Little Graduate

Kyson is so happy that he finally graduated from preschool. He claims that he didn't like preschool but I know it was just an act. He just wanted to go to school with Jake, Jaxon and Kierra every day. Thursday night was his preschool graduation. He looked so handsome and grown up.

He was so cute when he sang the little songs. He's pretty shy and when they were singing the Star Spangled Banner and doing actions, he got embarassed but he he did a really great job!

Kyson with his teacher, Miss Lici. She has been the preschool teacher for all of our kids except Jadon.

My cute little graduate. I can't believe in just a few short months I'll be sending him off to Kindergarten. I will be sad not to have my little buddy around all the time. It will be good for him to come out of his shell a little bit though. He's a really smart little kid and I know he is going to do great in Kindergarten!

18 months old

Katie is 18 months old today. I took all these pictures of her outside because that is her favortie place to be. She never gets tired of it! She loves to swing, jump on the tramp, slide, ride her bike and go on walks. Whenever the kids play outside without her, she stands at the kitchen window and knocks on it and yells "Hi" to them. Katie is talking more and more every day. She says so many words. It's so fun to listen to her talk. She does get frustrated when she can't figure out how to tell us what she wants. When she is mad, she will run around the room and hit things and then colapse on the floor and cry. Katie loves doggies and kitties and gets very excited when she sees them. She likes them from a distance. If they get too close to her, she gets pretty nervous. She still loves babies, especially real ones. If she ever sees a carseat she knows that a baby should be in it. She will go over to it and say "baby, baby, baby" until whoever is the owner of the baby shows it to her. Katie loves music! She likes to dance with her Daddy. She has fallen asleep on his shoulder, while he's dancing with her, several times. She doesn't like her carseat and frequently will freak out and arch her back so we can't get her in it. She loves hot dogs, bananas, apples, grapes, fruit snacks, candy and gum. She knows where we keep the candy and gum and will go over to the cupboard and ask for "nandy". She has learned to say please so we make her say please for everything. She will stand at Kierra's door, when she knows Kierra is in there, and knock and say "Please" over and over until Kierra lets her in. She doesn't care much for TV but loves Mickey Mouse. She watches the first 5 minutes of Mickey Mouse Club House and that's about it. Katie loves shoes and is always putting everyone's shoes on her. She knows when Dale is coming home. When she hears the garage door open, she'll say "Daddy!" and get very excited.

Katie doesn't have much fear of anything. She jumps on the tramp with the kids and it doesn't scare her at all! She will wonder off from us no matter where we are. She doesn't seem to even know she is by herself when she does that. She just keeps walking and exploring.

She loves to climb up to the top of our playground and peak through the slats and say "Hi". Then she'll move to the next slat and say "Hi". It's so cute to see her little face peaking through. She is so much fun and it's so fun to listen to her learning to talk. I can't believe how fast she's growing up!

Beautiful Day!!!

I was so happy when I woke up this morning to see the sun shining. I couldn't believe it wasn't raining (or snowing) and I was so excited! I started out by going on a walk with Katie. It was so quiet and peaceful and there was no wind for a change. I loved walking and listening to my music. When I got home I mowed the lawn. Our lawn was very long because I haven't been able to find two hours where it wasn't soaking wet. The only thing good about all this rain is how green it has made our grass. I love mowing the lawn. It is very gratifying. It's one of the only jobs I can do that doesn't get messed up within an hour. While I was mowing the lawn, Kyson and Katie got to have a picnic lunch outside. After that they just played outside. They had so much fun together.

In the evening, we went to the baseball park for Jaxon's game. It was a beautiful night. I love the view of the valley from the baseball park, especially as the sun is going down. This beautiful day had a great ending... Jaxon played great and his team won their game! I hope tomorrow is just as nice as today was!

Father's and Sons

On Friday Dale took the 4 boys to Father's and Sons. As they were getting ready, we realized that this is the first year they have gone to the whole thing. We have always had conflicts like baseball or dance performances and they go late or just on Saturday. This year they were on the road about 4:00. Jadon was very excited to go and got the trailer ready to go the day before. Even though it rained almost the whole time they were there, they all said they had fun!

Kierra, Katie and I had a good time having a "girls night" while they were gone. We played outside for a while, went to Subway for dinner and then watched two movies. It was fun to have a quiet night together.

