All About Lizzy-10 years

It is so hard to believe that my Lizzy is in double digits. This last year she has grown up so much! She has always been such a good helper to me, but she has increased that 10 fold lately. She is getting so good at being a big sister and helping with the little ones, even if she does get a little bossy at times. That is her job as the older sister right? She has gotten so good with Anne especially and Annie has started to just love her and wants to go to her all the time. She is going to be the best helper with Clara.

Lizzy is now in the fourth grade and doing just as good as usual in school. It is fun to see her learning things and telling me about them. It is so fun to have a little buddy to talk to about things. One thing about Lizzy is that she really doesn't have the whole attitude thing like a lot of girls start getting at this age. She is always so willing to help and be happy and try to do what is right. If she ever does start to get an attitude, I just let her know that she is doing that and she will start apologizing about it.

Lizzy has always been the very best eater. One of her favorite foods is salads and she actually likes to pack them in her lunch quite regularly. She actually has very adult tastes and likes pretty much everything that little kids doesn't usually like. She will tell me that whatever food I made for dinner is so great and her fourth favorite, or something like that. She enjoys helping me in the kitchen and is really starting to get good at helping there.

One of the most speical things about Lizzy is that she has the very best attitude. When something disappointing happens she does so well with being ok with it. I think sometimes even better than I do. We forgot to sign up in time for her to do the school play and so she didn't get to be in it. She was amazing and just said, "That's okay Mom!" I was seriously so blown away. She is such a good example to me!

This past school year she has started taking sewing lessons from her Grandma and I love how much she looks forward to it. She is a natural too, I am truly amazed at how well she is sewing so early on.

Lizzy is just such an amazing girl. She is my little right hand. I know that Heavenly Father sent her to me because he knew how much I would need her. I am so grateful to have her as my daughter!!

 

Lizzy is Ten!!

I can't believe that my big girl turned ten! Time flies! It was a year for her to have a friend party but she was wanting to have smores for her party for the treat and I was happy about that because I hate making cake for a bunch of kids. So many of them are like "I don't like cake!" It irritates me. So I made her her birthday cake on her birthday for our family party. She wanted a chocolate cake with purple frosting and yellow flowers. I haven't made many flowers so I thought I would try and teach myself how to make roses, but that was a definite no go! It is so hard! It will take me lots of practice to figure those out. So I just made some easy little yellow flowers that I thought turned out pretty good.

 

 

This year from us Lizzy wanted to make a teddy bear at Build-a-Bear workshop because she has never made one before, which I think is so cute. I am so glad she isn't growing up too fast. She also wanted clothes which is fun too, I love shopping for clothes.

She got a really cute outfit from Grandma and Grandpa that she just loves.

I had put the cake in a very nice glass cake dish that i thought was safe on the counter because the lid is so heavy. I should have known better! The next day while i was busy getting stuff done Annie and I am guessing Russy helped get the lid off, becuase I went in the kitchen and this is what I found. I didn't get a picture right ways becuase I was really mad so I don't have one of them covered in cake and frosting. The little stinkers! They seriously get into everything!!!

 

All About Russ-3 years

 

I was trying to get a good picture of Russy on his birthday but he was just so wiggly it was really hard to get one. These are the few decent ones that I got.

Russ is such a special boy! He is so sweet and kind but he is also so boy. He is really into playing with his trucks and balls and swords and guns and cars, you get the picture. A really funny thing that he loves to do right now is make sound effects. You would think it would be exhausting for how long he can do sound effects. Its funny too because in the store, if I am somewhere else and I am looking for Kevin and the kids I can usually find them because of Russy's sound effects. Russy is such a good talker now and loves to talk to people. He may be a little shy with strangers but not at home. He loves his sisters so much and loves to play with them. One day Janie wasn't playing with him and he said "But Janie you are making me sad!" He is saying so much funny stuff right now, I love it. I try and remember it all but it is hard to do sometimes.

One day I had made cookies and he said to me, "Mom these cookies are amazing!" It was the cutest. One day we were taking him to bed and he said to Jane "It's bedtime Jane!" It was too funny. He also will tell me that "The sky is awake Mom!" When he wakes up too early, even when it isn't actually light outside. I love to see his joy for the world and learning new things.

Our really nice neighbors have two boys that are just older than Russy so they give us so many nice things for Russ. They gave us a really nice almost brand new Cars bike for Russ that he loves to ride so much. He didn't have a helmet so we got him one for his birthday and he puts that thing on and takes it off 30 times a day. He is so funny. He loves to be outside and riding his bike or just doing boy stuff out there. He loves to see the garbage trucks and any other trucks and airplanes when they fly by.

He still loves firetrucks! But he really just loves all things boy. One of his new favorite things is Football. He actually will sit down and watch with Kevin and I when we watch a game. He usually goes and gets a football and wants to toss it around with Kevin. He will get down into the hike stance too. I love it. It goes to prove that we named him after the right person when we named him after his Grandpa who also loves football.

