Busy having fun

We arrived at our destination in the afternoon on Saturday! Hooray! The kids did great on our trip. We have been having fun seeing Aunts and Uncles and cousins. And of course.....GRANDPARENTS!!!! I am counting down the days till the big day of Melissa's wedding! Just a few more days. I am looking forward to seeing all of my family and being together for a day of celebrating! I am so excited for my sweet little sister. :D I know that it will be a great day for her. She is going to be gorgeous for sure!!! What a happy and exciting time! I love being around family (even if it is hot here!) :) I can't wait to swim and enjoy all the hot summer sun! Boy I do love Texas! You can take the girl out of Texas, but you can't take the Texas out of the girl!!!!!!

Keeping busy

Okay, so really, when am I not busy?! :) Here are a few things that have been keeping me busy lately. Here are the lovely bow ties that I made for all the boys for Auntie M's upcoming wedding! Cute huh? Aaron put his on today and promptly announced that he looked like Uncle Austin (of whom he has never met!) So funny!
Last week we finally got our little garden planted!! Do you see it there out the window? The kids are thrilled that there are things coming up out there and have to check every day to see what is growing. :) Who knows what it will look like when we get back from our trip. The bunnies that like to live in our woods may have eaten the whole thing, but I sure hope not!!! :)
Evan is now a cruiser! Hooray! He pulls up on any and every thing. He will be 9 months old this Friday. How did that happen?! He has a definite preference for me, even over his Daddy! :) I certainly feel loved!

True to form, as soon as I pull out the camera, all the kids want to be in it. Aaron said, "Take a picture of me and Evan!" when he saw that I was taking Evan's picture. We got Evan the little soft shoes that he is wearing in this picture to help his poor little feet! Because he is an army crawler, he wore his big toes and the ball of his feet raw because that is what he pushes off of to propel himself around. He wouldn't leave socks on to protect his feet, so we went to the little shoes. Perhaps one of these days he will do a traditional crawl, but who knows! :)

And of course, if Aaron is getting in the picture, Amber has to get in too!! These 3 are my rays of sunshine! I am glad to have had them home with me this school year. Tomorrow is the last day of school! Hooray!!!! I can't wait for the big boys to be home and that I won't have to do school runs for a few more months. I do love the summer time!!!

Aaron vs. the van

.....and the van won!

Friday after school the kids were getting out of the van to go in the house. Since our van has 8 seats now, the seats closest to the doors flip forward allowing the ones in back to get out. Well, Brian pulled the lever to flip the seats forward just as Aaron was bending down. It flipped right into his head and the result was lots of blood and a trip to the emergency room!! We were lucky to have a great nurse.....our next door neighbor was the nurse for us! :) It wasn't as bad as I originally thought, but he did get 3 stitches and has a great lump there on his head! Our neighbor will take the stitches out for us on Tuesday so that we don't have to go back in to the dr's office! We really do have awesome neighbors. They are all the best. I don't think that we could have bought a better house with better neighbors than what we have. We are blessed!

Fun on a warm afternoon

A few days ago after school, the kids wanted to play in the water outside. So, I decided to kill 2 birds with one stone and let them wash the car for fun! They had a blast and kept cool on a warm afternoon!!
Not only that, but my car got all clean! By the end of the day the kids were soaked, but we just played outside until they were all dry!! It was a fun afternoon for sure.

I think that Amber thought that the bubbles in the bucket were more fun than anything else. :)

Weston and Brian did most of the washing (and most of the spraying too!)

At first Evan was content to sit and chew on his toys and watch the action.

But then he found the water, and that was the end of that! He wasn't happy unless he was in the spray from the hose!!! :) Crazy baby!

