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!

 

Daddy Daughter Dance

Our elementary school a few years ago started an annual Daddy Daughter Dance for all school aged girls. This was Emily's 1st year to attend being she's in Kindergarten.

She chose to wear her new Easter Dress with a pink necklace a friend at school gave her. She specifically asked for 2 pony tails curled in a messy bun style. This girl certainly knows what she wants! 

 Hamming it up for the pictures!

 Madelyn was just as excited but was able to contain herself a little better than little sis. She too chose to wear her new Easter Dress and asked to wear my purple necklace that matched perfectly! The girls and I had so much fun that afternoon "primping" in front of the mirror. It made me think about what it will be like when these girls aren't giddy with excitement to go to a dance with their dad but with a boy! Eeeeeekkkkk! I'm afraid that time will be here sooner than I'd like!

So glad they had fun spending some time with their Dad. Kory's work schedule at the Mine has been changed to 6 days a week and 12 hours each day, 7am-7pm. Right before this crazy new schedule began he accepted a cabinet job. He will be making close to 400 cabinet fronts for a Mariot Hotel back in Chicago.  We hope to make some money on it to put towards a lot here in town so that one day we could possibly build our own home.  As if the 12 hour shifts right now didn't keep him away from home enough this cabinet job certainly hasn't helped.  Despite his busyness I'm thankful for my husband for making the time to take our sweet girls to this dance. I know they had fun and I hope this is something they will always remember!



Kylie 9 month Photo Shoot

Miss Kylie hit her 9 month mark the end of Febuary. Once again I forgot to post the pictures of that milestone.

Miss Kylie's personality is coming out more and more. She is so much fun! She is starting to be able to play pat-a-cake by herself. She'll look at me and start clapping her hands. When I start to sing the words she get's the biggest grin on her face and starts clapping harder. So fun!!!

 She didn't appreciate being laid in the hamper by big sister trying to help! But look how much bigger she is. She's growing up too fast for this mama.

 After the girls and I were able to calm Kylie down we were going to change her wardrobe. However she did not want to get clothes on so I shot a few with her naked.  Sure wish I had a cute diaper cover. At this late stage in the game though why bother. 

 I love the above picture. This is also something new Miss Kylie has started to do with her hands. When you talk to her she holds her hands up like she's asking what???

She's growing up. She's starting to play with her toys more and more and just learning how to entertain herself. Kylie's not crawling but she is starting to scoot across the floor. It's my personal opinion that she's not crawling for 2 major reasons: 1- She's got 3 older siblings that will carry her around on her whim. They can't stand it when she cries. When she starts grunting it's almost a race to see who can get to her first to pick her up and haul her around. Therefore she has NO real need to crawl. And 2- our main floor is all tile. It's cold, cold, cold! Even though we've got the fire burning non stop lately the tile remains cold. I HATE walking around barefoot and so does everyone else. Having socks on makes it bareable but for the most part we always have slippers or shoes on. On the rare occasions Miss Kylie does scoot herself off our rug in the front room she starts to whimper almost immediately.  If she ends up sitting on tile floor for even just a few minutes by the time I pick her up her little hands our COLD. She has no desire to be on the tile and I can't say I blame her. Maybe when it starts to warm up a bit she'll show more of an interest in crawling.

Pinewood Derby

Tuesday night our Scout's held it's annual Pinewood Derby Pack Meeting. This year we struggled a bit as we didn't receive the kit until the the day before we left for Nauvoo. Being we were gone for so long Hunter and his Dad were left with Monday to create his car. Last year Hunter's won and he went to Region. At Region he came in 2nd and so wasn't able to go to State. Frankly I didn't want to have to take him to Salt Lake for the state competion so we were quite happy he came in 2nd. This year Hunter was hoping for the same thing. Despite the late hour of making the car they created a "unique" car for this year. Hunter called it a horse and other's called it a donkey or mule. Hunter with some help spray painted his car black monday night. Tuesday afternoon when he got home from school he painted the horses nose and nostrils. He was going to paint the eyes but decided to hot glue a pair of googly eyes instead.

