The First Day of School 2014

It was sure great to start school again! Even though we had a great summer it was just time to go back!! Since it is so warm here for so long we don't usually do much school shopping, but we do like to get the girls at least one new outfit that they can wear on the first day of school and of course new shoes.

The girls got to find out their teachers the night before and Lizzy and Jane both got the ones they wanted and Lizzy even had her best friend in her class too! Nellie didn't have a specific teacher she wanted so it was all good. The night before was like Christmas Eve the girls were so excited they could barely sleep and Lizzy especially was up really late.

the next morning Lizzy woke up feeling nauseous. I really thought it was lack of sleep and anxiety because there was also a bit of drama with one of the girls that was going to be in her class, so I tried to get her to go, but she decided not to. It was so sad that she missed the first day of school because she was really looking forward to it. Sure enough later that day she was feeling fine and was so mad at herself for not going. Nellie and Jane were really excited to get to school. I really dread the whole first day of school thing because there are a million parents and no place to park so I have to park blocks away, then I have to find a way to deal with the babies while getting the big kids and all their supplies to the classes etc. It is a nighmare!

 

 

Nellies teacher is really nice and I could tell immediately that she would be a good fit for Nellie.

Jane was exctied to wait in line with the other kids and I asked her if she was nervous and she said uh no! Like I was such a weirdo for asking. She also told me that she thought she might be the tallest in her class, which was pretty cute becuasee she may just be the shortest in the class.

I got Jane all settled into her class and then I was thinking "Ok we can go now right?" but none of the parents were making any attempt to leave. It was ridiculous. There are too may helicopter parents and I just want to say to them "you aren't helping your kids! Cut the cord and let them figure stuff out on their own. They will be fine!"

The next day Lizzy woke up and she said she felt a little nauseous again, but I made her go becuase I knew it was just anxiety she was feeling. She went and ended up being just fine and things even got straightend out with her friend.

 

Sammamish, WA

This summer instead of our usual trip to Utah we decided that it would be fun to go up to Washington and visit the Muhlesteins. It worked out so well too because a whole bunch of the other siblings of mine decided to come, along with my Parents, so it ended up being a fun family reunion. We knew it was going to be a long trip so we headed out really early thinking that the kids would sleep for the first couple of hours because they did that on our last trip, but of course no such luck. Then about a hundred miles into the trip we had to stop to check on the pads that we had strapped to the top of the car and realized that they were standing almost straight up, so no wonder that we had gotten horrible gas milage.

This trip fell at a really bad time for me pregnancywise and I wasn't feeling too well traveling. We had to stop at McDonalds because there was no where else to stop. Nothing really sounded very good to eat but the smooties looked good, so I decided to get one. Miss Anne decided that I had gotten it for her and she literally did not let me hold the cup. She would share with me as long as she was holding the cup. She ended up drinkg probably the majority of it too. Little Stinker! But so darn cute! The drive through Oregon just about killed us! The speed limits there are sooo slow!! We also got stuck in horrible traffic through Portland because they have a horrible freeway system there and it ended up adding another hour to the thirteen hour drive. With five little ones it pretty much stunk! But we stuck to our only stop twice, the kids are such troopers on trips!

It was fun to relax the next day and just be together with family. We went to a park and let the kids play and then we went down to the private lake that the Muhletstiens live on and let the kids just play in the water.

The trampoline that the Muheltsteins have was the favorite thing to play on. Especially the blob. The blob is the other thing attached to it that the kids would go and sit on annd then one of the big guys would go and jump on it and launch the kids.

It was so pretty there. We just loved it. The weather was just perfect too while we were there!

Annie is a little goofball. thankfully she did pretty well just hanging out.

 

Another thiing everyone enjoyed was the canoe. It was fun because we could get a whole bunch of kids in.

Russy had fun wading around in the water.

 

One of the evenings we got all the kids together and Aunt janae taught them a whole bunch of night games. It was really fun for the kids. They have loved playing those same games since we got home too.