My Famous Kentuckian

Why teachers choose the last week of school to make all the huge projects due is beyond me, but this week, Weston has had 2 MAJOR projects due! Today's project was that the kids had to choose a famous Kentuckian, do all this research on them, then dress like that person and give a presentation. Can you guess who Weston is? He is supposed to be Abe Lincoln!!! We got the top hat at Michael's and I made the bow tie from foam. I thought that he turned out quite cute!!! He was so excited about it. :) He said that he wore his suit all day....even at recess when it was in the 80's outside. He looked mighty handsome. I was sure glad that one of the books that I had to buy back in the day for my Elementary Education literature class was the photo-biography of Abraham Lincoln. His birth place is just a few hours from here and both of the bigger boys have had a project where they had to do research on him this year. That book sure has come in handy! Today was Brian's track and field day and tomorrow is Weston's! It is hard to believe that there are only 5 more days of school left, and even harder to believe that if we hadn't had so darn many snow days that the kids would already be out!!! :)

After school smiles

There isn't too terribly much going on here at our house, Just the usual!! Aaron and Amber are getting over a cold and now Evan has it and has been a little out of sorts today. He is finally getting a tooth on the bottom!!! Hooray!!! Don't you like his bonks? He always seems to have one or two!
He is eating more and more these days and has decided that he will actually tolerate a few baby foods. :) Today he pulled up in his crib for the first time. Go Evan!!!

This is the last week of homework for the big boys. They are counting down the days till summer break! There are 9 days left of school!!!

I have to admit that with weather in the 50's and 60's this past week that it hasn't really sunk in that summer is practically upon us!!!!!

I am lucky to have such great and happy kids!

Can you believe that this little guy will be starting school in the fall?! He talks about it every day and keeps asking if it is almost July so that he can be 5. :)

And Amber, she is a ham for sure. I love each and every day. Even when I am dead tired because little Evan still is not a good sleeper!!!! Who couldn't love each and every day with smiles like these to greet them every moment of every day?!!!

Happy Wednesday to all!!!!! From our house to yours.

Makes me smile :)

This morning we were all playing downstairs in the playroom. Aaron and Amber had been busy "making" me food to eat. After doing that for a while, they decided that they wanted to make a few things for themselves. Amber brought her "meal" over to the little table and sat down to wait for Aaron. Then Aaron sat down with a "meal" of his own. Then, I was able to witness this sweet conversation between the 2 of them:

Amber: Don't forget to say prayers Anon (which is how she pronounces his name).
Aaron: Would you like to say it? Or do you want me to say it?
Amber: You can say it.

After Aaron prays over his plastic food, Amber then decides that she needs to say a prayer too. So, they fold their arms and bow their heads once again so that Amber can pray over the plastic food too.

Seriously, I think that it was one of the most touching things that I have seen in a while. It made me smile. It is moments like these that keep me going and help to remind me that I am doing a good job teaching my kids the things that they need to know and what is most important in life.....Jesus Christ!!! I am so thankful for my little ones. They all bring multitudes of smiles to my face every day!!!!! :)

Oh, how I love it!!!!!

Check out the progress that our yard has made over the last 2+ years that we have lived here. The picture above was taken in the Spring time 2 years ago before I planted some new grass so that our yard could look presentable!!!! Look how awful it looks and how small the bushes are!!!!
And here it is just a few days ago after our puddle adventure!!! Doesn't it look so nice? And GREEN?!! And wonderful!!! Look how much the bushes have grown. They are still small-ish, but a lot bigger than those tiny sticks that we planted!!! Seeing our yard look so nice and lovely makes me very happy!! :) The next thing that we would like to do is to plant some lovely dogwood trees in the front and maybe put something in by the mailbox!!! A little at a time!! I absolutely love, love, LOVE it! It makes me smile every time I look out the window!

Puddles are for splashing

It rained yesterday in the early morning. Aaron wondered if we could go on a puddle walk after we dropped of the boys for school. Even though a lot of the water had already dried by the time that Evan woke up from his morning nap, we still found plenty of water to splash in. Aaron and Amber had so much fun!
Amber was a little unsure at first, but it didn't take her long to warm up to the idea!

Oh to be a kid!!!

