Emily's Kindergarten Graduation

This picture is of Emily's 1st day of kindergarten, 9 months ago!

 This past friday was her very last day of kindergarten. I wanted to take a picture of her before school but instead got one when she got home. Friday was a fun outdoor water party for the class. She came home a mess! I still had my make shift photo studio set up and she asked me to take a picture of her in it instead of outside like the above.  Emily has grown so much this year. She is reading so well and was excited to recently finish her 1st chapter book.

 In the middle of last week Emily participated in her Kindergarten graduation.

 Beautiful girl!

 Dang camera has a hard time taking pictures in low lighing but here she is anyways giving her one liner.

 Between the children giving there parts they sang songs for us.

 One of the songs they sang was a child's version of the limbo song. They sang while trying to do the limbo using a bat.

 Here she is with her teachers. Mrs. Chamberlain on the left and the Aide Miss Andrea on the right. Love these women.

 My graduating Kindergartener standing by her silhouette and a bouquette of flowers from the family!

Let the summer begin for Miss Emily! Her older siblings still have school this week.

Brayden's Preschool Graduation

About 2 weeks ago Brayden had his Preschool graduation.  It was so fun to see all these cute little kids walking into the gym all together, in a line and being so quiet.

 On the stage each child had a turn holding the microphone. Brayden's part was B-r-a-y-d-e-n spells Brayden! 

After the kids had their chance to share with the audience that they could spell their name they sang some fun songs with actions.

 During each song that was sung a handful of kids were at the microphones singing to us.

 The last song was the biggest hit of the night. Each preschooler was given 2 glowstick bracelets, the lights were turned off and then they sang their last song with actions. It was fun to hear the kids and follow along with their glowstick actions.

 After the program each preschooler recieved a book and a bag full of goodies for the summer from Miss Wendy.

 Before leaving for the night the kids had their fill of all different kind of flavors of popcorn. So yummy!

Miss Wendy has been an AWESOME Preschool teacher. Brayden knew his letter's before beginning preschool but in the short time he attended he really took off with learning the sounds each letter made. He's had fun in preschool with painting, coloring, cutting and gluing. In March they made a leperchaun trap and caught a leprechaun. They left him in the trap and went on a walk in search of his gold with his Teacher's Aide. When the class got back to the classroom they discovered that the leprechaun had escaped and taped Miss Wendy to the wall. She was yelling, "Help me, Help me". The class was able to free Miss Wendy and play with what the leprechaun had left behind in his rush to leave. It's hilarious to hear Brayden tell this story. In April the Easter Bunny came to class and gave the kids treats. Afterwards they were able to go outside and search for hidden easter egg treasures. In May the class went of a field trip. They went to the park almost all day! They roasted hot dogs for lunch, played on the park's jungle gym and ice blocked down the hill. I wasn't to sure about having my baby boy go to preschool so soon but am so glad I did it. He has had so much fun and has made many friends. I get a kick when we're somewhere around town and I hear my 4 year old yell out, "Hi so and so I'm Brayden remember me? We went to school together!" He loved preschool and is missing it all ready. He keeps asking how many more days till he can go back. I'm so glad that Miss Wendy has made school "fun" for Brayden.

Kylie's 11 months.

It's finally started to warm up around here. It's so nice to be able to wear some Spring/Summer clothes. With the warmer weather brings sandals! This pretty girl can sit all day listening to the noise she makes while undoing the velcro on her sandals.

  

She still doesn't care for the annoying stickers her Mom so desperately tries to make her wear.

 Love this picture! Now if we could only get her do this during prayer time.

 Kylie's been teething this month. She now has 4 on the top and 3 on the bottom.

 Love this girl of mine. Can't believe her 1st Birthday is just around the corner.

Kylie is such a happy, joyful baby! She loves to play pat-a-cake and peek-a-boo.

 She loves to be outside. Her favorite food right now is bananas.

 She's hit that stage that she doesn't like to be fed but wants to do it herself. She makes the best messes when she feeds herself. She is enjoying the families meals and no longer wants to eat the pureed baby food she's been eating for several months now.

 Kylie loves her dad!

 With Kylie being mobile she is now all over the place. She has learned to open the corner cabinet where we keep cold cereal, crackers and her snacks. She likes to help mom keep this cabinet cleaned out.

Months ago I started putting Kylie in her bumbo on top of the table while her older siblings sat at the table and did homework. It seems she has learned to "write/draw" at an earlier stage than my other kids did. It's so funny to see her want her own paper and pencil to draw with when her 

 older siblings are writing/drawing now.  

This is Kylie's newest toy! The dishwasher. It doesn't bother her if the dishes inside are clean or not!

Brayden Turn's 4!

Brayden turned "4" a few saturday's ago. He's been wanting a super hero cake all along and then that morning switched to a Skylander cake instead. I love the way the bottom layer turned out! The top layer had more issues than I can count but.... He loved it and that's what counts!

 Brayden was quite excited about his presents that were just his!

 One of his presents was new bike! This kid of our's has been riding one of those little scooter's that are meant for 12 mo.-18 mo. olds. He loved this old bike of his and rode it everywhere. He'd ride it to church on those mornings that we walked, he'd ride it to cousin's house or back to the barn to feed our show pigs we just got. To say this bike was to small for him is an understatement.  He love's his new Angry Bird's bike. He tells me he has to practice riding it everyday!

 Brayden received several dress up clothes thanks to Target's clearance after Halloween.

Brayden is just too much fun to watch. It took quite some time to open gifts. When he'd open one he'd want to sit and play for a little while before opening anymore. He loved his spiderman car's.  

