Family Visits (January 2014)

Since my sister's wedding was the day before our 12 year anniversary, Fixitman and I decided to take a mini vacation while my parents and sisters watched our kids. It was fabulous. Baby came with us of course but he slept most of the time since he was so young still.

Twelve years of marriage

While we were there, everyone held Baby, including my kids. He's cute and huggable of course!

My grandmother lives in South Carolina also and we enjoyed visiting her of course. She has a dock on a canal that connects to the ocean behind her house and the kids enjoyed throwing pinecones into it and watching them sail away.

Sweet boys. Love 'em lots!

Hah, Princess is holding a baby doll here, not our Baby!

Did it trick you? I did several double takes while we were there thanks to this doll.

He is already looking big and chunky. How fast they grow.

My nephew celebrated his first birthday while we were visiting! It was fun to be able to attend his party.

 (My sister makes awesome cakes as a hobby just looking things up on the internet.) Since she picked a race car theme, she also gave the kids boxes to make their own race cars and held foot races while wearing them. Simple stuff makes kids happy!

My mom likes to put out really large puzzles when family is gathered together. This one was a 3000 piece animal scene that took over 3 weeks of many people working on it...to end with 1 piece missing. But puzzles are pretty much a family tradition I guess. We sit around searching for pieces and complain about the puzzle together.

Trips to visit family are never long enough but they are always fun! We loved seeing everyone.

Princess turns 5 (December 2013)

 How can it have already been 5 years already? I spent so long wishing and hoping for this girl to join our family. Now she is 5 and no longer a small one. We celebrated the day with delicious food, cake and presents. She loved hearing the story of the day she was born and seeing her baby pictures.

A blue chocolate cake with sprinkles. She knows what she wants.

She gave her dad some of her bling to wear for the night.

Her dad painted this wagon for her. She loves it.

Baby brother watched the proceedings with interest.

I love this girl. She loves to do arts and crafts with me and is always ready to draw, paint, sculpt, cut and paste. She loves to have pretend sword fights with her brothers. She loves to look at books and have them read to her. She declared recently that she was ready to learn to read and has earnestly been working to learn the sounds and shapes of the letters. She has opinions about clothing, colors, activities and she will share them. She prefers pants to skirts but will wear a frilly dress to church. She enjoys pretend play with dolls and animals and we sometimes have pretend tea parties together. She loves her dad and baby brother. She asks me daily what her jobs are and likes to help clean. She reminds me every night that we need to read scriptures. She does not like potatoes and never has. She prefers plain cheese pizza. I love her so much. I am so glad she is part of our family.

Who does our newest baby look the most like? Princess. Here she is at about 2 months old. He is very much like her, only he doesn't have as much hair.

Trainboy turns 9 (December 2013)

My sweet little boy is growing up. We celebrated that he has been part of our family now for 9 years in December.

Breakfast in bed. Didn't know I had started a tradition there. Oops.

Cute brother helped me out by holding baby.

After much deliberation, he decided a peppermint chocolate ice cream cake was what he wanted. So I set out to make my first ice cream cake.

My cake is huge!

Lots of candles

Picture showing the inside of the giant cake.

I followed a recipe, but the ice cream layer was just too thick for us. I think that yummy fudgey layer that you get from store bought cakes would have been a nice addition. When you add in that it had to be kept in the freezer also, this cake wasn't completely consumed until mid January.

Favorite present: A calculator

So earlier in the month, Trainboy had an abscess in his mouth and had to get a tooth pulled after a round of antibiotics. While he was at the dentist, his dad made a video to show me later of what happened. In it Trainboy is asked what he wants for Christmas and his immediate answer is "a calculator". Hah! Love it! That was an easy birthday present to get him. He was thrilled! (I should note that part of that desire probably comes from the fact that I am protective of my calculator that I use for tutoring work. He has gotten in trouble for "playing" with my calculator before.)

This kid is really growing up to be an awesome person. I can't believe he is already 9. It doesn't seem like that much time could have already passed. I still remember trying to get him to sleep and how much time I spent worrying about making sure he got his naps. Now he tells me how busy he is trying to fit in all the books he wants to read.

Trainboy as a baby with a beautiful head of hair.

My oldest two boys in 2005

The older ladies who stop you at the store to tell you to cherish the baby stages because you'll miss it and it'll be gone so quickly - I know what they mean now. But in those moments of not getting enough sleep it seemed like every day was never ending in length and I don't have enough memories of cuddling him. I wish I could go back and just hold Trainboy as a baby again. Since I can't, I guess I'll hold his baby brother extra and try to pack in the memories of joy of now. Because Trainboy is an awesome kid with a big heart full of love. He is sweet and caring and helpful. He is inquisitive and a stickler for following the rules. He has a quick temper when he perceives injustice. He loves to watch the birds and grow plants. He is observant and thoughtful. He is wonderful. I am glad he is part of my family.

