Cupcakes!

Last week Josh and Isaac went on a field trip to the zoo with Isaac's Kindergarten class. I am so zoo'd out this year since we've already been twice in the past year, so I asked Josh to go with him (Josh didn't go with us the other times). What a good dad! He forgot the camera though, so we don't have any pictures of their trip. They had a lot of fun though. While they were gone on their fun trip, Parker, Bryce and I decided to make some lion cupcakes! We had fun making the cupcakes and decorating them. Even Bryce frosted and decorated a cupcake. They turned out pretty cute!

Mother's Day

I had such a good Mother's Day yesterday! I am just so thankful to be a mom and have my three sweet little boys. It's the greatest blessing ever. After church yesterday we went down to the river and had a picnic for dinner. We played at the river for a bit then had our picnic. We had shrimp salad pitas. They were SO good! Bryce had a blast playing with a water spout that they had there. He got so wet! Afterward we stopped at a little playground and let the kids play for a bit before we headed home. It was such a nice day. I'm glad I got to spend the day with my family.

Finally Moving Forward!

Last Friday the lot owner's loan closed to remove the lean from the property! That means that we can go ahead and start building. YAY! On Saturday we went to the property with the builder and plotted out the house where it will be on the lot. It's going to be so cool! We're excited. I took a picture of the lot from each of the four corners. I want to take pics through the whole building process. It'll be fun to look back on. We're supposed to start excavating this week! We'll see if he can get the excavator lined up *fingers crossed*. Here are the four pictures. The last pic is just a cute one of Bryce. He had fun playing in the tall weeds out on the lot. : )

Enjoying the Warm Weather!

Today was such a pretty day that the boys and I decided to head to the park and the library. It was so warm (almost hot!) and nice. The boys had lots of fun playing on the park and we all got some much needed sunshine. Then we headed to the library to cool off and get some books.

Bryce's Hearing Test

We had an unexpected long day yesterday! I took Bryce in yesterday morning for a sedated ABR hearing test to see if we could finally get some answers in regards to his hearing. He woke up with a bit of a runny nose that morning, so the sedation team gave him a med to help dry up the secretions (and it seemed to help), but during the sedation he ended up aspirating. : ( He had a hard time coming out of sedation and his sats were lower than they liked. I put my hand on his chest and could feel rattling. So they had the NP listen to him and she heard the "squeakiness" as she called it, and he was retracting. (He had none of this when he came in.) So they gave him a neb treatment and it helped some. They ended up admitting him and just kept him on oxygen most of the day. They did a lung x-ray and things were clear. His sats finally came back up to 100% on room air by 7:00pm and they let us go! This is the first time we've been to a hospital other than the Primary Children's for a sedation. He's never had a problem before, but I guess these things happen.

So we ended up being there for nearly 12 hours... unexpectedly. I was SO glad I brought my book! It was a long day of waiting. Bryce is doing really well today, so we're glad it didn't end up being anything serious.

As for the hearing test, they finally have confirmed (after 3+ years of testing) that he does have a mild hearing loss in his right ear. They want him to get a hearing aid in that ear. Luckily our school district has loaner hearing aids that we can try before we actually have to buy one. I'm just glad to finally know where we stand with his hearing so we know what needs to be done!

Our Easter Weekend!

For Easter weekend this year, we decided to go camping with my family. We went to Arches National Park. It was so much fun! We spent a lot of time hiking and seeing the beautiful arches & scenery. My parents were there along with my brother Tim, my sister Cammie & her hubby Jesse and baby Sydney. We have SO many pictures from our hikes that I put them all in a slideshow:

Saturday night we dyed our Easter eggs in Grandma & Grandpa's trailer. The boys had lots of fun of course, and Bryce even got in on the action a little (including trying to toss eggs and cups of dye! Hehe). We also had an Easter egg hunt out by our camp. It was fun although a little chilly!

Update

Well, as you have probably guessed, we have not yet started on our house (big surprise huh?). The DAY we were supposed to break ground, we found out that the city was going to charge us $9,000 MORE for the building permit so they could put in a new electricity transformer. AND we found out that the guy were buying the property from had some leans on the property. So obviously we couldn't start building if there were leans, and we couldn't afford the extra $9,000, so we started looking around for another property.

Josh's uncle owns a property in Payson that we considered. But after many prayers, Josh and I just really felt that we should keep trying for this Spanish Fork lot. Thank goodness for that 'Chappell Charm'! Josh was able to talk the city out of charging us that extra money!! Yay! So we are now just waiting for the guy to get one last lean off of the property and we can finally start. He just started working with the guy that is financing our loan and he's positive he can do it for him. So things are moving along slowly, and we are once again being tested in patience.

Other than that, we are all doing good. Josh's new business is doing really well and he has new clients in Blanding and Richfield now and he'll soon be doing two big presentations to get more clients in both SLC and Provo areas. We're really excited and thankful for how well it's been doing.

Isaac is doing SO well in school and just loving Kindergarten. We had his parent-teacher conference a couple of weeks ago and he's doing great. He's actually reading 3rd and 4th grade books now!! Parker is enjoying preschool and he's doing well with his reading too! I bet he'll be reading by the end of summer. Bryce is doing SO well in his special-ed preschool. His speech has really taken off since he started in January. It is so cute because he has learned to say "go to school" and he'll say it all day long and point out the window. He'll also say "Bus!" and "Backpack!" So we know he's loving the whole school experience. He's also really been memorizing songs. He's not so good at pronouncing all the words, but he does so well with the tunes. There is a song on the Madagascar movies that the kids like called "I Like to Move it", and Bryce has started singing that too. It's so funny! It's fun to see him coming home from school and "singing" songs that we didn't teach him.

That's about it for now! Just praying we can get things moving and get our house built!