Family Life Project

Jadon is working on his Family Life Merit badge and needed to come up with a project that involved the whole family's participation. He (with my encouragement) picked to weed one of our flower beds. This particular flower bed is a nightmare to weed every year. I never get to it when the weeds start sprouting because my allergies won't allow it. Because of this, the weeds are usually pretty tall by the time we get to it.

It was kind of hard to get Jake and Kyson away from the WII to come out and weed, but once we did they were actually really good workers. Their job was to go around and pick up all the weeds once Jadon dug them loose with the shovel. We heard a lot of screams from Kierra every time she saw a bug or a worm. All in all, I think it was a great project! It's so much easier to weed when you get to sit and talk to your family while listening to music (Jadon brought out his Nano and speakers and put them in the tree).

The finished project!

Ya gotta love sidewalk chalk!!!

Today I decided to spend some time weeding and Kyson wanted to be outside with me so he chose to color on the sidewalk with chalk. He decided he wanted to color the whole porch all different colors. I kept watching him and he was so cute as he busily covered the porch with chalk colors. I LOVE sidewalk chalk! Especially a brand new container with big pieces of new chalk. It's awesome that something that costs $1.00 can entertain kids for so long!

Mother's Day Lunch

Today I went out to lunch with all my siblings and my parents to celebrate Mother's Day. My brother, Paul, lives in Georgia and he was here for a few days so it was great to be able to have him there.

We had a great time together. We ate yummy food and laughed a lot. I can't remember the last time we did something like this. We sometimes have adults only dinners so spouse are invited but this time it was just the 5 siblings. It was fun to reminisce about our childhood. Apparently, I'm the only one in the family who doesn't love meatloaf. Weird! I hope we can do this again sometime!

Happy Mother's Day!

Today has been a great day! On this Mother's Day, I am especially thankful for the oppurtunity I have to be a Mother. Dale has been wonderful! He took care of as many of the daily duties, that I normally do, as he could. He made breakfast, lunch and dinner for all the kids and let me take a REALLY long Sunday nap. While he was cleaning up dinner, he said to me "Why do you like this job?" While I finished my dinner, I sat and thought about that. It really does give me such joy and satisfaction to have 6 kids to take care of. It means the world to me when they are happy. I am happy taking care of them. I agree that sometimes they can drive me crazy and test my patience levels but I still love my job! I love watching my boys play sports. I love watching Kyson and Jake play together. I love all of Kierra's drawings and stories. I love listening to Katie talk. I love spending one on one time with any of my kids. I love going out to dinner as a family. I love taking pictures of my kids. I love looking at them, asleep in their beds at night, before I go to bed. I love it when they tell me they love me! I love to see them smile!
I am so thankful that I have been entrusted to take care of these special children!

I took this picture for two reasons. I love tulips and the first little flower, on the bush behind the tulips, bloomed today. It made me excited because I love it when all the flowers start blooming in our yard!

Dale and the kids sent me these flowers for Mother's Day. They are so pretty! Once again, I love tulips. They also gave me a card saying what their favorite thing about me was. That was neat. Jadon gave me the Ward's Worldwide cookbook. There are so many recipes in there that I want to try!

I put this picture in because it was so sweet. When everyone was cleaning up dinner together, I looked over to see Katie sitting on the couch, looking at my sharing time manual. She was just staring at the picture of Jesus. She is so sweet! It's the little things like this that make everything about being a mom worth it!

Best game ever!

Tonight was a pretty important game for Jaxon's team. They were playing the 1st place team who is undefeated. Not only were they undefeated, they have beaten every other team by more than 10 points. To top it off, one of the players on the other team was the son of my good friend. I'm sure the title of the post gives it away. OUR TEAM WON!!!! It was such an awesome game! Jaxon had an awesome catch. He was in left field and a ball was hit right towards him. The catch looked like something you see in Major League Games. The ball came at him on his right side and he just brought his left arm across him and snagged the ball. It was so cool! He had a big grin on his face after that and so did I! He also had two great hits. It was a close, stressful game the whole time. They ended up winning 3-2 when a player caught a pop fly making the 3rd out in the 6th inning! It was so much fun to watch all the kids come running out of the dug-out screaming. All the parents were screaming just as loud. What a fantasic night!