We had a fun day going to Microsoft and visiting Brett and having lunch there. It was really nice and the food was cheap. Plus there were free drinks. You know the kids thought that was pretty awesome!

Another great thing about having a family reunion with my family is that there is going to be great food. And there was! Annie throughly enjoyed her strawberry waffle.

Probably the single best thing about this trip though was seeing all of the cousins together. They have so much fun together and always just pick up where they left off. I love that they have such a good time together!

We decided to take a trip to Pike Place Market, which maybe wasn't the best idea with alll the little kids our group had. Next time I dont think we will go there. It was just so crowded and not much for the kids to do. Plus Chanelle and Toms vans window got smashed in and Toms laptop stolen right in the middle of the day in a place full of people. It was crazy.

We did manage to find a place to get ice cream for the kids and they enjoyed their very expensive cones.

I thought I would get one for me and just share with Anne but you can see how that turned out. She would get mad if I even tried to get a lick!!

After this day Seattle is not one of my favorite big cities. We drove around trying to get to a park to hang out until the game started but the traffic was so bad we just drove through traffic and then decided we better just head to the game.

Russy sure was excited to see this pepsi sign. He has just a bit of an obsession with peps.

The kids had so much fun with their cousins at the Mariners game. There was unlimited popcorn and drinks and the kids went to town. Jake had so much he threw up when going to bed that night. It was a good thing he was the only one and that he made it into the bathroom becuase he was sleeping on the ground with all the other kids. That could have been disasterous!

Russ and Anne were kind of hard at the game and I cant say that Kevin and I had a whole lot of fun, but it was really worth it to do it for the older kids.

One of the days we had had a pretty busy day, and I had spent a lot of time making Nellies cake, so I was pretty tired. The Muhlesteins had planned for us to go that evening out on Lake Sammamish (which is a much bigger lake) and go boating and jet skiing with some friends of theirs. It honsetly did not sound fun at all because we were kind of beat from the day, but I am so glad we ended up going because it may have been the most fun we had on the whole trip.

There was a small beach there for the kids to play at, with a ton of sand toys so Russy and jane had some fun doing that.

Aunt Judy was so nice and she didnt really want to do much so she hung out with Annie and kept an eye on her for us when we went out.

The kids had a lot of fun on the boat.

I love this picture of Kevy and Russy, it just totally shows their relationship. Russy just worships his dad.

Kevy had fun taking all the kids and me around on the jet ski

I love this picture of Grandpa with the kids. Russ and Jane had fun sitting on the back of the boat with Grandpa.

Russ and Jane even went out on the tube with Aunt Janae and Jack. Because Jane went Jack decided he wanted to go too. They went pretty slow so they were safe and they absolutely loved it but there was one part where Janae almost lost Russ, that was a bit scary!! I took Annie on the boat too and I think it scared her pretty bad. She held on so tight to me and closed her eyes, i almost thought she fell asleep becuase she was so still when the boat was going. But as soon as it would stop she would pop her head up. I cant ssay I didn't love the snuggles. She is the opposite of a snuggler and I have never gotten ones that good before.

These two little babes sure do love each other. Russy is so sweet to Annie and he will talk to her so sweet and he calls her things like precious baby, it kills me it is so cute!

Russ adores his boy cousins. Whatever they are doing he wants to do too. Carson was throwing rocks so Russy went ove ther and started doing it too.

Nellie had her birthday the week before but we decided it would be more fun to celebrate with cousins. So I made her cake up there. It is always much harder to cook in someone else's house so it ended up being a lot of work. Especially since I made homemade filling as well.

Nellie never can decide what she wants, so she didn't know what kind of decoration she wanted on her cake so I just came up with this. I think it turned out pretty cute.

I had made a buch of cupcakes too thinking the little kids would want the cupcakes and us aduls could have the cake, but unfortunately everyone wanted the cake and there was barely enough for everyone.

I had to take a picture of this on the way back because it was too good. I cannot think of the last time that Nellie took a nap, but on the drive home she was out. The kids sure played hard on this trip. We had SO much fun and we are so glad we made the horrible drive. It was very worth it!

