Jayden's new word

Steve taught Jayden a new word...

For those of you who can't understand it, it's "antidisestablishmentarianism".

Yum!

Spencer and his friend made some cookies the other day. They were an 'experiment'. They took a regular chocolate chip cookie recipe and then added some extra stuff to it, and I have to say, they turned out much better than any cookie I've ever made! From the picture you can kind of see the flour all over his shirt. It took us a good hour to clean up the kitchen when they were done. And it included a good scrubbing of the floor too!

Melissa's California Report

With the school year approaching the end, we have been busy at our house getting things all wrapped up. And one of the major things has been Melissa's state report. I am proud of her for doing the majority of it on her own. She would sit down at the computer figure all her stuff out, and then I would look it over when she was done. Then Steve would re-look it over because I am not so great with the proof-reading-type stuff. She did California for her report. Which was nice because I already know quite a bit about that place having lived there for my first 17 years. She was a little nervous before the presentation...
But when she got up there and got talking, she became a natural!
When she was finished, she said that she could have gone on forever, but they were only given 15 minutes and she took all of it. I tried to take some video of her power point part of the presentation, but as you can see, Jayden thinks the camera belongs to him, and it just wasn't working. Her power point was quite impressive. Things have sure come a long way!

Since you asked...

Since Lisa asked what the other 61 pictures were of that I downloaded, I thought I would oblige! There were 33 like this: 18 of Spencer practicing his Piano:

Two of Melissa's old art project from the 3rd grade:

I actually think Melissa took this picture. We had her go through all her stuff again this last weekend to see if she really wanted to keep it all, and sometimes when she decides she no longer wants it, she will take a picture of it just to remember it and I will stick the picture in her scrapbook.

And then there were 8 other shots of us sitting on my Mom's couch. Our ward is putting out a directory of the families with pictures included, and we needed a picture. This was the winning shot! Thanks Heather!

And yes, that adds up to 61! Thanks for asking!

A budding Photographer

I was kind of surprised when I went to download pictures from my camera and it said that there were 61 photos to download! Seeing as how I took my camera to my mom's yesterday for Memorial day and didn't take any pictures, I thought I would only find like 10 pictures. However, Jayden had gotten ahold of my camera again. Even took some pictures of Spencer practicing his piano...

Notice the great form!

Actually this picture got Spencer in trouble because he should have known better that Jayden can't play with the camera. And should have kindly gotten the camera away from Jayden. Because as much as I want a new camera right now, there are a hundred other things I would rather be buying.

Where has my baby gone?

I have to admit, for as much as a pain as Jayden can be sometimes, one area that I have totally lucked out on is his easiness for taking naps. I tell you what when this kid is tired, he is tired and he wants a nap. Many times, it is Jayden who will tell me that he is ready to go night night. The other day, I set a goal to get certain things done by the time Jayden went down for a nap so that I could 'play' when he was sleeping. I usually put him down at 1:30 and for some reason that day at 1:00 he was begging to go down for a nap. I told him that I needed to get some more cleaning done first and he started to throw a fit to take a nap! And being the fantastic mom I am I told him no. He had to wait until I got the family room picked up and vacuumed. To which he said, "okay!" and helped me pick up the toys.

However, this one area that he is EASY in, does not make up for the little escape job he did in the store yesterday. We were at the grocery store and I had one of the shopping carts with the police cars in the front for the kids to drive around in. I try not to stop for too long at any one place so that he will stay in the car, however at one point he jumped out (while the cart was moving) and then went running off down the ailse pulling sale signs off of the shelves. All the while laughing and thinking it was so funny that mom was running after him and just couldn't quite catch him all that quickly. So, I think after an episode {and there's always an episode} like that I deserve this.... Followed by only a few minutes later, this...

And yes, he's still in a crib. I know that he is almost 2 and a half, but I have no need to hurry him out of the crib, (no baby in waiting that is) so why rush? I know that as soon as he gets potty trained I will sadly have to put him in a bed, but I am in no hurry to rush that either. I think that I will just enjoy the fact that he's my baby as much as I can.

Why I haven't posted in a week...

Let's just put it this way.... I am a bad mom... My kids got majorly sunburned last week. You can still see a little of the rosyness under Jenna's eyes, but man, it was bad, and looking at them everyday, just made me so sad. You just don't think about sunscreen so much right at the first of the season. Jayden was probably the worst, he doesn't look as bad here, but it was so bad, his ears were blistered. I haven't posted because I didn't want to take pictures of my kids doing anything. I know, it's vanity on my part, but I could just imagine DCFS coming to my house and taking my kids their burns were THAT bad.

However, now we are in the peeling stage. And my kids are faithfully putting on sunscreen. Melissa has even been having me spray her with sunscreen before she goes to school because they are having a kickball tournament at school and they are spending a lot of time outside. So here's your friendly reminder for the summer: don't forget your sunscreen!

A late Easter post

Since we were driving home from Arizona on Easter, we didn't actually go to church on Easter. However, I did get the kids some Easter outfits and here they are... Of course Jayden's shirt only stayed tucked in until the church parking lot. Jenna (I know it isn't the typical "Easter" type dress, but the pastel colors kind of wash her out)

Spencer (and yes, the boys shirts match, except Spencer's is a lighter blue than Jayden's)

Here's Melissa. Only I should have gotten a picture of here cute shoes that she had on. She's growing up so fast!

And of course the group shot! I think this just might wind up in our Christmas card!

