Aaron's promotion

This past Thursday was a very busy day at our house!! :) It started off with Barth flying in on a red eye flight from Las Vegas and making it home in time to walk out the door 30 minutes later to go and see Aaron's Kindergarten promotion!!! It was such a fun morning and Aaron was sooooo excited about everyone getting to see him graduate. The nice thing is that they release the siblings of the kindergarten students so that they can come to the promotion as well! Aaron woke up with a bit of poison ivy that morning, but it didn't stop him from going to his big day! Here he is coming in to get on the risers. Lucky for us, our last name is at the end of the alphabet and so that meant that he got to stand on the ground so we could see him really well!
Here are two of the classes in on the risers, ready to serenade us. I wish that there was better lighting in the gym because so many of the pictures came out dark that were zoomed up. The children sang us 4 songs. Hopefully I can post a video of the last one that they sang about 1st grade because it was so very cute! As they were singing the first 3 songs, Brian turned to me and asked if those weren't the same songs that he sang when he graduated. Of course, they were. But they were still sooooo adorable. I think that one of my favorite parts of the whole thing was when we started off with the pledge and you could hear the Kindergarten group, loud and proud, above everyone else, saying the pledge. Hearing their sweet little voices made me proud to be an American!

Here is Aaron, waiting his turn to graduate. The lady with the microphone is his teacher. The other lady is our principal.

Yay for Aaron! Congratulations on a great year!!!!! :D

After all was said and done, we headed to the cafeteria for a reception of cookies and lemonade. Aaron had a great time. We even got to check him out early and bring him back home with us! (which was probably a good thing since their classroom had no chairs in it because they needed them in the gym for the graduation and they still had to be in the gym for the afternoon kids!)

The kiddos thought those cookies were yum, yum, yummy!

This was the teacher's helper in Aaron's class this year, Mrs, Johnson. She was so nice and Aaron loved her!

And Aaron's teacher, Mrs Strotman. He really liked his teacher this year, and she really liked him too! Overall Aaron had a great Kindergarten year!

Way to Go Aaron! Happy Graduation!!! I am so pleased with all the good things you have learned this year in Kindergarten!!!

Choose to be Thankful

I was talking to Barth this morning and had walked out of the room for like a minute, and when I came back, this is what I saw!! My little messer had struck again, with a brand new box of cocoa crispies that I had gotten as a special treat for Weston for being such a good helper to me lately! As I started to express my frustration to Barth about having to clean up another mess and the fact that I was getting ready to dress Evan in his 3rd outfit of the day, he reminded me of something I had told him a while ago. He reminded me that instead of feeling frustrated, I should choose to be thankful. And so, I decided that I would do just that. I am thankful that I have a very healthy, active, adorable little guy that can do so many things. Thankful that the Lord has blessed me enough that I do not have to worry about the fact the an entire box of cereal is wasted but that I can easily replace that box of cereal. (I can remember vividly when Barth and I were young and in school when we had hardly any money and losing an entire box of cereal would have been awful!) Thankful that I have a broom and dustpan to sweep up the mess. Thankful that I am well and healthy so that I can spend my days chasing little people and cleaning up messes! And thankful for a good husband to help me keep things in perspective!! :D Today, I choose to be thankful for the blessings and trials that the Lord give to me each day!
And I am especially thankful to have my wonderful, beautiful, active little children to help teach me the things in life that I need to learn!!!

Smile

We had our family pictures today, and I thought that they turned out pretty good!! Here is a look at some of our pictures! We had pictures of the family....
.....and just the kids.......

.....followed by individual shots! I LOVED this one of Evan!!! The photographer was great with all the kids. As long as she didn't get to close to Evan, he liked to smile away at her. :D

Really, most all of the pictures turned out pretty good!

This was the best one of Aaron of ALL the pictures that we took. He had a fake smile in most all of his pictures, but she captured his picture just as he was laughing at her joke!

Brian really is in need of a haircut, but I was glad that I didn't cut it yet because I LOVE those sweet blonde curls of his!

And really, Weston looks so grown up! I can't believe he is almost done with elementary school forever!! I hope you enjoyed the pictures!!! :)

Webelos Award and Arrow of Light

Barth and Weston have been working very, very hard the last few months so that Weston could earn his Webelos and his arrow of light before he turned 11 and went on to the 11 yr old scouts. At the end of April (yes, I am way behind!) at the pack meeting, Weston earned both of his awards. Since Barth was the one that worked the hardest with Weston, I thought it was only fitting that he was the one that awarded him with his award. :) I am so proud of Weston and how hard he has worked to get his awards. He has done a great job!
Weston and one other boy that is in the other ward, that our cubs meet with, and who turned 11 one week before Weston, both got their arrow of light that night as well. I think that the one requirement for the arrow of light that Weston liked the best was going with the bigger scouts on an overnight camp out at our local state park with Barth. They got rained on and it was certainly a very cold night (in the 40's), but they had a great time!

