11 months old

Katie is 11 months old today. I can't believe that in one short month, she will be a year old! My, how time flies! She is growing up and learning so many new things. She has learned to climb on things and loves to climb in the dishwasher and on the bottom of the end tables. She has even climbed into the bathtub. She loves to get into cupboards. We are trying to teach her what cupboards she can't open because we don't want to buy those dumb cupboard locks. Hopefully it will work. She if finally sleeping through the night. Once we decided to be strong and just listen to her cry, she did awesome. It only took her two nights to figure it out. I have to say, I miss her snuggling with me in our bed! It's fun to watch her learning how to communicate with us. When I ask her if she wants to eat, she claps her hands. She is just starting to shake her head "No", when she doesn't want something. Since she has learned to crawl, she loves to explore. She LOVES the kids rooms! If they ever forget to close their doors, she will zoom down the hall and try to get in there before they figure out they left it open. Katie loves anything that makes music. She has adopted a little dog from Kyson that sings songs and she loves it. She will bounce up and down every time the songs play. We are thoroughly enjoying our little girl. It is so much fun to have a baby around again!

Mystery reader

Jaxon has a teacher for 3rd grade that Jadon and Kierra also had for 3rd grade. She does what she calls a "Mystery reader" every Friday. The parents take turns coming in to read a book to the students. The parents sit behind a curtain, while they read, and the kids are suppose to try and guess whose parent it is. Last Friday it was my turn. When I did it for Jadon and Kierra I couldn't disguise my voice good enough. They knew as soon as I started talking that it was me. This time I brought helium balloons and sucked the helium before I talked. I told the kids jokes because Jaxon loves joke books. After the story was over, and the kids knew it was me, they all took turns saying what they like about Jaxon. I think it's a great moral booster for the kids. After that, I get to tell what I like about Jaxon and some funny stories from when he was young. It was fun to embarass Jaxon! Since we were going off track, his class was having a Halloween party and they got their faces painted. This is what Jaxon looked like. I thought he looked pretty cool!

The joys of crawling

Katie has gotten to be quite an expert at crawling. She is really fast, especially if the door to outside gets left open. She loves outside and crawls super fast, only to get there right as someone shuts it, leaving her crying. So sad! She has just started climbing onto things. Today I was unloading the dishwasher and she decided to climb right in. She was very proud of herself and was thrilled at how much easier she could get to the dishes.

Freaky Friday

On Friday Kierra's 5th grade class celebrated Freaky Friday. Her teacher started this because when she was in 5th grade, she always wanted her mom to come to school with her. It really was fun. We got to go to school with our kids for an hour and a half and do what they do at school.

We went to recess with them. All the girls play some really cute games and they taught us how to play them.

The parents had to take a spelling test. I'm ashamed to admit that I got 16/20 on the test. Then we did a math paper and we raced against our students. I beat Kierra on that. We had to take a test to see how "cool" we were. They had phrases like l.o.l. and p.h.a.t. and we had to say what they meant. I got enough answers right to barely make it into the cool parent category. It was really fun to see my daughter with her friends and know a little more about what goes on in the day. I found out one thing though. I'm NOT smarter than a 5th grader!

Everybody needs to be an only child sometimes!

The other day Jaxon got the chance to be an only child. All the kids were playing at friends houses and Jaxon couldn't find a friend to play with so he was just hanging out with me while I made cookies. We were just talking and I said to him "Hey, it's kind of like your an only child right now." He thought that was so cool! Then we remembered that Katie was crawling around on the floor so he wasn't "really" an only child. He said "That's OK, I love just being with my baby sister by myself." We continued to just hang out. He asked me if he could have a cookie batter beater since he was an only child. I usually don't give the beaters to kids because we have too many kids and I only have two beaters. It wouldn't be fair (I know, I'm a mean mom!). So, guess what I did. I gave him both the beaters. You should have seen his face. It was fun. I don't get one-on-one time with him much and I really enjoyed it!

Three forks hike

This weekend we went on a hike with my family up Diamond Fork Canyon. When we went camping with the Byers family a few weeks ago, we went on the same hike. I wanted to go again without my little kids so we could just enjoy the scenery. I was hoping the leaves would have changed so we could enjoy the fall leaves.

The colors were amazing! I never dreamed that they would be so pretty! Every time we saw a beautiful scene, we didn't think it could get any prettier. Then we would go around a bend and it was even prettier.

After some of the kids went swimming in the hot pots, we hiked back down. The hike down was even prettier because the sun was shining through the leaves. When you see beauty like this, you want to share it with everyone. It was a fun hike on a beautiful day.

First conference together

Jadon went to the priesthood session of conference for the first time tonight. It was neat to see him and Dale leave together, dressed in their suits. They started the tradition of going out to dinner before so they went to La Luna, of coarse. Dale said it was neat to have Jadon there with him for the session.