Jane's Graduation

 

Janie is graduated from kindergarten and will be in first grade next year. How is that possible? My baby Jane can't possibly be that old!! She did so amazing though at school this year. It wasn't even a problem for her. She did so well learning everything. She picked up reading so quickly. She did awesome!! I am so proud of her and how grown up she is getting!

Jane loved her teacher Miss Ray. She loved being in the owl class too. I remember how when she found out she was going to have miss Ray and be in the owl class she was jumping up and down she was so excited, and now here we are, it's the end of the year.

I had to get one more of Janie and Maxim because they are just too cute together, and who knows with moving if we will even be back here in the fall.

 

Primary Temple Day

The primary had a special temple trip for the kids where we got to go and tour the grounds and learn more about the temple. Of course it had to be at 9:00 on a Saturday morning do we had to leave the house pretty early, but it all worked out. It was really neat becuase we got to learn some special things we didn't know about the Sacramento temple in particular. It is always such a special thing to go and spend some time at the temple and feel the spirit and espcially as a family to get to take the kids and help them to develop a love of going to the temple and appreciating the gift that it is to have nearby.

I love those smiles!

Nellie is getting so grownup!!

Lizzy is too! How did my girls get so big!!!

I love how Russy was holding Janie's hand. So cute. He did really well and was such a good boy for the tour.

I love this Eternal Family of mine! I am so very blessed and so grateful for the blessing of all of them in my life!

 

Trouble

These two are serious trouble! They are either fighting like cats and dogs, or getting along great making huge messes. Russell hates to share his stuff with Anne, but she always wants it so they end up biting and hitting and all kinds of stuff. Annie is feisty too and she won't back down, in fact Russell is much more of a pansy than she is. The best thing too is that whenever I catch them making trouble Russell blames Annie. He has already learned that game, but clearly doesn't realize how ridiculous that is. When they get food out of the fridge he says that Annie did it. Sure buddy.

They can seriously be just the cutest together, but this is a rare occurance. Russy wanted to wear his dodger cap for opening day and Annie wanted to be just like Russy.

It always happens when I am nursing or getting ready. If I can just make it through the mornings I am good to go, but it's hard to make it through the mornings without a breakdown on my part because of some crazy thing they have done. Here Annie and Russ had taken her birthday cake to the living room and started taking big hunks and eating them and smeared frosting all over the couch.

I just don't understand what is in their little heads when they do this!! Why dump everything out?

 

I guess in a way it is partially my fault for always forgetting to put the cereal away in the locked pantry. You would think I would have learned by now!!

I found them behind the couch eating ice cream and Russ tells me that it was Annie who got it out. sure!

The problem with pictures too is that they never do justice to how bad it really is. Here they had pulled out about ten different games with a million little pieces and cards and mixed them all together! Why!?

They love to use Clara's stuff as their own. Russ loves to make anything into a vehicle. Annie just thinks that her bath seat is a really fun place to sit and hang out.

They are just so cute together though! The few times when they get along are just priceless!

 

Mothers Day

It's always fun to have my birthday and Mother's Day so close together. It's like a whole week of fun times for me. I especially love when my little kiddies do something special for me at school. This year was the Mother's Day tea with my cute Janie.

I love when I get to spend some special time with just one of my kids. I loved all the darling things she made for me, I could tell that she really spent a lot of time on them to make them extra special.

It was also fun to watch Janie and her best friend Maxim enter act. Theyarereally cute together.

Of course it is also a highlight to hear all the cute songs they sing. I especially loved how out of tune the songs were, but they just sung their little hearts out!

I look at this crew I have and I can hardly believe it! They are really all mine! I was pregnant and gave birth six times! That is crazy! It is so amazing! All I really ever wanted in my life was to be a wife and a mother, and look at where I am. All of my dreams have come true. I am so very grateful that Heavenly Father has blessed me beyond anything I could have imagined!! I have the most beautiful life!

 

Chick-Fil-A Family Night

We love to go to Chick-Fil-A for their family night because of the face painting and balloon animals they do. But we hadn't been in probably two years. Well when Kevin left on a business trip when Clara was 6 weeks old, I decided to take the kids there one night since it was one of the hardest things I have been through in a while, with having him gone and Clara being so difficult. I certainly didn't want to be thinking about making dinner! It was serious survival mode!

Lizzy decided to get her face painted as a clown, and I think she is just thecutest clown ever! Definitely not a scary one!

We thought that Russy wouldn't want to get his face painted because it kindof freaked him out but then he saw some boys with ninja turtle faces and he really wanted that. It was just seriously too cute!

Nellie and Jane did their usual flowers and rainbows. The lady that does them always does such a good job!

 

It was a fun way to pass an evening without our Daddy!

 

All About Anne- 2 years

It is so hard to believe this little monkey is two! She is no longer my littlest, which is just so crazy!! She did so amazing after Clara was born, she didn't show any jealousy and just loved her so much. It is really cute how she says Clara's name, it sounds a lot like Tawa.

