Lillie's 6th Birthday

Man, I hate it when your pictures blog in reverse. Well, here is Lillie's birthday from finish to start:

My parents, our next door neighbors, and Allison and her now missionary came over for cake and presents. We had a nice relaxing evening in the front yard. Amazingly it was only semi-sweltering outside!
Here is the birthday girl with her new set of wheels. She had been waiting a long time for this. (Bonus - you can just catch a peek of our new car in the corner... the gold one. Tim is happy not to be driving a chick car anymore)
Lillie picked Chili's for her birthday dinner and here she is with her favorite guy in the world!
In the morning I took the kids to pump it up to start the day off right. I personally love this place and I love even more that it's free for me but I still get to go down the slides. If you've never gone down a 20 foot high bouncy slide, you've gotta try it. All the kids had so much fun!

Lillie at 6:

Favorites - Barbie, Hello Kitty, Art, Putting on make-up, wearing tights, picking out her own clothes, doing her own hair, being in charge, singing and dancing to the radio, swimming - Lillie has completely taught herself how to swim this summer, and taking care of her brother Grant

Best Friends - Becca and Ruth Holland, Madison and Brooklyn Zufelt, Abby Serenil, Johnathan Hurt, Asher Hardman, and her brother Samuel. Those two play together all day everyday with minimal fights. I love to see that, it really melts my heart!

Dislikes - Mom telling her what to do, not wearing tights, eating her vegetables, mom combing the tangles out of her hair - there are screams about that every morning!

We love you Lillie! We know you'll have a great year in 1st grade!

L & S's Chuck E Cheese Party

This Lillie and Samuel wanted a party at Chuck E Cheese. We had them combine to avoid paying twice for the exact same kids to come to a CEC party 3 weeks apart. They seem to be friends with children that are from the same family and when it's summer it seems that everyone in a family is invited to a party! That's cool with us, but we tried to be creative for our budget's sake! The party was a great success with a huge turnout. Samuel had a lightsaber cake and Lillie had a last minute cake from HEB. She had originally requested a rainbow jello mold. I made one and it turned out cute initially and then I had the bright idea of putting skittles in the last layer to spell her name... yeah, don't ever do that. It was a soupy mess a few hours later.

Here's Grant having the time of his life. With all the party things I was trying to do I couldn't always watch him and I'm very glad he didn't get stolen. He thought it was fabulous to run around by himself. When I did get to play with him though he was really cute. He'd grasp the token in his chunky little hand and work it in to the slot. He thought he was a total big boy. When mom wasn't around to supply him with tokens he had no problem horning in on other people's games.

Here are the birthday kids with most of their friends from the party. They had a super fun time and I am a total fan now of parties held at a location other than my own house!

Happy 4th B-Day Samuel!

Samuel had a super fun 4th birthday. He go to do whatever he wanted all day! (For the most part!) He thinks it's pretty awesome to be four and still, nearly 2 months later attaches the phrase "yeah, I'm 4 so I'm big" to lots of the things that he says. Here are some highlights:

Playing baseball with Grammy after the presents were opened.
Riding his new bike from Mom and Dad. He does have a helmet and is a nazi about wearing it (I have trained him well bwaaaaa haaaa haaaaa!) so it is totally weird that he is not wearing it here. I guess when you've just got the big boy bike you've been waiting for you can't worry yourself about those pesky details.
Showing off his new boots from Grammy and Grandad. He wears these things every where including to the pool and to bed. Totally cute!
At Red Robin with mom and dad for his birthday dinner. He was so excited to eat at this place and even more excited that he got to meet the big stuffed red robin and have everyone sing Happy Birthday to him!
Samuel with his best friend Odell Holland. I took the boys to Brackenridge park to ride the train and get an ice-cream. We had a great time and just finished and got to the car in time for a major rainstorm to hit. I guess the birthday gods were smiling on us! Happy birthday buddy, we love you so much!

Samuel at 4:

Favorites - Spider Man, Hot Wheels Battle Force 5, trains, computer games, swimming - He has gotten so much braver this summer - he has been terrified of water since birth but is now floating around on a noodle and sticking his head all the way under!, band-aids - he puts a band-aid on every little cut!, eating - he has to eat immediately upon waking and several times throughout the day, playing with Lillie and Grant, learning his letters and numbers and spelling them in the air, sucking his thumb, reading, Wii games, riding in the back of the van with Lillie

Best Friends - Odell Holland, Tristan Zufelt, Peyton Billingsley, Zach Payne, and his sister Lillie

Dislikes - naps & haircuts - what an easy going boy!

We love you so much Samuel! You are so fun and wonderful - you are always doing something to make everyone laugh. We know you'll have a fantastic year in Pre-school!

Say 'Good-bye' to the Saturn

As some of you have already heard, I was in a pretty bad car accident yesterday afternoon. I am doing good other than the stiffness and soreness from hitting a airbag and being caught by a seat belt. I cannot on the other hand say so much for my little Saturn. Yesterday was her last and final voyage across the great roads of San Antonio TX.

I am now in the process of figuring out who they are going to claim is at fault and all that fun stuff.

