Hurricane, Moccasin, and on to Kanab

We spent part of a day in Hurricane with Candy and Amy's kids and then headed to Moccasin. The girls had a fun time taking a walk through town and finding a kitten that followed them home. We had a fun time playing in the water, slip n slide the next day. The girls were more interested in the kitten (Indigo) than getting too crazy in the water. I hadn't felt too good for those days and that might be one reason we didn't get any pictures. Wednesday night we headed to Kanab and Grandma Nora came up to have supper with us out on the deck.

 

the girls had a lot of fun with her and she really enjoyed the view from my parents place. I must say it is quite nice.

Monday Night Picnic at the Park

We spent a couple of hours with Amanda and then headed to a park for a family picnic. It was a super hot day-107 and our car went into "engine failsafe mode", which was kind of scary. But once the sun set and the kids got wet it was a lot of fun. I didn't take as many pictures as I wanted to of the whole crew. It was a lot of fun and I was glad that we had brought lots of fun games to play in the park. The Heaton cousins had a lot of fun trying to figure out how to play "graces" and shooting off Daniels rocket.

 

Colton, Talon, Sariah, and Brandon working on the rocket

 

Nora was very excited to play in the creek. I was a little nervous to let her head out there by herself so I asked Jileigh to take her down. She would have stayed down there for hours if I would have let her.

 

This is a view from the park we were at.

 

More crazy cousins, sure love and miss them lots. Brandon, Sammy, Talon, Kelsey, & Chad. We all had a lot of fun, but were pretty tired when we dragged ourselves back to Aaron's to sleep.

Homeward Bound

We headed to Utah for our yearly trip the end of June. We took it a tad easier and drove out in 2 1/2 days instead of 2. My brother recently moved to Midway, which is a perfect stop for us before we headed down to So. Utah. We enjoyed spending the night with them and eating fish tacos! I always told Daniel that I didn't and wouldn't ever like mexican and fish together, guess I was wrong once again. Sunday after church and lunch we head to St. George. We stayed at Aaron and David's place and were treated to an amazing dinner by a whole crew of family (Mom, Aaron and Elisa, Amanda and Jake, Esther and Ryan, and Nate and Candy). Monday we went to visit Dad at Ben and Shaea's. After visiting on the lawn for a bit we decided to drive 3 blocks over to the temple and walk around a bit. It had been a long time since my girls have been to a temple and I thought it would be fun to see where Mommy and Daddy were married.

 

It must have been a combination of the blue sky and bright sun but I didn't remember the temple being so bright white. It was actually hard to look at it was so bright. The girls had a fun time looking around the vistor's center. As we were walking around the grounds, this bird hopped down from the tree and just sat there looking at us no matter how close we got.

 

We are pretty sure that it was a peregrine falcon but we are not sure why it wasn't afraid of people.

 

While we were in the visitor's center we ran into Daniel's brother, Matt. Matt works as a maintainace engineer at the temple. He told us if we could find someone to watch the kids he could take us in the temple to show us some cool things. Well lucky for us we brought Grandpa along. He watched the kids while Matt took us through some behind the scenes places in the temple. It was neat to see some of the old pioneer construction that is still holding the place up. We were pretty lucky that it was on a Monday so it was closed. It was super amazing experience! Thanks Matt!

 

Look Dad! I Can Read!

The other day, Eli was wearing this red Old Navy onesie that was kind of big. He would grab his shirt, pull it out and look down at the lettering like he was reading it. The girls thought it was a pretty fun trick and Daniel thought it was pretty cute so he had to take a picture.

 

You Can Stop Looking

So if you have been looking for Prince Charming, Mr. Right, or a knight in shining armor, you can stop looking because we already got him and we are not giving him up! We love our Daddy so much. He is our hero in so many ways. We tried our best to pamper him on Father's Day but it was pretty hard because we are so dependent on him. We were glad his early morning meetings got canceled so we could actually have a shot of bringing him breakfast in bed. I was going to make him something fancy but woke up and found that we were out of eggs, so we settled on leftovers from Kyla's birthday party. It ended being pretty fancy though - German popovers with custard, berry syrup, and whipped cream; sausage; fresh fruit; and juice. I even had the girls pick some flowers from the yard for a vase to make it look pretty. I was so sad that I didn't get a picture of the tray. The girls were very excited. I don't remember what we had for lunch but then Daniel took a nap, went home teaching, and got massaged (well if you call three little girls running massage tools up and down him a massage).

 

Unfortunately, I didn't get to massage him, which is what he would have really liked, but I was busy getting dinner on. We had a yummy dinner, including steaks that he had to cook since I am grill incompetent. Then the girls gave him their hand made crafts. Nora gave him a pencil tree, Kyla a modge podge mosaic tie, and Myka a flower picture (her choice not mine). He loved the presents and will forever treasure them and put them in a very prominent place at work! We also previously gave him a fire pit, when they went on sale earlier in the year.

 

I was so exhausted by the end of the day and very happy that Father's Day only comes once a year!

Kyla's turns 6

We threw Kyla's party together at the last minute but it ended up being great. It has been a few years since we were able to do a friend party for her. She was pretty excited and came up with this great idea to have her party in the morning and have all the guests come in their pajamas and have breakfast. Everyone thought it was a great idea. She planned out all the details and gave me the menu. We would have German popovers (with custard, syrup, and fruit syrup), sausage, fruit, muffins, juice, and chocolate chip cookies and ice cream later on. Here Kyla is helping me make muffins for the big day.

 

We have started this new tradition of putting a bunch of balloons in the girls room before they wake up in the morning on their birthday. We tried stuffing Kyla's bed by putting up a blanket on the outside. She didn't appreciate balloons suffocating her while she was sleeping and kicked all the balloons out by morning. But the girls had fun loading up the bed and playing in it that morning.

 

It was nice for mom and dad to have the party in the morning because we could stay up as late as we needed to to get everything done. Things like a super duper, daddy decorating job. We didn't get to bed till 2 am, but it was fun to make birthday magic.

 

 

Daniel also made this fun bowl out of the watermelon rind to put all the cut up fruit in. The girls thought it was the coolest thing ever.

 

You can imagine how much of that fruit 8 little girls ate, but that's O.K. it was a great leftover. The girls at her party were: Madeline, Ashley, Nora, Kyla, Ella, Marian, Addie, and Myka was there somewhere. I am glad we kept it small it is so much easier to handle.

 

What's better at a birthday party than playing with balloons and dancing?

 

We sent Kyla on a scavenger hunt (another late night Daddy project) to find her big present - the bike. All the girls had a great time running around the house to find the clues. She was very excited to have a big bike. She has been too big for her old bike for quite awhile. Nora was even quite jealous, which surprised me, and thought she needed a new fancy big bike too. I told her once she learned to ride without training wheels we would talk about it. Mom and Dad were excited about our totally last minute CraigsList find. It looks brand new! And yes those are pink cowboy boots that she is proudly wearing with her pj's on. Cringe. Sigh. Smile.

 

Kyla has been so much fun to have as part of our family. She is very good at playing with her sisters and especially loves taking care of her little brother. Her attitude in life is like a switch and either things are the worst or the best. She can be the best, most awesome helper around the house and actually knows how to do more jobs than Nora since Nora was gone all day at school. Kyla has an amazing sparkly smile and captivating laugh. She is always bouncing, jumping, running, and climbing. The only downside is she often is getting hurt in the process. We are hoping to get her in gymnastics this fall to work on her coordination. Kyla is reading quite well and is fully ready for first grade. Her kindergarten teacher actually suggested skipping first grade and going into second. Since she has a summer birthday and is one of the youngest in her class anyway, we didn't think it was a good choice for her. I am going to be sad to have her gone all day this year and not have my big helper around. WE LOVE YOU KYLA!!!

3 Months Going on One Year

Here are some pictures of Eli on the day he turned 3 months old. I can't believe how big he has gotten. He loves to smile and will full on laugh every once in awhile. It seems like his sisters can get him to smile the best. He is still such a sweet, good baby. He usually sleeps through the night from around 10 to 6:30 or 7 before he wakes to nurse and then goes back to sleep. I sure love that he lets me sleep.

 

I took him in for a Dr's appointment because at his 2 month visit the Dr. was a little worried that his head was lopsided and we might have to use a helmet. We spent the month making sure he slept on the other side and the Dr said his head was beautiful when we took him in. I was so excited I didn't want to deal with the whole helmet thing.

 

When we took him in he weighed in at a whopping 16 lbs 7 ozs!!! I still can't believe I have such a chubby baby. Good thing he is pretty good baby because I wouldn't be able to carry him around for very long.

 

"Sweetly sleeps that little boy" We just had to take a picture of Eli's cute, sleepy face. He doesn't fall asleep in my arms very often so I like to cherish the moment.

