You know, Ali.....

If you know Sarah you might have heard of Ali. Ali showed up about 3 years ago when Sarah was in preschool. She started telling us stories about her fairy friend Ali. I asked her preschool teacher if she had been talking about fairies or read a story about a fairy named Ali, she hadn't. Ali goes through things that Sarah goes through, hears about or wishes happened to her. Ali has a mom and dad. Her mom used to drink coffee until she stopped because they are Mormons and Heavenly Father told them to stop(just to be clear I may have a caffeine addiction, but its strictly soda). She has a little sister named Ruby who gets into all kinds of trouble that Ali has to help her out of. She also has a brother named Brian.

When Ali first showed up a was a little worried, because she seemed so real to Sarah. Anytime Sarah started in on an Ali story (You know, Ali-they all start the same) we would hurry and remind her that Ali was pretend. Now the stories start: You know, Ali-my imaginary fairy... I've stopped worrying about Ali, because I realized that she helps Sarah figure life out, and deal with what's going on around her. For example once one of our neighbors crashed on her bike, well then Ali crashed on her bike and was hurt and sad, but she was ok. I know that someday Ali will disappear, and that will be kind of sad. Ali reminds me of what an imagination Sarah has, and I hope that she never looses that. I thought I should take a minute to write about it, before we all forget about Ali.

Picture This

Here are some pictures that I have been wanting to post. Let's go in chronological order, starting with April Fool's Day. It is our little family tradition that I mess with our food on April Fool's, typically dinner. This year Tiff and Carter were with us (Mike was flying), Shelby's friend Krista also joined us for dinner so I went with the classic meatloaf cupcakes. I was certain that Carter's reaction would be the same as Shelby's the first time I made these. She was so excited about having cupcakes for dinner, that when she realized they weren't cupcakes she was MAD, so mad that she wouldn't touch my fried egg sundae that was made with lemon pudding and ice cream. Carter surprised us all by just rolling with it, he wouldn't eat the mashed potato frosting, but that was because he's going through an "I don't eat potatoes" phase.

Our dessert was fish sticks and peas. Don't these look awesome?! The 'fish sticks' are wafer cookies with peanut butter spread on the outside and then rolled in corn flakes. The 'peas' are made from laffy taffy. The best part (other than the cookies being really good) was that Shelby was nervous to eat them, even after she told Krista that she thought they were made with cookies and some kind of cereal. I LOVE that even though she's totally on to me, I can still get her!

Here is my new coat closet! Yay!

This is the school room. The art above the bed was painted by Shelby and Sarah just this week. I still have more decorating that I want to do, but we love going in here for school, it is such a bright, happy room. I should have taken a picture that included the curtains, they are white with colorful circles made from dots, they look great with the quilt. Mom, do you remember this quilt? This was my final Laurel project (the YW program was a little different then) I took this quilt with me to college, each circle is tied with yarn in the matching color. It was sooooo much work, but I still love it today!

And now for some Las Vegas Highlights.Here is Shelby outside her world headquarters. We like to tease Shelby that she was named after the Shelby Cobra.

This is Shelby's favorite CobraThis is Darren's favorite.So, I guess its a really big deal if you get Carroll Shelby to sign a piece of your car, like the dash board, or maybe the mirror cover on the visor. You can actually send them to him and for $250 he will sign them. So when you visit the factory, you get to sign the wall. I figure for our four signatures Mr. Shelby owes us $1000. The kids love the Rainforest Cafe, we go there for lunch everytime we visit, not because the food is great, or because its cheap(its neither of those things), but because the atmosphere is cool. There are animal statues all over that move, and about every half hour there is a thunder storm. Its pretty cool, and the girls love it.We also love a visit to M&M world, the girls like the 3D movie. This time I decided I wasn't getting sucked into buying M&Ms there, because they are stupid expensive, we can find a Smith's later and buy as much as we like, and still have money for our favorite Thai food!

So, there you have it. Hope you enjoyed a little look into our lives this past April.

What did I just do?

I registered for the Pony Express Days 5K! Holy crap! I know a 5k isn't that long, but I've never done a race before and now I'm a little, no a lot, nervous. I printed out my training schedule, and figured out that I should start training this week! Holy Crap! Good thing I have a run planned with Mandi tomorrow. I've always toyed with the idea of doing a 5k and when Mandi decided to run a half marathon I decided that I would give it a go. So, after talking with Mandi today I went ahead and signed up. I'm excited, I'm not looking to do anything, but finish and run the whole thing. Tiff is supposed to be doing this with me, so here we go.

Also, on another note. We went to Las Vegas last week. Tiffanie had a conference and it was a great excuse to visit Melanie. You can get an overview of our trip on Melanie's blog, and I promise I will post some pictures soon, not just of our trip, but I want to show off my April Fools day dinner, and my school room and coat closet (I was thinking today that of all the improvements we've done on our house the closets are my favorite).

Well, wish me luck as I train for this run. I'm reminding myself that this is supposed to be fun!