Willy's Easter

Being Will's first Easter I think that I should let you all in on his exciting day.  It started yesterday when this happened:

In the beginning

Close to the end

We were dying Easter eggs and to keep Will peaceful I passed an egg over for him to inspect. He started out innocent enough, slightly cracking the egg and just picking at the shell.  No, I am not clueless; I knew the egg would soon be mush but I figured that a kid only lives once.  Why not let him make his first Easter memories the messy, fun way. :)  The boys thought it was hillarious and I have to admit it was funny how serious he was during the disceting of the egg. The bop had to of course stay in his mouth because as you know, kids under one should not have eggs.  He wanted to try though.

Then today we had the always fun Easter egg hunt at our house.  This is Will's only shot from Easter and he did not even want to be a part of it.  He slept straight through the hunt and it was only after everyone left that he dug into all the empty eggs to play for himself.  He also went and played tennis for the first time today.  As in play I mean crawled around the tennis court watching Caleb and Peter chase after balls and every now and then he would get a ball.  It was so cute to watch him crawl around in that big tennis court with a ball being bounced between his legs as he was crawling away to explore something new.

Flowers and Kids grow in dirt!

Yesterday we got to work and planted our seeds (in cups first) to get ready for the hopeful harvest we will produce from our garden.  We like planting in cups first so we can watch the roots growing from inside the cup, it is fun.  The boys loved starting their garden, especially Will who was experiencing it all for the first time.  It was windy outside so we pulled all the gear into the kitchen and got down and dirty.  Caleb is an old pro at planting seeds, he knew what to do.  Peter was less excited to get his hands dirty but he still enjoyed placing the seeds into the dirt.  Then there was William.  He wanted to grab everyone else's cups of dirt and was really frustrating Peter.  We gave him his own cup with a tiny bit of dirt so that he would be appeased.  Then this happened:

The boys found it very amusing and William did not see any harm in a little dirt.  As Grandpa Gray says, "Flowers and kids grow in dirt."  Now the cups are sitting the windowsill of the boy's bedroom waiting for the sun to come out and help them sprout.  And I think Caleb has maybe learned his lesson on only so much water for the seeds, we do not want to drown them. :)  And when our seeds are ready to transplant outside we have these ready for the garden:

The boys painted them up so that we can put them in the garden to help us see what is planted where.  We already have three of them outside because we did some planting outside on Monday.  It was too beautiful to not do yard work and we were anxious to get our garden going.  So we planted peas and cantaloupe and pumpkin.  We will see what happens to them, these crops take such a long time to produce that I figured we would try planting now.  Happy Spring!

Continuing in the hope

Whew buddy, what a day.  And it was conference, you'd think it would have been spirit packed and filled with uplifting moments.  Well, I did have my uplifting moment but it was not until the end of the day and after much strife.  These are my boys at Conference Camp-out, a Rob Gray Family tradition that my boys love and somehow it brings us together to get us excited about conference.  

Caleb's memorable quotes from today were, "Mom, I've listened to TWO talks from conference!"  He was so proud of himself, I did not have the heart to tell him that he had listened to the first two talks of conference and he had another hour and a half to go. :)  Also Caleb said from Sister Liffer's (sp??) talk, "Mom, when you discipline me I do not learn anything."  OH BUDDY!  I think that was prophecy for the rest of the day's behavior for Caleb.  But seriously, Caleb does pretty good with catching certain phrases in conference.

Peter loved watching the choir sing and he would always point out when someone said Jesus or our Savior.  And Peter is convinced that Mary Poppins is in the Tabernacle Choir. :)

This is William at conference:

He was loving the TV and made his brothers quite upset that they could not see the picture. But he was just so happy to be right there with all the sparkles on the TV and those other people. It was great!

Anyway, back to the Hope part.  So, conference was not all singing and praising.  It tends to be "no" and "shhh" a lot too.  And that made kids grumpy, which made parents testy and grumpy which is not a good combination.  By the end of the night I was glad Rob was able to get away to Priesthood and I was looking forward to bedtime.  But even bedtime did not go smoothly.  Somehow we ended up crying, disciplining (which I wonder if I am a failure because sheesh, I am not teaching anything) and, oh brother.  But even Heavenly Father is able to get through to me and led me to a great scripture as I was reading to the boys.  2 Ne 10:23, "Therefore, cheer up your hearts, and remember that ye are free to act for yourselves-to choose the way of everlasting death or the way to eternal life."  What a wonderful message for three unhappy people, "cheer up your hearts."  Heavenly Father helped me to pull it together and to somehow end the night well.  I was able to hold Will as he fell asleep and watch him be so peaceful.  I was able to help my boys know that they are loved and in some crazy way special to me and God.  And they were able to go to sleep with a good feeling in their heart.  Thank you, Father in Heaven for helping me end the day right.  

Oh my heavens

For some reason trying to upload pictures to Blogger from my computer here in California has been harder than...well it's been ridiculous. I've wanted to put pictures of the boys on so their lonely daddy can see them (he's still in CT while we're having fun here in CA). At first it was just that they wouldn't upload at all. For some reason they've started uploading, but now they won't upload properly. The pictures are distorted and discolored. As you can see, I had an option with this specific picture to either have a floating baby head...