We splashed in every puddle between our house and the park. Amber's boots were quite big on her and even though she tripped numerous times, it was still a fun morning activity!

It was a cool and breezy morning. Just right for being outside. Even Evan had a good time on the walk. I can't believe how big he is getting!

Thanks for the fun idea Aaron!! I am so thankful to be a mom. I am grateful that I can stay home and watch my kids grow and have fun!!!

The Big 1-0!!!!

I can hardly believe it! Where has all the time flown by to?!! Our sweet little Weston is growing up fast! Today he is 10 years old. It seems like just yesterday I was in the hospital and thinking that he would never get here!!! And then, there he was with all that dark hair!!! I can remember thinking that he was so small. :) Now, he is double digits!!! One whole decade!! TEN!!!! Oh my!

So, for his birthday, here are 10 things that I love about Weston!!!

1. His compassion for others. He is always concerned for others and how they feel. There have been many times when he has done something for no other reason other than the fact that it would make me happy!

2. His cheerful personality! He is positive and upbeat and I don't think I have ever heard him say that he was bored!

3. His love of knowledge and learning. He loves to read and, 9 times out of 10, you will catch him with some non-fiction book in hand learning everything he can about a given subject!! (I think he knows more than I do!!! :O)

4. His love of the gospel. He loves his Savior and he loves the scriptures. I don't think that I could ask for anything better than this!!!

5. He is a peacemaker. He is certainly not perfect and will squabble with this brothers, but he is more often than not the peacemaker in our family and likes to find solutions to the problems!

6. His willingness to overcome his fears. Weston (unlike me) gets stage fright quite easily. And so, to overcome this, he decided that he would begin bearing his testimony on Fast Sundays so that he would not be so afraid to be in front of a crowd. I don't think that he has missed a Sunday since he made that goal! He still gets nervous, but it is less than it was before.

7. His love of writing. From an early age, Weston loved to write. At any given time, you can find some corner of our house that has got some paper that Weston is writing on. Sometimes it is stories. Other times it is a newspaper. He loves to make lists. He even makes up games and writes down all the rules. You name it, he has it written down!!

8. His absent-minded-ness!!! He is a typical absentminded professor!!!! :) You can ask him to bring you the pen that he just set down and he won't be able to locate it anywhere!! Even when it is right under his nose. Ask him any kind of mathematical equation and he can spout it out in 3 seconds flat, but ask him when his project is due and he has no earthly idea!!! I love it!! :)

9. His love of music! He loves to sing and play the piano and whistle and hum! It is fantastic and music to my ears!!!!

10. The fact that he is the most wonderful oldest son that a mom could ask for and that he will be mine for all eternity!! I am forever thankful for that! I am so thankful for Weston and all that he adds to our family. I am a lucky mother indeed that his little spirit was born into our family 10 years ago today!!!

Happy Birthday Weston!!!

We love you!!!!

Meet the new memeber of the family!!!!

We bit the bullet yesterday and finally got a new van. After the zillionth time of needing to be fixed, it was time to trade in our lemon of a van. I really liked the roominess of our Grand Caravan, but it just had one problem after another. After researching and looking, we decided on the Toyota Sienna. We got an 8 passenger van so that we have room for 1 more. :) The van is 10 months old and was a rental vehicle. I love it and am so excited to be driving it. We were hoping that the next new (to us) car would be for Barth, but at the moment his 1994 Toyota Camry with 250K miles was in better shape than my van with less than 100K!!! Hopefully soon we will be able to get him something too! I was bummed when I found out that the new Sienna (2011) has one of those teeny little seats for it's 8th seat, so we knew that we wanted one that was from 2010 or older with 8 full seats. We got a great deal on our 2009, and I am thankful to Barth for working hard and getting us a new van that hopefully will work great for the next many, many years!!!!! :)

The hair

Evan's hair is not white like Brian's was, but it is blonde to be sure!! Here are some pictures from yesterday so that you can see it better. It doesn't look so very blonde in these, but it really is! :) You can tell better out in the sun, but since it is raining today, this will have to do for the time being! :)
So happy when he is happy! I love his cute smile!!!!

