Pinkalicious!

My little Hailey is all girl. She absolutely LOVES the color pink! Whenever you ask anything to do with a color, she chooses the color pink.

Her favorite outfit is all pink:



She has pink pants, shirt, undershirt, socks, hair bows, ponytail holder, and anything else you can imagine - she was pink from head to toe!

Her favorite book is entitled "Pinkalicious":



If you've ever been to our house, more than likely she has either asked you to read this book to her or read it to you herself. She has it memorized and it's her first choice whenever reading is involved.

My little pink angel - she makes me laugh!

Some Great Writing

Now that Zach is in kindergarten, I am amazed daily of the different things he is able to do. In addition to learning his letters, reading, and other fun things, they are also working on writing. Jeremiah and I are probably the only ones (other than his teacher) that know how much he has improved over the past 6 months. They usually come home with activity papers that they have done in class. I couldn't help but share this one. They are learning phonics or sounds to read and write, so the teacher asked them to write the word for the picture using the sounds they hear. Here was his paper:



(Did you notice the one for table? How cute is that???)

In addition to the reading, math, and sight words homework they have, they also have to do a "writers workshop" page. This is a page where they decide on what they want to write about, draw a picture, then using the sounds, write the story. We've been talking a lot about bunnies and Easter lately and because of that, we have been watching a lof of "Max and Ruby" - a Nick Jr show with two cartoon rabbits (for those of you who don't know who they are). Zach decided to write a story about Max and drew a picture of him for his writer's workshop page. Here's how it turned out:



(If you have a hard time reading it, the swirly looking letters are e's.)

I thought these were so cute. My little boy is almost done with kindergarten and I can hardly believe it. He's growing so fast and learning so much. He loves going to school every day and has a perfect attendance record (we've been lucky to not be sick much this year, knock on wood).



Dad and I are so proud of you Zach and all that you are learning, you are our special boy and we love you very much!

A Funny Story

Sometimes kids do the funniest things!

Today when Jeremiah got home from work, the kids decided it was time to jump and play on him. He loves this, but finds himself exposed (as you can imagine) with all the feet, knees, and elbows associated with playing. Well, he jokingly told me he needed a cup to protect himself. I agreed, happy it was him rather than me, that they had decided to rough house with.

After some more playing, the kids went upstairs to play with their toys. A minute or so after that, Hailey came down and walked up to Jeremiah, handed him one of her play cups from her play kitchen and said: "Here you go daddy, here's your cup."

We laughed and laughed and laughed - probably for about 15 minutes at her innocent solution to his problem. What a cutie she was trying to help out and providing him a "cup" as he had said he needed.

Kindergarten Talent Show Star!

Tuesday during Kindergarten, Zach's teacher held a talent show for all the kids in his class. We tried and tried to help him come up with a talent, but in the end, he decided he didn't want to do one. He quickly changed his mind after he saw a few kids in his class perform, but by then it was too late. Luckily, over half the class didn't do a talent, so it wasn't as if he was the only one. His teacher invited any family to come and see the talent show. Jeremiah had already gotten off of work last week for Daddy donut day, so Hailey and I went to see it.

The whole class performed a talent, which was really fun to watch. They performed a Mexican Hat Dance and it was just darling! As you can imagine, I didn't get a whole ton of really great pictures, but here are a few I was able to snap during the dance.







The good news is that I had took a few video clips of the dancing. The bad news is the the clips were just too big to put on the blog. So for those of you who live close and visit us often, you'll have to remind us to show you the video clips of our little "dancer."

Walking back after the "performance."



This is him sitting and watching some of the kids perform.





Look at my big grown-up boy - what a smile!



And this is a picture of him and his best friend Landon. The two of them have been inseparable the last few weeks and I was so glad that I was able to get a quick picture of them.



Cute little friends!

I'm Ready for My Close-up!

I had a complete make-over including hair, make-up, and jewelry the other night. I think these are the best stylists ever!





Now that they have me looking my best, I'm ready to go anywhere and do anything!