 

All About Nellie- 8 years

 

Nellie has really blossomed lately. I sense a real desire to do good and be good in her. It is amazing to me that she is already 8! I constantly say it, but where did the time go? How is this spunky girl already this old? Nellie is so sweet. She has that super stong will in her that makes dealing with her sometimes very difficult, but lately I have noticed that she has really tried hard to act differently and not go to crazy town when things don't go her way.

Nellie has been looking forward to her eighth birthday for a really long time. In fact as soon as Lizzy turned eight Nellie wanted to be eight too! For her birthday I took her to get her scriptures that we give the kids for their baptism. We had already gotten her an early birthday present becuase she needed a new bike really bad a few months ago. You would think that most kids wouldn't be that excited about getting a new set of scriptures, but not Nellie, she was thrilled! She loves her scriptures soo much! I love to see that. She even loves to sleep with them at night becuase she feels safer with them.

Nellie loves her siblings so much! She and Jane are the best of friends worst of enemies, but they also play so well together. She also loves Russy and Annie so much! She loves to try and take care of them and help them.

Nellie is soo into her treats. I would think one of these years I would write that Nellie isn't as into sweets as she used to be, but I don't think that is ever going to be the case! I know that all I have to do to get her to really feel the consequences of something is take away her treat. She will try and give me other options but I am no dummy! I know the thing that will have the most impact on her to change a behavior is taking away that treat.

Another thing that Nellie is really into right now is listening to primary music when she goes to sleep. i dont know why all my kids seem to get so scared at night time, but they all do, and the thing that helps Nellie is listening to primary music. She has the CD in her room of all the primary program songs and she puts it in every night. I love it too because she has such a beautiful voice and I can her her singing along with all of the songs.

Nellie tries really hard to be a helper to me but it just isn't in her like it is with Lizzy, Nellie wants to help if it issomething that she decides she wants to do. When I tell her that her helping pick up the messes she makes is the biggest help she just gets bugged because that is what she doesn't want to do. She is kind of a slob and her room is always so messy, but trying to get her to clean it is like pulling teeth. She throws her biggest fits about having to clean her room.

Nellie is a lot like me in that she doesn't really know a lot of the time what she likes to do and wants to do. I think she struggles sometimes being a younger sister to Lizzy because Lizzy always seems so sure of herself, but their relationship reminds me so much of mine with my older sister Chanelle. Lizzy is Chanelle and Nellie is me. I find a lot of peace in that because I feel like I figured out what my gifts are and my Nellie will too.

Nellie is doing so well in school. What a blessing! She is such a good little reader and is really taking off in that! She is so smart and I love to see her so happy to go to school everyday. She comes home and does her homework on her own everyday without me asking her. She has a new little friend in the ward that also goes to school with her. I am so happy that she now has a friend that also shares her same beliefs.

Nellie is such a speical girl that we are so grateful to have in our home! She blesses our lives so much and we love her so much!

 

Summer Fun Part 2

As part of our summer activities we tried to use up some of the free coupons the girls got by doing the summer reading program at the library. One night for family night we went to get frozen yogurt, and there was a nice little seating area where there was a waterfall, the kids loved playing by it of course!

Lizzy is my ultimate poser

Russy is not very adventurous around water, he is more on the cautious side, which is fine by me because then I have daredevil Annie.

She thinks she needs to see everything that is going on up close and personal.

Unfortunately I don't think that this scared Annie at all. She is still a total stinker who thinks she is as big as her sisters and can do whatever they do! She sure is a fiesty one!

Russy always liked to go outside and water the gordon as he called the garden. I think he got that from watching Thomas the Train. He also always called the hose the firehose and he liked to water anything he could find. Hence the picture of him watering the truck!

We had a fun time growing a garden this year. It did alright, there definitely wasn't an abundance, but we did enjoy having some fresh veggies from the garden.

My little gals didn't really help that much in the garden but what do you expect form kids.

