4th of July, Ben's birthday

We enjoyed a quiet 4th of July at home this year. Bryce had a nice 4 day weekend, so that was nice. Of course we ended up with too many fireworks to light on just one night, but we didn't go as overboard as we have in the past. And this year, Chris and Daniel actually stayed out and watched them instead of running into the house and sometimes peeking out the front window. Daniel did go run inside after I mentioned that they had been actually staying out, but I don't think he was actually scared. And Abby loved the fireworks and wanted to see more.

Here are some pictures from our nights. Since Abby put our camera in the toilet, I've been having to take everything with my phone. Luckily, the phone is a 5.0 megapixel camera too.










And if you've seen any of my posts on facebook, you've heard about Daniel breaking his right big toe (or great toe, as all the doctors and nurses called it) by dropping a big rock on it 2 minutes after I told him to stop playing with the rocks. He was upset when he saw the cut on his toe and kept yelling, "It's broken! It's broken!" But after he calmed down, he was pretty good about it and even entertained all the doctors and nurses to the point where they all said they wanted to keep him there all night. And as we were leaving the ER( we had gone to a Quick Care place where they took the x-ray first, then sent us to the ER where they'd be better equipped to be able to deal with an open fracture, even though the fracture was an in-place fracture and the cut on his toe was caused by the rock, not by the break), Daniel was very cute and kept telling everyone he saw, "Thanks for fixing my toe!" And if you missed the pictures on facebook, here they are again:





And Ben celebrated his 8th birthday this month. Since it's an even-numbered birthday, he got to have a friend party and decided he wanted to go bowling. The problem with birthday parties in the summer is the large number of kids invited who were going out of town that weekend, so didn't get to go. He still ended up with 3 friends plus his family there, so it was fun. He even got a bowling pin from the bowling alley at his party, which was pretty cool.








And Alex lost his second tooth recently, which wasn't the one we thought would come out second, but he was still pretty excited to get another visit from the tooth fairy.

A few more odds and ends

As I stated in the previous (or next, depending on the order you read them) post, I went to Youth Camp this year. I was really glad I was able to go for the whole week, and really grateful that Bryce was able to take the time off to be with the kids. The camp was amazing. I think we all came out of it with stronger testimonies and a firmer resolve to do what is right. We had a lot of fun, we froze, we laughed, we cried, we ate really yummy food, and just had a really good week. I was a little sad to see it end. I didn't take many pictures up there, but here are a few I did take.

On the Thursday morning, we had a nature walk/values presentation. We were divided into 7 groups and would go to each station as some of the lites (laurels) presented a little thing on each of the values before we met back together to talk about the 8th value, Virtue. These two pictures are taken during that walk. It's Rebecca and her friend (whose name escapes me right now) and Makenna is with them in the second:



We each did ward skits on the Wednesday night where we were assigned a scripture and acted that out and then showed how it applies to us today. These other 3 pictures are from that. The last is of one of the other leaders, Jenny, who would probably kill me if she saw this picture. The other two are of the skit:





The Sunday after I got back from camp, Alex got a special treat: he lost his very first tooth. He's got both bottom new teeth coming through, so it was about time one came out, but I don't think it was early enough to save him from getting braces. Poor kid. Not really surprising though. Here are a couple of pictures of him with his newly lost tooth:




And here are a couple more pictures. Abby finally started taking a couple of steps a little over a month ago, although it would only be a couple and she was pretty chicken to try more. She's walking all over the place now though. The first is a picture Ben took of her walking, although she was walking with her walker toy here. Isn't she cute?



And now this last picture is just one of Daniel, Abby, and Chris playing in the laundry basket. Abby wasn't too thrilled to be in the basket, but she does like playing with her brothers:

Daniel Turns 3

Daniel turned the big 3 on June 15th. Because I was heading to Youth Camp (basically Girl's Camp with boys), early on the morning of his birthday, we celebrated his birthday the Saturday before. He was a little sick, but felt pretty good most of the day.

We went to Primos for lunch, which is one of our kids' favorite restaurants. They love the all you can eat pizza, especially the garlic cheese pizza and the cookie dough dessert pizza.

When we got home from the dinner, we let him open his presents and then had cake and ice cream. Since Daniel's favorite color is orange, he wanted orange frosting on his chocolate cake and cupcakes. He also loves marshmallows, so they're decorated with some of those as well.










