Amy's 4!!

It's hard to believe my little girl is already 4! We tried to make today special. She woke up to a Happy Birthday poster and presents, although we made her wait until Daddy came home from work before she could open them. The suspense was killing her, but once Ken came home she was so excited to open gifts. It might as well have been Christmas morning. She woke Ian up from his nap so she could start. She's been really into jungle and safari animals so we got her some plastic toy animals and a safari "tent" type thing to play in. Then we headed off to Chuck E. Cheese to celebrate her day as a family.

Amy at 4:

Favorite hobbies: projects, painting,

Favorite sayings: "probably, yes/no"

Favorite toys: animals & dinosaurs

Favorite movie: "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs"

To celebrate Amy's 4th birthday we spent the evening at Chuck E. Cheese. We all had a great time!

Our Chuck E Cheese Portraits

Little Rachel is all smiles :)

The last couple weeks Rachel has started to smile.

Amy & Ian with their new sister, Rachel

Happy Birthday to Me

Yesterday I turned 31. Carrying on his family's tradition, Kenny decided to get up a little early and make me a sign to add to the birthday decor. He couldn't find a marker anywhere so he decided to use black shoe polish. He made up my little sign and hung it on the wall. What was supposed to be a nice little sign became a little more gothic as the shoe polish ran. It made me laugh everytime I walked by it. Ian told me he didn't like the sign. I guess it was a little scary for him.

4th of July Breakfast

Last year we started a little tradition to have a 4th of July breakfast in the backyard for our family. I was tempted to not bother this year, but I thought of my sister-in-law Debbie and had to do it. It's easy to make traditions happen when more family/friends are around, when invitations have been extended, etc. But when there's no accountability to anyone else but your own children who will inevitably be too young to probably even remember it's easy to skip opportunities for the magic moments. Debbie would have made the breakfast happen whether it was for Ty, Bre, and Buddy or if it was the whole extended family. So, in her honor I put out the 4th of July placemats she gave me several years ago, made little red, white, and blue yogurt parfaits and toasties and had a very simple 4th of July Breakfast with the family. Amy & Ian made sure they were wearing their 4th of July hats (by their own desire). We sang "America the Beautiful", enjoying a blustery and not-so-yummy breakfast outside (kinda hard to mess up yogurt parfaits but I learned that the Dannon or Yoplait vanilla yogurt is the only way to go - some of the other stuff is gross). We'll finish up the celebrations with fireworks. Happy 4th of July!

Memorial Day Weekend

We spent a short, but fun, memorial day weekend in California with Ken's parents, brother, and nephew. We had a great time visiting and being together. The kids loved swimming in the pool. My parents and sister came up on Sunday night to spend a few hours with us and the kids as well. Amy finally learned how to pedal a bike. She felt like quite a big girl finally figuring out how to do that. 

 

On Monday we went on a hike near his parent's home. The hike had a spectacular view of the ocean. We found some "buried treasure", a geocache, and enjoyed the beautiful weather.  

A couple things you might have heard Amy say while on the hike: "Daddy, if we see an animal in trouble we need to help it okay?" (Hmm. . . a little Diego influence?) and "Daddy, we're going in the jungle. You need to follow me." Ian enjoyed looking for lizards and bugs, finding the sailboats on the ocean, and watching the fighter planes overhead. The kids did great. It made me anxious to go "exploring" more.

It was our last "driving vacation" for awhile. We figured out that since January we had been to Arizona twice, California twice, and Orderville once. Our kids are now seasoned road trippers, and luckily they travel quite well so far. The ride home from California was a bit eventful with a throw-up episode and a potty incident, but I guess you have to make it memorable somehow :). We love our family and were glad to spend the time hanging out with them.

Planting begins

In spite of colds, Ken's bad back, and rain, we were anxious to start planting our flowers and our vegetable garden this week. Friday night we started the endeavor planting our flower boxes that go around our deck. On Saturday we continued by planting some vegetables in containers. We have a lot more to do before we are finished with the planting. We tried to get the kids involved. Ian was excited for a whole 5 minutes and then just wanted to play in the dirt. Amy actually wanted to pick out some flowers to go in the flower box (with a little guidance). She was excited about her special Amy flower box.

Catastrophe Averted

I've been letting Amy practice cutting paper lately and hadn't really thought about the possibility that she'd think to cut Ian's hair, but she did put her cutting skills to use on Ian's hair. Luckily, I caught her before she did any major damage. Ian's hair is so long right now you can hardly tell. So, if this is the worst of our hair cutting stories I'll be grateful. What family doesn't have a hair cutting story? It's a right of passage of any toddler I think. I'm just glad it wasn't Ian cutting Amy's hair since it's taken her 3 1/2 years to grow her hair to it's current length!! Amy's justification "I was making it not crazy".

Climbers

Yesterday the kids got their little rock climbing harnesses in the mail. Ken was so excited to try them out. He gave the kids their first lessons in rock climbing in our back yard.

Sweet Brother

Amy got in trouble yesterday. After I told her she could come out of timeout she went over to Ian for a little comfort. She gave him a hug and then cried on his shoulder for a few minutes. Ian kept telling her, "It's okay Amy." I must have been tired myself because it had me tearing up at the sweetness. I'm glad they are such good friends and help each other when they are sad.

Temple Square

Last Thursday I thought it would be fun to take the kids to Temple Square and take pictures of them in front of the beautiful flowers. I hoped that perhaps some of the pictures would be good enough to send out for mother's day. Although a sunny day, I misjudged just how cold it was going to be so it wasn't nearly as "fun" as I hoped. The kids had about a 10 picture maximum before they were ready to go indoors - none of which turned out all that great. I might have to try again next week when it gets warmer. It's so beautiful this time of year on temple square I don't mind going twice..

I seem to have very few pictures of me with my kids. The ones that I do have aren't the greatest. So, when I find a picture that I like of me I want it to be great of the kids too. Unfortunately, this one wasn't the greatest of Ian. He must be shaking his head or something to get a mouth like that. So I photoshopped Ian's head from the picture below to try and make it at least decent. I think I need to shrink his head a little more in the updated picture but it did the trick - at least for a new profile picture on facebook :).

Here the kids are still enjoying their time at Temple Square in the freezing temperatures. And the picture below is about 5 minutes later. . . Not so much fun anymore.

So we went to the visitor's center to get warm. By this time I was tired so we didn't stay long but we did look at all the large pictures around the room and stopped at the Christus. Amy went right up to it. Ian was a little afraid. But it was still fun to be at Temple Square with the kids.