The Little Things Inbetween

I'm always writing about the big or bigger events that happen in our lives and sometimes the little things in the middle get missed. It's in the middle where the fits are, the funny things are said, leisure time is spent, tears are cried, singing and dancing happen & laughs fill the air. And of course there is cleaning, laundry and cooking too. So here is a little bit that I wanted to talk about.

Megan LOVES to read. She has been getting into chapter books, she is currently reading 3 books at this time. Which might explain her personality a little since she is always doing several things... a great multi-tasker... we just need to control it a little more. She is always taking anything that we are going to throw away and she can imagine anything to make it into. She is quite crafty and loves writing books. Maybe someday she'll publish one!

The kids will play on the swing set constantly, which is great. The only bad thing is once Bryson sees a spider he will stop playing. I'm still trying to get him to be the hero and kill it. Someday!

Bryson is constantly saying funny things. Some of the things that I am remembering are:

While eating dinner...
B: I'm full (with most of his dinner still sitting on his plate)
Dad: Well I guess you don't have room for a cookie then.
B: uh-huh! this spot right here (drawing a circle on his belly) is for the cookie.
Dad: Then eat some of your peas.
B: There's no room, just enough for the cookie.

His favorite phrase... "Mom, when I was a baby and was in your belly and came out I... (whatever Connor is doing, like ate baby food, spit up, crawled, you get the point)

We recently moved him to a booster seat in the car and he watches the cars behind us and is always telling me to go faster cause the car is going to get us. I have to explain to him that the car won't hit us and that I can't go faster cause there is a car in front of us.

He has also been obsessed with taking pictures. He is always wanting to take pictures. Maybe cuz we are always taking pictures.

Connor's favorite thing to do is jump in his johnny jump up. He loves it!

He has finally got his crawling down and now he can go all over the house in just a few seconds. We are constantly digging stuff out of his mouth that his brother and sister leave on the ground. Here is a short video proving that he crawls.

Connor also is good at copying things. He will pat his head if you pat your head. He LOVES to laugh and the kids are constantly trying to make him laugh.

Connor is also going to have his tear ducts probed, we were suppose to do it this week, but he got a cold, so we had to reschedule.

I feel like that is it, since I can't think of anything else right now, but I'm sure I'll remember something else later. I need to be better about posting about the little things and not just waiting till the big things.

Dog Training

Megan & Bryson went to a dog training class where they got to help train a dog. The kids (more Megan) have been asking for a dog and so we figured that this would be a good class for the kids to attend so they can understand the responsibility of training a dog, and also for when we eventually get a dog we will know how to train it. I wasn't able to attend, but Josh took the kids and took these pictures. So the rest of this post will be from the words of the kids...

(Megan) The night was very fun we got to train a dog to heel
and to sit and to come and to stay.

I (Bryson) got to train Spotty. He tried to jump up on me. I trained Spotty to play games and I got to give him a treat. I put the treat in my hand and I dropped it on the ground and he tried to eat my hand, but it didn't hurt.

Bryon's favorite part was giving the dog treats.

Here my (Megan) dog wouldn't sit down so the trainer had to come and make him sit down.

Megan's favorite part of the night was teaching the dog to heel, and taking the dog through an obstacle course.

We will hopefully be able to go to more of these classes (which are free) to help the kids learn the responsibilities of a pet and also to get their "dog fix" in.

Over the Weekend

We went to our gym's 10th anniversary party where the kids played lots of different games, jumped in bouncers and Megan even got her face painted as a bunny.

We also added some flowers to our landscaping.
We put some Double Impatiens & Calibrachoa in the planter box, wave petunias by the mailbox & Geraniums and Salvia in front of our bushes. Hopefully everything will grow as expected and in a few weeks they will all look amazing. I'll have to post another picture later.

We also planted our garden! I am most excited about this. It was our next project after the swing set and we finally got it finished. We are growing slicing tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, red peppers, green peppers & zucchini. Hopefully our garden will grow well this year and then we can make another box for next year and double our garden.

Around the World

We had a ward activity a couple of weeks ago (I'm finally catching up) that was for adults only. We were all split up into tables and each table was a different country. We were Puerto Rico. Josh and I were the table captains and were in charge of organizing our dinner for our table and an activity that the whole ward could participate in. The Riveria's on our table are from Puerto Rico and did a wonderful job with our main dish and our beautiful centerpiece. The night was a lot of fun. I didn't take many pictures but got a lot of videos.

Here is a video of Josh participating in a noodle eating contest...

For our table's activity we got ideas from the new "Minute to Win it" TV show and did a big competition.

We started with "Suck it up" where you have to transfer M&M's from one cup to another by sucking them up to the end of a straw, without using your hands. (we varied it from the actual game)

The top 4 players moved on to "Dizzy Mummy" where they had to unroll a roll of toilet paper by spinning around without it breaking.
The top 2 players moved on to "On the nose" where they had to move cottons balls from one bowl to another only using their nose with Vaseline on it.

It was a great time. Some of the other games that we did were a grape throwing contest, hot pepper eating contest, sumo wrestling contest, making tulips out of paper, word scrambles, hula dancing and other ones that I can't think of right now.

80's Flashback!

A couple of weeks ago we had a surprise b-day party for one of my friends here at our house. It was a blast! We all dressed up in 80's outfits to celebrate her turning 30.

Here is the whole group looking awesome!

All the girls from our ward, minus the b-day girl, we took plenty of pictures while we waited for her to show up.

