Cookie Decorating with Grandma

A few days before Easter, we went to the Estioko's house to decorate "Merry Cutouts" with Grandma Wright. I think it is fair to say that everyone loves grandma. Most people would not like being so squished, but you know that Grandma loves it!

Here is Claire and Sydney carefully decorating their cookies.

And VIOLA! The final product. Claire was the only child I have left who would come with me to decorate cookies. My other kids are too old and too mature for such foolishness. But as you will see, they are not nearly too mature to receive an Easter basket from the Easter bunny.

Easter 2010

The night before Easter Claire and I did the traditional egg dying. I couldn't interest any of the boys to join us. It is a good thing I still have Claire or my holidays would be very boring. We decided to only hard boil 6 eggs, and then we dyed 6 raw eggs. Who says they HAVE to be hard boiled?

Now Easter this year coincided with General Conference. We have our family tradition of cinnamon rolls for Sunday morning conference and Easter or not, we weren't going to break with that tradition. So when Claire and I finished the egg dying, we began the cinnamon roll making.

Stone and Aiden are not much into the Easter traditions anymore. They are too old for that. But they are not too old to get a basket from the Easter bunny. And they want it hidden as well. We are down to only three kids at home for Easter morning now.

Lindsey had to work at the bakery on Easter Sunday. So we brought her Easter basket to her. Her basket is the white one on the counter. She stood on the corner with her bunny ears and a sign advertising the bakery. She said it was absolutely freezing. I mailed an Easter basket to Richard at BYU-I.

This was our Easter table. I decided to try my hand at lamb this year. So we had ham and lamb, along with alot of other good stuff. Of course Grandma and Grandpa Hoopes joined in the fun.

Two and a Half Years in the Making

This is the first time in two and a half years that all five of my children have been home for dinner! I had forgotten what a big crowd we can be. Who knows when this will happen again. Hopefully it won't as long next time.

"Sisters. Sisters. There were never such devoted sisters." Lindsey decided to go around the table and take MYSPACE photos of everyone. So here she is with her favorite sister, Claire.

And with her "twin" as people at school used to say. I don't see it.

Like father like daughter. Lindsey is like her father in many ways. Don't you think Richard's eyes could be as pretty as Lindsey's if we could put make up on him?!

Interestingly enough, Lindsey is also very much like her mother, and not just in appearance. She has many of the same personality traits. I like to think she got the best of both worlds.

And here is a classic MYSPACE photo with Lindsey's favorite brother.

Okay, so maybe this is Lindsey's favorite brother. It is kind of hard to tell sometimes. She seems to love all her brothers.

And on a final note, here is the whole gang. Hmmm. Who do you think is the character of our family? That's okay, we love her anyway!

The Current Hoopes Family

Compare this photo with the family picture below. Who has changed, and who has stayed the same?

Claire's 11th Birthday

We had Claire's 11th birthday party last Friday. I picked her and her friends up from school. I don't have a photo, but I decorated the car with streamers and helium balloons. And tied cans to the bumper to make noise. She loved the attention the car attracted at school.

We played a game called "cheese-head". We put whipping cream on a hat, and a partner had to throw cheese puffs at it. The winning team was the head with the most cheese puffs on it. Claire and her partner won.

Claire didn't want a cake and ice cream. She wanted Jello. So I bought Jello cups and added whipped cream and sprinkles to them. She is blowing out her candles here.

Claire and her friend Amy have made up nick names for each other. Claire calls Amy "cream puff" and Amy calls Claire " cheese puff". When it came time to open presents, this friend's card was as big as the gift. Claire opened it up and found a sign that read," to" taped to a bag of cheese puffs, and "from" taped to a box of cream puffs. That was as much fun as the gift itself.

At the party we decorated cork boards. The girls really took this assignment to heart, and did a terrific job on their boards. We clued buttons to push pins as well.

A Fun Day Skiing?

Stone and Claire both had a desire to learn to snowboard. So we took a day off from school and work and headed to the mountains. We purchased special equipment and lesson packages for them. They were totally excited as you can see. Aiden was also totally excited, he just giggles on the inside.
This is a photo of Claire up on her snowboard. She is the tiny one in yellow.

This is Stone snowboarding. He loved it. He fell a lot, but didn't let that stop him from getting back up time and time again. He was determined to master the skill.

Aiden took snowboarding lessons when he was younger. So he already knew what to do. He took off on his own. Big Richard and Aiden had fun taking the "scary" ski lift together.

UH-OH! It wouldn't be a Hoopes family outing if someone didn't break a bone. And Claire was the first to oblige. She got in two runs, and then fell on her wrist suffering a buckle fracture. I am really grateful we purchased our lesson package on a week day special, because they don't give refunds for injuries. So most of Claire's fun day of skiing lasted about 30 minutes. Then it was 3 1/2 hours in the lodge with Mom.

At one point Stone and Richard came in to rest and check up on Claire. Claire's body language speaks for itself. She was bored and in pain. The First Aid station wasn't allowed to give us any pain medication. But they did say we could buy some ibuprofen in the store. Unfortunately the store was all sold out. So Claire just dealt with it. After I took the photo I decided it wasn't very attractive of anyone. So I told them to try again, and this time to look good.

So this was the result. I think they all look much nicer in this photo. Stone and Claire tease me because they say I stage every picture. I think they will thank me when they are older, and all our family pictures make them look good.

This was the end result of our family outing. But wait! What happened to Stone?! Well, we were ready to go because I had made a 2 o clock doctor's appointment for Claire. Richard went to call Stone in to the lodge. Stone had just completed a run and was at the bottom of the hill, when Richard called out his name. Stone turned to look at Richard and lost his balance and fell. We thought maybe he had sprained his wrist or something. Certainly he couldn't have broken anything with something so slight as falling from a standing position. But at the doctor's office, x-rays revealed that he had fractured his ulna and median distal bone? of the thumb. Let see, that means Stone has broken his right arm once and his left arm three times. Not to mention his three foot bones he has broken. The doctor didn't seem too worried about it. He said his own son has broken as many bones.

Aiden's 17th Birthday

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One of my friends was telling me how nice it has been to have Aiden hanging around her house lately. I explained to her how Aiden refuses to have friends come to his house. He never wants to invite them over to our house to hang out. She suggested that I have a surprise party for him, and force him to have friends over. I liked the idea, and with his birthday just 7 days away, I went into full swing putting together a last minute surprise birthday party for Aiden. On Friday evening around 6:45 I asked Aiden to run to the gas station to get me a soda. Anyone who knows me, will know this a common occurrence and not suspicious in the least. His friends had all parked up at Grandma Hoopes' house waiting for the all clear signal to come down. We were waiting for Claire to tell us he was coming as she was put on look out upstairs. She some how missed the headlights driving up. Aiden walked into the kitchen holding my soda wondering why so many of his friends were just hanging out around the couch. In a rather staccato method people starting yelling "Surprise!" He was surprised.

The party was held in the basement. In the front room was air hockey, fuzeball, and videos. In the bedroom was the food and band hero.


After about 2 hours everyone left. I was afraid everyone got bored, and as soon as the first movie was over, they all wanted to go home. I was feeling really bad thinking it was another disastrous party by Mena. But then about an hour later they all came back in and went down to the basement again. Apparently they had just taken the party outside, and were walking up and down Cole rd. The party ended about midnight because that is most of the kids' curfews. All in all I would have to call it a success. Fewf!