 Here's Dad and Brayden trying out that new bike outside. It's a little big for him  but he quickly got the hang of it.

 After riding his bike around the block Brayden decided it was cake and ice cream time.

Brayden is fun little boy.

He loves to ride his bike outside. He loves being outside just like his older siblings. He loves swinging, and playing on the slide on our jungle gym. He loves to go next door and jump on his cousin's tramp. His favorite breakfast is cereal, he loves a 7 layer bean dip for lunches and lasagna for dinner. His favorite book right now is The Big Hungry Bear. His favorite color is yellow. He started preschool a few months ago and absolutely loves it. He only goes 2x a week but asks every morning if it can be preschool day. His favorite friend is Kyler who lives around the corner from us and also goes to Preschool with Brayden.

Happy Birthday my little man!

Hunter Hit's The Double Digits!

My oldest has hit the double digits!

Where has all the time gone?

I'm not old enough to have a child reach this milestone!

Regardless of what I think, it's happened.

He's 10!

It's been a tradition in our family that we have pancakes for every birthday breakfast. The age they turn determines the amount of stacked pancake that is placed on their plate. The older they get the smaller each pancake becomes. But I love watching the stack of pancakes grow each year.

Well...something happened between the last April and this past April. Hunter has decided that he really does not like pancakes. Being our family only eats cold cereal on Sunday mornings, pancakes have become my quick, hurry, we don't have a lot of time breakfast and so it is not uncommon for us to have pancakes 2x a week.  I guess maybe we've eaten pancakes too much this school year. Hunter specifically asked if we could NOT have pancakes for breakfast but his favorite, German Egg Balls. So that's what we did. My camera decided it didn't want to work when we sang Happy Birthday or when he was able to blow out the 10 candles from his breakfast. It decide to work when Hunter was finished with his breakfast and there was nothing left to take a picture of but mom did it anyways just because.

 Hunter is growing up. He's not a little boy anymore. He's reached that age that we can have a serious conversation with. He understands what we are trying to explain to him. He can be quite funny! Dad was joking around with him that he was getting new "Go Diego Go" underware and got this reaction from him. I love his laugh!

Hunter has needed a new bike for quite some time now. The bike he's been using he's had for several years now but he has outgrown it. While riding if not careful his knee's would hit the handle bar. I was contemplating getting him a new bike at Christmas but knowing he wouldn't be able to use it we waited for the birthday. So glad we did.

 Since before Christmas Hunter has wanted Skylander's for the Wii. My opinion was that I wasn't going to pay $70 on a white circle box that you place characters on. The character's that sit on top of this box are the character's that can be played during the game. What a rip off! You have to spend that much money on the game and than spend additional money for character's. What ever happend to Super Mario Bro.'s or Donkey Kong and 10+ characters you could choose from???  A few weeks after Christamas I saw the game on Amazon for just a few hours priced at under $50 and so I snagged it with the intention of saving it for his birthday. I wish I had caught on camera his expression when he opened Skylander's. Knowing how ridiculous I thought of the game I think he really thought he'd never own the game. It was priceless!

 

 Hunter was quite thrilled with his new bike too. He opted to take it for a spin before he played his new wii game. Being it was early April the snow was gone but the wind wasn't. I love how you can see how his shirt is plastered to his body and he's sitting still. (Don't mind the blown out knee. Apparently he ripped it while playing tag football at school.)

 I wanted to make this boy a skylander's cake but he doens't like cake, frosting or fondant. He requested his favorite dessert, brownie and ice cream. My camera at this point decided not work again. Howeer fiddling with it for a few minutes it came back to life so we relighted the candles for a picture which is why the brownies shown below have already been cut into!

 Happy Birthday Hunter!

Hunter's favorite subject in school right now is "recess" hahahaha. Do you remember saying things like that? After recess his next favorite is Math. His favorite books he's read this year is Harry Potter (this is the 2nd time), Percy Jackson Series and the Ice Fire Collection. He has a love for reading.

Hunter loves to spend his time outside. He likes to play basketball and baseball. He likes riding his bike around town. He likes to jump on his cousins tramp, sleep outside and go up to his Grandpa's shop and using his BB gun shoot crow's with his cousins.

Kylie's 10 month Photo Shoot

This summer my goal is to learn photo shop really really well. I want to go through all of Kylie's pictures and change the background, fade the background just spice the picuters up a bit. Until than these will have to do!

The end of March Kylie hit her 10 month mark.  My lighting was once again off but hopefully I'll be able to fix that too!

Such a serious face!

 Kylie for the most part is a smiley little girl!

 I love the smile on the picture below. Just wish she hadn't looked down when I snapped it!

 Several weeks ago Kylie started this hand motion. She does it all the time. It's so fun to see her try to communicate with us.

 Something new Kylie has started to do is this!!!!

Drives this momma CRAZY!

I don't like it when they start taking off their headbands.

When she finally got it off this is the face she gave me...

Little stinker! She knows it drives me crazy when she takes them off.

 

 Once she discover's she's got a headband one it's very difficult to distract her. She just keeps trying to pull it off!

When Kylie hit her 10 month mark she was not crawling but she was close so very very close. On April Fool's Day I was in the kitchen cooking up our dinner when Kory called for me to "come watch this". My baby girl was crawling! Since than she's all over the place and is starting to get into everything! I hate our stairs!! They make me so nervous when she's around them. I'm on the look out for some sort of a gate I can put around them to keep her away from them since a normal baby gate won't work!

One night Emily forgot to hang her backpack up. She left it on the floor unzipped. Big mistake! Kylie took it upon herself to clean out that back pack.

 She's becoming quite the little mess maker!