Waiting on his blanket

The other night I found Jace in the laundry room waiting for his favorite blanket to come out of the dryer. It was priceless! This cute boy won't go to bed without it. Chris had been out mowing the lawn and apparently had gotten grass on it when he came in the house. I guess he picked Jace up and had grass all over himself and transferred it to the blanket. Makenna took the blanket and tried to get the grass stains out of the blanket and then threw it in the dryer for Jace. You can also take note that Jace is holding his cup of chocolate milk, which is another must for him at bedtime. He stood there watching his "gunka" (what he calls this particular blanket) until it came out. He did hear me at one point and turned to actually pose, and tell me what happened to his blanket.

I wish I would have snapped another shot of him getting his gunka out of the dryer and how happy he was when he realized how warm it was! He is such a funny but very cute kid! We love him, quirks and all.

An afternoon of Gymnastics!

This past Wednesday, we had another field trip with Baylie's pre-school to the Elite gymnastics center. It was a super fun afternoon with a lot of different things for the kids to do! Jace wasn't sure he wanted to participate, at first! Once we got in there, he was like the energizer bunny, going from one thing to the next!
Here's Baylie getting ready to jump on one of the trampolines. Jace on the rope swing above the pit. This was a favorite of all the kids!

Jace would climb to the top of this platform and jump about 7 feet into the pit. Here he is hanging from the high bar, getting ready to fall into it. One of the moms asked how old he was and when I said, "3," she wondered why I wasn't more concerned with his jumping off the platform. I said, he really wasn't afraid of much and he was just jumping into foam blocks.

I'm not sure what this is but a few of the kids brought it over and put it into the pit. Jace crawled through and I thought it was cute when he stuck his head out.

Baylie took a turn on the high bar as well.

Baylie on the rope swing...

Jace couldn't lift himself up on the rings but he enjoyed trying.

Baylie took a turn walking the balance beam

Playing in the pit of foam blocks, Baylie and Jace had a blast!

Trying to bury themselves

Here's Baylie with her teacher, Mrs. Grover. She has had so much fun in pre-school this year and that credit has to go to Mrs. Grover. Mrs. Grover spent the entire time playing with the kids in the pit, jumping on the trampolines with them, taking pictures of them, and showing them tricks from her former gymnastic days.

This was such a great field trip, all the kids thoroughly enjoyed themselves. We are grateful to have such a wonderful teacher for Baylie and are sad that it's almost over. I know she is looking forward to kindergarten but we will always remember the days with Mrs. Grover in pre-school, and look forward to 2011 when Jace can join her pre-school! Jace didn't want to leave the gym and he kept asking for "one more time on....," and after about 10 one more times, I took the poor boy out kicking and crying. Thanks again Mrs. Grover for such a fun afternoon!

New 'do'

Last Saturday, Emily asked if I would trim her hair. Well, first of all, I hate to trim her hair... it's way too thick with lots of natural wave and curl. Reluctantly, I said ok. I butchered her poor hair but was able to make it look half-way decent for church on Sunday. I told her that on Monday after school, I would take her and have someone who knew what they were doing fix it. So we ran into a hair salon and I explained to the lady that she needed to fix my disaster of a trim job. I had already made it shorter than Emily wanted but she was nice enough and said she would try and just even it out without taking off much more length.
Her hair turned out super cute, she had to stack it, which Emily has had before. She was also kind enough to thin her hair out and said that would need to be kept up on. I think next time, we'll have it thinned even more. A view from the back

I have been trying to talk Emily back into a 'stack' for a while and she would always say 'no.' I think it makes her look a little older too. She is very happy with it and this post will remind me to 'stay away from the scissors' when it comes to Emily's hair.

And she's off

Makenna joined the track team which started back in March. This past week, she had her first track meet. It was in Rigby with her school, Rigby and Rocky Mountain. I was able to go up and watch her participate.
Here she is waiting for her events to be called. Kenna, Jordan and Cambria - still waiting for their events.

This is Kenna walking across the track after her 800 event.

We didn't have the camera on zoom for this one. Kenna is the second runner, this is during her 800 event. She did very well in this race, I believe her time was 3 mins. 11 secs. She's working hard to improve this time. She would like to be under the 3 minute mark.

She is also doing the long jump, which was a favorite of mine back in the day. About ready to land in the pit! Go Kenna!! I don't remember how her jump measured but she did scratch her first one.

She is really enjoying being part of this track team. A big group of her friends are also on the team so it's made it really fun for her. She is working hard to improve in her events each day and I look forward to going to her track meets (as long as the weather is warm)! Go Kenna............ and Sandcreek! She plans on joining Lindsay in the fall on the Hillcrest Cross Country team which will be fun for them both!

Dress shopping!

