that he went into "the blast zone" and thoroughly enjoyed pelting little kids with Nerf balls. Later he took the bigger kids to play laser tag. His character was Chuck Norris and he was quite pleased with himself when he got the highest score!


Isaac, Abram and Joseph liked playing in the "Jungle"


Ben was really cute and not afraid to try all of the bounce houses.


Even Colleen and Lydia got in on the fun.


Pretty Kate!


Cameron looked so funny down in this hole!


Here is Ben jumping with excitement!


Kate and Cameron


I was surprised Kate went down the big slides at all. Once she tried it, she had a blast.


Thanks for the fun night!

He's a Wolf!

At the Blue and Gold banquet last month Isaac received his Wolf.


I bought this cool ribbon to wear so he doesn't have to pin my shirt.


He chose the "round of applause" for his cheer.


After this I was called to be the Wolf Den leader.

Eli is 2

On Valentine's day we celebrated the February birthdays with the Bartlett's. We ate Hawaiian haystacks and then ate cake and ice cream.

I got Nate to decorate this beautiful Elmo cake! Didn't he do a great job?


Lydia's cake was made by her mom and it turned out so cute!


I love that smile!


Two little two-year-olds!


So sweet!


Neither one of the birthday kids wanted to blow out the candles so we had to help them! Maybe next year!

Utah Gymnastics

They boys brought home from school a free coupon to take the whole family to watch a meet of the gymnastics team up at the U of U. We decided to take the kids as an off track activity. The day we picked to go happened to be a free day to ride TRAX.


Kate


Eli


Eli with Daddy


Mommy and Kate


We stopped at Chili's first to have some dinner.


Eli enjoyed the chips and salsa and didn't seem to mind they were spicy!


This was the restaurant Nate and I went to on our first official date!


Here are my boys drinking water and chocolate milk at the same time! Weird.


Eli told daddy to put his hood on, so the two of them matched and then said, "Take a picture mommy!"


Isaac and Joseph had a fun time dancing to the music at the meet.

We brought our binoculars and the kids had fun watching the girls do their tricks. Once they saw the cotton candy man they couldn't rest until we bought some. Eli tasted a little and would have nothing to do with the stuff! We rode the train back to our car and drove home. It was a nice night.

100 days!

Joseph has now had 100 days of first grade! It sure is amazing how time flies! Joseph has a great teacher this year who has really helped him improve his schooling! We love you Joseph!

Happy Birthday Eli!

Sunday was Eli's birthday. He has now officially entered the terrible two's!

Here we are getting ready to open presents.


Eli likes playing with Play Doh in nursery so we got him his own set.


See how thrilled he looks? :)


He also got this fridge ABC set.





Eli has started asking to sit on the potty and actually had some success, so we gave him some underwear! He is doing this a lot earlier than all three of my others!


Eli likes Elmo so I made these cupcakes for preschool.


He was very pleased with them.


Happy birthday, big boy! We love you soooo much!

TV Trouble

Just over a week ago, Rebecca and I sat down to watch a movie after getting the kids to bed.  About five minutes into the movie, we heard a loud pop and then a constant whirring noise coming from the TV.  We also noticed that the display was now black and white.

As a gadget geek, I immediately saw this as an opportunity!  We've had this 50" rear-projection DLP TV for about five years now and I don't know how much longer the bulb is going to last, so I saw this as a prime opportunity to get a new TV.  Costco had some nice Vizio LED-backlit LCDs  in the 47"-55" range that were looking mighty tempting.  However, I did a quick search on the internet and found that the likely cause of our TV problems was a bad color wheel.  This part can be had for about $110 and the guides for replacing the part seemed pretty detailed and straightforward.  So rather than spend $1500+ on a new TV, I decided to attempt to repair it myself.

Today the replacement color wheel arrived, so I delved into the innards of our TV and was able to replace it without causing irreparable damage to myself or the TV.  When I finally got to the color wheel itself and lifted off the mount, this is what I found:

Nice huh?  This is what the color wheel is supposed to look like (broken on the left, new on the right):

So after a week without our TV(and Wii Fit and DDR3), it's finally working again!