Ben's birthday, swimming lessons, and changes

So yes, it's been a while since I've actually done a post here. I just haven't gotten around to posting things.

Ben had his 7th birthday on the 11th. It's crazy to think how fast he's growing up. Since it's an odd year birthday, we were just celebrating with our family and not having a party with friends. Ben decided that he wanted to be able to play the Xbox 360 with his dad for his birthday. He had wanted to go to a movie, but then changed his mind and just wanted to play. He also said he just wanted a chocolate cake with no frosting, so that's what he got. I put the candles in the shape of a 7 for him at least though. He got to pick what we had for dinner that night too. He wanted quesadillas until I came home from the store with some fish sticks and tator tots and pizza rolls, then he wanted those instead. Despite it being a low-key birthday, he said he had a lot of fun.

The boys with Ben's cake:

All the kids and Bryce ready to sing to Ben:

Abby, Chris, and Ben:

Ready to blow out the candles:


Ben, Alex and Chris have been taking swimming lessons last week and this week. Ben and Alex are in the Level 1 class together and Chris is in the Preschool class. I really thought that Chris might be one who refused to participate and just sat on the edge watching everyone else, but he's been getting right in there with the rest of them and doing what his teacher asks. They all seem to really enjoy the swimming lessons. Usually I leave Abby with Katie and bring Daniel along with us and let him play in the water while his brothers are doing their lessons. Daniel tends to watch Chris's class and copies some of the things they're doing, especially when they're blowing bubbles in the water. He really wants to be able to go over and join them, but he's too young.

Ben's and Alex's class. Alex is the one floating:

Here's Chris with his class:


And here are a few more pictures of the kids:






And now for the changes portion of the post today. I'm going to be changing this blog so it's open to invited readers only. I'll be doing it within the next couple of days, so if you want to be invited, make sure you let me know so I can make sure I get the invitation out to you and you'll be able to access this. I'm also going to start another blog that I'll be updating more often than I'll be updating this one. I'm trying to give the kids more structure during the day, and the other blog is going to be my motivation to keep it going and where I'll make myself accountable for keeping it up. I'm going to try to keep that one a little more on the anonymous side, since it will be open to whoever wants to read it. I haven't gotten it set up yet, but I hope to get it up and running at some point today and I'll put back the address to it back on this post. When it's up and running, feel free to post suggestions and comments as much as you would like, I'm sure I can use all the help I can get. Thanks a ton!

Edit: I just got the new one up and running. I will probably change things a bit later, but it's up for now. If you want to check it out, go here.

4th of July pictures

This is a little late, but I thought I'd post the few pictures I took on the 4th of July. We spent the 4th in Utah with family, which was a lot of fun. I should have taken more pictures, especially at the family reunion, but of course I didn't.

Chris was his usual self with the fireworks and spent the whole time inside. He kept saying that everyone who was out there with the fireworks was going to catch on fire and blow up. I'm not sure where he got that. Daniel liked the sparklers, but didn't like the loud fireworks and spent most of the time inside too.

So here are the pictures I took:

Here is Grandpa helping Daniel with his sparkler while everyone else looks on:


Ben and his sparkler:


Ben and Alex waiting for Bryce to light the sparklers:


Alex with his sparkler, Daniel wanting to take it from him:


And today I let the boys play in the slip 'n slide again and decided to put Abby in her swimming suit for it too. It's a 3-6 month size, but was a bit too small for her, so I'm sure that will be the one and only time she was in it. So here you can see her in it:

Daniel's 2 year WCC

This morning I got everyone up and ready so we could leave at 8:00 to drop everyone off at Aunt Katie's while I took Daniel for his 2 year well child check-up. Daniel was pretty upset that he didn't get to go in Aunt Katie's house and play with his cousins and cried halfway to the doctor's office. He usually doesn't cry that much, but I had to wake him up earlier than he's used to, so he was tired.

There are actually a couple of reasons why it's nice to have a doctor appointment at 8:30 in the morning. The first one is that it's early enough that the doctor hasn't really gotten behind, so we got to go back on time and didn't have to sit waiting for an hour as we've done in the past. The second reason is that it's over quickly and we have the rest of the day to do whatever it is we wanted to do. In today's case, I'm considering taking the kids to the zoo again, but we'll see.

