Kid Watching

Picture Overload!  We bought a little kiddie pool to add some spice to our backyard.  We had it for a week before we got to use it.  I kept promising the kids "after quiet time (3pm)" and we got afternoon thunder often with some rain every day.  Finally it was overcast and looked like it was going to downpour any second, but after a week of broken promises, we pulled it out anyway.  Funny enough, never thundered or even rained. The kids played for hours and I just sat with my camera to enjoy the show.  Isabelle never was still enough for many pictures.  Most of the ones of her were blurry.




Michael was unsure of the whole slide into the water bit.  He wanted the slide dried off every time at the beginning.  He warmed up to the idea and had fun, but never slid totally in like Isabelle. He also had to have his goggles on.  SO funny!

BIke Parade

The preschool Isabelle went to last year and Michael is going to next year has a few cheap 3 day summer camp things for outgoing and incoming students.  I decided to put them in one for Michael to check out school with Isabelle around.  They LOVED it!  Michael is absolutely ecstatic to go to school next year. The theme was patriotic and they ended the last day with a bike parade.  The kids were so excited to decorate their bikes.




Isabelle was the only kid that didn't have training wheels on her bike and it would have been much smarter to have them on.  Preschool parade stop and go traffic was pretty tricky for her, but she did way better than I expected! She only rammed the girl in front of her a few dozen times. :)



Isabelle prayed, "We're so grateful for this red and yellow country we live in." Haha.  She usually starts with red and yellow and then corrects herself to red while and blue.  It makes me laugh every time.

Michael's teacher told me after she read the class as story, he said he wanted to read to the class, so she let him.  He climbed up in her chair and "read" a story to the class.  He showed them the pictures and everything.  She said it was adorable.  His behavior was also really good all 3 days.  I was nervous to see how he was going to do.

What did I do with only 1 kid for a couple of hours for 3 days?!?!?!  It was so strange! I mostly just stuck to my normal morning at the gym routine with a little bit of only 1 kid shopping.   Luke was a little lost being an only child, but we had fun.

Sports Boy

Across the street is a 14 and 8 year old boy who LOVE to play basketball and baseball. They are outside playing in the street for a few hours every single day, no matter the weather.  Michael sits on this green box in our yard and watches glued to his entertainment (while everyone else is frog catching).  He sits there and cheers them on and says, "Nice shot!" or "Good catch!"  So cute!

Isabelle and her...

FROGS!  This girl cracks me up!  In Spokane it was praying mantises, grasshoppers, and other bugs.  Here it's frogs, slugs, worms, and lizards.  She is obsessed. She's only caught 1 lizard. Lizards are so much harder to catch she was so cute when she finally caught one.  Frogs however, she has caught HUNDREDS!  And that is no exaggeration.  We live in frog heaven I think.  At night we never have less than 10 on our front door.  We live by a pond, I mean swamp.  The frogs at night by our house are so loud sometimes. It's insane! I had no clue just how loud frogs could get.  We recently had quite the batch of baby frogs showing up, so now she has even more to catch.  She spends all her outside time frog catching.

I said, "Isabelle pose with your frog."  What does she do?  Put it by her FACE!  I've never been too grossed out with bugs or this kinda stuff, but I don't want them by my face.



This is her frog catcher.  It has at least 4 frogs at a time.  She always puts a couple of rocks and an inch of water in there for them. So considerate. :)


Checking out the catches of the afternoon.

Big Sisters are Awesome!

Being the big sister to a little brother, I have so many fun dress up, tea party, and playing house memories with Matthew (not to worry, we did also play cars and legos alot).  It's so fun to watch Isabelle take such a role in these little boys' lives. :)  They already outnumber, and will soon outgrow and overtake, so I just enjoy the cute scenes in my house while they last.  It won't be long before I don't see this anymore.  This week it was dress up time, complete with bracelets, necklaces and wings!!!!