Take a look at the pictures that I was able to get of my little car.

I Love You As My Teacher.....

In June we traveled to Utah as a family to attend the funeral of our Aunt Barbara Whaley. Below is pictured one of the notes that came with flowers from one of her current students. I thought it captured so perfectly who Aunt Barbara was for so many of us. Whether she was you sister, aunt, neighbor, or friend, she taught every moment of her life. Aunt Barbara was an important person in my life. I've known her for 11 years now and she was there for most of the major decisions that I made in my adult life. She knew Tim and I when we were still "just friends", and she always welcomed me in to her Barrington Park condo when I was in Salt Lake for the weekend. I always left with a book or two in hand to read until the next time I came down from Idaho. She made the effort to be there for us whenever I or later, we needed her. I love you so much Aunt Barbara. You are greatly missed, but I will always remember the many lessons that you taught and all the love you gave. You have truly been an excellent example of the Christ-like life we should lead and I feel blessed to have been one of the lucky ones to have known you.

As Jason said, the kids did great on this trip. After my last UT fiasco with Grant in tow I was nervous. But they were marvelous. Many thanks to Jason for driving with us to UT. I know that was a huge sacrifice and we really appreciate it! I'm even tempted to say the drive part was pretty fun... but that's coming from a person who did not drive one single mile of the trip so.... you might want to ask someone else if you're interested in a more enlightened opinion!
The kids slept a lot in the car while we were there. They were so pooped from all the activities.
I just love this pic of Tim, G, and G-ma!
We were able to visit the Costello's on our last day and the kids had a ton of fun running around their property and petting the horse next door.
Happy 50th Birthday Aunt Susan!
The cousins had a ToN of FuN playing together and really wore each other out.
Here are all the kids with stuffed animals from Aunt Barbara. They carried these around non-stop. Lillie's bunny is still with her a lot and always when she sleeps at night.

Uncle Jason what can I say... you're the best!

G was so happy to finally have a head butting partner! And it looks like Uncle Jason is too!

Grant + Food = FINALLY! & Memorial Day 2010

As you all know our youngest has had a strange aversion to food starting around 10 months. Well, finally, a few days after we came back from the family UT trip in June he started liking it again! And this time with a much larger pallet. Yay! He won't be nursing when he's 10!!!!!

This is the 1st day he really started eating. I thought it was so sweet to see Samuel share his yogurt. G had a bad reaction to yogurt when he was younger but I thought it was time to try it again. It's funny, but yogurt has seemed to be the catalyst to all of my children's solid food diet.
This is MY domain!

We took our annual memorial day trip to the coast, and despite all the seaweed on the beach we had a marvelous time. The kids did great in the car. It was Grant's 1st time to be forward facing so that kept him entertained most of the trip.
G enjoyed himself much more this year since he wasn't confined to a car seat!

The kids really enjoyed creating tidal pools and watching the clams bury themselves in the sand.

Mother/ Daughter Camp Out & Laura's BYU Graduation

Here are some pics from this year's M/D Camp out that our stake does. Unfortunately last year's was rained out so this was a make-up held in May instead of September. I'm hoping they do the regularly scheduled one as well this year! Lillie and I have such a great time together. This year we also camped with my mom and sister, Allison. Well, Allison did spend a few hours sleeping in the tent! But that's cool. The less than cool one's had a blast together!

Here's Allison getting ready to send Lillie down the makeshift "rapids". We were smart enough to remember our tube this year, unfortunately hardly anyone else did and all wanted to borrow ours. Lillie was less than pleased and eventually figured out that if she said she was done with the chutes and wanted to go somewhere else, I wouldn't make her share anymore. Smart girl. Looking back, I wish I hadn't made her share so much... not her fault that other's didn't have the foresight! Next year, I'll let her be more stingy!
More river fun. Here's Grammy and L with our friend's Aydia, Genevieve, and Michelle Easton.
Midnight. L did not want to go to sleep. She entertained us with potty jokes until we finally had to ignore her. But it was a blast!
The next morning L found a butterfly and it sat on her hand for about half an hour! It was especially cool since she was in a the middle of hatching butterflies from their chrysalis' at school and she was able to tell me all the parts of the body.

At the end of April Grant and I went with my parents and sisters up to Utah to watch Laura graduated with her Bachelor's Degree in Wildlife/Wildlands Conservation. Woot! Woot! We're so proud of you Laura. You're doing great in Mexico and we know you'll do awesome in Grad School! Jen and Wendell were kind enough to let Grant and I stay at their house and they were even kinder to watch Grant so much so I could attend various graduation exercises alone. Thanks so much you guys, your're the best! The trip was hard... Grant was terrible on the plane, got no sleep, and didn't want anybody but me. It was a less than perfect introduction to the rest of the UT family. However, I'm really glad that I went and it was so nice to so much family that I hadn't seen in so long!
Wendell was the only person that Grant was happy with and he really enjoyed being bounced on the tramp.
We were able to see Aunt Barbara, and even though Grant was a total mess, I was really happy they were able to meet. It was good to be able to visit with her one last time.
L to R: Katie, Mom, Laura, Dad, Audrey, Allison