Too Hot and Humid

Saturday it was hot and humid.

We started out the morning at a church pancake breakfast. Then we went home. The kids went outside to eat their snacks and before long, started dumping water on each other to cool off. Since they were already wet why not just turn on the hose and play in the water...with their clothes on.

Chase, Caden, Jordan, and Kailyn eating pancakes.

Caden playing with the hose.

Caden

Kailyn and her friend Jenessa.

Kailyn

Caden

Kailyn

Jordan and Chase are missing because they were not fans of getting wet in their clothes. I think they missed out on a lot of fun.

Caden's Art

A picture of a person Caden drew.

Flip the paper over and you see the back of head with a crack and all. ("My crack" is what he calls the cut he got on the back of his head when he was bouncing on the bed.)

I have never had a kid that drew both the front and back of a person.

Preschool Graduation

Jordan had her preschool graduation. What a great year of preschool it has been. All of the kids have come so far from the first of the year.

Her certificate of achievement.

Jordan's hand prints with a little poem about how she is growing up so fast.

The graduating class:

(L to R) Hailey, Taiya, Gabriel, Kiersten, Jordan

Our Own TV Celebrity

Kailyn was a local celebrity at her grade school today. Apparently the Toledo Public School District held a competition for the most number of books a class could read in a 7-week period. The competition was for all grades. Kailyn's first grade class won the competition (the class that read the most books overall). Kailyn's role? She read more books than any other first grader in all of Toledo and was reportedly one of the very top readers of all grades. In that 7-week period, Kailyn read 236 books (those are just the "chapter" books. We didn't write down any of the "picture" books [eg, Dora, Barbie, etc] that she read during that time. We had no idea there was a contest going on). BTW, TPS has approximately 35,000 students (K-12, data from 2002-2003).

As a prize, the superintendent of TPS rewarded the class with a pizza party. Kailyn won a $25 gift card to Barnes and Nobles and was interviewed by 2 TV stations! She was a natural in front of the TV crew and proudly displayed her adorable dimple. All day, other students at the school approached her and told her they were proud of her. She even got to ride on the inflatable slide outside of the school for free, since the person running the slide recognized her as the TV star. BTW, I have no idea why there was an inflatable slide outside of her school today.

Here are some pictures of the event:

Showing off her certificate and her gift card

The Interview

Enjoying the Pizza

My Peeps

I would have never survived residency without my friends. They saved me many a time.

Starting on the left and going clockwise: Cassidy, Me, Julie, Lindsay, Jill, Jessica, Brittany, Leisy, Cyndi, Renae (hidden), Beth, Liora, and Lyndsay

Library Day

Our kids love when we check out new books. They can't wait to get home and just sit and read.

School Carnival

We have gone to the elementary carnival every year since we moved here. The kids absolutely LOVE it! So many fun things to do.

Caden and Jordan going down the huge slide. Can you see Caden's face? Here let's get a little closer....

Yes, this is the look he had on his face all of the way down.

Kailyn (on the right) going down with her friend Madison.

Riding in a spinning strawberry.

Chase discovered cotton candy. Yeah, he loved it!

Jordan wanted to ride in this spinning swing. We stood in line forever (it was by far the slowest line there)! I began to question the choice and then she got on and this is the look on her face and it seriously didn't leave her face until she got off. She was thrilled to death and it made the wait worth it.

Eating Crayons

Why does this kids think that crayons should be part of his diet?

Caden

With the summer months upon us, and the sun setting so much later, Caden has had a really hard time falling asleep at night. A couple nights ago he had a particularly hard night and kept coming downstairs. I thought he had finally turned in for the night when I heard sleeping sounds (ie deep breaths). I go to check it out and there is Caden with his pillow and blankets asleep on the floor by the front door!

WARNING: If you faint at the sight of blood you may want to stop now!!

Caden thought it would be fun to jump on Mom and Dad's bed, falling to his bottom, and then flinging his head back. Unfortunately, he got too close to the top of the bed and flung his head back and hit his head on the marble ledge of our window. He cut the back of his head open. There was quite a bit a blood (because it was a head injury). He was taken to the urgent care and received glue to put him back together again.

Stopping the bleeding. (To the left is Jordan trying to comfort him)

Now he has a crusty spot of hair on his head matted down by glue. I would love to clean it but that would also clean the glue off his wound. Looks like he will look like this for awhile.

I am constantly amazed at how resilient kids are. As soon as he got the glue on (and found out he didn't have to get staples or stitches) he was a happy, chatty, little three year old again. I had hoped it would slow him down a little bit so he won't reopen it but he is back to his crazy, wrestling self.

Jordan

This last week was the last week I taught Jordan's preschool. She has absolutely loved preschool. I think she is going to love starting Kindergarten this fall. Caden loved when I taught because then he got to go, too.

Back row: Jordan, Taiya, Kiersten, Hailey

Front: Chase, Caden Gabriel

Kailyn

Guess who lost her 2nd tooth!

Sporting a milkshake mustache.