He is happier now that he can get from place to place even though he is not doing an official crawl, just a great little army crawl!! Also, yesterday I was saying "hi" to him and he waved his arm back and kept saying, "ha" back to me!! It was so cute!!

You can see that he still has some of his baby hair there at the bottom back of his head. That hair is brown and the rest is lighter! Can't believe that he will be 8 months this next week!!!

Because he is handsome!

Our little Evan gets bigger as the days go by! I have yet to capture a good picture where you can see that he has blonde hair, but it is blonde none the less. It is not white like Brian's was at this age and actually I think that it has a slight tint of red to it, but his hair is soft and fuzzy and sweet! Look at those big, blue, beautiful eyes!!!!!
Evan, like my other kids, has more of his height in his torso than his legs. He is really tall when he sits up next to other babies his same age and even older than he is. He is long for sure. He can now army crawl where ever he wants to go. He isn't one of my earlier crawlers for sure, but as long as he can go, it is good to me. Besides, when you get all grown up, it isn't like we all sit around asking when each other crawled or walked or anything like that! :P (or at least that is what I tell myself to make me feel better. And then I remember that Weston was too fat to even bend his knees to crawl at Evan's age and he was just great too!!!) He is in for a shock these next few weeks too. The time has come for him to start learning to go to sleep in his own bed and also for him to start to try to sleep through the night! I am all about baby steps though. First I will let him cry for 5 minutes and then go in to pat and help get him to sleep. Then, after a few days, it will be 10 minutes, and then 15, and then 20, etc until he can figure out how to comfort himself to sleep. It has worked for me in the past, but if I know one thing for sure, it is that every child is different!!!!!! Here is hoping that our methods from the past will get one more little one sleeping good here soon!!!!!

Evan- 7.5 months

Evan never had a check-up at 4 months, so at 6 months he had a 4 month well check and his first round of shots and today he had his 6 month check and second round of shots. Here are his stats from today!!! :)

Weight: 20 lbs, 12 oz - 75%

Height: 28.5 in - 80 to 85%

Head: 18.5 in - 95++++%

He is doing great. Did fine for his shots too. He is developmentally right on for his age. He is starting to crawl and babble. He still doesn't really like a ton of foods and won't eat anything off a spoon, but likes cheerios and those Gerber puffy things. He also likes apple and pear slices even though he doesn't have any teeth yet. He prefers me to anyone else, but is good for Daddy too. I can't believe how big he is getting these days! I thought that it was fun to get out the other boys baby books to compare. Weston was shorter and much heavier than Evan is. (He was 29 lbs, 27.5 in at 7 months!) Brian was just slightly shorter and a bit heavier at 24 lbs even and 28 inches at the same age. Aaron and Evan's weight were exactly the same at this age but Aaron didn't get to be Evan's height until 9.5 months. Just a fun comparison of the boys. :) Hopefully I can get some more pictures up of Spring break, but I just thought that I would pause and give you my Evan update!!!! :)

Spring Break- the hotel

Our hotel needs a post all it's own!! :) We stayed at a cool place called Wilderness at the Smokies. We got a room that had a living room, kitchen and then another room the same size as the living/kitchen area that had beds in it. I guess that I didn't get that great of a picture of the kitchen because this is the only picture that I have. Amber is sure cute at the table though!!! :) The kitchen had a stove and oven, fridge and dishwasher. It had pots and dishes and everything. We cooked and ate our dinners there at the hotel which was nice. The place had 2 bathrooms as well which is nice for a larger sized family.
Here is the living area. There was a curtain that you could pull for privacy. They had a cool Murphy bed that you see Aaron on that pulled down out of the wall. The couch that the others are on also was a queen sofa sleeper. I think that the room said that it accommodated up to 12 people, but I am not totally sure of that!
The room with the beds had a bunk bed that you see here that was a twin over a queen! We brought our own porta-crib although I do think that you could have requested one. We had so much room! There was also a privacy wall between the bunk bed and the other queen bed that was in the room. I didn't get a picture of that bed. Also in the bedroom was a twin pull out sofa. Like I said, it really fit a ton of people!!

