A Quick Update

Well, time is flying by and with summer here, there is little time to keep things updated!  I've got  to keep 4 busy little kids busy and that is keeping me busy. :)

Here are some of the highlights from the last couple of months:

Kayla is becoming quite the little bike rider.  Her trike died and we found this cute bike at a yard sale.  I am proud to say that I put on the training wheels from Lily's bike all by myself. :)

It's harder to get a picture of all the kids together, but here's one. 

Lily graduated from our little preschool co-op.

Our chicken coop is almost done.  The kids had a great time playing in it.  It is now more done that this picture, but not completely done.  I'll post a picture of it when it's all done.  It is usable, though and the chickens are growing fast!

Since it is rare to get a picture together, I thought I'd better post this one.  We are at my youngest sister, Kara's high school graduation.  She started kindergarten when I started at BYU.  Now I really feel old. :)

 

Oops.  Fuzzy family shot.  

 

We took a little trip out to the Whitman Mission while we were in Walla Walla.  My sister, Lori is working out there for her third summer!  She's the third in the family to work out there.  

We spent a Saturday afternoon riding bikes along the Boise River greenbelt.  It was a lot of fun!  We stopped to find a geocache in this huge tree. . . but never found it.  

Here's Lily's pose.  She's quite the drama queen.

Me and sweet Benson.

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Kayla rare poses for the camera these days, so this was nice. 

Benson sure loves my cookies. :)

My mom made nightgowns for the girls (and cousin Kate).  They feel like princesses in them.

And they sure have lots of fun together!

Well, if you made it to the end of all these pictures, thanks!!  Now I might feel not so overwhelmed about posting again that's a little more up to date. :)

We Got Chicks!

Meet the newest members of our family! Strate (Nathan's chick, started out as Fluffy, then Bird of Prey, now Strate. . . ), Sweet Tweet (or the latest might be Fluffy, I can't keep track--that's Lily's), and Dorothy (Kayla's--she loves the Wizard of Oz). Hopefully, one of the names of Nathan's and Lily's will stick before too long! Lily, holding Sweet Tweet.

Kayla and Dorothy.

The girls' favorite sitting spot, staring down on the baby chicks.

I didn't get a picture of Nathan with his yet. The kids are having so much fun with these little gals. :) We are hoping they will be nice, low maintenance, productive pets. ;)

Look at Me!

This is Benson's latest trick. He's starting to pull himself up to standing! It took a little help from Lily to get up this high, but he pulls himself up onto our little mini tramoline and then crawls across it -- and right off the other side unless we are there to catch him. :) He has lots of helpers to watch out for him, though!

Happy Birthday, Nathan!

Our big boy Nathan turned 7 years old today! I'm not big into birthday parties, but I told him that he could have a "couple" of friends over for cake. I had made a yummy eclair cake for his birthday, but then we ended up with 5 little boys over and I didn't want to share that yummy cake! So, I quickly made a chocolate bundt cake (which turned out SO delicious--just a cake mix with the eggs, water and oil called for, a package of instant chocolate pudding, a couple spoonfuls of sour cream and chocolate chips. Yum! For the frosting, I melted 3 T butter, 3 T milk and 3 T cocoa, mixed and added 2 cups of powdered sugar. . . ).

Here are the boys chowing down! I have to say that this was a very last minute party, but it tunred out great!

Everyone making silly faces.

Lily and Kayla making their funny faces.

Tonight after dinner, we sang, again, and had cake, again, with Bryson home. It was a great cake day!

Nathan's said it was his best birthday ever and that makes me happy. :) He is growing up so fast and we are so lucky to have him in our family!

Chuck E Cheese

Well, we finally did it. After years of Nathan begging to go to Chuck E Cheese, we finally did it. Yesterday, we spent three fun-filled, loud, crazy, overstimulated hours there to celebrate Nathan's birthday! The kids absolutely loved it (which kind of surprised me, at least Kayla, because she doesn't usually like loud places with lots of people. . . )

Benson was sooooooooo good to endure the craziness and being kept up way past his naptime. He was such a trooper and never complained. :)

Of course, I was a little tired by the end-to say the least-especially after hauling this big boy around most of the time.

Lily had a rough start. Her tooth was SO loose and she couldn't eat or do anything until because it was hurting her.

Finally, her tooth fell out! That's number 2 for her.

Bryson gave me a couple short breaks from carrying Benson around. :) So, he sucks on his index finger. . . backwards (Benson, not Bryson, ha ha). It's very cute and when he is ready for nap, he just cuddles up to me and sucks his finger. I put him in bed and *poof* naptime.

With all the games and things to do there, the kids' favorite thing was the above ground tunnels.

Crazy driver Nathan on the loose!

That night, we let Nathan open his present from Pa and Grammy (I knew there were new church clothes in it. :)

He is SO excited for his birthday tomorrow!
In fact, Nathan is so excited that he woke me up this morning at 5:18AM. That kid is an early riser, but I think he is literally SO EXCITED that his early morning wake time is getting earlier and earlier. . . hopefully it will go back to normal (at least 6AM) after his big day.

A little bit of fun

We took some pictures of the kids the other night when we were all dressed up and ready to go to our Stake Cultural Arts Festival. Kayla wouldn't get in this one. Our preschool group took a field trip to the fire station. Kayla, again, not wanting to be in the picture).

Yes! Benson is getting curls! Why is it that my baby boys get all the curls? (Nathan had very thick, fast growing curly hair as a baby, Lily didn't get hers until age 4 1/2.) And there are my new pics!

9 Months!

Time is flying by when it comes to this little dude! He's nine months old now and doing great! I can't ask for a better baby.

And just in case you haven't checked out my self-reliance blog lately, I've been doing some posts on it. http://selfreliancebyjamie.blogspot.com/