This was by far our best day of picking. We especially loved the cherry tomatos and Annie loved them more than anyone. She would sneak out in the back and go eat them off the bush. She would even eat green ones thats how much she loved the tomatoes.

One day the girls pulled out this stroller and Anne thought riding in it was the coolest ever, so much so that she wouldn't get out but she would squeal if they didn't keep it moving.

We had fun celebrating Grandpas birthday, we got him a Dodger cake that was so cool, but it made just a bit of a mess with the blue and red frosting.

Another afternoon activity we did was playing with shaving cream. The kids really enjoyed this one, Jane told us all about it because it was something that she did in Miss Pattys place, so she kept saying this is how Miss Patty did this..

As you can see this is an activity that Russy really enjoyed a lot. He got his cars going in it and then decided that wasn't enough he needed to paint his face with it as well.

We used our Dairy Queen coupons form the library and got ice cream cones, but that is the last time I go to Dairy Queen! They chaged over two dollars a cone. I had coupons for 2 so i thought no big deal I will buy three, becuase I knew there was now way I was getting away with not getting one for Miss Anne. well it cost almost 7 dollars for the three child size cones! What a joke! We went and hung out at one of the older parks and it was actually really nice because there were so many big trees that there was a lot of shade and it was much more enjoyable to play.

One sunday afternoon Russy was outside playing in the back when we heard him scream like we have never heard. It was so sad. We ran out there and realized he had gotten stung by a bee or hornet on his ear. We tried to calm him down while I began trying to look up home remedies. I found one that said toothpaste and it seemed to be the easiest one so we gave it a shot and it worked like a charm. He immediately stopped crying and was fine after that. Of course he did have to have a bandaid on it just like every kid has to have.

My little stinker baby is such a monkey! She got so crazy over the summer and started climbing on everything!! She figured out how to climb on the table and I was constantly finding her up there!

Annie has found an obsession with rocking toys. She loves them! She has her little pony at home and she goes to town on it! She is also with us in the Nursery and she loves to ride this one there as well.

Roseville is really good at having a lot of activites to do with the kids. One week was truck week and down at the library there was a different truck eack day that you could go down and see and sit in and they would also show demonstrations how they worked. We went down a couple of days, because Russy is seriously into trucks. The kids got to dress in the gear as well.

I even got up in the truck. It is crazy how high up they actually are!

Even little baby girl got the gear on!

It took Russy a while to actually want to wear the stuff but he eventually did. Such a cute boy.

Another day we went down and they actually had the hats you could take home with you, which Russy was pretty happy about.

One of the things that I knew I had to do this summer but was dreading like nothing else was a lemonade stand. The girls have been begging for the past couple of years to do one and I have just made excuses because I just didn't want to do it. I didn't know how it would go over, I was worried they would be disappointed etc. But I knew i just had to bite the bullet and do it. They wanted to do it on a busy street and I told them no, they had to do it in front of our house so I knew they probably wouldn't get too many customers. But I made some homemade cookies thinking that would help draw some people. It ended up being totally fine. They didn't have tons of customers but they had enough that they thought it was pretty cool and they actually made eighteen dollars. So overall it was a great day.

I found out I was pregnant with about a month left of summer so I was a bit worried about how the end of the summer was going to go especailly since it is usually hard anyway and then add in not feeling well and I was really worried. It ended up being pretty good. The girls were so sweet one day that I wasn't feeling well and I came out to this. They had a made me up a little bed with books and stuff and they left me this cute note. Lizzy is the one behind it all, she is such a sweet girl always trying to make me happy and serve me. I sure love these kids of mine.

There are some cement slides nearby that we have been to before and the kids have just loved them but the last time we went they were covered in dirt and didn't work that well. So this time when we went the kids were surpirsed at how fast they were. Plus if you bring cardboard to slide on it goes way faster so it was a blast. Russy loved it but Annie wasn't too sure about it and got really worried going down. Jane even had a blast doing it too. It is something we will have to do again soon.

We had a great summer! I loved spending time with my kids and doing activites with them. I hope they can look back and see that I tried really hard to help them have a good summer!