Nellie's Birthday Bash

Since Nellie had never had a friend party before I decided that she really did need one. I am such a bad mom, I know some mom's love throwing birthday parties but I really don't. They just stress me out. I decided to keep it as easy as possible for me so we decided to do a water party. At first it was going to be a beach party but after we couldn't find any decorations that were inexpensive I decided to just go with green and Nellie decided she wanted pink too, she is really starting to branch out! She of course decided on a jaguar cake but after having a Diego cake two years ago and jaguar cupcakes last year I told her it wasn't going to happen. She ended up being pretty happy with her cake, although she told me she wished I had made the stripes go the other way. Leave it to kids!

The funny thing is that only about half of the kids wanted cake. I didn't realize that so many kids were so picky about stuff, how can you not like cake, especially as a kid! Lizzy was being her silly self and not realizing that what she was saying was rude and told me that it wasn't that they didn't like cake, they just didn't like the cake I made. Thanks Lizzy. Way to make your mom feel good.

The crazy thing was I thought a bunch of the moms would stay because they usually do, but my friend Alisa was the only one who did, so i am so grateful for her because I really needed the help. We did cake and presents first since we were doing water games and I didn't want a bunch of wet kids in my house, so it worked out good.

Nellie loved all the presents she got! I especially liked the slip and slide because it was the thing that ended up keeping all the kids occupied for the whole time, thank goodness.

Here was the line waiting for the slip and slide, it took most of them a while to figure out how to slide on their tummies but once they did it was a huge hit!

Nellie was very serious preparing for her turn. She was a natural at it and got to the end on her first try.

I love the little buns sticking out of her suit! Happy Birthday Nellie! I can't believe that my little preemie is now five!

Big Lady

My Baby Lady is no more. It makes me a little sad, but we are enjoying it so much too! She is so big, it is crazy how much she has grown up in the past couple of months. No more paci, no more diapers, no more crib, and she was the one that decided on all of them. Well the paci was us, but the other day she said to me, "I don't need a paci mom because I am big!" It was way too cute. I seriously could still just eat her up. When she got into her big girl bed she was so proud of it and wanted to show everyone. She will go and roll around on it and say, "do you like my big girl bed?" She has been talking for a long time now, but she says the most adult things sometimes it just kills me. Last night it was prayer time and she said "I believe it is Lizzy's turn to say the prayer." She makes us laugh so much and Kevin is convinced that she is going to be the ham in the family.
Another thing that she is into lately is puzzles. The girl can do a 25 piece puzzle completely on her own and she is so good at doing them. She can even help do a 100 piece or more and is actually a really good help doing them. Plus she loves to do them too, it is her favorite thing to do and she asks me everyday to get the puzzles down for her to do. We had to go and buy a bunch more just because she loves them so much and wanted more to do.
She is also very excited for her brother to get here and to be a big sister. She will come up to me and start rubbing my belly and say " baby brother I love you!" We just love our little Janie bug and she will always be my Baby Lady!

The 4th and lots of Fireworks!

We had so much fun on our trip. One of the highlights was being able to do the really good fireworks in Utah. We all went out front and just hung out and let all the little boys be little pyros. The best was that my brother Bryce bought so many cool fireworks and he is like a little kid with fireworks. I don't know if I have ever seen someone enjoy it more than him.

Janie had fun eating candy and hanging out with Dad. I love the candy smile.

It was really cute to see all the little kids lined up on the curb, they had a blast.

Gotta love Nellie, she is pretty good at throwing fits over stuff, I don't even remember what it was about.

Little Poser Lizzy. One of the funniest things that she did was she took some of the streamers that came out of Parachute firework and she held them up and rode around on her bike like she was a beauty queen, for probably over fifteen minutes.

On the fourth we decided to go to the parade down in Provo. At first we didn't want to go because we would have to get up early and we were all pretty tired, but we decided that it was something that the girls would really enjoy, and of course they did. They had never seen a real parade before with actual nice floats, just the small Kansas ones. Lizzy absolutely loved the ones with the beauty queens on them. The funny thing was she waved to each and every group that passed but when it was the beauty queens she did her elbow wrist beauty queen wave. That girl is something else.

One of the favorites was the big balloons. The girls really loved watching the people spin them.

Chanelle brought Max and Jack too, so it made it even more fun.

The night of the fourth we had almost all the grand kids there(we were only missing Austin's four kids.) So we decided to try and get a picture of all of the grand kids together. As you can see by these pictures it is pretty hard to even get all the kids in the picture let alone looking at the camera.

Little monkey with her sparkler. We had such a great Fourth this year and we are so glad we got to spend it with loved ones.

Timp Cave

I am slowly getting the posts done from our trip, I know it takes me forever. Most of the family went on a hike to Timp Cave, but I knew that there was no possible way that Nellie would make it with how she does with walking. So I stayed back with her and Jane, and Kevin and Lizzy went on the hike. Lizzy was very excited to go and I guess she did awesome on the hike. I guess she was a bit scared in the cave and really held on to Kevin, but everyone told me how cute she was. I guess she kept asking the tour guide questions about the rocks and all kinds of stuff. She is way too cute.

Always the little poser. She just can't help herself.

I went on the hike when i was in fifth grade, but I don't remember too much about it. Looks like it was pretty cool.

The cave is about 40 degrees inside, but it was such a hot day that I guess it felt pretty good for everyone.

More Activities!!

Our trip to Utah this year was extra fun becasue we did qutie a few activities and fun things that we don't usually do. I lived in Utah most of my life and I had never been to the Bingham copper mine. Chanelle, Mel and I took the kids while the guys went golfing. It was a neat experience but probably a one time thing. The girls were really scared of falling in which was funny because it wasn't a cliff. Nellie was throwing a little fit, big surprise.

Me and my gals! I still can't believe that we are adding a boy to the mix. I don't know if I will actually believe it until he gets here.

The kids next to the big tire. It was huge!

Oh how I miss the beautiful mountains. They have them here but they are too far away to see. Although it is better than Kansas where there were none. It was really fun to take the girls up the canyon and have dinner one night. I think it might have been one of my favorite things about the trip.

We found a campsite that was miles from the water which was great because the rivers are so swollen this year there was no way we were going to take the little kids anywhere near them.
The kids found a little trail that they hiked and they thought it was the neatest thing ever!

We had hamburgers and hot dogs and then we roasted marshmallows for smores! We got these huge marshmallows and they made the biggest mess but they were so good!

Jack and Jane really got to know each other a lot better on this trip and had so much fun together!