Bonnie's Field Trip

I love sending a camera with my kids on field trips.  They love to take pictures and I love seeing what was important to them.  Here are some from Bonnie's field trip to the Fish and Game Outdoor Expo.

A Desert Tortoise

A Bearded Dragon

Bonnie's best friend Hana with a Boa

Bonnie with a Monitor Lizard

A view out the window of the bus

A self-portrait

Easter and Plants

I forgot to take a lot of pictures this Easter, but here are a couple of the eggs that we colored.

 Here are some pictures of our grapes and our lime tree this spring.  They were taken around Easter time.

Unfortunately this summer we got some horrible little caterpillars on our grapes that have completely destroyed our plants and most of our grapes ended up being very tiny and many were eaten by birds.  We will definitely be spraying them next year with whatever chemical we can find to destroy those caterpillars.

The limes, on the other hand, have been fantastic.  We have picked them to use on Mexican dishes and also to make limeade.  We've had so many of them and we have loved having that tree!

April Fools' Day

Here are some pictures of our annual April Fools' Day dinner.  This tradition started a few years ago and the kids will not let me forget it.  They start talking about it several weeks ahead of time and so far it has lived up to their expectations.

Family dinner at our house

Ben eating dessert

Gwen eating salad

Jared eating dessert

Bonnie eating her toast..."Good toast"

Apparently I turn into a pirate on April Fools' Day

Nate eating his dessert

I love this tradition and I hope the kids continue to love it for years to come.

In March Gwen was Student of the Month for her class at school.  I am so proud of her for making good choices at school and being such a great student.

Gwen and her teacher, (in blue) Ms. Conrad.

Gwen with her student of the month certificate.

Visitors Again... Yay!!

We love having visitors come.  My sister Jess and her family were able to come visit over our Spring Break.  We had so much fun with them.  Unfortunately I didn't take a lot of pictures, but I did take some, and Jess took some and between the two I have quite a few pictures to post.

Ben took this picture of our movie night.  Apparently our kids wore us out and we didn't make it to the end of the movie.

While they were here we went to a concert for the Piano Guys.  We took our kids and we got a baby sitter for Kylie because it was kind of a late concert.  It has been a while since I've had to look for a baby sitter and I am once again grateful that I don't need to do that on a regular basis.  We were able to have a Brazilian BBQ with Becca and Nick.  We also went bowling and all the kids beat all of the adults.  I will add that the kids did have the bumpers up, but still it was a pretty poorly bowled, but really fun game on the adults part.

One of the days they were here we were able to go to the Mesa temple.  I always love going to the temple, and it was particularly nice to go with Jess and Spencer.  It's always great to have family there.

The gardener in the back bombed our picture.  It was really funny.

 Jess also took our family pictures again.  The reason for doing them again was pure vanity.  Ben and I had a not very healthy year last year and we were trying to do better this year.  We have both lost quite a bit of weight since January so Jess was kind enough to retake our pictures.

January

March

January

March

 The morning Jess and Spencer left, my kids treated them to a live, outdoor concert.  It was a lot of fun.

The band.

Bonnie discovered that heels are not as comfortable as they are cute.

The finale

I just loved this shot with the holes in the knees and the very large sandals

The band posing

The Audience

Thanks for coming and visiting Knudsens.  We loved having you!  Come back any time.

Gwen Field Trip

Gwen went on a field trip in February down to the Sonoran Desert Museum in Tucson. I wasn't able to chaperone this field trip as it was from 8 in the morning until 6 at night.  I let her take the camera and these are some of the pictures she took. I love seeing what my kids take pictures of when I send them out with the camera.  I will not post all 105 pictures.  

Katie, Zoe, and Danielle

The seat on the bus.

Gwen

A dried up piece of cactus that was an owl home

Mountain lion paw print

 

Evelyn, Cameron, Katie, and Gwen

A statue of a bird

Gwen the Desert Tortoise

Pretty Flower

Rattlesnake

The lights and buttons on the bus

Gwen loved her field trip and I am so glad she got to have this adventure.

Braces Faces

At the end of January Nate and I both got braces.  I don't love them and Nate really, really is not fond of them, but in the best interest of my son, and just for pure vanity's sake for me.  We both have braces for anywhere from 18 months to two-and-a-half years.

 By the way, I had to retake this picture about 6 or 7 times to get Nate to give me a decent smile... punk kid (whom I love, just for the record).

I know that my posts seem to all come at once, or not at all.  Hopefully I will have a while of them all coming.  We'll see how it goes.