Friday, July 31, 2009

What makes my heart happy...



Kylie: I love you one step above everybody else in the family


Jayden: I love you the mostest of all the people in Arizona

Thursday, July 30, 2009


Kylie has lucked out yet again to have such great primary teachers. It was a fun surprise to find these sitting on the front porch as she walked out to go to school on her first day. It's no secret that I'm not much of a baker. Usually the only time you'll find me baking cookies is on the last day of the month when I haven't done my visiting teaching. Whenever I do bake I always have several plates set aside to give to people and Jayden is always disappointed that I won't let him eat them. So today he got excited to see a plate of cookies on the counter but as he walked closer and saw the picture of Jesus on it, he lost his excitement and said, "awwww man, are these for Jesus?"

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

9 Months

We're creeping up to 10 months and I'm finally getting around to posting....
I'm still having an issue with wanting to spend all day kissing and squishing this little man. Just look at those cheeks and lips, can you blame me? He's started the army crawl and it cracks me up when he sees something he wants on the other side of the room. His eyes and mouth open wide and he squeals while he scoots as fast as his little arms can drag him until he finally reaches his prize. One of my many favorites is when I get him out of bed he starts flailing his arms and legs all over the place with a huge grin on his face. He also claps whenever he eats or sometimes when I sing to him. He is still such a happy baby, even when he wakes up at 6:30 every morning. Unfortunately Baby Einstein has lost it's magic and I can no longer go back to sleep. I guess it's nice to get the extra motivation to get up and go running, though. He loves going for morning jogs or bike rides and it's been nice having that time for just the two of us. He loves to eat anything and everything with his two little teeth and I wasn't surprised that he's reached the 20 lb mark. He weighs 20 lbs 6 oz (50%) and is 28 1/2 inches (50%) and his head is 17 3/4 inches (50%), you can't get anymore average than that. I still can't believe how much faster these past 9 months have gone by compared to the 9 months that I was pregnant! We love you, Mads!

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

First Day
I can still remember how nervous I would get the night before the first day of school, so I was surprised that Kylie didn't seem the least bit nervous at all. She was so excited to go back, mostly because she lucked out to get in a class with a really nice teacher and alot of her friends. She woke up at 5:30 am and was so excited to go. She had her outfit picked out for an entire week before and insisted on wearing jeans, even though it was around 110 degrees that day (okay, so I have to confess, the sweater was my idea. She really wanted to wear the dark blue shirt with the dark blue jeans and I just couldn't let her do it. Those school uniforms need as much help as they can get. Any other day but the first day I would let her get away with the blue on blue combo, but I just couldn't today. Maybe one day she'll thank me. I told her she could take it off once she got to school, but I was feeling very guilt stricken as she walked in the door after school with the sweater still on and sweat glistening off her forehead and the first thing she said was, "I'm sooo sweaty!!!" Atleast she looked cute, even if I am the worst mom. Oh, but I did give in and let her get the book bag that is twice as big as her own body). I love that she still wants us to walk her to class on the first day and will even pose for pictures. I don't know how many more years I'll be able to take a picture of her holding her dad's hand while walking to school. We love you Kylie and am glad you are enjoying school so much. I already miss having you around and Jayden and Maddox have decided that you are much more fun to play with than I am. Good luck and enjoy second grade!

