Birthday Boy!

 I can't believe this little guy has been a part of our family for 5 years now! He has a whole lot of personality packed into his tiny little body and he definitely keeps us on our toes. We sure do love him!

We had a lot of fun celebrating Matthew's birthday. He wanted to have a party this year (I think we're falling into the party every other year thing, which is fine with me!) and specifically requested a pirate party. We held it at a park and kept it really low key. The kids played for the first little while and then we rounded them up for a treasure hunt. Jon went all out making a really cool treasure map and led the kids on their hunt for treasure.

Their treasure was little cardboard treasure boxes that had a few little goodies in them. They filled the rest of the their treasure box with candy from the pinata that we broke open after the treasure hunt.

 Buddy and I had worked hard making pirate cupcakes...he was so excited about these.

As people were eating cupcakes he decided he HAD to open his gifts...he just couldn't stand it anymore! So before we knew it, he had already opened one and was onto the second one. And then it just dominoed from there. Every present was his favorite and a couple of times he asked, "How did they know that's just what I wanted???"

On Matthew's actual birthday (the 14th) we had a little family party after dinner. He chose macaroni and cheese and hot dogs for dinner and then he got to open the couple presents we had gotten him.

Emma was so sweet and insisted that she wanted to use her money to pick out 2 presents for him. He LOVES the squishy little ball thing, and thought it was fun that she got him the 3 pack of water guns so all 3 kids can have a water fight together.

A Lego set from the grandparents...between this set and the 2 other sets he got, he and Emma have been in Lego heaven the last couple of days.

A remote control car! Ellie calls it a yobot (robot) and the kids think it's the funniest thing. We've had a lot of fun with it though.

 We were so over cupcakes at this point, that I made mini fruit pizzas (he also took these for his preschool birthday celebration). They were tasty!

And a birthday wouldn't be complete with a birthday interview:

What is your full name?  Matthew   Do you have any other names?  Steven.  I can't remember the whole thing.

How old are you?  Five.

What's your favorite color?  Pink

Who's your best friend?  Steven

What's your favorite animal?  A zebra. I mean a lion.

What do you want to be when you grow up?  A artist.

What's your favorite movie?  The Eon Kid

What are some of your favorite books? Umm...I don't have any favorite books.  No? Not your Ninjago books or your Jake and the Pirate books?   Actually yeah, my Ninjago books.

What makes you happy?  When somebody be's nice to me that makes me happy.

What makes you sad?  When someone punches me that makes me sad.

What's your favorite food?  Reeses Puffs

What's your favorite song?  Umm...Jesus wants me for a Sunbeam.

What games do you like to play?  Um, the punching game... Oh, boxing on the Wii? Yeah, boxing and baseball, actually and tennis.

What's your favorite toy?  The truck I got for my birthday.

Lots of Pictures

I have been so unmotivated to blog lately. I often find myself composing various blog posts in my mind of things that I don't want to forget...and then I forget because I never write it down. It's a vicious cycle.  :)  So instead of some great post, you get cell phone picture overload! Just random pictures of our life lately.

Fun picture taken at a not so fun trip to the library. I had been feeling a little nauseous, but that was nothing new, so we went. I ended up spending our whole time there in the bathroom throwing up. Then we booked it to the car where I lost the rest of whatever little was left in my stomach while happy little families watched in horror. It was pretty awesome...BUT, the picture is cute!

Ellie and her BFF

They love reading stories together

Our favorite fro yo place- Menchies! The kids and I have no shortage of excuses to go there as often as possible.  :)

This boy and his sleeping habits! He has a bunk bed, and sometimes he'll sleep in one of the beds, but he usually prefers to pile all of his blankets on the floor. A couple weeks ago Emma started sleeping in his room again and now they sleep in one of the beds together. 

Sunday family walk by our house

 For family night a couple weeks ago we set up our croquet game at Emma's school. It was so much fun (and I totally won! Though admittedly the competition wasn't that fierce). 

Ellie has a thing for mascara...except she thinks it's a hairbrush. Super annoying! I have found her like this 3 times now and she's always so proud of herself.

Matthew learned how to ride his bike! We are so proud of him. After a year of trying to get him to try it, all it took was promising him that if he just tried to ride it we'd let him play the Kindle. He ended up taking off right away and was having so much fun that he completely forgot about playing the Kindle....:).  

We are in the (slooooow) process of making over our living room. I'll post pictures when it's all done, but I just had to share the pillow that I made. I bought the red one, but made 2 of the flower print one...I am really proud of myself for sewing something (even though it was really simple) and actually having it turn out.

Jon took Emma and Matthew on a hike a couple weekends ago. They LOVE doing that kind of stuff with him.

Notice Matthew's jacket? It's on upside down! Haha! I kept looking at the pictures thinking something looked off. Finally I realized there was no zipper on the front of the jacket and the hood was hanging down his back...funny boy!

We helped wash headstones at the Golden Gate National Cemetery for the Mormon Helping Hands service project at the end of April. We love helping with these service projects every year.

 Lunch was provided after....the best burritos in all of San Francisco. And they were tasty!

We had a mom and dad bird take up residence in our bird house a few weeks ago. Now it is full of noisy little baby birds. I wish we could see them!

Painting canvases with Dad before church on Sunday. Dad's always the fun parent!

 Emma's school does Art in Action, where each class has a mini art class once a month and does an art project based on an artist or style or picture. One of our libraries has displays for each of the schools to showcase some of the art pieces. So, it was a fun surprise when I took Ellie to the library this week and saw Emma's painting up on the wall. Isn't it such a cute picture?

17 weeks! Looking chubby, feeling good. We find out the gender next week!

The Best Way to Announce

I posted this on Facebook....on April Fools Day.

Baby Farrell #4 coming October 2013!

I had a 12 week ultrasound that morning, so it was the perfect opportunity to announce. It is definitely real, and very true (I wouldn't try to joke about it if it wasn't) and I had so much fun reading people's responses throughout the day trying to figure out if I was serious or not.

We are so excited for this little one to join our family. Sometimes the thought of FOUR kids feels a little overwhelming, but we know this was the right time for this baby to join our family and we can't wait!

Friends Fun Run

 Emma really wanted to put together a kids' fun run over spring break, and I thought it was a great idea, so we spread the word and started planning.

The big day was yesterday. We had 20 kids in all and everyone was SO excited for the big race. This was really low key and we were just kind of going with the flow but it turned out great. We had the kids run as many laps as they could on a path that circles a baseball field. It ended up being a really hot morning, so halfway around most of the kids were slowing down and wanting water. Some kids ran the whole way....some (Matthew) walked the whole way pouting. Eventually everyone finished. I had bought some plastic gold medals for everybody that we passed out and then we had some snacks. Afterwards several of the kids decided to go for a second go around, while others opted to go play on the playground, dig in the dirt, or make sure all the snacks got eaten.  :)

We had such a great time and can't wait to do this again!

 

 

These two crack me up. They walked the whole way around holding hands. And just look at Matthew's face...haha!

One of the moms led the kids in stretching/cool down exercises. It was super cute.

Going for their victory lap

 

This little guy soaking up the sun cracked me up. Such a cutie!