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:

Alex's birthday party, Ben's award

You know how you have something you want to do and somehow it keeps getting put off? Well, that's how it's been with this blog lately. There have been a few things I wanted to post and never got around to it, so I've even forgotten what they are by now. So anyway, here's a few things I actually do remember.

We let Alex have a birthday party with friends for the first time this year. He was very excited about it. Because his birthday is so close to Christmas, we did the party a month after his birthday. He originally wanted to go to Chuck E. Cheese for his birthday party, but that's a little bit pricey, so when I suggested bowling, he was all for it. He actually ended up inviting more girls than boys, which was pretty funny, but it ended up fairly equal, as he had 2 boys and 2 girls show up. His brothers were all sorts of excited for his party too, which made it especially sad for Chris when he was sick and couldn't go. Alex was just sad that he got the lowest score in the game.

Here are some pictures from the party:

This one is Kayla, Hunter, and Alex

Alex with his cake:

Alex posing with his ball:

Alex and Kayla by the lit cake:

Kids bowling:

Saje and Alex by the ball return, Ben bowling:

Kyle waiting his turn to bowl:


The day before Alex's party, there was an awards assembly at the school. Ben got an award for "Exceling in reading and math! Creative Writing Award!" Yes, that's how it was spelled. Gotta love the school systems. I was a bit bummed because I couldn't go to the assembly to see Ben get his award because Chris and Abby were both sick and throwing up. It had been a long week with the youngest 3 getting sick with a stomach bug.

Abby has been crawling around all over the place lately and seems to really enjoy her new-found freedom. She sometimes gets herself stuck in different places, like this:

Usually she's just a happy kid though and has this expression on her face quite often:


We're still working on potty training Daniel. He's a stubborn toad. And putting him in pull-ups last week when he had diarrhea (believe me, you wouldn't have wanted him in underpants for that one, either) has put him back a bit, so it's almost like starting over. I keep hoping that one of these days it will click and he'll no longer have any accidents. It should happen one day, right?