Thursday, July 23, 2009

The Good Old Days

It makes me sad how deprived my kids are. At their age I remember spending my summers outdoors from sun up to sun down exploring the mountain in our backyard, building tree huts and riding bikes around the neighborhood. So many of life's lessons were learned during those summer days outdoors and I'm beginning to realize how much my kids are missing out. Even if it wasn't a blazing 110 degrees outside, it makes me sad that we live in a time where our kids can't even ride their bikes in the front yard without having to worry about them. That reason alone makes me want to move out to a farm. Every time we visit my aunt and grandparent's in southern Utah I love that my kids can finally be kids. They disappear outside the minute they wake up and the only time I see them all day is when they want to show me the fort they built or the dances they made up or the critters that they caught (well, except when Jayden got tired of being the only boy and found a friend in the Star Wars Wii game. His favorite time of day was when Uncle Wade would come home and they would watch Star Wars together) They got nice and dirty, went on frog hunts, tried to catch baby racoons, fed the horses (and almost got stampeded)and I tried not to worry too much when Kylie and her 9 year old cousins would ride all over the place on the 4 wheelers. My aunt gave me a hard time about being a city girl when I was hesitant to let her ride down to the corner store and buy candy. Something they do all the time and something I would never dream of letting her do here. I'm just glad my kids were able to finally be kids, even if it was for only a week.
I was looking forward to celebrating an old fashioned 4th of July and was sad that their little town did all the big parades and fireworks on the 24th so we had our own little parade and the kids loved decorating their own "floats".
They did have races for the town where everyone got to race in their age group. Jayden came in first place for his age group and he couldn't have been more proud of his dollar bill grand prize. There was this sweet old man that told Jayden before that he was betting his money on him so when he won he gave him 4 quarters, it was so sweet. Jayden was a sweetheart also when he gave Kylie 2 of his quarters since she didn't win. Here he is showing off his winnings with one of my other cousins that is only a month younger then him. They had the best time playing mad scientists and making potions and he was sad when she had to go back home after the weekend.
We had the best time doing our own little fireworks show. Maddox even got to stay up past his bedtime and sat there in awe the entire time. I don't think he blinked once.
Afterwards we played my favorite old time classic: night games. I loved initiating my kids, it was like a right of passage. We dressed up in dark clothes then stayed out all night playing hide and go seek and capture the flag. SO much fun.My aunt is only 10 years older than me and has kids the same age as mine, so it's easy to forget that she is my kids' great aunt and that her kids are actually their second cousins. My grandparents built an addition onto their house a couple of years ago so they have this huge house now where there's always family coming down looking for any excuse to party. My other aunt and a couple of my brothers came down too so it was fun playing with everybody. I was excited that we were able to see my brother and his wife who were visiting from Iowa with their adorable little baby. It was a non stop party, we had some pretty rowdy card games and I think I gained 10 lbs from eating non stop. Jayden wasn't used to the round the clock eating, when we sat down one night to eat dinner he said, "but we just barely ate!"I don't know who was more excited about the riding lawn mower, Jayden or Jason. Seriously. After spending the 4th with us, Jason had to go back to work in Vegas the next week but made them promise to let him mow the lawn again when he got back. Kylie and the older girls spent all day doing scavanger hunts for everybody. The girls had a wedding for the chickens, here they are enjoying their first kiss as a married couple.
They decided to have a water day one day and had this whole back yard beach party thing going on, complete with snowcones and a show. It was seriously the perfect summer vacation....

Friday, July 03, 2009

So much to do, so little time....
....that's how I feel everytime we go to Vegas, and I love it. Jason's been working there pretty much the entire summer (which explains why right now I'm devouring ice-cream, popping Pringles, watching "Confessions of a Shopaholic" and blogging all at the same time. That's my kind of multitasking.) After being cooped up from the heat we were excited for another vacation. We spent the week hanging out with family and great friends. It was also nice spending time with Jason, I think the kids' favorite part was when he took them out till midnight playing games and winning stuffed animals at Circus Circus. Vacations are the best. Jason hooked it up and got us upgraded to a beautiful top floor suite at the casino where he's been staying. We're talking plasma tv's in the bathroom and kitchen here, definately not the Marriott's we're used to staying in.

The nice thing about staying at a casino is that there is so much to do. We went to the theater one day to see "Up". The kids were so excited to be the only ones in the theater and I told them they could sit anywhere they wanted. Kylie sat at the very front and Jayden sat at the very back, until some cranky old lady and her husband came and sat right in front of Jayden and then complained loud enough for me to hear, "I don't want to sit by this kid the entire movie, he's going to be so loud!" Rude. Thanks for raining on our parade. We also had fun going to the arcade, swimming with my friend Kandice and her cute kids and swimming, bowling and going to the movies with cousins.
We usually avoid the strip whenever we go to Vegas, but it was kind of fun being tourists in Jason's hometown for a change. We went with Grandpa Young and their cousins to Shark Reef at Mandalay Bay and the kids thought it was awesome. We also went to dinner at the Chinese restraunt where Jason got his first job as a dishwasher, ahhhhh memory lane.of course no Vegas trip is complete with out a visit to Grandma's and with our good friends the Gublers and Morris' (thanks again for a delicious dinner!)

This picture perfectly describes the way we felt after an exhausting week of non stop fun as we headed up to Utah for more adventures....