 

Free Sale/Muffins $.50

The Friday and Saturday right after school got out our block had a big block garage sale. I decided we didn't have enough stuff to go to the hassle pricing, setting up, etc. So we just gave our stuff away (mostly pure junk, I am really bad at getting rid of stuff). The girls set up a little table and sold muffins and juice while people looked at our free stuff. It worked out quite well. They got tired after awhile but stuck in there most of the first day. They had a lot of fun making signs and getting everything ready and organized. I was running around too crazy to remember to take pictures of their little table, so I just got some pics of the signs they made later.

 

It ended being quite successful and they made about $80 for the two days. Although I did not take out the cost of making the muffins or all of mommy's work! If you are wondering why the sign says homemade bread, it is because we ran out of muffins after the first day so a great friend made some delicious bread and strawberry jam for us to sell.

 

Now we need to get more serious about spending the money the made. We bought nice goggles for them but still had some left over. Don't know if we will do it again next year but it was fun.

Swimming Lessons 2009

So I broke down and bought these great warm belly suits for the kids that I have been looking at for a long time. My friend had them for her girls and we ended up borrowing hers a couple times when we had very cold pools to go into. My girls are so skinny they get cold very quickly in cool water, especially Kyla she turns purple very quickly.

 

The girls were very excited to get them and try them on and loved the surfer look.

The week after school ended they started swim lessons and did really good. We were able to have a few friends taking lessons at the same time. They all did a great job. Myka is starting to be much more friendly with the water but is still a little reserved. She would put her head under the water but it was still kind of a big deal for her. Kyla is getting much more adventurous and would love to swim all over the pool, but still needs work on the coordination. Nora made some big steps by being able to jump off the diving board to her teacher. She can swim quite a ways without assistance but gets a little nervous if she can't touch. She has to be very comfortable with the situation and does not like feeling out of control.

 

Nora had to work on her jumping technique instead of leaning forward towards her teacher.

 

This picture was actually taken at the school picnic the last day of school. They rented out the pool and park and had a whole day of fun. And my girls, of course, played with each other instead of their friends. I guess I should be excited they like to be around each other so much.

 

Eli's first swimming experience, he did great and never fussed. He loves the water and kind of looked overwhelmed with the whole idea. Thanks Birgitte for the swim trunks, they are so cute.

Growing Girl

These two pictures were taken about a year apart, so do you think she has grown at all?

 

2008

 

and 2009. She still insisted on doing it herself. Luckily it was warm enough it didn't matter if she got water dribbled all down her.

YW/YM Campout

So I guess we need to slow down and stop having so much fun because I am having a hard time keeping the blog updated. Last week was fun and busy as usual. Nora had a field trip to the Dearborn Historical Museum and Kyla went on a field trip to the Detroit Zoo. Friday we packed up and headed camping with the Young Men and Young Women of the ward. It has been a tradition each year and they decided families were invited this year. Since Daniel is the Young Men's president we decided to support him and come along. It wouldn't have been much fun without our great friends the R. family there. I was pretty nervous about going camping with a two-month old baby and 3 little ones but it turned out being a lot of fun. One of the key components to that was probably the lack of dirt (We camped on a big lawn of sorts).

 

Eli's first campout! Such a good boy, slept through the night and everything

 

Hanging out around the campfire.

 

Nora taking such good care of her little brother.

 

Myka professionally roasting marshmallows, NOT but she really tried to get them nice and brown.

 

We have offically grown out of our tent. So the girls got to sleep in their own little two man tent. They did great once they got to sleep and were super excited to have a tent. Isn't is strange how you go camping to get out in nature and the kids are so fascinated with sleeping in a tent that they spend as much time as possible in there.

 

The girls had a great time playing with Daniel and his water bottle rocket he built for the scouts.

 

One of the scout leaders took this picture of Nora playing ladder ball. I wish I could take pictures as good as he does.

 

Five little girls walking alongside the woods trying to find a trail to follow. It is a good thing we never found a good one because I heard there was lots of posion ivy in there. After we packed up camp the plan was to go swimming at a water park, but it was overcast, cool, and a little rainy. We decided it wasn't worth paying the money to get the girls in to just freeze and complain. The YM and YW went swimming and we went to the park and then headed home. Daniel called as they were getting out of the pool and said everyone was hungry and I had driven off with the scout trailer and all their food. So with a half an hour's notice I threw together a fun backyard BBQ with the youth. As if we weren't tired after that, we decided on a date that night and went to the Olive Garden while the R's watched the kids.