We Love Uncle Taylor!

One of the most exciting times for the kids is when Taylor stays with us. He stayed with us this weekend and the kids loved every minute of it. They just love playing with him, jumping all over him, and even trying on his shoes! Hailey was funny trying to walk around in those, I think it took her about 5 minutes to walk 20 feet because she was so unbalanced - it was so cute!





This is all 3 of them on Sunday morning right before church - don't they all look nice?

They have such a great time whenever he's able to stay a night or two with us and cry when he leaves. He's so great with the kids and always takes the time to do whatever they want him too and he never complains. Whether it's being a Taylor-gym (otherwise known as a jungle-gym) or playing endless hours of XBOX, the kids just can't seem to get enough.

WE LOVE YOU UNCLE TAY!

P.S. Your Jimmy Baboo!

Distinguished Dragon

On Friday Zach came home with a big smile and showed us his Distinguished Dragon Pin that he had received that day. Every year his elementary school gives these pins away to the kids who fulfill a list of grade specific requirements. These requirements are basically the skills they need to pass that grade and move on to the next plus some. We were lucky that Zach had pretty much all of them done by they time they sent the paper home mid year. We worked on the last few and had them passed off in plenty of time. He was so proud of his accomplishments! We're proud of him and had to get a few pictures of him wearing his pin!




We're also extremely happy about the teacher he had this year. Mrs. Paxman has really been a great teacher. In fact, all of her students earned Distinguished Dragon Awards this year.

I can't believe my little boy is growing up so fast. First riding his bike without training wheels, then loosing his first tooth, and now almost being done with kindergarten. He continually reminds me that he's going into 1st grade next year and will be in school all day. That's something that I'm not quite ready to talk about yet, I'd rather wait the 3 or so more months before I have to accept that fact. But regardless of how much he's growing (even though it's way too fast) his Dad and I are extremely proud of him and we love him very much!

Toothless!

Wow, two posts in a row about how big my little boy is getting. As you can tell from the title, we now have a child that has lost a tooth!

Zach has been complaining for months now about how everyone else in his kindergarten class has had a loose tooth and he's the only one that hasn't. We kept telling him to be patient and not to worry, but it seemed he would mention it at least 10 times a day. Finally, a week or two ago, one of his front lower teeth started to loosen up. After playing with it and realizing that it hurt when you tried to eat with it, he decided he didn't want a loose tooth after all. Of course you don't get to choose on this one, so we've been waiting patiently for it to fall out.

As he and Hailey were outside playing today, I heard one of them mention something about blood. I jumped up from the computer where I was working and ran outside to see what was going on - talk about blood is never a good thing. When I got outside, I found him outside with the tooth in his hand and an extremely bloody grin.

Once we got both him and his tooth washed up and the blood stopped, we took some pictures. "We have to take pictures to put on the blog!" Zach said enthusiastically! So here are the pictures:





As you can see, the other tooth has already popped through the gums and has started to move up. We were wondering when this little baby tooth was going to make room so that the big tooth could come in!

Needless to say, he can't wait until he goes to bed tonight so that he can leave his tooth for the tooth fairy! Congratulations Zach on your first lost tooth - you're getting to be such a big boy!

Look Mom ... No Training Wheels!

That's right. My little boy is just growing up so fast! Every time I turn around, he's learning to do things that just make me realize he's not so little anymore.

Today we decided it was time for Zach to learn to ride his bike without his training wheels. He's very coordinated and does very well with any type of physical activity, like sports and such, so we figured it would go fairly fast.

Little did we know how fast he would get a handle on how to do it. After about 5 minutes (really, it was 5 minutes!) of Jeremiah running behind him up and down the sidewalk, he had it.



Hailey of course wouldn't be left out of this whole bike riding thing. She followed Jeremiah and Zach up and down the sidewalk on her "bike" and would be so excited whenever he did something good.

(She was of course quick to point out that she was already riding her bike without training wheels - silly girl!)

And here's our big boy riding completed without training wheels, without any help, and on the road.




Can you believe how big he is? I don't know about you, but just seeing him on that bike riding all by himself makes him look so much older.

It's Official ...

She's getting to be just like me.

In her opinion, that may not be a good thing. But since she's so much more cute and sweet (most of the time), I take it as a compliment. You're wondering what I'm talking about right? Well, I was in the kitchen doing something the other day and I heard what sounded like a bunch of books being dumped on the floor. As I flew around the wall to see what was going on, I came upon this:





Usually I'll yell and get mad before I ask questions, but this time I was curious WHY all of the movies were out of the movie bookcase, so I decided to ask her instead of getting mad first (yes, this is one time that I've been a good mom - maybe it'll be a trend!). So after spending a second or two of composing myself and my voice, I asked her: "Hailey, why are all the movies are on the floor?" Her response: "I'm organizing them all Mom." Now any of you that know me know that I'm a perfectionist and like to have things put away and organized - sometimes I'll even reorganize things many times until I feel I've achieved that "perfect set-up." Looks like my children have inherited more than a little bit of that characteristic from me. Personally, I don't think that's a bad thing, but my husband's opinion may be completely different based on having to actually live with me.