Daniel weighs 27.4 pounds, which is a little below the 50th percentile. He's 34.5 inches tall, which is a little above the 50th percentile, and his head measured at 18-7/8 inches, which is a little below the 50th percentile. So he's growing well and is about average.

He had to have 2 shots today, the Hib that they didn't do at a year because they were deferring it because there was a shortage on that vaccine, and the Hep A. He complained a little bit, but didn't cry. He was focused on the stickers the nurse brought in and really wanted his sucker. In fact, he started asking for the sucker as soon as we walked into the building. I think maybe he's been to the doctor a lot. It's actually been nice this year with the tubes in his ears because we haven't had to take him in for ear infections all the time.

So to sum it all up, Daniel is growing well physically and developmentally. He's a good kid and can be pretty brave sometimes. I don't know if the doctor does, but we sure think he's cute.

Abby at 3 months

I can't believe how fast time is going. Abigail should not be 3 months old already, but she is. She's already grown a lot - I stood on the scale with her and it said she's about 13 pounds now. She's lost a bit of hair, which I think is sad, but I figured our girl would be bald when all of our boys had hair. She smiles all the time and tries to talk to us. It really sounds like she's actually saying, "hi" sometimes, but we know she's probably not.

Her big brothers love having her in the family, especially Chris and Daniel. I still laugh thinking of how Chris told me the one time that he was going to marry her and I had to explain to him that no, he couldn't marry his sister.

I get a lot of people telling me that Abby looks like me, but she looks just like her brothers, so she must look a lot like Bryce too. In either case, we think she's really cute. We're so blessed to have such great kids!

Here's a picture of Daniel going in to hug Abby while Chris was hugging him:


Here's Chris lying by Abby:


Chris and Abby:


Here are a few pictures I took of Abby today on her 3 month birthday:

Latest trip to Utah

Since Di and Brian were both in Utah visiting family, I thought I should take advantage of the opportunity to go see them too. So on Sunday after I taught my Sunday School lesson in church, the kids and I left Bryce (giving him a Father's Day present of some solitude for a few days) and drove to Utah. My mom was nice (thank you!), and not wanting me to have to drive there by myself with all the kids, flew De (thank you too!) up to drive down with me. It was nice to have another adult there to help with the kids if I needed it.

We had a busy couple of days there, going to Lagoon on Monday and to the Hogle Zoo on Tuesday, then heading back on Wednesday. It was nice to be able to see everyone and to get to meet a niece I've never met before (Savannah). And thanks to Mom and Dad T for letting me stay with them!

So here are some pictures from the trip. First are some pictures from Lagoon. Ben says his favorite ride was the white roller coaster. He had me take him on it twice. I thought it scared him the first time and he wouldn't want to go again, but he liked it. Alex (who wasn't tall enough for the roller coaster) said his favorite ride was the Log Flume. Chris seemed to like all the rides he rode on, except for Rattlesnake Rapids. He didn't like that one at all, especially because he got the wettest in our raft. Daniel's first ride was the merry-go-round and he cried through most of it, but then decided that the rides were fun and seemed to enjoy all of them.

Brian and some others (I can't remember who was in his raft) getting wet in Rattlesnake Rapids:


Ben and Alex in the bumper cars:


Chris in the bumper cars:


Alex in the boat:


Chris and Daniel in the boat:


Ben and Alex in a plane:


The 4 boys in a couple of planes:


Ben and Alex in the car:


Chris in the car (Daniel got out and is by the gate):


Isabel in the car:


And now some from the zoo. Ben says his favorite thing at the zoo was seeing the rhinos. Everyone else liked the bird show.

The boys are playing with the big ball:


Ben on the elephant trunk:


Alex, Chris, and Daniel on the trunk:


Alex showing me his ticket:


And finally, since we were all together, we thought we'd take some pictures of us all together. Unfortunately for my camera at least, one of the boys had played with it and switched it from pictures to video, so mine are video. But here's us all together:

This first one is just of us siblings. And man, it's either the angle that makes the shirt make me look huge or it's the shirt or both. It has to be either the angle or the shirt, right?


This second one has Mom and Dad with us too:


And this one is the best example of what happens when you don't know the camera is on video instead of pictures. But this is all of us as before, but with all the grandkids (except for Kady and Kelly, who were in Cedar City for a soccer camp):