Home Away from Home

We just got back from a fabulous trip home to Utah.  I pretty much took zero pictures.  I just enjoyed every moment.  Mike's mom has a bunch of good ones, I'm sure.  She's always so good at picture taking. Oh well...Here's the couple I actually took.

This is the way to travel.....

Mike with all 3 kids, me across the aisle alone?  Yes please.  Haha.  Good good man.  Actually turns out, I'm too pregnant to have Luke on my lap for more than 5 minute increments.  It started out me and Luke across the aisle and Mike with big kids, didn't last long.  The next 3 flights I took one big kid, Mike took 1 big kid and Luke lap jumped.  As nice as it is that he's still free....it was nothing short of a nightmare.  Nothing entertains him for more than 40 seconds.  So, I packed TONS of food and a pen and paper pad.  He ate or colored pretty much all 4 flights we took, and still screamed on 3 of them.  Have I mentioned before Luke is NOT a traveling kid, car or plane? Maybe next time we should try a train. Haha. The big kids were perfect, so they made up for the Luke disaster.   I also don't recommend running from terminal A to terminal B, pregnant, carrying Luke and a backpack, "Playing chase" with my other two to not miss our next flight while Mike waited for our stroller....Definitely a painful but funny moment. All in all, the traveling out and back was only a category 2 hurricane.

"Quick" recap...we spent time with Mike's sister's family.  She JUST had a baby....as in only 1 week old!  It was awesome! I LOVE babies!!! So we had her other 4 kids at Mike's parent's house alot to play, sleep over, and give Sharon some quiet recovery time at home. We hung out with a few Eagle Mountain people.  We went boating with Mike's cousin and wife and 2 cute boys.  We hit up 7 peaks with our pass of all passes and an arcade place. Made it to the zoo, a tin foil dinner and s'mores up the canyon, played a few games and saw Mike's grandma who is almost 90.  Mike also made it to his two Realtor classes he had to go to and he made it to the sand dunes.  The kids got a trip to the dollar store and ice cream with Grandpa.  We had our favorite Chinese take out, the kids played in the "hot" tub for HOURS swimming. We spent time on the deck enjoying all the beautiful scenery Utah has to offer.  I ate more cheese that I thought I could consume....turns out it's not just that I'm pregnant and things taste weird....cheese in Fl really does taste different.  The kids loved all their cousin time. Isabelle and Sarah enjoyed all their "sleep" overs and just had fun together. I'm sad they don't live closer. We had a blast.  It just wasn't long enough.  We would have loved to see more people and spend more time with the people we did see.





We are all in love with baby Joshua.  At only 6 lbs, you can't help but want to snuggle him every second you can.  He was the most fought over object by everyone.  Luke was completely enamored with him.







Going to Utah, driving in our neighborhood, seeing our house that we still own, but don't get to live in, spending time with our wonderful family and friends that we miss so much, it's hard to see sometimes why our life has turned out the way it has. I've lived in 5 states now, I can say with my personal opinions to back it up, Utah has our favorite form of outdoor life and family life.  While no place is perfect, (I do LOVE humidity) Utah is a happy place for us.  One we hope to make it back to eventually.  Until then, we will just have to let our little vacations tide us over.

Because Sometimes....

It's just too awesome to take off, hat and all....Love my little Finn McMissle!

Random

Going through my pictures, there were a few I missed that I want in my book.

Luke loves hats. He's always finding something to put on his head.


So bored waiting for Isabelle's school graduation.  Glad I had gummy bears.



This is how Michael shows off his muscles. "Woot at my muscles!" (Look)



Michael helped Dad change the back breaks in the car.  I remember this moment on the front breaks in Spokane with Michael, when he was Luke's age doing the same thing.


Another tongue out concentrater around here.



This face makes me laugh.  He sticks that lip out anytime things aren't going his way.


And I do have another kid. :)  All the kiddos got sick together.  Lots of couch snuggle time.