He loves his Dad like nobody's business and I am so glad that we were able to have a boy so that they could have this special relationship. He has the kindest little heart. He is always out of nowhere telling me "I love you mom!" It is really so sweet. If I say "how are you doing today Buddy?" he will also ask how I am doing. When we went and got an ultrasound for the baby and he actually got to see that there was a baby in there he has been so sweet to me after and will just randomly ask me "How is the baby doing Mom?" Seriously I don't think that he could be any sweeter. Although he is going through a stage where he thinks that I will just give him whatever he wants and when I say no he has a meltdown, but I think that is pretty common with this age.

These two together are serious trouble!! I thought it was going to be a lot easier once I just had these two at home but they are seriously killing me! The get into everything! But I do love to see them playing together which they are doing a lot lately.

The girls love to spoil and coddle him so he is a bit of a pansy right now. In fact Annie pushes him around and will take his things and he just freaks out, I tell him "go take it back" but he just cries. The sisters all love their brother so much and we are sooo happy that we were able to have our Russy to make our lives brighter. We love him so much and our lives would definitely not be the same without our blond bear!

Russy's Third Birthday

I think that three may very well be one of my favorite ages. They are still so darn cute and fun and say such funny stuff, but they also understand so much more so you can reason with them, and best of all they understand and get so darn excited about things like their birthdays. It has been so fun to have Russy counting down for his birthday and talking about "Guess who's birthday is coming up?! Russys!" He even said that after his birthday had passed, it was too funny. He got so excited about being able to open presents and have all the attention on him. Since he isn't in preschool yet I always wait until their fourth birthday to do a friendr party so we just had Grandma and Grandpa over for cake and to watch Russy open his presents.

 

We got him some legos that we thought he would like building, but I think they are still just a little too big for him. He just dumps the entire bucket out but doesn't really put too much together and he and Anne just make the biggest mess with it. We had to put them up for a while but I'm sure he will be really excited when he is bigger and we bring them down for him.

I had asked Russy what kind of cake he wanted for his birthday a couple of months ago and he told me a football cake, which I was thrilled about because that is pretty easy to make. Jane tried to convince him to have a firetruck cake which I wasn't too happy about, so I convinced him that he really did want his original pick of a football cake. I didn't want to buy a new cake pan so I just looked on pinterest for a good idea for making a football cake. I thought it turned out pretty cute, and Russy loved it so that is all that mattered.

The funny thing was he was so into his presents and everything else that he didn't even end up eating his cake that night. Kevin didn't know this and when he took Russy to bed Russy said "but I didn't get any cake!" Kevy thought he was just being silly so he didn't let him have any. But he ended up having plenty the next day. It was a fun little day for our blond bear! We sure do love this crazy boy of ours and we are so grateful that we were blessed with him!

 

Bishop's Pumpkin Farm

We had to make our annual fall trip up to Bishops pumpkin farm especially since we missed last year. I knew that Russy would really enjoy it because he was too young the last time that we went. And sure enough he thought it was a pretty cool place. We were able to go up on a friday afternoon after the kids got home from school since Kevy has his flex Fridays. It was nice too because stuff is a little cheaper on weekdays then it is on weekends there.

I look at these kids of mine and I am completely blown away at times that they are all mine. What a dream come true it is to be a mom.

SAnnie may look like she didn't like the slide but she really did and got right back up to go again.

Russy was very timid on the slides because they are huge and very long, but once we got him to go down once it was all over. He just kept going down and then running back up to the top to go down again. He loved it! We had to make him stop because he would have spent hours doing just that.

One of the favorite things that the girls did was the sunflowe maze. They got to pick their own sunflowers and they really enjoyed that, and getting to take them home.

Russy liked using this digger thing. He is such a boy and so into tools and stuff like that.

Annie is such a big shot lately. I swear that that girl thinks she is 10 years old. She thinks she can sit wherever she wants and climb on what she wants to. When we sat to eat dinner she had to stand up on the bench and of course fell and wacked her head twice because she wouldn't let me touch her.

I think all of our favorite thing to do was go on the train. They have the cutest little train there and Russy LOVED it. He was sitting by Kevy and he told him "this is the best train ever!" He is at one of my all time favorite stages because everything is so exciting and he says the cutest, funniest things. After the train ride it was getting dark but we had a few tickets left so we went to ride the carousel. But there weren't enough for everyone so Nellie sat off with kevy so I could take the little ones. I thought it was the sweetest thing for Nellie to do that. She even told Kevy that she felt the spirit when she did it, which just makes my heart so happy! The kids were so grateful for us taking them and spending our time and money on them. Which of course makes me want to do it even more. We had such a good time.