Annie has started to talk a lot. I love to hear her start to say so many things. It gives her so much personality. My favorite thing that she say lately is when she will say, " love you mama!" It seriously melts my heart. When she first started talking she would say yes to everything, and in the sweetest little voice too! Now all of a sudden it is no to everything and in the meanest voice too. She is certainly going through a phase right now. Lately we are calling her our little dictator because she is trying to boss everyone around, and in the meanest way too! The other day in the car she was screaming at Russy to sit down over and over even though he was in his seat. Even though she is so bossy right now she still loves to give hugs. If she does something wrong and makes someone sad she will go and say "hugs, hugs" and try and give them a hug.

Annie has the best hair! It is really thick and the prettiest color! Whenever we go places people will comment on how amazing her hair is.

She went through a phase where she wanted to wear Russy's clothes, so I had to snap a picture of her.

One great thing about Annie is that she loves her bed and she loves to go to sleep! She can climb out of her crib but she never does because she loves to get all settled in with her paci and her blanket, her pillow and her babies. She is waking up really early though in the morning becuase of going down so early. She comes down to our bed and uses her one volume (very loud) voice to get us up to get her a bag of cereal and turn on a show for her.

She loves to sit in Clara's seats, whether it's her bouncer or her car seat or bath seat. I wonder if she is trying to be a baby for longer.

She is best of friends worst of enemies with Russy. The get along occasionally but more of the time they are fighting like cats and dogs! She is really tough too and is the one who is pushing Russy around. We have to watch out for our feisty little Annie girl.

Annie just loves Grandma and Grandpa so much! She calls them Bama and Bampa in her cute little voice! She will see them and go run and give them a hug. She has always liked my dad a lot and has loved to just go and sit by him since she was a little baby girl.

I just adore this crazy spunky sweet little lady of mine. Each child comes and adds so much to the family and you just can't imagine your life without them, and of course Annie is that way too! She is just such a little light in all of our lives and I am so grateful I get to be her mom!!

 

Annie's Birthday

We celebrated Annie's birthday when the sisters got home from their trip they took with Grandma for Spring Break. It was really weird to have them all gone for a whole week. It was the week of Anne's birthday so we just waited to celebrate. Plus it's not like a two year old knows any better. Which is another reson I refuse to make a big deal out of their birthday at this age.

We let Annie pick out some presents at the store from us already, but I did want her to be able to have a present to open so I bought some little things with the money from my parents so she had a present to open.

I made her a flip flop cake. I was having a hard time deciding what cake to make her. She really likes Legos and that is what we got her, but I didn't really want to make a Lego cake. One of the girls suggested flip flops since she loves to wear hers and everyone else's. So I thought that would be cute.

Russy had to be all up in the business too. We lit candles and sang to her and she seemed fine and we tried to have her blow them out and all of a sudden she flipped out and was freaking out about the fire. It was too funny. We love this little crazy two year old!

 

Easter

There is something about an egg hunt that is just so much fun for the kids. The week before Easter there was a neighborhood hunt at a nearby park. It was fun to watch Russ and Annie figure out how to do it. Annie got the hang of it but pretty much just took her sweet time. Russy struggled to get the eggs into his bag so I had to go out there and help him. I'm sure some of the parents were annoyed with me, but I just knew that he would freak out later if he ended up with just a few eggs and everyone else had a lot.

We tried to help Jane with a strategy of what to do so she could maximize the number of eggs, she ended up doing pretty well for her, she is just not an aggressive sort. We couldn't find our easter baskets so we were the white trash family with the Walmart bags.

Russy had to unstuff his immediately and try to eat all of the candy as quick as he could. It was cute because he called the chocolate eggs footballs.

It was fun becuase we had our cousins in town to visit so they came to the hunt too. We never win anything so I just gave all of our raffle tickets to Lizzy to go and listen for prizes and she won three! I think she must be one of those lucky people, we will have to have her win us prizes more often!

Clara is actually in this picture too, she is in the sling I am wearing. It has become one of her favorite places to be. Especially becuase she really dislikes her seat so whenever I have to take her places I have to put her in there.

I wish I could have been in the picture too but alas I was in the car nursing. Story of a moms life.

It is always so fun to have cousins visit!

We had another hunt the day before Easter at the church. This one was good because each of the kids were only allowed a certain number of eggs so there wasn't the mad dash like there was at the other one.

We even splurged on the kids and bought them the dollar buckets at Walmart.

 

I love this picture of Jane and Russy waiting for the hunt to start.

We had to do the obligatory egg coloring. For some reason it is like carving pumpkins for me, I always want to do it wth the kids but I am never good at planning it and the all of a sudden I realize the holiday is upon us and we haven't done it yet. This was the first year that Russy joined us doing it and he absolutely loved it. He made sure to make a green ninja turtle one, becuase they are one of his new favorites.

 

 

 

I love the joy that kids have in doing these activites. I love how they look forward to them and think they are something extra special. It sure makes me want to do more stuff with them like this when they love it so much.

It was a great Easter. We had an egg hunt in the house this year because it was raining. I love how my kids are not hard to please. I guess that comes with having a big family and not being able to give them whatever they want. The kids wanted an egg hunt rather than having the Easter bunny come, which is always fine by me especially since I have noticed everyone is going overboard and acting like Easter is another Christmas and giving their kids these giant gifts.

I love to see all my kids together and know that my whole family is here. What a great feeling that is!!