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

School Easter Stuff

Samuel and Lillie each had an egg hunt at school. Here is Samuel during his. They had it in the school's sanctuary because it was raining outside.
Here is Samuel and next to him is his best friend Peyton. Peyton always wants to take Samuel's trains that he brings for show 'n tell but other than that they get along nicely!

Here is Lillie with her friends. L to R: Megan, Abby, Renee?, and Lillie

Mrs. Gonzalez's Kinder waiting for "Go" so they can hunt!

I forgot to mention this: on Easter night the big girls put together a "show" for us. It was called the butterfly show and it consisted of them running around the slide flapping their "wings" pretending to be butterflies. They were really excited and proud and I thought it was extra sweet because I remember doing the same thing with my friends and cousins and being so excited to put a show on for the adults. It's really neat to see Lillie as she grows up and comes up with new things to do and be interested in.

Taking their bow

Easter 2010

Happy Easter everyone! I hope that everyone had a beautiful holiday. I thought it was especially special that Easter and General Conference fell on the same weekend this year. I really loved Dianne's post with her testimony of our Savior Jesus Christ. I too know that our Savior lives and loves all of us. I am so grateful for his atoning sacrifice and ressurrection that make it possible for us all to live with Him again. I love this time of year when everything is so fresh and new. Our little family had a beautiful holiday together though we really missed all of our Doolittle relatives.
We enjoyed a morning session of conference and Easter lunch with my parents and sisters. They colored eggs with the kiddos which everyone loved and we enjoyed a nice multicolored potato salad later in the week from all the hard-boiled excess in our refrigerator!
For afternoon conference we headed over to our good friends the Zufelt's. We enjoyed smoked ham (awesome job T.J.!) and all sorts of other yumminess. Then came.... the egg hunt. So if I thought we went overboard on eggs last year, I don't know what we were thinking this year. Between Ashley and I (although mostly thanks to Ashley) I think we had somewhere in the vicinity of 20 dozen eggs... for 5 children! It was insanely ridiculous, but a ton of fun! The hunt lasted FoReVeR! with pretty much all the kids having to dump their overflowing baskets and go back for more. They thought it was fantastic but I think we'll dial it down next year. Here are some pics of the day:
Grant picked precisely 3 eggs before he stopped to eat. He was mostly confused by what was going on, but he is at that stage where he enjoys picking things up and putting them in to containers so he liked this. It's just that by this point in the Easter season he recognized a plastic egg as something that had candy in it so he really didn't get too far!

L to R: Brooklyne, Tristan, Samuel, Madison, and Lillie. This is the 1st time I've ever taken a picture of all of these children and everyone is pretty much looking at the camera. I was pretty excited.

The moms and babies enjoyed relaxing on the bench while the kids filled up with sugar and the dads...

...burned stuff... Tim and I had neglected to shred personal info documents for about 2 years and the pile was so monumental neither of us wanted to shred it. Thanks guys for letting us use your facilities!

Coloring eggs L to R: Katie, Mom, Lillie, Laura, and Samuel

We had a great day with our family and friends. Thanks for sharing the holiday with us guys! We feel so blessed to be surrounded by so many great people!

Side note: The Easter Bunny leaves the kids baskets outside their bedrooms for them and it was super cute to hear them wake up and be excited about them and sit in the hallway and start scarfing chocolate. They gave Grant's basket to him without us knowing and we found him halfeay through a chocolate bar with the wrapper still on! I let him keep enjoying it, I just made sure to dig the paper out of his mouth first!

Grant is a walkin' man

Okay, pics are out of order and I can't seem to figure out how to move them around anymore, so... the real blog post is at the end. However, I took these super cute pics of Tim and Grant tonight and wanted to share them. The kids have always wanted to get ice-cream from the ice-cream man who drives around in his ghetto beat up van but I've never let them. A few weeks ago I decided to stop being so uptight about it (I mean the ice-creams probably aren't laced with drugs.... right?) and I told them that next time he came by and we had $ we'd get some, even if we hadn't had dinner yet. So we heard him drive by tonight, and of course we hadn't had dinner yet (probably because it's the start of the long weekend and I was in lazy mode and hadn't made any). We ran out to stop him and the kids enjoyed ice-cream cones for dinner. That topped off their afternoon of filling up on Easter candy. Anyway, Grant was pretty mad that he didn't get his own cone but he was appeased by an orange lolli and his daddy. I just love how these pics portray how crazy he is for Tim and vice versa.
And here is my walkin' boy. He's been taking some steps for about a month now, but last Saturday night we all sat and watched everything click into place in his head. He just got up to walk and never stopped. It's so wierd and cute to see him walking everwhere now because he's so short. It's just been a long time since we've had such a little walker. Oh, and at the same time he started walking he also turned into a monkey and tries to climb everything now!

Lillie's First "Lost" Tooth

So a couple of weeks ago Ms. Lillie got what she has been waiting for since Kinder began.... her first loose tooth. It took a while to get it out because her teeth grow so tightly together she had a hard time wiggling it and mostly gave up. Until last Sunday. It loosened up on it's own, which I'm sure is much better, and she came to me and the thing was bending back all far and gross-like. It held on until school the next day (which is what she wanted). She lost it in Mr. Z's P.E. class and got to go to the nurse and put it in a tooth necklace. She was so excited! She came home and said "Renee said that when she lost her tooth the tooth fairy gave her $100!" I said "That's so awesome! But our family tooth fairy is on a budget so it's probably not going to be that much..." "I think it will be" she said. Suffice it to say she was very happy with the $3 under her pillow the next morning. And she already has a second loose one... I think she's having the dangerous realization that her mouth is actually a money machine. We're just waiting to find her with a piece of string attaching her tooth to a door knob or something... yeah, Tim gave her that idea!