Lost School Bus

Last week Cruz had a substitute bus driver. In the morning he arrived at the stop about 7 mins. early. There were quite a few kids that weren't at the bus stop yet (Cruz was). I wonder how many parents had to take their kids to school that morning?

So, we wondered what would happen when he came home. He usually gets home about 12:17 to 12:20. I think the latest ever was 12:26, and that was the first day of school. Well, it was 12:30 and still no sign of the bus. I told Karl that if it wasn't here by 12:35 I was calling the school. At 12:34 we see it coming. It is coming from a completely different direction than usual (it wouldn't even be the direction he would come if he did the route backwards). We can see two stops from our house. He goes towards the other one first, stops at a different place than the stop is supposed to be, and then tries to do a u-turn on our tiny little street. So finally here he comes, toward our stop. The stop is right across the street from us. He stops clear down the road, and I see Cruz and the other little girl get off. As the bus drives by our house I see the bus driver reading a paper (I assume it is the route). None of the Kindergarteners are in their seats. They are all standing at the front of the bus. I asked Cruz why all the kids were at the front and he said the bus driver was asking them where to go! So, at 12:40 Cruz finally made it home. From the looks of things, we're lucky he made it at all.

Fun Easter Weekend

On Saturday morning our neighborhood had an Easter Egg Hunt in the park behind our house. The kids had so much fun. There was a pretty good turn out, and a ton of eggs. Our kids ended up with about 80 eggs.

After the hunt we went to visit Grandpa Schempp for his birthday and spent the day there. The kids got to color their Easter eggs at Grandma's house, and they loved that.

When we woke up on Easter morning the Easter Bunny had come and filled the kids baskets and hid all their eggs.

After church we took Easter pictures of the kids, then each of the kids took a turn hiding the eggs for the others, and then we had our traditional ham dinner. YUM!

If any of the pictures are too small you can click on it to enlarge it. We had a great weekend, and hope everone else did, too. Happy Easter!

Freedom Rock, Well Turn It Up Man!

Okay, so I came across this on YouTube. Karl and I were dying. Does anyone remember this? It was a commercial from the mid-80's. This commercial was ALWAYS on. I almost bought the record, not the cassette, or CD, the record.:)

Friends, Food, & Fun

My friend Claire and her family moved to Branson, MO a while ago and they were here visiting for a few days. So last night Natalie hosted a little get-together. It was so fun to get to spend a little time with Claire and her cute family, and of course to see everyone else, too. You can never go wrong with good friends and good food. Mandy, thanks for the link to the cute blog backgrounds. I jumped right on that! Claire, you are so much fun. I miss you. And Natalie, thanks for being such a great hostess, as usual.

We're In Business!

Everyone probably knows that we've been working for months on trying to get this business ready to go. Well, it's official...we're in business. For those who don't know what we're doing, it's creating family disaster plans for people. The business name is My Family's Disaster Plan. The website is http://myfamilysdisasterplan.com/ . I'm also putting it in my links. Check it out, tell us what you think about the site (looking for constructive criticism), and feel free to create a link to it. We're not taking out any loans to start up, so we have a $0 advertising budget. We are really relying on our website and word-of-mouth at this point, so do us a favor and tell people about it. Thanks!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Karl woke up early this morning and made breakfast for us. So Cruz, Kenyon, Mara, and I woke up to a festive breakfast of green pancakes and green milk (Mara calls it "fairy milk"). Thank you, Karl!

Fireworks War 2007

I thought this might give people a fun look my family background, you know, where I come from. This is a little slice of life at the Stokes'. This video is taken at my Mom's house. It's of my brothers and some of their friends having a fireworks war. It's pretty entertaining. For those of you who may not understand the concept of a fireworks war, you basically shoot fireworks at each other and try not to get hit. I've been in a few myself, and they are a blast;) but definately nothing this intense. Firework wars are a fairly regular occurance at my family's home. I'm glad one has finally been documented. So, this is where I come from...kind of explains a lot, doesn't it?

Throwing Rocks

One of my kids favorite pastimes is to go to the park behind our house and throw rocks into the pond. We haven't been able to do that for quite some time. It's not quite as fun to throw rocks onto a frozen pond. So, the pond finally melted and the last week has been just beautiful (not counting today) so a few days ago the kids got to go throw rocks into the pond, at last. They had sooo much fun. Of course, Kenyon kept putting his feet in the water, with his shoes on, and we had a few near misses between rocks and heads, but that's typical. We all had a great time.

I just have to add that I am so loving being able to go outside and actually feel the sun warm my skin. It is heaven. I am sure all you other Utahns know what I'm talking about. It has been a long, cold winter. Finally, spring is arriving. I am thrilled!

A Bike for Mara

Mara got a "new" bike yesterday. Our neighbors were doing some cleaning and said they were going to take it to DI unless we wanted it. It is such a cute, girly bike and in great condition. What more could you want? Mara is thrilled. As a side note, she also got three jackets, a snow suit, and a scarf. All very cute. So, today she got to try riding it. I was very impressed that she was already trying to pedal on her first day.

Cruz vs. Mom (Mom Loses)

Cruz went in to have his cavity filled today. They gave him the laughing gas. I was a little worried about how it would affect him, and with good reason. Anytime he has been put on any kind of painkillers or anethesia he gets VERY aggressive. We have two broken dressers to show for it. He pulled them over. He throws things, hits people, it's very strange. Anyway, today the gas started to take effect. I leaned over to ask him how he was doing and apparently I got in front of the movie he was watching and he couldn't see. Rather than say something, he hit me right in the face. Wow! So a little bit later I was checking on him again. I guess I'm a slow learner, because I got in front of the TV again. You guessed it, BAM! Right on the face. Later after it had all worn off Karl asked him why he hit me. Cruz said, "I didn't know what I was doing." I believe him. He was pretty loopy. So the moral of the story is... if Cruz is on laughing gas, don't get in front of the TV.

"I'm Going to Leave"

If you have seen "Open Season" you may remember the scene where Beth and Shaw are arguing. During this exchange she calls Shaw a knuckledragger and he calls her a veggieburger. Mara picked up on this pretty quick, and started calling Karl a knuckledragger. So, Karl and Mara have started having these little name-calling battles. It seems that this time Mara has had enough.