Smarty Pants

This post is a little late but Baylie has finished her kindergarten skills book!! Everyone knows that I am NOT a fan of the skills book and although I know it helps the kids learn, I just really dislike having to be the teacher, I just don't have the patience for it! Here is the book with all the kudos from her teacher written on it and the medal that she earned for finishing. The skills book consists of 60 pages or skills that need to be passed off. Some of them are as simple as knowing your address, birthday, phone number and counting to 100. Where my lack of patience comes into play has mostly been on the rhyming pages. There will be an 'an' for example on the top of the page and subsequent words that end in 'an.' Baylie would be going along reading just fine, "van, can, ran, man, bat" What?? Yes, that was among my frustrations. Other pages are words that need to be read without sounding them out, like this one.

For each page that was passed off, they got to put a sticker on the back "chart" of pages, so they could see their accomplishment. For the past month or two, Baylie has had only 3-4 left to pass off. She would come home from school and I would anxiously ask if she passed off any skills because she was so close, only to hear, "1" or "no." The day finally came a couple weeks ago when she pulled out the skills book and showed me all the boxes had stickers on them!!!

Proudly showing her book and medal!

Way to go Baylie!! I'm so happy that this is over and I'm sure she is too! This is really my least favorite homework that ANY of the girls have had to do! I've saved this skills book in the hopes of getting Jace started on it early so when kindergarten comes around for him, my frustration level won't rise too high!

My baby girl turns 6

My sweet little Baylie turned 6 yesterday!! I can't believe how fast she is growing up. She had a great day and was even happy when she woke up (those of you who know Baylie, know she is not a morning person)! Here she is enjoying her breakfast of french toast!

Opening gifts was the real reason she was happy to get up and get going. She had been asking since the night before if she could open them.

Jace and I went to her kindergarten class to take treats to her class. Here she is wearing the 'birthday crown'

She also had the 'share sack' that morning so we got to watch her tell her class about the item she brought to share with them. Her teacher Mrs. Killpack is trying to get out of the picture and notice the happy birthday Bailey written on the white board?? Yep, she spelled her name wrong! Passing out the treats of brownies and kool-aid bursts

YUMMY!!

She wanted to go to 'chuck o rama' for dinner (I forgot my camera) so we all went and took grandma Jackson with us. We came to have birthday cake and ice cream.

The big girls told her that since she left two of the candles lit, that means she has two boyfriends. Here she is just before walking out the door to school, showing off her age!

Happy birthday to my sweet Baylie! She is such a good girl and a joy to have in our family!

Here are some random pictures of Baylie a couple days before her birthday. She was supposed to dress up as a pirate for a birthday party and Kenna took these before she left for the party. I love her big blue eyes and smile!

Showing off her fun side!

We love this girl!

Watch out young women's here she comes......

Emily turns 12!! I can't believe how quickly the years have gone and that I have another daughter in young women's. She has been waiting for this day for some time, it seems they just reach a point when they are so ready to be out of primary.
Here she is with her breakfast, a fried egg on toast.

Opening her presents.... (this one is blurry) another girl wearing make-up, ka-ching!!

She wanted to go to Red Robin for her birthday dinner, here she is showing off the balloons they gave her to wear and her birthday sundae.

She is a girl after my own heart and loves a white cake with raspberry filling, I was more than happy to get her one!

Make a wish and blow out the candles...........

Happy to show us how old she is..... with a little help!

Happy birthday Emily!!! We sure love what a fun personality she shares with us and are so proud of the young woman she is becoming. She is a huge helper to me around the house and with her little sisters and brother. She usually always has a smile on her face and it sure helps brighten our days!

I can't wait until I'm 8

Ali has been anticipating her 8th birthday for some time and it has finally arrived! She is an early riser so she didn't get her breakfast in bed, in fact, as I was in the kitchen peeling potatoes to throw in the crock pot at 6:45, up came Ali. We quickly made her birthday breakfast of breakfast burritos, the fruit was thrown on the plate by her dad to make the picture look better! She was anxious to open her presents so we sent her down stairs to wake up the rest of the kids. We have 9am church anyway so it was all good. Here is Ali with her gifts.

The favorite gift was 'sing it' for the WII. We got one for Christmas and it's been a huge hit, who knew there was more than one?

New outfit.

After church we came home to eat. She wanted pork roast and potatoes. I put the roast in the crock pot the night before so it's really tender after cooking for 12-15 hours. When I woke up, I realized I didn't turn the crock pot on!! I was so upset thinking I had ruined her birthday dinner but I just cooked it on high and it was fine, not as tender as we like though. Since she had a birthday cake with her friends yesterday, she wanted a chocolate pie for her dessert.

Blowing out the candles.....

Proudly displaying her 8 fingers.

Ali is such a joy in our home and seriously one of the funniest kids I know. She makes us laugh daily and are so grateful to have her in our family! We are excited for her to be baptized in a few weeks, she is anxious for that day as well. While we were in Salt Lake a few weekends ago, we stopped in the distribution center to let her pick out her scriptures and she is counting down to the baptism day so she can get them. Happy Birthday sweet Alison - we love you!!

Birthday party times 2

With so many birthday's in March, and Ali and Emily's only 5 days apart, I decided to have a combined birthday party for them. They wanted to have a party at the gymnastics center that isn't too far from the house so back in January I called to reserve the gym. We had a great time eating pizza, cake and playing around with all the gymnastics equipment.
Here's Emily climbing out of the foam pit after swinging into it. Ali and a couple of friends jumping around on one of the trampolines.

They built an obstacle course on the 'floor exercise' area and the kids had a great time with that. Here's Ali with a few of her friends waiting to take their turns.

Emily and her friends opening gifts. Emily still opening gifts.....

Emily with her birthday cake

Lindsay and Kenna came with us to help me out and they were great helpers, getting pizza for the kids, pouring and refilling drinks etc.

Ali chose to have a cake made out of cupcakes.

Ali with her friends getting ready to open gifts

Look ma, no hands!!!

Playing around on the rope swing and falling into the foam pit was one of the favorite things at the gym.

. Chris made it home from Salt Lake midway through the party and the kids were so excited. Here he is with Jace and Ali in the pit!

Group photo of Ali and her friends in the pit - look closely and you'll see the girls.

Emily with her friends in the pit.......

Ali and the friends that came to help her celebrate -

Emily and her friends that came......

It was such a fun day for these two girls! We all had a good time, I even took a turn on the rope swing, it's a lot harder to get out of the foam pit than you would imagine! Neither group seemed to mind that the others were there as the gym was plenty big and tons of things for everyone to do! I don't know why it took me so long to figure out how much easier it would be to have 1 party for 2 girls then trying to have them individually! I'll have to remember this for the years to come! Happy Birthday Emily and Ali, we sure love having you in our family and enjoyed spending the day with you and your friends!!