Dec 2006, age 2

Dec 2008, age 4, becoming a big brother for the first time

Dec 2010 about to eat his baby corn he grew in the garden.

Jan 2013, age 8, being goofy for baptism pictures

Trainboy age 9, Baby age 7 weeks  (early January 2014)

Dinoguy's birthday (Oct 2013)

My first baby celebrated 11 years of life on this earth in October. We started the day by bringing him breakfast in bed, which meant that the rest of his siblings now want such treatment from now on. Oops. His sister made him approximately 7 birthday cards; she loves coloring! He also got to attend his first Boy scout patrol meeting that evening so he was quite happy.

He asked for chocolate cake with chocolate frosting - I made Germans chocolate cake but used a Chocolate ganache filling and a Chocolate buttercream frosting. It was extremely sweet and chocolatey.

Happy Birthday dear boy. I love you!

11 years ago on his first Halloween

Little Guy turns 3 (October 2013)

Little Guy celebrated 3 years of life in October. It was a fun birthday. We had a couple family friends come over and join us in celebrating his birthday with his favorite dinner items and cake.

Playing with his remote control fire engine after Fixitman resoldered the connections.Coincidental that it happened on his birthday he could use it again, but he was thrilled!

He ask for a dragon cake. Since his favorite movie is "How to Train Your Dragon" wings were the most important feature. I used the Wilton Dinosaur pan and added chocolate wings. (My awesome sister's suggestion)

After eating salad, mac & cheese and hot dogs, it was time for cake!

After cake he opened his presents.

Photobombing by a family friend.

Haha I cropped the photobomber out of this picture.

These two boys are good friends. Dinoguy loves to hold babies also.

Love this picture. :)

In trying to figure out what to get the three year old boy who has everything (because he has older brothers!) I thought of getting him a pet fish. So we went to the pet store and he picked out a baby beta fish. I have never had a pet fish and as soon as we got home and started to set it up, the lunacy of this started to settle in. I had taken responsibility for another life again! Ack!

Sometimes his fish' name is Wendy, sometimes it is Peter Pan. I guess it depends on if he believes it to be a girl or boy fish at the time. The good news is the fish is still alive, almost two months later! Hooray!

April 2013 Activities

April 2013 was a busy month. We started off with a preschool field trip to a local bakery where the kids get to see the kitchen, freezer, giant stone oven... eat a fresh cookie and then make their own custom bread!

Here are the cuties!

These two were excited to attend also, though they were older than the others. Food inspires them.

We are frequent visitors of the library, here are three of them reading. I just love that Little Guy has learned how to "read" and act at the library and we're past the shelf clearing stage.

We did still life drawings for art this month, trying to focus on learning to draw objects behind other objects as well as details.                                Here is Dinoguy's drawing.

Here is Trainboy's drawing.

Here is Princess' drawing. She loves art!

                                      And here is Little Guy showing off his drawing.

Princess was given a butterfly kit for her birthday in December. We ordered the larvae and they were delivered at the end of March. She really enjoyed watching them grow from tiny larvae to large caterpillars in their jar and then they made chrysalis and we transferred them to the mesh observation cage. After watching them hatch and feeding them for several days, the weather was warm and it was time to let them go free.

She really liked watching them, it was fascinating to see their tongues unroll and roll up.

However, she would NOT hold them! Here is Trainboy holding one to give her, she says NO!

Here is Trainboy observing them. He really liked holding them!

Now Mom holds one close to her, but she still does not want to hold it herself.

General Conference came at the beginning of April and we had fun watching it and coloring pictures/taking notes.

Chocolate waffles with whipped cream and strawberries! Happy Conference breakfast!

We discovered these eggs inside a pocket of the jogging stroller I hadn't zipped up. I carefully transferred the nest to a gardening pot and we watched and waited. We never saw a mama bird and the eggs never hatched. I think they were laid too early in the spring and a cold spell had doomed them.

Princess lost her bathing suit last fall at the pool so we needed a new one. She chose this one out of the catalog and was very excited when it arrived. (Mom was happy because it was very discounted and affordable!)

We celebrated Mom & Dad's birthdays, here I am with the presents the kids chose for me.

And here is Fixitman with his cake.

                                         Here is Little Guy helping blow out the candles.

My sister came to visit after her semester ended. The kids LOVED playing with their aunt! They showered her with affection.Here she is experiencing three hugs at once with a fight.

We visited the local museum that had an interactive DNA exhibit that was quite fun. The kids didn't want to leave!

We took Auntie to the beach of course!

I found this fly swatter gun at the dollar store and it reminded me of one from my childhood. Little Guy thought it was the best toy ever.

Playing at the park with Auntie before she flew home.

Sisters

Well there is a whirlwind tour of highlights from April 2013 here! Hope you had a fabulous April also.