My Mother's Day

Mother's Day was so special for me this year. On Mother's day morning, Jason let me sleep in (which is a HUGE gift in itself) and he and the boys cleaned the whole house while I was sleeping. They also made a beautiful breakfast of french toast, sausage, eggs and O.J. I also received some pretty daisies and my favorite cereals: Raisin Nut Bran and Fruity Pebbles. Below is a picture of my flowers. The cereal did not last long. Jason also gave me a yummy strawberry short-cake dessert. Carole gave me a vase with flowers and a cute post-it book. One of the best parts about my day was Jonathan's talk in primary. He read the book "I Love You Forever" to the primary and talked about how his Mom taught him about Jesus and his sacrifice for us. I was so touched-he had me in tears. Thanks so much for a great day. Love,
Dacia. A.K.A. Mom.

My awesome boys

I would title this post Happy Mother's Day but it is days past and that would not make sense. So, I will show you all how awesome my boys are (yes, I am including Rob in "my boys") and the present they gave me for Mother's Day.

A while ago I told them that for Mother's Day I wanted a gardening box to have more space to plant this year. Rob was wonderful and went to Lowe's, got the wood and spent a good portion of his Saturday putting it together. He is awesome! Then we got some really great dirt and Rob, Peter and I filled up the box. Peter was such a big help and in the first picture you can see what he and Will did after it was filled up. They went around and picked blossoms from different trees and "planted" them in my box. Peter told me, "look how pretty I'm making the garden box." They were so cute. Then the Saturday before Mom's Day we planted everything and it was so great! I love to garden and my boys are such great helps. This is the final product with our pumpkins in place. Let's hope they grow and flourish.

Then the actual Mother's Day was great. Caleb, Peter and I went for a nature walk in the morning and they had such fun. Then they sang in Sacrament and Peter was so cute with his first time. He was so confused where to go to sing but he was so sweet up there, and Caleb of course sang all the words. My boys (including Rob) are awesome and I love them all. Thanks for the great day, guys!

Vacation time!

I will make this short because I need to go clean and organize the vacation stuff rather than sit in front of the computer. It was fun! It was filled with coughing kids and some sleepless nights (we kind of all caught a cold). But it was also filled with relaxing, lots of time with family and fun on the beach. So, on with some pictures.

One of our first activities was an Easter egg hunt after all of the family was together on Tuesday. It was awesome and left for some great memories! The eggs looked really cool with all of the colors on the sand. Then as we were waiting for the boys to come down a tractor came rumbling along and would have smashed all of our eggs had we not gone out and stopped him. Then we had some competition by the seagulls who came to open up the eggs on their own. Crazy! But fun!

The boys had a blast at Sea World. We loved the killer whale show and the shark encounter. Caleb loved the rides at the Sesame Street play ground area and Willy, Peter and I fell in love with the dolphins and got soooo close to touching some. It was a sunny and fun day.

My boys loved playing in the hot tub. Caleb was the only one that would play in the other pool, Willy would have but it was too deep for him. So, all three of them spent some time enjoying the really warm water and splashing.

Finally our last day at California was great! This was our best day at the beach and both Caleb and Peter agreed. We played in the waves, the boys searched for seashells, we wrote a message for all to see (seen in the picture), and Caleb's favorite part: he got buried in the sand! It was a family thing, we all dug the hole, then helped cover him up, took some awesome photos, and then just when his feet were falling asleep we helped him out. It was great! And now we are glad to be home. Glad to be out of the truck after that LONG drive and the boys are rediscovering their toys. :) We left when it was snowing in Utah, had beautiful weather in California, and came back to more snow in Utah. Now, off to normal life!

Real San Diego Pic

This is a pic of the kids doing our Easter Egg hunt on the beach--on Tuesday.... These kids don't have the speed thing down just quite yet--they like to stop and open the eggs to see what it in each one before putting it in their baskets.... sheesh. who taught these kids how it's done?!

San Diego

Happy Spring Break!

No, this is not an April Fool's joke, we really did this today. Caleb wanted to make a mutant snow goon and we had fun doing it. Not your typical Spring break activity but you do what you can in a Utah Spring. :) See ya in California!

Sleepover success!

Ya know, there are some sleepovers that just need to end early. Kids are tired, kids are at each other, the mom is just ready. But this sleepover could have gone on longer, it just ended so that it would end on a happy note. :) I think it was the best one ever. We went to Granny Gray's house last night and that was wonderful entertainment for the boys. Then they all went to sleep fairly well and in the morning they resumed their usual play. Setting up clubs with the sleeping bags, sliding down the stairs in the sleeping bags, playing dragons and swords and portals and making up their own rules with memberships and everything. What made this sleepover great was that it snowed during the night and the snow stuck! It was also fabulous packing snow so we (excluding Jonah who chose to remain indoors) headed outdoors and built ourselves a fort. It was a great fort! The boys had fun throwing snowballs at each other with the fort, and working together. Too bad the sun came out and melted it. :( But after the fort was done we came inside and my Gray boys introduced Dacia's Gray boys to snow ice cream. It is a Rachiele family thing and it is sooo good. Well, Jonathan was not too into it but he was also complaining of cold from being in the snow.

Good times were had by all. The boys could have gone on forever, they love hanging out with each other. But like I said, I ended it simply so we could have all happy boys and they would be left with happy memories instead of someone getting too tired and then someone else crying. But goodness, the sleepover ended at 3:00pm I would think that was long enough! As we were driving away from Dacia's Caleb was on major sleepover let-down. He was so bummed that he could not be with them longer and he just wished he lived at their house. What cute boys! We love our cousins and we just wish the other three were here to play with us more (that is a shout out to you Jackson, Douglas and Cooper).