Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween from our ladybug, Spider-man, and mummy.

Fall Fun

My sister, Kim, is a school teacher. When she is "off track", we try to get together to take my kids to do some fun things. Not only do my kids LOVE her (all the grand kids do), but its nice to have some extra help with my 3 kiddos when going somewhere. We decided to venture out to Wheeler Farm one day while she was off. My mom came along too. It was a really nice day and we had a fun time.

Brooke was content to sit in her stroller for most of the time

We played in the tree house

Went on a wagon ride

Fed the ducks

Climbed the big tree

We had a picnic and let the kids play at the park afterwards.

We have also been to the pumpkin patch a couple of times. Kevin's mom took all the grand kids on the night of the priesthood session. I forgot my camera that day. So these are from when my mom took her grand kids.

Preschool

Here is Dreyson on his first day of preschool. He loves it and wishes he could go to school everyday like Jena.

First day of Kindergarten

Jena started Kindergarten in August. She was so ready to go to school and could hardly wait. Jena loves learning. She loves trying to read and sound out words. She loves to color, cut, glue, draw, tape, write, etc. School is perfect for her. She absolutely loves it and she loves her teacher too. The only part about sending her to school was letting her ride the bus. It sounds silly to me because I rode the bus all growing up, but it was really hard to let my little 5 year old get on that bus and hope that she makes it there and home OK. Fortunately, we have an awesome school and principal, who rode the bus with the kindergartners the whole first week to make sure everyone made it.

Luckily, she has a couple of friends in her class from our ward

Summer Recap

I know....just call me the world's worst blogger. I just can't seem to keep up with everything right now. Lets see if I can get caught up on the blog. Here's a quick recap of our summer.

The boys mowed the lawn

This one goes with the picture below. We had a "camp-out" at my in-laws" house. It was a blast!! I really had a lot of fun. We all came over and had dinner and then watched an awesome firework show. ( I think it was the weekend of the 24th of July) Then we all set up our tents and slept outside. In the morning we had breakfast. My in-laws rented this giant slip'n'slide. It was awesome! Unfortunately, this is the only picture I got of someone going down it. Dreyson loved it!

We had a fun 24th at my parents (or this might have been the 4th....)

Fun with sparklers

My kids and I had a fun day at Lagoon with Aunt Kim, Aunt Teresa and her kids. We had a blast. My kids loved everything. They especially loved the bigger rides, like Bombora and the Bat.

We enjoyed the parades

And riding bikes....

And giving each other a ride on the tricycle.

Brooke Turns 1!

Our cute little Brooke turned 1 in July. She is so stinking cute! She is such a good girl. She is walking now and can go up and down the stairs on her own. She had a pretty quiet birthday. We celebrated on the 24th of July with my family, so on the actual day of her birthday, we just did our own family thing. It was nice and quiet.

I got the idea to give these balls as a present from a friend in my ward. Brooke loves them! She will take them all out of the basket, then put them back in.....and repeat. My kids and Kevin love them just as much (except they like to throw them at each other)

She is definitely a treat girl. She loved her cake and ice cream!

All the birthday presents

Happy Birthday!

Do you know the best part about having a birthday on Sunday? You get to celebrate ALL weekend long! Jena and I celebrated our birthday in June. We started off the weekend with a friend party on Friday. This was the first friend party for Jena and she was so excited she could hardly wait. She actually counted down the minutes until her friends would get there.

We played "Pin the hair on Rapunzel"

We played this "Pop the Balloon" game (We actually call it "monster mash" at Halloween time, but I thought it would be fun to do at a birthday party) We made bracelets, but I didn't get a picture of that.

We opened presents and took a group picture.

Then had ice cream sandwichesSince Jena's birthday was on a Sunday, we let her have her big present, a new bike, a day early so she would actually get to ride it. Of course, she loved it! She was even more thrilled that she had just learned how to ride a 2 wheeler just a few weeks earlier and now she had a fun, new bike to show off her new skill.

We took Jena to dinner that night for her birthday since we wouldn't go on Sunday. She, of course, chose IHOP. My kids love that place.

Here she is opening the rest of her presents on her actual birthday.

Remember that part on Despicable Me where the little girl squeezes the unicorn and yells, "He's so fluffy!!!" That's exactly what she was doing here. She has wanted a pillow pet forever and I just couldn't disappoint her.All the birthday presents. She spent almost an hour setting all her presents up like this so I could take her picture. She wanted to make sure everything was seen...even down her her markers and stickers.We spent our actual birthday going to church and then we had dinner at my in-laws house. We go over there once a month for family dinner and it just happened to fall on our birthday this month. It was great because we got to pick what we wanted for dinner and then we brought cake and ice cream for dessert.

Singing Happy Birthday

Our annual birthday picture

There she goes!

Jena learned how to ride a 2 wheel bike in May. I was surprised at how quickly she caught on. She had been asking me for a while to teach her, and every time we took off the training wheels, I would get too frustrated and just put them back on after only a few tries. One Saturday afternoon, we started practicing again and she picked it up so fast. Our new favorite thing to do together is go for a bike ride. She is so proud of herself. She lets everybody know that she can ride a 2 wheeler!

(These pictures were actually taken a while after she learned.....after she got her new bike for her birthday.)

All Boy

Dreyson is ALL BOY! He is a very busy little guy who always has to be doing something. I often get comments on how busy he is. Here is proof that Dreyson always keeps us on our toes....

We have made 2 trips to the ER with Drey in the last month!

The first one happened when he jumped off my bed on the day of Jena's preschool graduation. Jena and Drey were practicing flying (they are absolutely convinced that if they just practice enough, one day they will take off) It is not uncommon for them to do this and I really didn't think much of it. I have tried to gently break it to them that no matter how hard they try, they won't fly, but they don't believe me. So, when both kids showed up wearing a pair of Jena's dress up fairy wings, I didn't even blink an eye. Little did I know that they were planning their flying lessons in my room. Off MY bed. My bed is pretty high. Drey still has a hard time climbing up on it. I was in the other room and when I heard the scream, I KNEW something was wrong. So I ran in there to see them both lying on the floor. Apparently they jumped together, arm in arm. Drey could not walk on his leg. He would just collapse. So, being the awesome mother that I am, I told him to go lay down and then we would see how he felt when he woke up. Classic mother response right. "Take a nap. You'll feel better when you wake up." Ha! Except he did not feel better. I finally decided that I had better take him to get checked the next day when he still would not walk on his leg.

He had a suspected fracture (they couldn't actually find one, but due to the fact that he would not walk on his leg for almost a week, they suspected a toddlers fracture) in his leg and got to wear a splint for 2 weeks. The longest 2 weeks ever!

This one happened during a pillow fight with a cousin. Pillow fight. Sounds harmless, right? Dreyson fell and hit his head on the end table at my parents house. I was actually already at our pediatricians office with Jena for her 5 year old well check. I got a phone call from my niece who was at my parents saying that Drey had hit his head and was bleeding really bad and I needed to come back right now. I got to my parents, saw his head, and turned around and headed right back to the doctor for stitches.

Oh Dreyson, we love you! Please no more ER visits for a while.