a letter

Friday, I woke up to Ethan saying "Do you like this Mom?"

Ethan wrote a letter to the Easter Bunny. It says, "Dear Easter Bunny, please hide eggs only down stairs. Love Ethan" Next to the drawing of the rabbit it says, "petter coten tail".

Ethan has worried for days that the Easter Bunny would hide the eggs both upstairs and downstairs, and it wouldn't be fair to Elliott. This was his brilliant fix to that problem. He tacked it to the wall so the Easter Bunny would be sure to see it (ya know, in the dark while he's hiding eggs and filling baskets in the middle of the night. haha). Man, I love this kid.

our "pets"

For Ethan's 5th birthday, Abby and Chris got him this ant farm. It took us until now to actually get it out and order the ants (oooops). After several weeks of waiting for the weather to be warm enough for the ants to live in the mail, they finally arrived, and we put them in their new home.

Both boys love watching them crawl around and dig their holes. The ants creep me out and I even had nightmares about them taking over our house last night. I hope they die soon. :)  

Now to get ready for Easter weekend. YAY!

Big Sky State Games 2011

This past weekend was so much fun! The boys and I left of Friday afternoon and headed to Billings. When we pulled into town, Ethan said, "It feels good to be back in Billings." I had to agree. It did feel good. Helena is definitely our new home, but Billings will always be special to us.

We stayed at Erica's house (thanks again so much), and the boys went to bed soon after we got there.

Jason had to work Friday night, but made it down on Saturday to watch Ethan's first game against his former Billings teammates. It was such a fun game to watch, and so nice to see our Billings family. It felt so strange to be back in that rink with our new team, but still with the same old people too.

Ethan played so well. It's been awesome to watch him improve this season. 

Ethan and Tyler were on each other the whole game. We are going to miss competing against him next season.  

And Denim too. He was a great mentor to Ethan, and so much fun to watch play. 

Ethan has gotten much more aggressive, and had several shots on goal. This one went in so smooth. I love watching him play hockey. He had 5 goals for the tournament. That is a record for him.  

Ethan played 3 games on Saturday, and Elliott did amazing (considering he didn't have a nap) so we treated them to ice cream.  

Sunday morning, bright and early, Ethan had his 4th game in 2 days. They played the other Helena team. Another awesome game to watch. 

The kids were all playing "All Out" for a chance at winning the championship and being that they all play together all the time, they held nothing back. It was some amazing hockey. 

They did win that game and moved onto the championship game. They lost and took 2nd in the tournament. I couldn't be more proud.

Our weekend didn't end so well, our suburban died, and we crammed into the car for the ride home. While it wasn't ideal, I love my family, and I didn't mind the drive home at all.

soccer begins

Last night was Ethan's first soccer practice. The practices are at the soccer fields, and not a school, so to keep Elliott occupied, I brought his soccer ball too. He and I had a great time kicking the ball around for the hour, and I'm quite impressed that at 2 years old he can dribble a soccer ball while running. :)

Ethan did great and was so excited to be there.  

Elliott tried to do some of the drills that another team was working on. They put one foot on the ball then switch quickly and try to not move the ball. It was so funny to watch him try. 

And, this picture is not exciting, but look how gorgeous it is here. We are surrounded by mountains. 

Now it's off to Billings for a weekend of hockey. I can't wait!

it might be..........

I realize it's not even Easter yet, but dare I say, it might be Spring? Well at least we've had a couple nice days. :)

Elliott LOVES being outside. He's working on catching.

Please note, throwing a ball and trying to take pictures is NOT easy. 

His face is a lot cuter when he actually catches it, but he blamed me and the fact that I was taking pictures for him not catching it, and the camera was banned from playing catch with us. 

He is a terror on his scooter. He goes all over the place, and at 100mph.  

And he loves every second of it. 

Just look at that smile! 

He's also very dramatic. He was tired of me taking his picture, so he decided to act like it was really hard to push his scooter. Haha. 

I think between him and his scooter and Ethan with his bike, scooter and skateboard, that poor sidewalk is going to get worn out this summer. We are definitely looking forward to a lot more warm and sunny days.

Flat Stanley does Helena

Meet Flat Stanley. He's not just any Flat Stanley, this one belongs to my cousin, Grace, in Virginia. She's a third grader, and her class is participating in the "Flat Stanley Project". You can read more about it here. Grace asked us to show Stanley around Helena, and we were excited to help out. Ethan cut him out and Jason picked out the places we went.

Stanley traveled by purse since it was VERY windy that day. 

Elliott and Ethan were both excited to get out of the house.  

Our first stop was the fire watch tower. Of course it's at the very top of a very steep hill. 

Cool huh?  

Whew! We made it!  

Stanley had a rough time in the wind, but we got a couple pictures of him by the tower. 

The tower is much taller than it looks when you get right up to it, and it's surprisingly still in good shape. And you really can see the whole city from up on that hill. It's GORGEOUS here.  

Then they stood by the statue of the miners. Helena was built around mining for gold and the streets downtown are just paved trails that were used while they were mining. They are narrow and crooked and not in any sort of organized direction. A huge pain for getting around, but an interesting fact. 

This is a trolley car downtown.  

After seeing what downtown had to offer, we went to Fort Harrison. We showed Stanley the tanks. 

The Medal of Honor Grove was closed, but I can't wait to go back and read all the plaques. Ethan decided to salute his Dad for this picture. Hehe

They even have a small helicopter there. You know we had to have a picture of that.  

Then it was back in the purse for Stanley and we headed to the lake. I am so in love with the scenery here. How awesome is this lake?  

Those were the highlights of Stanley's first trip out in Helena, we are hoping to find a few more places to go, and maybe we can even meet the Governor!?!?

a little family time

Yesterday while I was getting my hair done (thank you Andrea), Jason called to tell us he would be getting off early. He's not "that person". He doesn't just take time off for no reason, so I was certainly surprised. It was so nice to be able to have a day all together with nothing to do. We decided to take the kids to the Exploration Works since Ethan hasn't been able to go yet (and keeps begging). Of course the kids loved it.

But so did Jason. He was totally into building the best water setup.  

This is one of the exhibits Elliott and I hadn't done yet. It "freezes" your shadow on the wall. This was fun for everyone. So here they are making the shadow....... 

and if you look close (it's much better in person), when the bright light goes out, they move away and the shadow is still on the wall. They stood in all sorts of crazy ways. 

After we were done there, we walked next door to the carousel. None of us had been there yet. 

Elliott didn't want to ride an animal so he chose this. It's like a teacup ride on the carousel (puke).  

The rest of the day was pretty uneventful, but it meant a lot for us to have some carefree family time.