Good for the Soul

After what has seemed like a very long and cold winter, we've had some really nice spring days. The temperatures have been in the mid to low 60's and have really be enjoyable. The kids have spent a portion of each of those days outside playing and have loved it! They have really had cabin fever the last month or so and have been waiting impatiently for spring to be here.

Yesterday was one of those really nice days (along with the today and tomorrow) and so after lunch we all headed outside to enjoy the warmth and fresh air. It really is true that sunshine is good for the soul. Even as an adult, I've felt a little bit of cabin fever myself and yet, after only 10 minutes outside, I was feeling refreshed and energized.

The kids decided to swing and blow bubbles. Now that they are both old enough to blow bubbles themselves, I'm able to sit back and just watch them have fun. I've always been busy working or doing something else when they've been outside thus far, but yesterday I took a little while to play with them and grabbed my camera to get a few fun pictures.

They love blowing bubbles! Each of them have their own bubbles and love to sit on the swing and blow, blow, blow!



Bubbles and smiles!



More bubbles and smiles!



And a good day outside wouldn't be complete without swinging!



An action shot of swinging! Not too bad if I do say so myself!



Another action shot - nice close-up of Zach's boots!



Swinging and having fun!



Zach has finally figured out how to pump his legs and keep himself going for quite a while, but Hailey's not quite to that point. So after I gave up pushing her, she decided to do some other things. First she decided to slide down the slide.



Next she wanted to play with the soccer ball.



Finally, she decided that she'd blow some more bubbles.



The kids were having so much fun swinging. They couldn't stop giggling the whole time. Ah, the days when something so simple could make you giggle and giggle!



Looks like Zach isn't the only sports-minded one. Hailey was pretty impressive kicking that soccer ball around. Not bad for a 3 year old!



It was a very fun afternoon. We all felt much more energized after being outside in the sunshine and getting some fresh air. Spring, keep coming and bringing us more warm weather so that we can enjoy many more days outside!

See the next post for a surprise we got while we were playing outside that made our day even more exciting!

Tractor, Tractor, Tractor!

As many of you know, the city/state is planning to put a road right behind our house. We have love/hate feelings towards this road. We LOVE that they are putting in another road running east and west between I-15 and Saratoga Springs, it will reduce the amount of congested traffic on Main Street and will be so nice. But we really HATE that's it going in right in our backyard (or just behind). It's a long story behind us being right next to it, we didn't know when we built here that the plans were to put in a major road. But despite what happened, we are where we are and the road is going in where it is. We've decided that for now, we're going to be positive and happy about it. The fact that they are putting in a 14 foot sound wall between us and the road helps out quite a bit as well. That should shield us from the noise and protect the kids from any danger.

After years of planning, they have finally started and yesterday was so exciting for us! A big bulldozer came and was pushing around some dirt right behind our house. The kids and I were outside playing and were so excited that the weather was nice enough for us to watch. It was pretty amazing and I snapped a whole ton of pictures. Zach wanted me to put them on the blog for everyone to see, especially his cousin Ashton who loves tractors.

This is a picture from an upstairs window. Looks like they were smoothing out the area back there so that they can finally begin working on the road.



It was amazing how close the bulldozer got to our back gate. He put quite a big pile of dirt there and was driving on top of it. It almost made it look like he was driving on top of our back fence!



Hailey was so funny watching the tractor. I caught this picture of her - it was such a cute pose!



My kids are scardy-cats and I was sure they'd be terrified of the tractor and all the noise it was making and want to watch from inside the house, but they were fascinated and weren't scared at all. This is a picture of Hailey blowing bubbles for the tractor.



This was such an amazing sight from where I was sitting. Zach swinging with the tractor in the background, it was probably at least 15 feet from him, but from the view, it looked like it was right next to him.



They spent hours out there watching the tractor from different places. This was one of my favorites - they climbed up on the slide platform to really get a good look.



Zach got more creative and found this little spot to watch from. He was probably up there a good half an hour watching. I would have gotten tired and bored after about 5 minutes, but not Zach, he loved every minute.



I also got a few video clips since it was so amazing. Here's just one so you can see (and hear) how amazing it was to watch.



We loved the sunshine and being outside to see the tractor, it was a pretty fun day!