I made an appointment for earlier this afternoon to go and have Lindsay look at and try on dresses for the dance. This was a little shop in Rigby and it was fun that we were the only ones in there and we had the owner all to ourselves to help us. We brought Avery and she and Lindsay had a great time. She ended up trying on about 8-9 dresses. I was so bummed when we got there and realized I forgot my camera. I would text the pictures to Chris and then Avery said, just use those pictures for your blog, thanks Ave! She looked great in so many, it was hard to choose.
These are in no particular order. Here's the one I absolutely fell in love with. It was in the top 4 This one was darling as well. It was in the top 3

When she walked out in this one, we all ooohed and awwwed! Simply gorgeous

This next one was in the top 2 and was my absolute favorite!! You can't tell from this picture but the top has such beautiful bead work and it went down the back of the dress as well.

And the winner is......

Lindsay loved this royal blue sequined one the best. She took forever deciding between it and the pink one above. I think she was trying to make me feel good since the pink one was my favorite :) She looks absolutely stunning in it and I'm happy she found one she likes. This was such a fun afternoon and the great thing about this little shop was that 95% of the dresses were modest! I really don't know who was more excited her, or me! I am now wondering if we should have taken our time, gone to a few more stores before getting one............

She answered...

It took quite a few ideas to narrow it down to one, and actually, we combined 2 ideas to come up with Lindsay's answer. Thanks to Dr. Sparks for these ideas!! First, we went and got a puzzle and some alphabet stickers. We put the puzzle together and flipped it over and spelled, 'out of all the fish in the sea, thanks for choosing me.' YES! Lindsay. The reason for the 'fish in the sea' saying is due to the fact that we got a finding nemo puzzle.

Next we took a garbage bag and filled it up with popcorn... Baylie and Jace were her right hand men, loving every second of it!

Lindsay then dumped all the puzzle pieces into the garbage bag and shook the bag up, mixing in the puzzle pieces with the popcorn.

Finally, we put the puzzle box on top of the popcorn, tied up the bag and attached this note.

We put the puzzle box on top so he would think how simple it was going to be, however, it shouldn't have taken him long to realize the puzzle box was empty. He would have to dump out all the popcorn to find the pieces, put it together and turn it over. We thought this was a fun idea and hope he did too. Next step? Dress shopping : )

He asked....

Last night about 9, Lindsay realized we were out of bread and she wouldn't have any for a sandwich in her lunch today. I quickly made a short list and sent her and Chris to the store. When they returned, about 45 minutes later, Chris noticed something in the yard and wondered what was up. Lindsay grabbed the groceries and headed in the house and Chris went to investigate. He came in and told Lindsay, "it's for you." The few of us that were still awake ran to see what was up. (keep in mind it was 9:50pm and was dark, I had Kenna grab a flashlight so I could capture the moment) Here is what we found....

I really wanted her to leave it all so I could take better pictures in the morning but Chris said if there was any moisture, the signs would get ruined and and Hershey kisses would be yucky! We were all pretty giddy about her being asked out for the first time since she's turned 16.

Here she is with all the signs together (they were spread throughout the lawn and she had to follow them) after she brought them in.

The big dance is May 8th. We now have to find a clever way to answer him, any suggestions are appreciated! There is much excitement in our house in anticipation of the big day, we stayed up talking for quite awhile brainstorming ways to answer, what to wear etc. I hope my family didn't mind a 10pm text announcing my excitement : )

Bowling with Baylie (and Jace)

This morning we had the opportunity to go bowling with Baylie and the rest of the kids at her Pre-school. It was such a fun morning and they had a great time. Jace was a little timid at first and said he wasn't going to bowl but after a few minutes, he decided to give it a try.
Here are two of my cute kids in between turns. Here is Baylie getting her ball...

getting into position......

and away it rolls! She even bowled 1 spare!

Jace getting his ball.

Notice the ball hasn't made it all the way down the lane in this picture. Neither of them could roll it very hard and we waited a few minutes for the ball to get back, every time.
Here they are just hangin' out waiting....

Baylie and a group of her pre-school friends were super silly! There was a lot of hugging and dancing and playing on the floor while they were waiting for their turn to bowl.

Here's Baylie and Isabella (Izzi) giving each other hugs. They also took turns picking each other up!

Here they are dancing and playing ring a round the rosie (never a dull moment)!

Here Baylie is with Izzi, Bracken, Abbey and McKinley, it must've been after they "all fell down!"

Peace out! (I'm thinking she learned this pose from Kenna)

Jace and I had a great time with Baylie and her pre-school friends. I can't believe that her pre-school days are almost over, we have loved her teacher, Mrs. Grover. She has taught Baylie so much this past year and has always had really fun things planned for the kids. We are having quite a few field trips as the year comes to an end, last week we went to the movies, and next week we get to go do gymnastics! Thanks Mrs. Grover for such a fun day!

Puzzles

Once the bigger kids leave for school in the mornings, it's sometimes just hard to find things to do with Baylie and Jace. The while ago we were at the dollar store and found some cute puzzles. I had forgotten about them actually until Baylie got one out and wanted to put it together. Baylie put hers together without any help from me. Jace soon grabbed one and joined her, although his was a joint effort, with me. Here he goes...

Baylie reaching over to help Jace.

Puzzles complete! Way to go guys!

This was a quiet morning and I was glad we had these puzzles to keep them busy for a while. They put together a third later on. Baylie was great, once she figured out one, she just kept putting it together over and over again. They were excited to show big sisters when they got home from school!