Earlier in the day, Bryce and Jarom went over to a house where some people in our ward had recently moved out and told Bryce that we could have their old swingset, and brought it over and set it up. Daniel was of course convinced that it was another one of his birthday presents. Here's Bryce setting up the last part of it:


And just for comparison, here's a picture of Daniel when he was just a tiny baby. He was 7 weeks old here:

Alex Graduates from Kindergarten

The last day of school for the boys was June 3rd this year. On that day, Alex officially graduated from Kindergarten. Yes, I do think that Kindergarten graduations are a bit silly, but he was pretty excited about it. Unlike Ben, he actually sang the songs with the rest of the kids and did the actions. He got his regular award for completing Kindergarten, with his teacher talking about how he's already working on 1st Grade sight words, plus another one for being a super homework kid, since he was one of the few kids in his class who turned in all the homework stuff throughout the whole year.

Here are a couple of pictures I got from my phone with that. Alex is in the middle in the green shirt, next to the kid with the red shirt. Yes, I did have some video too, but the same thing happened with those videos as with the video of Chris in the previous post.




I think Alex's favorite part of the whole thing was after the presentations when they got to have cookies and punch outside. He ate lots of cookies.

Been A While

Okay, so yes, it has been quite a while since I've posted anything on this. And now I have a bunch of pictures and things to post, so this may take a while. I think I will break it up into chunks to make it a little easier.

Back during Memorial Day weekend, I took the 3 oldest boys by themselves and we did something together just the two of us. That Friday I took Ben to see Diary of a Wimpy Kid. He loved the books and wanted to see the movie, so we did that. Typical kid movie, not as good as the book, but Ben really liked it.

On that Saturday, I took Chris bowling. He had been sad that he didn't get to go bowling way back when we went for Alex's birthday party there, so I took him bowling. He had a blast.

And I had a funny video of him bowling that I recorded on my phone, but apparently when I transferred it to my computer, my computer didn't like it and erased it from my phone too. I'm a little bummed. That one cracked me up.

On that Monday, I took Alex to see Shrek 4. He seemed to really like that one too. Daniel got to go to the store with me by himself later and pick out some stuff, so he thought that was pretty fun too.

Okay, I really am bummed about that video. Maybe one of these days I'll figure out how to see what's on my SD card on my phone to see if it's still saved there.

Abby's Birthday and Easter Bunny

Yesterday Abby had her very first birthday. I know I've said it before, but man, time is really going fast. It's hard to believe that a whole year has gone by.

The week she was born went by really fast too with lots of doctor visits because my titer levels were going up, and the experience of having an amniocentesis, which I hope to never have to repeat. And since at this point we're not planning on having any more kids despite Bryce constantly counting our kids to find out who is missing, I think I won't have to. :) And last year it was fun to be able to bring Abby home from the hospital on my birthday. Happy birthday to me, right?

As a reminder, here's what she looked like as a new baby. See, she actually had some hair:


Abby got to have a first birthday cake when we were in Utah visiting family. Susan made a really cute castle cake for her. Here are a few pictures of that:



Before the boys started their spring break, I had suggested that maybe we could take Abby to the zoo for her birthday, since they just reopened the petting zoo section. Unfortunately, the weather decided not to cooperate and we had lots of rain mixed with some snow. But that's okay, we just stayed home and played together like normal, except Ben did go to a birthday party for a girl in his church class who happens to share Abby's birthday. (And coincidentally, her grandpa shares his birthday with me.)

I tried taking some pictures of Abby on her birthday, but she didn't want to sit still for them. Here are some that I took:



Anyway, we picked up Abby's cake from the grocery store (I love that Albertson's gives a free 8 inch round cake for a baby's first birthday when you order another cake). They had pizza rolls for dinner (Abby and Chris both love those) and waited for Bryce to get home from work, then we sang Happy Birthday to Abby and let her have at her cake. She was very tentative at first, then dug in with gusto later. She had a good time. Here are some pictures:


Here's a video of her with her cake:


This morning we had the Easter Bunny stop by. He stops by on Saturday for us every year. The boys were very excited when they woke up this morning and found the baskets and eggs. Here are a couple pictures I took this morning: