The mean, the green and the funny

 St. Patrick's Day was a busy day around here! It's my mom's birthday, I spoke at the ward Relief Society birthday party, and my soon to be sister-in-law, Allie Eager had her bridal shower. My little men and a couple of little green men seemed to be busy as well.

Although, the size of these green footprints on the toilet make me a little nervous about how big these leprechauns actually are?!:

Abram thought it sounded fun to make a leprechaun trap, but he had evil designs because he planned to do worse than just trap the leprechaun:

His plan was that the leprechaun would take this zip line, which had a catch towards the end of it that would make the leprechaun come to such an abrupt stop that he would lose his grip...

And fall into this box where there was a great risk that he would be impaled:

Sadly, you can see from the above picture that the leprechaun was indeed wounded as some blood was found on one of the golf T's.

This is the note that angry leprechaun left for Abram.

Meanwhile, Pace, who truly believes in these little men, received this note and scored all the Rolos:

I can foresee some back-and-forths in the future between Abram and this leprechaun.  Personally, I wouldn't want to mess with a leprechaun; they always seem to come out ahead.

One night for family home evening I put a penny in the bottom of a small container and then filled it with packed flour.  I turned it all over and dumped it out on a plate and everyone took a turn slicing at the flour trying to keep the penny from tumbling off the top. The person who caused the penny to tumble had to then root around in the flour with their nose and pick up the penny with their teeth: 

Anni working on her yoga, doing a pretty great "tree pose":

Track season has begun and I took Isabelle to the running store to get some good shoes and spikes.  It thought it was pretty awesome that they videoed her running and then put it into slow motion to see how her stride looks to help her find the best personal shoe:

About a week ago, Pace got excited about moving the names around on the family home evening chart.  I asked him what he was excited about being in charge of and he said "activity".  I asked what he wanted to do for the FHE activity and he immediately said, "Go to Gravity Factory!" I hadn't realized how much he wanted to go, and he has watched his brothers go plenty of times with friends.  It was pretty clever of him to figure out a way to get to go:)

I have a lot of fun dressing this little pumpkin:

Pace's class at school had an animal parade.  The students picked a favorite animal and learned a lot about it and then presented it to parents.  Pace picked the Nurse Shark:

I'm so glad that Katie has kids up here that she comes to visit because it's a highlight to have her come visit so much!!: 

I love my sister!: 

Twins!:

Sunday visits at grandma's house:

I love seeing all these cousins together!:

Isabelle is finally finishing driver's ed. Her parents were kinda slow about getting that ball rolling...:

One day I gutted the boys room and gave it a good cleaning.  It was SCARY. I started out with the intent to throw all but 10 outfits away for each boy because I was sick of everything being all over their floors.  I theorized that they had too much stuff and not enough room for it, so therefore some of it needed to be eliminated.  Then I got into their drawers, where -lo and behold- NO clothes were kept.  Hopefully we can keep up on this better in the future...

This picture was taken when I was beginning to feel like the end was in sight.  And it still looked pretty bad:

grisly!

 A couple of Sundays ago Pace and Abram were jumping on the trampoline and Abram moved just as Pace made a dive for him.  Pace - and mostly his teeth - hit the metal of the trampoline.  He came in howling, and as this is a familiar sound, I must admit that I didn't rush over...I did, however, go see what was wrong, and this time it was something serious!  He was bleeding pretty good and I couldn't see really well what was happening, but it looked like his tooth was knocked out of place.  Since it was a permanent tooth, I had the thought to put it back into place, but when I looked again, I could see that there was nowhere to put it!  It was fast Sunday and Shawn and I kept getting faint just looking at it because we had been fasting for so long.  Shawn even had to keep sitting down.  

We were expecting four college students to show up for dinner within the hour (Kami, Maddie, Isaac Farber and Micah Bradford) so Shawn took Pace to community care while I finished dinner preparations.

Community care said they weren't qualified to help and said we needed to call our dentist. We were finally able to get hold of Dirk Strobel who was so wonderful and came right in and met Shawn at his office. He said that Pace's gums were caved in.  He also said that this was the perfect time for Pace to get his teeth knocked out, if it was going to happen, because they were still growing in and he thought it would be possible that his teeth would be okay and not die. We will see with time!  

Pace was super brave getting stitches. I kept him home from school for a couple of days since he couldn't close his mouth,  his lip was so fat, and therefore he couldn't eat.

Abram felt really bad that he moved when Pace dove for him and gave him a lot of attention when he got home.  Nolan loaned Pace his phone to play some video games to get his mind off the pain. It was sweet to see how the kids took care of Pace:

Abram also made his famous smoothie for Pace:

Belle's Balloom

 Before we moved to Pendleton, Isabelle was really into ballroom, so when we moved back, we signed up again.  Sadly the year has been less-than-stellar with a teacher that shows up late for every lesson, who also doesn't teach dances for the competitions until the practice before a competition, and uncommitted partners.  This will probably be Isabelle's last year.  I LOVE to watch her dance so much though!  

Nolan's choir

 Nolan really has a gift for singing - even during a year of dealing with his voice changing. Since he was really young, I have been amazed at the way he can pick out harmony on songs.  He has been in the "Select Choir" at school and seems to really enjoy it:

Nolan is in the center and is farthest to the right.

Moving towards adoption

 We had court a couple of weeks ago and they finally decided to change Anni's plan from reunification to adoption.  It will probably still be 6 months to 1 year before adoption finally happens, but it's a step in the right direction! 

I told Anni that I wanted to take her picture so that I could always remember the day.  She plopped down on the floor and did this pose:

What a character!  We are so glad that she's in our family. (And that Isabelle teaches her how to pose so well:)