Mother's Day

For Mother's Day, the kids thought that it would be fun to make me breakfast. Spencer made brownies (THAT'S my boy!)... Melissa made some French Toast...

Jayden set the table (here he is trying to get the silverware out of the dishwasher)...

Jenna made the orange juice...

And Melissa was nice enough to wipe up the floor when Jenna was done, and Spencer spilled some of the brownie batter on the floor, but Melissa helped him clean that up too. What a great morning!

A yearly tradition

Every year on Ragan's birthday we take flowers to the cemetary for Ragan's birthday. And in keeping with tradition, we take the same pictures every year. We take a picture of the headstone by itself,
Followed by a picture of all of the kids ...

And then each kid individually... First Melissa

Then Spencer

Then Jenna

And finally Jayden

Melissa really seemed to struggle all day. She came home from school and was in tears. She said that she just had a really bad day at school and proceeded to tell me all that had happened and gone wrong. And after listening to them all, I think she could would have been just fine had it been any other day. That night, she asked me why she is the only one that gets emotional like that, and I told her that's because she was alive when it all happened and remembers it being sad.

After the cemetary, we came home, had some cake and sang happy birthday. Again, Melissa struggled throughout the song, but Jayden sure loved it. Even sang it in his bed when he was going to sleep. One other tradition Melissa has is she takes one of the flowers from the bouquet and presses it and last night she had Jenna grab a flower too, and Melissa was showing Jenna how to press it.

Love Birds

I know this is silly, but what kind of birds are these? The leading candidate right now is doves...

On Sunday, we had all sorts of different kinds of birds in our backyard. Melissa got all sorts of pictures of the quail that we saw. She is doing a report on California right now and that is the state bird. She was VERY excited about that. We saw a bunch while we were in Arizona, but never got around to taking any pictures. These two birds sat on the rock and sunned for quite a while. They were so fun to watch! They looked like they were taking care of each other. Which brings up another question, do birds mate for life with one partner?

Melissa's Dance Competition

These past two Saturdays have been spent on very uncomfortable bleachers doing something totally worth it. It was Melissa's dance competition. She does four different group dances and so I put a little blurb of each one on this post so you could see a bit. Sometimes I don't like the fact that my camera only takes 30 second videos, but right now I am thinking that isn't such a bad thing. That way you don't have to sit through the whole song and watch it all. In the above picture, Melissa is the last girl in line in the front row. This was one of the only still shots that I took. I was running out of camera battery and wanted to make sure that I had enough battery for the videos.

This was their Hip Hop number they did the dance to the High School Musical {can't remember which number} song, "Getcha Head in the Game". I was nervous about them using balls as props because so much can go wrong with a ball for a prop, but thank goodness they all held on real tight. They got first place at both competitions for this one.

This was their lyrical number. The song is "Love Story" by Taylor Swift. They got first at both competitions for this song too. Melissa is the front middle {just in case you were wondering which girl you were supposed to be following}. As a little side note the guy in the orange hat which sometimes pops into the picture had THE WORST BO I have smelt since Jr. High. It was so bad, first I looked to find on the program to see if he would be leaving anytime soon because we had pretty good seats. However after I realized he was there for as long as we were, I gave up my good seats to just get away from the stench. And everytime he turned around to say sorry for leaning on my knees I thought his breath would make me pass out. Yeah, he was THAT bad.

This was their Jazz number it got a second place at both of the competitions. I posted two videos of this number the one is at the beginning and the other is at the end of the song. Melissa is on the far left in the front row.

This is the last one... This was their Show tune which was a hip hop number. Melissa is the point in the triangle.

It was a very fun past two weekends! I really like going to her competitions not only to see her dance, but I also like to see the other groups dance as well. Some people come up with some pretty creative stuff. There are also those groups that are just down right strange or disturbing. There was one group where the girls had eyemasks on their face and were wearing purple wigs and on the back of their heads were white masks that were kind of like the scream masks, that was disturbing. And if it weren't for my battery I would have taken a picture.

Gotta Catch Them All!

In my attempt at being the fair mom... which I KNOW you can't do, but some of my kids seem to keep tabs, I did a post on Melissa, Janna and Jayden so now, I gotta do one for Spencer... Spencer's big kick right now is Pokemon cards. And with me it is a love-hate relationship BIG TIME! I love that Spencer is in to something other than video games right now, but I HATE that he carries them around with him EVERYWHERE! And if they aren't in his hands, they are in his pocket. Which I am surprised that they haven't ended up washed yet with the clothes. However, there was one night that I swore the kids were all asleep and then Spencer comes in the family room in a panic, "Mom! have you washed my shorts yet?" He was terrified that I washed his shorts and it would have ruined all his cards. Little does he know, I am not that on top of laundry that I would have already washed shorts that he took off an hour ago. Want to know where they were? In the bathroom... he put them down on the counter while he was brushing his teeth. At night before he goes to bed, he puts them in the crack between his bed frame and his mattress. Then of course in the morning he's got them in his hands at the breakfast table. I finally had to make him put them on the desk in the kitchen while he eats, just so that his hand doesn't permanently conform to the shape of holding cards in his hands. Not to mention his teacher has banned the cards from class. I am sure that if any of the other kids are like Spencer, it got to be a problem. I don't know if they actually play with the cards either, or just look through their decks and trade them. He had some friends over on Friday and they even played tag out back with their pokemon cards in their hands the entire time. I guess it's better than video games huh?