We all had a blast taking pictures, playing "name that tune" with 80 songs, and playing a get to know you trivia for the b-day girl. We all got to know "tramp-o-line Monique" better and enjoyed having a whole night in celebration of her. She is a great person, a wonderful example, fun friend & is beautiful inside and out.

Highlights from the night:

• Rene (Monique's Mom) undressing once they got downstairs into her 80's outfit.
• Learning more about Monique especially about her "Trampoline" dance.
• Seeing every one's 80's outfits
• One of the girls seeing a mouse and screaming which brought the party to a close and Josh on a mouse hunt. (we caught it that night)

Gotta love time out with the girls!

Derby Bingo

This is our 2nd year doing Derby Bingo. We started doing it since I miss my family bingo parties, so we started our own on Derby day. This year we started a hat contest. The idea came from a friend, but it was perfect since the Kentucky Derby is all about hats. So everyone was invited and had to wear some kind of hat... fancy, funky, silly or cute. So here are our families hats.

All the groups...

Everyone that came

Playing B-I-N-G-O!!

After we played bingo and all the prizes were gone we had a pot luck BBQ and watched the Kentucky Derby race (you can watch it here.). I do have to say that my favorite part was when all the kids were sitting down at the table eating and one little girl started to sing a primary song, the rest of them joined in and started to sing, then once that song was done they sang another. So cute! We had a great time and were glad to share my family tradition with our "family" out here! Can't wait till next year! I already have an idea for a hat.

He's a Big Boy Now!

He did it!

It took a long time, a lot of patience, lots of loads of laundry, some puddles, stubbornness & did I mention patience? But he finally filled his potty chart and is wearing big boys every day, and even some nights. We are so proud!

And since he filled up the chart we took him (and the family) to Chuck-E-Cheese!

(I don't know who that little girl is... Megan was looking for tokens on the floor and got her to join her, then they did everything together, so she is in all of my pictures with Chuck-E-Cheese.)

We all had a great time. Connor loved riding the rides, Bryson loved doing everything, he especially loved riding the roller coaster rides, which is weird since he didn't really like riding the roller coasters at Disney World. Megan became very good at skeeball, and Josh set the record (a couple of times) on the basketball "Hoops" game.

We are so proud of you Bryson!

Now we just have to work on nights. If we put him in a diaper he stays dry, put then when he wears his big boys he has an accident almost every time. A little frustrating, but he'll get there. One step at a time!

Dad works so the kids can play

This is what Josh did for 2 weeks (or more) every day after work and whenever he could.

Step 1: mark off the area

Step 2: get rid of grass in area

Step 3: Prep ground with landscaping fabric to prevent weeds.

Step 4: Build the swing set

Repeat step 4 for several days

Step 5: Build box around swingset

Step 6: Fill box with rubber mulch

and Ta Da!!

Thanks to everyone that helped put this togther: Jacob, the Elders, Tony, the kids & of course Dad who spent SO much time putting this together so that the kids have something fun to play on... and to get them out of the house to give me some peace too! Thank You!

Thunder 2010

Thunder this year was a little different then past years. We had invited some friends of ours to come sit with us where we sit. So as we are traveling down to park in our usual spot the road we park on was closed. Now we have people following us and we don't know where we are going. After driving around for awhile we finally found a spot to park and walked down to get our seat. It was very crowded, but we lucked out and found a spot. Once we were all settled (2 hours after leaving) I took all the kids to go potty and waited for an hour to use the porta potties. I was kind of nervous if Bryson would freak out going in a porta potty since he hates going to the bathroom away from home, but he did good, luckily. We got back just in time for the show to start. But with the technical difficulties it gave us 20 more minutes to hang out before the show started. The kids enjoyed trading off taking different pictures and seeing how they turned out since you can't see what you are taking a picture of until you take it. Here are a few of my favorites.

The fireworks were amazing again. Connor fell asleep during the show, and this year was Megan's first year not plugging her ears during the whole show. We had a great time and we loved having friends to share it with.
Here is a little preview, if you want to see more you have to come out and see it for yourself.

Soccer

Soccer season has started! The kids have had 2 games so far. It is totally different watching Bryson play and watching Megan play. I thought that I would give you a little insight!

3 year old league

First here is my cute boy in his uniform.

(he was cold and didn't want to pose)

This is what Bryson did on his first game of soccer...
stand on his head... check
play with the cones on the side line... check
jump up and down like a bunny down the field... check
suck on soccer shorts... check

I missed the picture of him hugging the goal post and not wanting to let go... wish I would have gotten that one. And playing with the out of bound flag. I do have to give him credit that he didn't need me to come out and hold his hand, and he didn't try to hold Josh's either. Maybe him being the coach helps out.

There were some good moments when he actually ran after the ball and played the game.

With the 3 year olds they don't have a goalie and they all run around in a heard with some parents holding the hands of their child. It really is quite funny to watch. Josh is the coach and I think that he does a great job talking to the parents and the kids and trying to get the kids excited to come and play (without their parents in hand). He is very positive, I even caught him giving a five to a little girl on the other team after she made a goal. He's a great coach!

6-7 year old League

Now here is Megan all dressed in her uniform.

(again it was cold, that is why her socks look more like tights to keep her legs warm)

There is a lot more running around. They actually have a goalie and do throw ins when it goes out of bounds. They lost their first game (even tho they don't keep score... but whatever to zero isn't hard to keep track of) and they got a lot better on their next game and won. Megan even seems to have gotten better between games. She does really well listening to her coaches, and loves to cheer on her teammates... "Go orange bombers, let's go!"

We have enjoyed watching our kids play and look forward to the rest of the season, if we don't get rained out!