Cousins

This past weekend my sister in law Sharon and her two kids Hyrum and Lilliana came for a visit from Colorado. My sister Jessica and her daughter Emily also came up for the weekend. So we had a full house. The kids had a blast getting to know their cousins. We spent Saturday at one of our favorite parks by the Sound.

Noah and Hyrum got along great and had so much fun playing together!

I love how Emma blends in with the play ground equipment in this picture.

All the kids eating lunch at the park.

One more picture of all the cousins together.

Hyrum had a birthday in June and so we had a volcano cake for him. He really likes dinosaurs and volcanoes.

Noah cooking something up. He had way to much fun with the dry ice!

Catching Up

We've been really busy here at our house.
Noah called us outside the other day and said we had to see something. We went out to see Emma riding her bike! She has had the balance down for about 6 months, but has refused to peddle. I guess Noah has been out there teaching her how to peddle and she finally got it down. Now we can't seem to get her off the bike! Kendall was really nice and finally repaired Noah's bike this past weekend and now the two of them ride around the neighborhood.

Another project going on at our house is bunk beds for the boys room. They are coming along really nice and I can't wait to put them up. Noah likes working with his dad on this kind of stuff.

Noah's got all kinds of plans for how he is going to get up and down from the top bunk. According to Noah he will have a rope ladder to get up and then wants to make a pole to slide down. That way no one can get up on the bed. I think he's going to be a little disappointed. :( I'll post pictures of the beds when they are done.

My "little" project has been strawberries and cherries. I got 45 pounds of strawberries and 50 pounds of cherries last week and had to get them all processed before they went bad. So I made 34 pints of strawberry jam and then froze the rest of the strawberries to make smoothies. I pitted the cherries and froze most of them. We have had a couple cherry pies and cobblers too. I love cherry pie with ice cream! My mom helped pit a bunch too, which was a very big help. My hands are still stained with cherry juice! But it feels good to have jam for the next year and fruit in the freezer for smoothies and pies.

Also, our couch FINALLY came! We've been without a couch since my mother moved out in February. I was really getting tired of sitting in the lazyboy recliner (which was our only place to sit all that time). As you can see the kids love it. It it big and comfy and I LOVE it!

I remember as a kid when we got our first brand new couch and how excited we all were. Then my dad ruined all our fun by giving us a very long list of things we couldn't do around the furniture (no eating, no dirty feet on the couch, no standing, jumping, climbing....) All us kids thought he was so mean! Now I find myself doing the same exact thing as he did! Daniel has gotten to the point that he will come up to me and hold out his hands and say "clean hand" before he goes near the couch. Poor kids! But I know some day when they have kids they will do the same thing!

So that's what we've been up to lately. Hopefully soon I will be able to post pictures of a cute little baby!

4th of July

We had a good 4th of July this year. It was a typical gray cool 56 degrees. We had my mom and some friends over for a yummy dinner. The kids let off sparklers in the back yard. And yes for those who live anywhere other then the pacific northwest, the kids are wearing coats on the 4th of July! It was a nice 56 degrees and cloudy skies all day. But that didn't stop us from having a good time.

We went to watch the fireworks. Daniel stayed awake for the first 5 minutes and then fell asleep. I don't think I could have slept through that show! Emma watched about 10 minutes of it and then turned her back to the fireworks, curled up and covered her ears for the last 20 minutes of the show. I'm just grateful she didn't cry the whole time like she has done in past years! Emma's favorite part was the drive home when she can see all the fireworks going off all over town, but doesn't have to listen to them. All in all it was a good day.

So I've been really bad a blogging lately. Life has been busy with day to day stuff. We've had a couple of nice days lately after a ton of rain which has been flooding our garden. The kids go outside every morning after breakfast and every night right before bed and collect slugs so they won't eat all our garden. They seem to really enjoy the hunt too. I'm so grateful for that, cause I can't stand the sight of those slimy creatures let alone pick them up to dispose of them. We are still waiting for summer to make an appearance. The days we have had sunshine I can't seem to get my kids to come inside, and I don't blame them at all! I don't want to be inside either. I just wish that I had the energy to go out and play more. I just mostly go out and sit on a chair and read a book while they play. I've been really low on iron this pregnancy and that has not been very fun. But I am getting my levels back up so my midwife is happy with that. I only have 7 weeks left till the baby's due date. I'm getting excited about meeting this new little one. This baby is very active and loves to "tickle" my ribs often, just to let me know she's there. I still think this baby is a girl, but we won't know for sure till her/his appearance in this world. If I am right and she is a girl we will name her Jane Elizabeth.

I thought this was a cute picture of Emma and Daniel sitting outside reading a book.

Emma is starting to really get interested in letters and numbers so she loves books.

On Sunday we took the kids to the park and let them have a little fun. Daniel loves the slides.

Kendall told me about a little conversation they had while exploring the little wooded area of the park. Noah was looking for good trees to climb and that's when he said this:

Noah: Dad, when I die and am resurrected, will I still be allergic to pine trees?

Dad: Umm, no you won't be allergic to pine trees.

Noah: GOOD! Cause I really really want to climb a pine tree!

I thought it was so funny, Noah loves to climb trees and the pine trees are what he really wants to climb more then anything else, but because of his allergies to them he can't.

So that's kind of what we've been up to lately. We've started a couple of fun projects that I will hopefully be able to post about soon so don't give up on me!

Emma Is 5!

Emma turned 5yrs old on Sunday. She was so excited for her birthday! We just had a quiet family dinner and cake and ice cream to celebrate. We did go down to see my Dad and Catherine and sister Jessica over the weekend also.

She wanted an "inside" ball, which Noah got for her. They have spent a lot of time playing with it already.

You can tell she really likes it!

She got a couple Barbie dolls and some clothes to go with them from my mom. The kids spent a few hours in Emma's room playing barbie that night.

We got Emma the game Zingo. She has been playing this game with her speech therapist the past few months and LOVES it. So now she can play it at home.

They just had to get one game in before cake and ice cream!

Emma wanted a butterfly cake this year and since I have absolutely no skills as a cake decorator my mom made the cake. She was so happy with it!

Noah is our resident pyro and had to light the candles!

Blowing out the candles. I can't believe she's 5! But at the same time it seems like it can't be that she has only been part of our family for 5 years, if that makes sense at all. She brings us so much joy and I can't imagine our family without her here in all her girly fiestyness.

Noah's 1st Pinewood Derby

Tonight Noah received his bobcat badge for cub scouts and is working hard to earn his wolf badge.

It was also his 1st pinewood derby race. He work really hard on his car and was really excited about tonight. All his hard work paid off and he received 1st place in the race! I was so proud of him. He was so serious when he went up to get the award and everyone kept saying "smile, you won!" I think he was more excited about making the car then racing it. He would spend hours sanding it till it was the perfect smoothness.

Here he is receiving his award.

Here he is with his car and award.

They had every car race against every car so Noah's car raced 12 different times. This is the video of his car racing for the 1st time. He was so cute!

Family Night Fun!

Tonight we had our family home evening. Kendall was in charge of the family activity, but was having a hard time thinking of something to do so I yelled out "Lets play tickle Daddy!" Before he knew what was happening all three kids jumped on him and the playing began! I don't know what he is going to do when there are 4 little ones piling on him!

The kids were having so much fun and I had a great laugh!

Then Kendall had enough and started fighting back!

He's got two down but Emma's still in this thing!

But in the end Kendall still came out on top! After burning off some energy we made home made blueberry ice cream in the blender, yummy!