The boys thought that it was fun that they could turn on the tv right here by their bed as soon as they woke up in the morning. We thought that it was nice too since we could lay in bed and sleep just a little bit longer while the kids were entertained by the tv! This particular morning we told them that the could eat their breakfast in bed while watching cartoons. I think that it won us parent of the year awards! :) Oh the little things that thrill kids! (they thought that it was a special treat since they don't get to watch much tv at home!)

Aaron and Amber enjoyed the cool morning air out on the deck one morning. They were so excited that this room had scriptures. Those 2 carried the scriptures all over the place while we were in the room. It was really cute!

Perhaps the best thing about this hotel, and the main reason that we chose it, was that it had it's own indoor water park that was only for the hotel guests!!!!!!! We thought that it was awesome and we spent hours there each day! Here are Aaron and Amber before suiting up with life vests that were provided by the hotel that they had to wear in the wave pool. To keep from having to fight to get them to put them on each time they went to that particular pool (since there were several) we just said that they had to wear it all the time. Lucky me, they didn't mind a bit!!! :)

The bigger boys were tall enough to "surf" there! I didn't get to try it, but it did look awesome!!!! Weston could have tried to surf while standing, but he didn't want to! Here is Brian riding the waves!!!

Weston liked it too. The longest line for anything was for this particular ride. I think that it is because the guards let each person ride for 5 minutes (no exaggeration) and so they usually had to wait about 20+ minutes for this one! According to them, it was well worth the wait!!!

Here is Weston riding the waves. Next to the wave pool was a small toddler pool that I didn't get a picture of. It had some spray things as well as dumping buckets. There were also some tiny little slides and 4 baby swings! Amber only wanted to go there one day. She thought that the wave pool was much better than the kiddie area. If you look closely behind Weston (right behind the lifeguard), you can see an opening in the back wall behind a line of chairs. In there was a 3 to 4 ft pool that had water basketball and a big floating snake thingy that the kids could climb on. That pool was more heated than the other ones and the little kids, including Evan, liked that pool the most.

Here was the other little kid area that was there. It is kind of more like Rosemeade Rainforest. It had a big dumping bucket of water that Aaron loved and Amber hated! :) There was also a smaller kiddie version of a tube slide that Aaron rode over and over and over again. Amber liked making the water spray different ways and doing some of the other water activities that were there. This water park had a see through roof so you could actually tan at the water park indoors. Cool huh?

There were 2 slides that Weston and Brian rode over and over again. There was almost no wait at any time for the rides. Sometimes they rode together (as you see here), but they could also go separately, so sometimes they raced each other- one in the yellow tube, one in the purple. I rode this with the boys a few times! They were quite fun! There were also 2 big tube rides that you had to ride in bigger groups. You can see one of the tubes for those rides leaning up against the wall with the 4 holes. Weston and Brian each rode the bigger rides once with me, but alas, they don't have as adventurous of a spirit as I do and so once was enough for them. (Sadly, I even had to bribe them to go on those rides with me!!! :) M&M's work wonders for me sometimes!)

Daddy with the littler ones in the wave pool. Amber wasn't too crazy about the waves, but she really liked the more shallow water to swim in once the waves were gone. You can see the opening to that other pool that I was talking about earlier better in this picture.

Evan had a fun time too, splashing away in the water. The funny thing was that the last day we were there, we ran into a family from our ward that had stayed there too!!!! (and our ward is pretty small) It is a small world after all!!!!!

And keeping with tradition, Barth let the kids ride the luggage cart on the way out! I am glad that we stayed here. It was a lot of fun!!!!!