They awarded Weston and Payton arrows to build in recognition of their arrow of light achievement. These 2 boys also competed against each other the past 2 years on their academic teams. They are friends and enjoy talking about their similar interests.


Since our ward has so few cub scouts (or boys), our pack is combined with the other ward. At this pack meeting, there were 6 boys that were going on to the 11 year old scouts, with 2 more moving up next month. Guess how many were from our ward? Just 1- Weston!! Oh well!! Such is our luck. Another boy that is Weston's age (older by a month) moved in a short time ago and finally Brian has another boy in his class at church as well! Now I think we just need to pray up a boy to move in that is Aaron's age...... :) I don't mind too much, both of my bigger boys have made some good friends in the other ward through the cub scouts program!!

Way to go Weston! We are so proud of you and your great accomplishments!! We love you! You are a wonderful boy and you can do great things!!! You are AWESOME!!!!

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's day to the best Momma and friend a girl could ever want to have! Thanks for all of your sacrifices in my behalf. Thank you for teaching me the gospel. Thank you for teaching me to always tell the truth. Thank you for instilling in me a love of the scriptures and of our Savior, Jesus Christ. Thank you for taking the time in high school to brush and dry my hair every night as I sat and did my homework. Thank you for ironing my clothes. Thanks for lending a listening ear......always lending a listening ear over the past 33 years. Thanks for the daily talks on the phone with me to brighten my days. Thanks for being the "reading Grandma" to my children and going to the pool with us in the summer when we visit. Thanks for all of the times that we would go to the store late at night together (and still do when we are together!) Thanks for all the times you pushed me to be a better person and reminded me of the things that I needed to be doing, even if I didn't want to hear it. :) Thank you for helping me to become the person that I am today. I love you Momma! You are the BEST!!!! I am so glad that you picked me to come to your family!!!!

Time Goes So Fast

When did this little bitty baby (okay so he wasn't all that small, but small for me!) go from looking like this........
.....to looking like this? How has the last 11 years flown by so fast? I love the young man that Weston has become. He is sweet, smart, kind, helpful, generous, loving, gentlemanly, happy, funny, and a joy to be around. I am lucky that the Lord has blessed me with this sweet boy as my first born. He continues to set a good example for his younger siblings to follow. He loves to make others happy and finds pure joy in making others laugh. (He gets his funny bone from his Dad!) I love him dearly and am so glad that he came to my family and not some one else's!!! :) Happy Birthday to my sweet boy! We love you!

Happy Birthday Weston

Summer Chop!

This past Saturday we finally had a sunny, warm kind of day! The nice weather got to me and so at bath time I decided to give Amber a summer time chop!!! :) She loves it! Her hair was almost to her waist and even though she has had several good trims, this was her first real big cut. It was almost to her waist (you can see if you scroll down a few posts) and we cut off 6 inches. That is a lot for a little one! Now we will let it grow out again until next summer probably! :)

Keep scrolling down for more new posts! I have tried to catch up some these past few days with what we have been up to in our family!! Enjoy our happenings!

Making Applesauce

A few weeks ago, I decided that it would be fun if Amber, Evan and I made applesauce. It is something that I have done with all of my children and something that they really enjoy. They all love to eat applesauce and I love teaching them where it comes from. Amber loved helping me peel the apples and put them in the pot.
Evan helped by standing on the step stool and eating an apple. :)

After we got the 3 lbs of apples peeled, cored and cut, we put them in a pot on the stove with the water and sugar and put them on to boil. Amber was curious to see how in the world these apples were going to turn into applesauce!

Evan liked it too. I think that he probably thought it was novel that I let him get that close to the stove without making him move away. He was probably confused was I wasn't telling him "Hot! Hot!!" He didn't get to stand there all that long though because I was worried that he would get hurt!

After it cooked for 10 minutes, the apples were ready to be mashed!! When I put the pot on the table with the cooked apples, Amber kept telling me that it still didn't look like applesauce. She thought that the mashing was great fun, but hard work!!

I helped Evan to mash the apples too. He LOVED the mashing!! I am being multi-talented here......I am taking the picture with one hand and helping Evan mash with the other! (and all the while worrying that Evan was going to try to touch the hot pot while I was taking the picture.....I can be such a worry wart sometimes!)

Evan loved the masher. He cried and cried when it was time to put it in the sink. I am not really sure why so many of the pictures came out dark. :P

And afterwards......we enjoyed a warm cup of applesauce. Amber didn't really like it warm, but loved it once it was nice and chilled. Evan, on the other hand, loved it warm and had 3 helpings!! It was fun to spend some fun learning time with my little ones. I have been so busy the last few months that I was glad to have a nice little break in my callings at church where I could focus on my little family and take some time to relax. The break was nice, but I am glad to have a new calling, and glad that I get to stay in RS as the enrichment leader (even though it isn't called that anymore!) It should be a lot of fun and since I was the enrichment counselor, at least I know what I am doing!!! :) And, after that nice break, I am refreshed and feeling like I can manage all my responsibilities well!!! Here are to happy Spring and Summer days ahead!!!!

