Daddy Daughter Fiesta!

Every year our ward has a Daddy Daughter date for achievement day girls. This year it was a fiesta. Kierra always loves to go on a date with her dad. They don't get a chance for one on one time very much and this is a great oppurtunity for them.

This is a really cute conversation that happened while they were gone. Jadon came home from his friends and asked where Daddy was. I told him that he was on a date with Kierra. A few minutes later, Jake asked me if he was getting a step-mom. I said "No, why do you ask that?" Jake said "You said that Daddy was out on a date. Why is he dating someone else?" He obviously didn't hear that he was on a date with Kierra!

Happy Halloween!

Last night we went to the annual Halloween party with friends from our ward. Dale and I don't really like to dress up so we decided to make our costumes simple and comfortable. There were a lot of people there with some really funny costumes. Maybe one of these years I'll get really creative and do something fun for our costumes. We had a lot of yummy food and learned some new games. It was a fun party

Happy Birthday Jax!

Yesterday was Jaxon's 9th Birthday. He has been so excited about his birthday for a long time. He made a list of things that he wanted for his Birthday. It had over 40 items on it. Some of them were small like a pack of Big Red gum while others were big and not very realistic like a whip or a real bow and arrow. He is always off track for his birthday so he was pretty bored in the morning. He kept looking at the clock because he wanted to know the minute he was nine years old (which is 12:45 in the afternoon). After he was officially nine, Dale and I took him out to lunch at Subway.

Later in the afternoon, he went to his last Wolf den meeting. I am his leader and we decided to have a Halloween party where we played Fear Factor. He got to be the one who had to fish for gummy worms in a plate of whip cream. He just dove in and got them as fast as he could. It was so funny!

After dinner, we had his yummy chocolate cake. It was a football cake and I thought it looked great! Dale asked him what piece he wanted and Jaxon said he wanted the 50 yard line piece. So that's what he got! Dale cut the first piece right out of the middle of the cake!

For a long time, Jaxon has seen the commercials on TV for Nightmare on 13th street (The Haunted House) and said that was what he wanted to do for his birthday. So that's what we did tonight. Kierra, Jake and Kyson said there was no way they were going, so we left them at my mom's. When we first got there, Jaxon decided he didn't want to go in. We finally talked him into it and we had a great time! It was a very well done haunted house and it was fun to watch the kids get scared (I was just as scared as them).

I hope Jaxon had a good Birthday. It's important to me that my kids have a good birthday because it's their day! We're so glad that Jaxon is part of our family. He definitely gives us some challenges but he has a lot of wonderful qualities and it's so fun to watch him excel at so many things. He's a great athlete and is doing great in school! He has a lot of friends and likes to have fun. I hope he goes far in life with his determination to be the best! I love you Jaxon!

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!