Either way, she's seen me do this many times and I guess she felt the bookshelf needed to be organized better. To her credit, she did put all of the same sizes and colors together - something I was impressed with since she's only 3.

Ah, my little daughter - too cute - and a perfectionist in the making!

Three Signs of Spring

At our house, we have a few traditions with the start of Spring. These are probably ones that you wouldn't normally think of, but they are constants at our house.

1. Flowers

Every year, I'm showered with these gifts of "flowers" from the kids. Once they determined these were flowers and not weeds, they run around outside and pick every one they can see. This was the pile I got the other day. Ironically, our yard only has a few, thanks to our early application of fertilizer, so I'm grateful that it's only a handful every once in a while. There are others in our neighborhood who seem to be "breeding" dandelions and although I'm sure it's not on purpose, I'm sure glad that isn't our yard or I'd be getting a whole more!



(They get so excited to give me their gifts, I couldn't help but take a picture of them in front of their bounty!)


2. Strawberries

And more importantly, our favorite dessert of strawberry cake. Our local Smith's had strawberries on sale for 99 cents a pound this week, so we picked up a couple and make ourselves a yummy treat. The kids couldn't stand the wait while we baked the cake, waited for it to cool, assembled it, and then let is set up in the fridge. It was almost to much to stand, but when they both got a huge piece a few hours later, they couldn't stop telling me how good it was.



(They almost couldn't stand sitting right behind the cake while I took the picture, but Zach insisted on taking a picture and putting it on the blog.)


3. Spring Cleaning

Now most of you may not think this a good thing. I would agree during the actual cleaning part, but afterwards, I'm always so grateful I spent all the time and energy doing it. This was my list this year. I'm definitely a list person and love to see thing checked off, so you'll see a few places where I added things later - ones I added after I did them, just so I could check them off. Silly I know, but it makes me feel good and helps me remember what additional things I've done as I was going along.


(You'll notice I'm almost done with my inside cleaning - actually I just finished the last few things tonight, but the outside is still yet to be done. This is because of the all the rain and wind we've had the last few days. I hoping to get to the outside stuff in the next few days.)

Luckily for my family, spring cleaning is something I pretty much like to do myself. Not that I don't think anyone else can do it, it's just something I like to do so that I know what's been done and when. Jeremiah is definitely happy about this little fact, although in his defense, he does offer over and over to help out and even gives me tons of help when I'm moving around the heavy furniture and vaccuming behind and underneath everything. This year to show his thanks, he and Hailey came home from the store with a little gift of flowers for me.



It was quite a surprise and made me consider doing this "spring cleaning" thing more often if flowers were going to be given. After 3 full days of cleaning - 6 hours on Saturday alone, I decided that it wasn't worth it. But I was extremely grateful for the thoughtfulness of my husband and his showing of appreciation for my efforts. Do I have a wonderful husband or what?

Well, those are our sign of spring. Maybe not the most obvious or logical, but definitely things we enjoy and look forward to (or look forward to having done in the case of the cleaning) every spring. Hope you all are enjoying your spring!

Fun Filled Weekend!

This last weekend, we went up to spend a couple of days with my sister and her family in Malad. We went up Friday afternoon and got back on Saturday night. It was so much fun! They have 40 acres up there, so there's plenty of room to play, play, play! They have four wheelers, other motorized vehicles, a sandbox, trampoline, horses, and anything else you can think of that's fun to do outside.

The kids had a blast! They rode on everything they could over and over and over. Once I looked over and saw Zach sitting on Ashton's four wheeler by himself. When I asked him what he was doing, he said he was just waiting for Ashton to rest and then go for another ride - he just couldn't get enough of it!

In addition to all the kiddie activities, the "men" + Afton did some shotgun shooting, then a bunch did some golfing, and a few even played horseshoes!

Now you're wondering where all the wonderful pictures of this fabulous weekend are right? Well, isn't it just like me to drive 2 hours, have a weekend full of fun, and remember everything but the camera? Yep, just like me. So you'll have to jont over to Afton, Michelle, or Holli's blogs to check out all the pictures (they were smart enough to remember their cameras!).

I guess the only other things we forgot was the sunblock. If you were in church on Sunday and saw us, there was no doubt whose children were ours - the two with the sunburns so obviously matching ours. After all the snow and the fact that we were headed north, sunblock seemed to be the last thing on my mind. It was probably enjoying being home with my camera! :0)

But regardless of the sunburns, we had an absolute blast! Thanks Brian, Michelle, Ashton, and Branson for such a fun weekend. We can't wait to do it again!