A decapitated dog head...

Or a...DANG IT...I accidentally deleted the only semi normal quality upload of this shot. Sorry, now you'll just have to use your imagination.
Well Cooper and Douglas were scared of Taffy (the dog) the first day, but are old pros with her now. Douglas loves to yell out 'Gawgy' when he sees her.

That's one lipsmacking slurpee there.

The rest of the pictures are of us at the park playing baseball. Well everyone else played baseball, I just took pictures. :)

For some reason Douglas has decided that if he's going to wear a hat, then it must be pulled over his eyes and he must try walking/running while this is done. So far he's run into the sliding glass door and couch, with minimal injury. I didn't try and stop him here though. There wasn't much to run into.

This is a slightly distorted picture of Cooper running the bases.

Hey look, Jackson's keeping his eye on the ball. I'm such a proud parent. All that yelling from the sidelines "Just keep your eye on the ball!" has officially paid off!

Douglas wanted in on the action too. It only took 3 throws to actually make it to Grandpa.

If you've got an itch...then scratch it. :)

Playing on the playground after the game

Douglas LOVES to slide

Yes the top of Jackson's head is a little...off.

March Middlings

Greetings from Graygoland!

First things first, our new phone number is: 435-214-0743. This is the number to contact any and all of us!

So, I know there has been silence from our shade on the slope, so I figured now was as good a time as any to break out in song...or whatever.

Jonathan turned 6! Yay. Had fun spending time with family and friends (Thanks everyone for the presents and fun!). His big present was a bicycle, which took him by complete surprise. I guess it would if you didn't ask for one. Oh well. Last year I bought him a bigwheel, but our Jon-Jon is somewhat vertically challenged, and if he sat in the seat of the bigwheel, his midget legs couldn't reach the pedals. If he scooted forward and put his feet on the pedals, then he was sitting on the bar of the bigwheel. Very uncomfortable. So he never rode the thing. He sure does love the bike though!




He also received a huge lego project. It is a big coast guard boat and tower. When he unwrapped the box and gave his first gasp of delight, he turned around and held up the box (almost as big as he is) and said "Oh cool! A shark!!" I have included a picture of the box, so you can see the shark.


Did you find it?





Jonah had a big school project this week. He had to research and write a 5 minute oral presentation with multi-media displays (pictures on posterboard) about an American figure in history. Jonah did his report on Paul Revere, and did a smashing job! "One if by land, Two if by sea..." Afterward, he and the other students presented their subjects in a "wax" museum, example below. It's hard to be "wax" with annoyingly pesky little brothers...


The boys have been inspired by their cousins to take karate. Originally, we signed them up in a kung fu class (Kung Fu Panda), but the instructor had a family emergency and the boys were stuck with karate instead. It scared Dacia's pants right off when she watched our little shrimps spar with much older, larger, heavier, experienced, and more physical students.


Dacia has had a very busy month. In addition to the runnings around and school projects mentioned above, she performed a solo in a stake production called "Woman at the Well," in which she sang some sappy, poppy LDS song as a nephite/lamanite woman who met the Savior during His visit to America. When the bishop asked her to sing the song as a musical number in sacrament meeting, she turned him down flat. "Not appropriate" or something like that. I just chalk that down to pregnancy hormones. Oh yeah, if you hadn't heard, she is pregnant. Again.


Dacia is the choir director for our ward, and we sang two songs on two different Sundays this month. She is also madly preparing our choir for Easter Sunday. She was asked to have the boys sing a prelude for Sacrament Meeting a couple weeks ago. And she greatly enjoyed singing with BYU Singers for a reunion concert last week.


Ordinary, boring routine really. Except for Spencer. He is a bit like Jonah, in that he will have entire conversations, without speaking a lick of English. The doctor thinks his progress is slow, and he should be speaking a lot more. Ha. Here are some examples. We are trying to get him to say "One, Two, Three!"








He really likes to hit things/people, with whatever he has in hand. A wand, a sword, a 5-pound pooh talking/singing Pooh Bear. None of us has escaped his fisticuffs. He likes to wait until you are least expecting it. He'll be sitting and watching some movie, and when Jonah sits down, Spencer turns around, stands up, and proceeds to whack Jonah on the head with a huge grin on his face. Jonathan will be completely absorbed in a Wii game and get clobbered on the head from behind. Dacia and I both get it when taking naps on the couch. Such violence!

Random Pics

Here's a few random pictures from before we left for California.

Jackson and Douglas were watching a movie together

Once again Mom decided to do the dishes. I really thought they were up high enough this time.

The boys decided they wanted to be Darth Vader, but we don't have a dress up Darth Vader. So they made their own. They even have buttons on their chest. So cute and creative. :)

St. Patty's Day

So we're (the kids and I) in Cali right now, but I thought I should post about our St. Patrick's Day dinner before I start in on all the fun times here in warm and sunny California.

The boys were super excited for St. Patrick's day and we had to make sure that everyone had on enough green to prevent pinching. Cooper and I made cupcakes while Jackson was at school, and Mom made an attempt to make homemade chocolate shamrocks for the top. Our dinner was a traditional corned beef and cabbage with carrots. And of course the green mashed potatoes. Super yummy!!!