Katie's 1st dance recital

 Tonight was Katie's first dance recital.  She really didn't know what to expect so she wasn't super excited.  She did like getting her new dance costume on. 

 Once we got there and Katie saw all the little girls in their costumes, she got excited.  She loved it when Lisa sprayed gold glitter in hers and Kamryn's hair.

 I wasn't able to get any pictures of her during her dance because they all turned out blurry but we got it on video.  She was so cute!  Her face was in awe when she came out on the stage and saw all the people.  As soon as she spotted us, she started waving and smiling.  She was so cute through the whole dance and did a pretty good job.

After the dance was over, a lot of the girls received flowers from their dad's (notice Kamryn with hers in the background).  We thought Katie would like a barbie movie better than flowers so that's what we gave her.  She was really excited.  I'm so glad that I have a little girl in dance again.  I just hope she wants to continue dancing for a long time.

Meet Averie

 This week I started watching a little baby girl named Averie.  She is 3 months old so, with Noah at 7 months, it's kind of like having twins.  The first two days have been easier than I thought it would be.  Averie still sleeps a lot so that makes it easier.  I was able to take them both to the church to exercise and they both slept most of the time.  I hope they keep that up.  Besides the church, I haven't taken them anywhere where I have to get them out of the car.  I don't know if any place is worth that ordeal.

 Katie instantly fell in love with Averie but she still loves Noah.  Noah likes to crawl over to Averie and Katie is really good at making sure he doesn't get close enough to touch her.  She loves to spread Averie's blanket out on the floor and then cover her up with another blanket.

Here's my little tribe.  I'm sure that we will have good days and bad days but it will be fun to watch these little ones grow up and I'm glad that Katie will have the chance to be a big sister.

Kyson's 8th Birthday

Kyson turned 8 this week and we had an exciting week.  We celebrated Katie and Kyson's birthday on Wednesday by going to a trampoline place and then out to McDonald's for dinner.  Besides going to school, on his birthday, Kyson did nothing but play minecraft all day.  Jaxon got him the upgrade on the ipad as a present and all he wanted to do was play it.  Since I always let my kids do whatever they want (within reason) on their birthday, I let him play the video game all day.

The next day was his baptism.  He was excited, but nervous, to get baptized.  It was a very nice day.  There were only 3 kids who got baptized so it was short and quiet.  Dale gave him a wonderful blessing when he confirmed him.  After the baptism, we went to a church to have lunch with our families.  We also had a pinata for the kids.  They all liked that.  It was nice to be able to visit with our family while the kids ran around and played.

That night we took Kyson to the Roof to celebrate.  We wanted to continue the tradition, that we started with Jadon, of taking our child who just got baptized to a nice place to celebrate such an important event. 

Kyson had a good time.  He was very excited when they brought him a special hot chocolate.  He ate some new things.  He even tried a mushroom.  I wish I had a picture of his face because it was so funny.  He did not like it.  He was so full by the time that we got to dessert that he only had one piece of cake.  We had a good time together and it was quite an adventure.  When we got to our car to leave, the battery had died.  Dale had to track down someone who could help us.  Kyson, being the little worrier that he is, didn't like that part of the evening.  Luckily, we found someone to help us and made it home safely.  I am so happy with the decisions that Kyson has made.  He is a great kid who likes to do what is right.  He is a wonderful brother to Jake and takes good care of his best friend.  He has a lot of friends and everyone seems to like him.  He brings a great deal of joy to our family and I love him to pieces!  Happy Birthday Kyson!

Katie turns four!

 Yesterday was Katie's 4th birthday.  She has been very excited for her birthday.  She woke up at 6:45, which was way too early.  I tried to get her to go back to bed but she wouldn't.  She wanted to get ready for her party (which was going to be at 3:00)

 She was pretty grouchy all morning and whining a lot.  I decided I was going to take her on a ride to get her to fall asleep.  When I came out from getting ready, this is how I found her.  She had fallen asleep on the floor watching tv.  She ended up sleeping for a long time.  In fact, I had to wake her up for her party.
                                     
 She invited 6 of her little friends.  I had little games like duck, duck goose and pin the carrot nose on the snoman planned for them.  They played the games and had fun but all they really wanted to do was play with each other.  So that's what we did.  They played house downstairs then went outside and played together. 

 I asked Katie what she wanted for her birthday dinner and she picked chicken and fries, of coarse.

