All About Jane-7 years

Oh my beautiful Janie.  How could this have happened?  How could she already be seven!  She was supposed to stay three forever!  She is still such a sweet girl, bur she has shown some sass too!   Jane is now in the first grade and just doing amazing at it!  She is such an amazing reader that it is hard to believe that she has only been doing it for such a short time.  When we read the scriptures she picks up the big words so fast.  Jane loves to go to school and has lots of friends, but mostly boys.  I don't know what it is about this girl but she is a boy magnet. All the little boys in her class and at church and pretty much wherever she goes, they flock to her.  I think it may be that she is such a cutie, but she also has such a laidback attitude they must be drawn to that  She is always bringing home little gifts that boys have given her.

One of Jane's favorite things to do is to play with Nellie, even though they may not always get along, and Nellie can get really frustrated with Jane.  Jane wants to be just like Nellie and will copy something that Nellie does.  It drives Nellie crazy but I keep trying to tell her that she should be flattered that her little sister wants to be just like her. They share a bedroom because they are both the biggest pigs around.  Janie is a total packrat and will keep absolutely everything, so her bedroom is a giant pile of schoolwork and trinkets and toys and clothes.

Jane is the best big sister to her little siblings.  They love her so much!  She is always willing to play with them and entertain them for me.  One of her favorite things to play is School with Russ.  She is the teacher and she always gives him lots of assignments to do. Its super cute. It's probably a good thing that she is good with helping me with them because Jane is notoriously bad at helping around the house.  Trying to get her to get anything done is pretty darn difficult.  She always seems to manage to sneak out of helping when everyone else is distracted by something else.

One of Jane's favorite things to do is to draw.  Give that girl a piece of paper and a pencil and she is good to go.  She loves to color and paint and draw.  I love it because it reminds me a lot of me when I was a little girl. I loved to do that too.  Maybe she will become an artist as well.

Jane still drives me nuts with the clothes that she picks out. She will wear the same ratty clothes over and over again when she has super nice clothes in her drawers that she will never touch.  I guess it is one of the ways that she expresses her opinion.  Her favorite color is yellow like me, that may have had something to do with it.  Her favorite food is Hawaiian Haystack, like Lizzy.   

Jane loves being included with the big girls and loves to stay up and watch shows with Kevin and I after we put he three youngest to bed.   Jane really is such a sweet girl.  She is quiet so I sometimes worry about her getting overlooked in this crazy family.  But she is such an important part of our family.  I just couldn't live without my darling sweet Jane.  I love her so much and I cant believe what a big girl she is.

Jane's Birthday

It was an off year for a party for Jane, so we just did our usual family thing.  Jane asked for the Chocolate Skor bar cake with raspberry filling.  I love that cake and it was actually served at our wedding, but for some reason I haven't made it in ages so it was great to have again. I just love that she wanted a yummy cake rather than a decorated one.  Jane got a new big girl bike from us so she didn't have anything to open that day from us.  We decided to get a bike that was in-between the big kid size and the small size because our Janie is just a little mini.  It was a good thing too because it ended up taking her quite a few days to get the hang of getting on the bike.     

I love that she let Russy and Annie be in her picture with her.

At least she had one present to open.  Grandma and Grandpa know the way to Janie's heart.  anything Arts and crafts.  She sure is a sweet girl and I cant believe that she is seven!

Cousin trip

Our big christmas present (we thought) was that we decided to take the kids to Utah the day after christmas to spend time with their cousins! We thought they were going to be so thrilled that we decided to keep it a secret, I mean after all we haven't gone anywhere for the holidays since Nellie was a baby. But alas when we told them the acted like, is that it? We decided to tell them a few days before Christmas because we were going to be leaving the morning after Christmas and we needed to be able to prepare a little bit better. As it was it was still incredibly exhasting to try and pull off.

We left pretty early and got a good start on the trip but that all came to a giant halt when we hit horrible traffic outside of Barstow! It tacked on an extra two hours to our trip. It was not cool. The kids were just a little excited when we finally got there. Clara did amazing on the trip but the last half hour she screamed because she was just done by that time.

One of the highlights of the trip was getting to see sweet baby Emma. She was born super early but did so great and is such a little miracle baby.

The kids always love kidding around with Papi.

We HAD to take a trip to a cafe Rio while we were there because it would be a crime if we didn't go get Kevin's all time favorite meal!

It's so fun to see the kids having a good time with their cousins.

 

We took the kids up to the red rock to climb around a little bit. But man it has been a lot of years since I have been in the cold weather and even in St. George I froze my buns off! Every time we went outside it felt so dang cold to me!! All I wanted to do the whole time was go back inside!

 

Russy is still in that phase where he says really cute things. He really loved climbing up in the rocks and he said "Mom look at this world!" And then when the kids were climbing over a little risky of a path and he said " guys do you think this is such a great idea?" He isn't much of a risk taker that's for sure.

That's a cute group of kids!

Back in St. George where it all began! It feels like just yesterday that I met this cute guy, but it feels like we have been together forever!

Two cute babies. Clara was super amazing on the trip and just crawled around and hung out most of the time. She even went to everyone all the aunts and uncles really well. She would just hold up her arms like " pick me up!"

It was fun to see all these little cousins together, getting to know eachother.Iliked how Annie and Jordan were chatting like big people.

After almost a week in St. George we headed up to Northern Utah to see our other cousins. It was only for a couple of days but it was worth it, becuasethese kids just have too much fun together!! The girls were reallyexcited to spend some time in the snow, but I think we have ruined them because they were all whining about how cold it was, and really who could blame them! It was awful! I have to admit to being very grateful thatwedon't live in the cold, I am the biggest aby about it now!

Lucy and Annie had a fun time playing together and luckily Annie was really sweet with Lucy. It helped that they both really love to play with babies! I can't wait for them to get older and really play together.

The kids were going to go sledding out in Eagle Mountain, but Annie and Russy couldn't handle the cold and were pretty much sobbing the whole time. It was awful!

 

The big girls had a really good time sledding. Although it didn't really change their opinion about snow.

The trip home we decided to leave really early in the morning to get a good head start. We ended up leaving their house just after five in the morning. It was dark and stayed dark for a really long time. I decided to drive because kevin doesn't do well early. I drove while everyone slept and they all slept until almost Elko! Poor Clara though caught a bad bug and was throwing up the whole way. It was so sad. Every time she had anything she threw it up. It made for a really crappy drive. Everyone was so anxious to get home that the kids didn't even want to stop and Elko ended up being our only stop the whole day!! We made it home by 2:30!! It sure was nice to get home so early. We were able to get everything unpacked and relax that evening. Clara was doing much better that evening, it ended up being only about a twelve hour bug.

We had such a good time with cousins, but I don't know how soon we will be traveling during the holidays again. It's just a hard time to travel with kids.