Apparently the tooth fairy forgot to stop by, so Kailyn decided to leave a friendly reminder on the kitchen table.

Who works harder?

A conversation I just barely heard, between Jordan and Kailyn:

Jordan: Mom works harder than Dad. That's why she has a Mother's Day. Dad works, too, but Mom works harder.

Kailyn: No, sir. Dad works hard, too. Sometimes he has to stop and think (explaining why there are times I can be found just sitting on the couch doing apparently nothing). It's very frustrating (his work is very frustrating) and he has to just stop and think (with the TV on and a computer on his lap).

Jordan: Mom works harder. Dad just has to work sometimes (truer words have never been spoken).

Kailyn: You don't know how hard it is to be a doctor. You've never seen him work.

Jordan: He's not a doctor

Kailyn: He's learning to be a doctor. When he moves to his new job he will be a real doctor.

Jordan: He just has to sit on the helicopter.

Kailyn is fiercely loyal to me, but it sounded as if even she were having a difficult time defending me. I won't tell you who I think is right in all of this. I WILL say that at the moment of this conversation, Shelly was upstairs taking a nap while I had just finished cleaning up the glass plate that Jordan had just dropped and shattered.

Mother's Day

Wonderful! That is how I would describe my mother's day. It started out by Ken getting up with our early birds (ahh, I got sleep in) and making breakfast. I was then served breakfast in bed. Homemade waffles with fresh strawberries and whip cream, my favorite.

Saturday he had taken the kids out to look for a gift. Honestly, one of my favorite parts of mother's day is this little trip that allows me to have a quiet home to myself for a couple hours. They picked out a very cute skirt and shirt, which I wore to church.

Kailyn made a paperweight at school. A rock she painted the BYU colors and put a Y in the middle. She was so proud of it.

Ken made dinner. He asked me yesterday what I wanted for my meal and I told him I felt like something different. Something we have never made. This is what he came up with....

Yum!

At church the kids made cute little paper flowers that said why they love me. Here is what they said...

Kailyn: She's SO nice to me!!

Jordan: She takes me to fun places and takes me to carnivals.

Caden: She makes breakfast for me.

I feel so incredibly blessed to be a mother to my little munchkins. It can be quite intimidating at times to think of all of the things I want them to learn but I'm thankful I am the one that gets to teach them.

Father Son Campout

Amid threats of a tornado (I kid you not!) Ken loaded up the camping gear and the two boys and left for the Father Son Camp out. Crazy? I sure thought so. I couldn't believe anyone would go. Thank goodness their trip wasn't ruined like I feared it would be. Caden was thrilled to death about going.

The boys all ready to go.

They got there, ate stew and drank these blue drinks. Caden loved the drink and thought it was the greatest (doesn't take much to please this boy).

They even saw a toad.

The tent is all set up.

Caden eating a s'more.

Chase hoarding all of the s'more stuff by bringing it to Dad so he can protect it.

Chase loved being with his dad. He would wander around and then come, back up and sit on Dad's lap. I think some people thought Ken was crazy for taking Chase but as Ken put it, "It was a win/win situation." Ken said Chase was so good (just walked around exploring) and I was able to have a nice break.

After he had his fill of s'mores Chase wandered around carrying this bag of marshmallows and graham crackers.

Lucky for the boys the rain didn't even start until after dinner and s'mores. Chase loved the rain. He would walk out from under the tarp into the rain and just stand and feel the rain fall down. He thought it was great.

The boys fast asleep.

Chase

At one point during the night Ken checked on the boys to make sure they were warm enough. Caden, being a light sleeper, immediately sat up and had a big grin on his face and said, "Hi, Dad. Good morning."

Chase slept really good. He even had the bed head to prove it.

Caden warming up by the fire in the morning.

Caden was so excited they had Life and claimed the whole box for himself.

The Fathers and Sons from our ward (it was a stake camp out).

All of the fun apparently wore Caden out.

So what did the girls do? We had a girls night in. We had friends over, ate pizza, played, painted nails, got the snacks out and started watching a movie and then....the power went out. Yes, the storm did hit us (apparently harder than the boys). We never were able to finish the movie since the power was out for almost 4 hours.

Botanical Gardens

Today for play group we went to the botanical gardens and fed the ducks. The gardens were very pretty. I'm thinking I need to drag my little family out for some pictures. We really need to update our family photo.

Jordan

This is about half our group. We had a great turn out. I am really going to miss everyone when we move.

Chase watching the ducks.

Caden feeding the ducks.

Taiya and Jordan feeding the ducks (ok so they are actually geese).

What kind of face is that?

(Malynn, Caden, Sienna, Jordan, Taiya, Baylor, Taevin)

They were all playing under this cool tree. The trees branches hung so low that they touched the ground, creating a perfect little fort.

The kids had a lot of fun until they found a mother goose sitting on an egg and got a little too close. The daddy duck did not like how close they were getting and scared them away...flapping its wings and squawking at the poor kids as they ran away. Poor Caden and Jordan were definitely scared.