Spring Break- The Water Park (catching up!)

After the picnic in at the park, we headed to our hotel, The Wilderness at the Smokies, for some water park fun!! We stayed one night and used the park for 2 days. Unfortunately, by this time, my camera was almost out of batteries, and I forgot the charger, so there are not many pictures from here! We got all ready to go and then Daddy wheeled everyone down to the water park on the luggage carrier that he had used to bring our things up! The kids love to ride on it!!!
Aaron, Amber and Evan loved the little kid part. Aaron and Amber really enjoyed the swings there. Evan liked the slide and the teeter- totter. Barth had the big boys in the wave pool at this time!

Brian wasn't feeling especially well this day. He had a bad cold and didn't want to surf like the other 2 boys. Weston had a blast doing the surfing this time!! This was, by far, his favorite part of the park this time!!!


Luckily, Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg and the surrounding towns had already had their Spring Breaks, so the place was not crowded at all!!

The best thing for Aaron this year was that he FINALLY reached the 42 inch mark!!!!!!! That meant that he could do the surfing this year!! It also meant that he could do the huge tube water rides with me. He could do everything except one ride! And he loved every minute of it!!!!!

He thought that surfing was the absolute best thing ever! The funny thing was that he was so light, that he couldn't get past the wave part at the top to get down to where he could do the body surfing, so the life guard had to pick up him on the board and toss him over the wave! It made me laugh!! :D

After a good 4 to 5 hours there, Evan and the others were pretty well exhausted! We went back and had sandwiches for dinner and Evan and Amber fell asleep right away. The others stayed up and watched a movie at the room. We got up first thing the next day and got all packed up to leave. We checked out at 10 and headed to the water park. We spent several hours there again before heading off to Louisville!!

Spring Break (playing catch up!)

On Wednesday of Spring Break, we checked out of the cabin and were going to head on over to the hotel that has a water park in it so that we could get 2 days of swimming fun in with the children. The place where we checked out of our cabin was the last stop light before you got into the National Park, so we decided to take our hot dogs and S'mores and have a fun lunch cookout since it had been raining the day before and hadn't worked out for us. Check out time was 11, so we were fairly early to the park and secured a great picnic area right by the river. It was a perfect spot. This was looking up the river from our picnic spot.
And this was looking down the river! It was gorgeous!! And it was a perfect day. It was in the upper 60's and so lovely! These first few pictures were taken with my phone and so a little out of order with the rest. Barth got to work right away getting the coals ready for lunch.

Like I said, a little out of order! At lunch time, Weston got to help Barth roast the hot dogs for our family! He thought that was cool treat! Nothing like one on one time with Daddy!

Brian eating his lunch at our table. Barth and Weston cooked up some YUMMY hot dogs for us!

Afterwards, Barth helped everyone roast marshmallows for s'mores! Mmmm.....yummy!

This was just at the edge of the picnic area. As you can see, it was right on the water! So fun for the kiddos!

But not so fun for the worried Momma! I swore that I would never buy a child leash. But that was before I had Evan who gets into absolutely everything. I broke down and bought one right before the trip. It was nice because it allowed him a little bit more freedom, but I could keep track of him easier. He wasn't too fond of it, but he liked it better than the alternative of having to be held all the time because I had visions of him running fast over to the rocks and falling in the water!

While Barth was getting the coals ready, I took the children on a little walk to explore the water and river!

Aaron loved climbing the big rocks!

Where we were picnicking, we had people on one side but a big, wide, open space to explore on the other side! It was sooooo nice for us! Thank goodness we got there early so we could get that prime spot!

The bigger kids all ran ahead back to Daddy but Evan didn't want to leave. I had to carry him back. :)

Aaron and Amber liked roasting their marshmallows. The coals felt good and warm after being in the shade.

Here we are eating our lunch and s'mores. This was when Barth was helping the littler ones roast the s'mores. Evan ate his lunch in his stroller. I don't really think he ate much though. It was more like a "throwing things on the ground" party time for him.

Mmmmmm.........so good! A perfect way to end the picnic lunch!

Delicious!!!

Roasting a few more....

Barth took the children back exploring and walking while I cleaned up our lunch things. Here is Evan trying to get at that water and rocks while Barth had him! Can't quite reach that rock, can he?!?

Finding some cool rocks and things in a side stream.

I was so glad that we were able to get to the National Park and enjoy it for a few hours on such a perfect afternoon! We love the Smoky Mountain National Park. It is just such a pretty place to visit!

Last year while we were here, we were lucky enough to see a black bear up close just off the side of the road! This year, just outside of the picnic area, Barth spotted a bear up the side of the hill. He backed up so I could get out and get a picture. My camera is zoomed up as far as it will go and you still can't see it all that well! He was kind of far away (thank goodness - or I would NOT have gotten out of my car to get a picture!) The bear is that black blob on the tree laying down there in middle!

It was sure neat to see a bear again this year- but I was glad to see it from far away!! :D