After dinner we opened presents then had a movie night.  We all watched the new barbie movie that Katie got for her birthday.  She loved it!  I think she had a pretty fun birthday and she is really excited that she is finally four.  I can't believe how fast the last 4 years have flown by.  It breaks my heart for her to be growing up and that's she's not a baby anymore.  I love spending my days with her.  She is my constant companion.  I have no idea what I am going to do when she goes to school.  At least I have almost two more years to enjoy her!

First snow of the season

 The first snowstorm of the season is always so much fun.  The kids were so excited to have snow on the ground.  They were excited when Lisa called and invited us to go sledding with them.  They got way more snow up on the east side than we did.

 Katie was so excited to go sledding and she's lucky enough to get carried up the hill most of the time.  She loved going down the hill and wanted to go over and over.

 Kierra and Katie had a great time burrying Jaxon in the snow!

 Kierra, Jared, Kyson and Kamryn all built a fort in the trees.

 Jadon loves to play football so he pushed for a football game after everyone was done sledding.

Before we went home, we went over to my Mom and Dad's and Dale got up on the roof to shake the heavy snow off of the trees.  He thought it was pretty cool that he could make it snow.  We had a great time and now I'm way excited for the holiday season! 

What a mess!

 I decided that I am going to deep clean all the bedrooms in our house.  I'm only going to tackle one each week.  I decided to start with the one that needed the most work, Kierra and Katie's.  To be fair to Kierra, she tries to keep her room clean but when you get two girls in one room, that's a lot of stuff to keep organized.  It took longer than I thought to pull off this task.  It took most of two days.  The picture above is what their room looked like after I pulled everything out of the closet.  That doesn't include the 3 huge rubbermaid containers full of stuffed animals and dolls. They are still in my room because I don't want them back in their clean room.

After this little project, I grounded Kierra from bags.  While going through her room, I found at least 7 bags full of all sorts of different things.  I knew exactly what happened.  Every time she cleaned her room, she would have a pile of stuff that she didn't know what to do with.  So, she would find a bag and stuff it all in there and then stuff it in her closet or under the bed. 

 Check out this drawer!  It has notebooks, bras and cereal in it. Strange combination of things.

 I did most of the work while Kierra was at school.  When she came home, she thought it was so funny how frustrated I was.  I put her right to work cleaning out her desk. 

 Look how much better her dresser looks now!  This is also the area from the first picture where Kierra's bed use to be.

 I love the closet!  I don't know how long I'm going to be able to keep those rubbermaid containers out of there since my room is next and I don't want them in my room anymore.  I wonder how successful a winter garage sale would be!

Kierra and Katie were so excited when the project was finally done.  Katie loved her nicely made bed and told me she would try really hard to keep it clean.  She then told me that if she messes up again, I can clean it up for her.  I'm thrilled to report that it's been 4 days since we finished and it is still clean and organized.  I hope they can keep it up at least until I get all the bedrooms done.

Happy Halloween!

 Katie as the cutest witch I've ever seen.  She had so much fun on Halloween.  She went to the parade at the school with me and loved every single princess, butterfly, barbie, flower or anything girlie costume!  She helped me get the pumpkins ready to carve while the kids were at school.  She was so excited to go trick or treating.  I wish I would have had a video camera going the whole time we were trick or treating because she was so funny.  She stayed with us to the very end and got tonz of candy.

 Kyson the vampire.  A week before Halloween, we went through the costume box and the kids picked out what they were going to be.  Kyson was pretty excited about being a vampire.  On Halloween morning while we were getting ready to go to school I had to work pretty hard to convince him that it was ok to wear the fake teeth.  He was afraid he was going to get in trouble.  He ended up wearing them.  There were 5 kids dressed like a vampire in his class.  He, of coarse, looked the best!

 Jake picked a werewolf costume but since you can't wear masks to school, he had to be something different at school.  He was a Utah fan.  He did wear the werewolf costume for trick-or-treating but I forgot to get a picture.

Kierra was Sandy from Grease.  The funny thing about her being Sandy is that she has no idea who she is.  I explained a little about the movie and now she wants to see it.  I think she can wait a few more years for that one.
I didn't get a picture of Jaxon because he left early to go trick or treating with his friends.  He was a baseball player.  This was Jadon's first year not to go trick or treating.  He was a trooper and still came with us.  He and Dale tossed the football around as they walked.  Several people felt bad for Jadon and gave him candy.  The kids all got tons of candy.  The first thing we did was set 25 pieces aside to make our Christmas countdown banners.  Goodbye Halloween, Hello Christmas!