 During pack meeting he earned a few awards.

His car didn't do as well this year but he still had fun. He received a green participation ribbon and... 

was given "The Most Unique Car" award!

His car did have wheels. However a younger boy knocked his car off the track after the derby and his wheels popped off. Glad they popped off afterwards and not before. It's crazy to think next year will be his last year participating in this fun annual event.

April Fool's

April Fool's Day was monday this year, the day after Easter. Brayden had snack that day for Preschool. We had several April Fools snack idea's but in the end I went with something a little less time consuming. When we walked into his class room his teacher said,"Ooooh Brayden, what did you bring for snack today?" He replied, "Dirt and worms, hahahahahaha I'm tricking you today. It's Fool's Day!" 

This kid cracks me up.

Being Fool's Day I needed to come up with something to do for my family. In years past I've made numerous trickery dinner's that look like dessert's. I've made jello and put it in their cups with straws so it appears to be kool-aid. I've gotten them up half an hour early pretending it was later than it actually was. This year I wanted something new. I needed something new becuase my older kids kept telling me that I couldn't trick them this year, they would be expecting it. So I did the unexpected!

Come dinner time I hung up a large sheet so that no one could see what I was fixing up in the kitchen. I than made a normal dinner or spaghetti, rolls, corn, jello and 2 types of drinks. I called my family to the table and at each place setting was a menu and a pencil.

 Inside that menu they were to pick from some coded words what they were going to be served over a 4 course meal. They started with nothing, no fork, plate, cup etc. Everything was to be chosen.

 Madelyn chose worms with brain matter aka spaghetti, mini digger aka spoon, girl scout aka brownie and mud slide aka chocolate syrup that was meant for her ice cream dessert. She loved it. She thought it was pretty difficult to eat spaghetti with a spoon. 

Hunter's 2nd course brought him a fluffy pillow aka roll, butcher's tool aka knife, worms and brain matter aka spaghetti and a chip of the old block aka an ice cube but no cup. It was HILARIOUS trying to watch him eat his spaghetti with a knife!!

This was Kory's 1st course. He ordered entrepenuer's 1st business aka lemonade, sock in the face aka punch, King Titon's weapon aka a fork, and udder's delight aka ice cream.

I fooled the kids one more year! We all had a fun night full of laughter and fun. I'm being told this was my best "trick" thus far. So glad the kids enjoyed the night. 

Easter Sunday

Easter this year didn't exactly sneak up on me but came a little sooner than I would have liked. We got home the night before a little after 10pm from our Spring Break 9 day vacation. The kids weren't sure the Easter Bunny would come being we were gone for so long and I indeed had my doubts too. 

Come Sunday morning this house had some excited kids seeing that the Easter Bunny did make a presence. This year the kids were given a new book, a new package of fun socks (not the old boring white socks this mom always buys), a baskett full of candy and new church attire. 

Madelyn loves getting new clothes and so immediately changed from her jammies into her new purple dress. She's been a bit envious of her Aunt Hanna's fun, bright, silly colored socks she's seen her wear and so was thrilled to receive her very own. She can't wait to see her Aunt Hanna and show her these new silly socks of her's.

Emily loves getting new clothes too. She followed her big sister's example and changed into her new dress too. She was thrilled with the brightness of her new socks and the fact she got her very own 1st chapter book. She also loved the blue ring pop she ate causing her mouth to be blue for all our morning pictures.

Miss Kylie received a new dress too. She got a fun board book and a new package of socks too. Her's I'm told are quite boring though as they are all white.

Hunter recently finished a series of books and so was quite excited to be able to start a new one. I love how my kids enjoy reading. I hope they continue that enjoyment into adulthood. We recently bought both boys some new church shirts and the Easter Bunny must have known this as he only brought a new tie for the boys.

 Brayden is big into Super Herores right now. He could not hold back his excitment over receiving Spiderman socks. He liked his new book and candy too but the socks were by far his favorite. He also received a new tie that somehow missed his photo shoot complimentary of his big sister Madelyn.

Next Sunday I'll have to take our belated Easter outfit pictures.