Visit with cousins

In November we were so excited because Jen and her girls Ali and Serina (Izzy) came out to Utah to visit for a few days. We didn't have a lot of time, but we did manage to spend a fun afternoon at the gateway children's museum. This is one of my kids favorite places to play, and no matter how often we go, they always find something new to try out. We had a great time playing with our cousins, and showing them the fun places that we can go.
Mckenzie loves to this part of the play area where she can stack big blocks, and make houses and towers to her hearts content.

Izzy enjoyed playing with Mckenzie in her "house."

Peek-a-boo, does anyone see me. although it looks like a slide, there is a plexiglass block at the top with only a hole to push blocks through. (although I have seen kids beat the system, and squeeze themselves down the slide too.)

Here is Ali and Kenzie building there house.

Brooklyn may not be old enough to build things, but swinging as a monkey comes easy. You can also see Izzy and Ali getting ready to build something.

I guess that she is done.

Halloween

Ok I admit it, I have officially given up on "playing catch-up" with myself on the blog, and will just start over and try to intersperce our fun summer events in with the current happenings. So, on that note....Halloween. This year I was absolutely prepared, I had the girls costumes, the candy, and the make-up ready to go....I only didn't count on Ryan and I getting the flu on the day before Halloween. Needless to say this really put a damper on things. Luckely we were saved by Marlene, Tiffany, and Nate who were more than a little excited to come and take our kids trick or treating. The evening turned out to be a lot of fun for everyone. The only downside I didn't get to go and see my kids having such a fun time or see how Brooklyn acted on her first time trick-or-treating, however I am told that she caught on very quickly. Anyway thank you so much for all of your help in getting over the sicknesses, and through Halloween. Hopefully next year will be a little bit better.

OK can you really get any better than three princesses when you have a family of girls... Well I did try to talk Ryan into being Prince Charming, but he said the tights killed the idea. He was willing to escort then as a Jedi Knight..until he got sick. Oh well maybe next year.

The whole crew Aren't they great!

Scary experiace

Luckily there are no pictures to accompany this story. Earlier this week, after getting Aby off to school, I started to clean up my kitchen, and opened my dishwasher. (This is not a new thing, as I find myself doing dishes no less than 2 times each day.) As I pushed open the door, and went to grab the top rack, I looked down and found looking back at me small brown eye within a small brown furry body. Needless to say I am not sure who was more frightened me or the mouse. (I am sure that it was me, but Ryan seems to think that the mouse was more frightened...fat chance.) After quickly shutting the dishwasher, and yelling I reached for the phone to call my husband. (the hero right:) Unfortunatly, it took him a few minutes to stop laughing long enough to tell me that he couldn't come home until the end of the day and that I should go to home depot to buy some mouse traps.

Never being one to let small things deture me I quickly put Kenzie and Brooklyn into the van and went to Home Depot After looking through the various methods to rid myself of the mouse I bought some different things, and brought them home. There was however, no way that I was going to set the traps, and do anthing remotely close to where that mouse would be found. I was however brave enough to reclean the dishes in the dishwasher, and then deep clean my kitchen. No way was I ever going to give this mouse a reason to stay in my kitchen. I am happy to announce, that since that fateful morning I have not seen nor heard from the mouse, and I hope never to again.

The New Road

In July of this year, the city finally agreed to fix our road. I wish that I had some before shots, but I don't. You will just have to take my word for it that our road was the worst road in the area. Those of us that had to use it on a regular basis would joke that we didn't try to miss the potholes, we just tried to find the smallest ones to go through. (the only problem was that we weren't joking about it.) Anyway it was neat to watch the big diggers and other equitpment work on the road. The pictures are of the first day when they ripped out the origional road, but it lasted nearly a week. My kids spent a lot of time out in the front yard just watching what was going on. At least they had the neighbor kids to keep them company. One of the workers commented that he didn't realize this would be a parade. (all the kids were sitting on chairs and eating snacks.) The workers were really great though, and would watch out for the kids.
Wouldn't you be fascinted too, it you had never seen big equiptment up close?
For the most part this didn't interrupt too much, although I did have to drive across the front lawn one time to get out and take the kids somewhere, and I did have to carry my groceries around the corner from my house. That gave the neighbors a good laugh.

Brooklyn Fish

There is a funny story behind these pictures, I had been drying the swimming pool after draining it and cleaning it, and it got left in the sprinklers over night, so the bottom was full of some water. The next morning, I let the kids outside to play, and before I could say boo Brooklyn had climbed up onto the trampoline, and was playing in the dirty water from the sprinklers, and having a great time. The other kids thought it looked like fun, but I stopped them before they could get all of their clothes wet too.
Who needs a swimming suit to go swimming, just give me some clothes and water and life will be great.
Lucky for me she did eventually get out of the water.

Gymnastics

Aby and Mckenzie both signed up for Gymnastics this summer with Karson and Bryn as their cohorts. This turned out to be very fun and both of my girls loved every minute of it. They could hardly wait until Monday of each week so that they could go back. Both of them were very sad when their six weeks were up. It was only with the promise that I would sign them up after our trip to Chicago that they stopped crying.

I have to admit that I was very impressed and pleased with the teachers and the gym that they go to. The main goal is to teach the kids strenght and to have fun. I love how they have mixed the skills in with games and learning. On a side note, I did sign my kids back up and they are loving it!!! The are so excited to go and play on all the mat and toys each week. The only hard part is that Brooklyn isn't allowed to play with them. This doesn't make her very happy, and she is constanly trying to get into the play area with them.
This is Aby turning a flip on the bar.
Their favorite is definatly the pit of foam. The teachers call it an Ocean, and the kids love to play and jump into it. I have to admit If I could I think that would be what I would want to do the most.
Here is Kenzie as she is helped to do a front flip. She is turning out to be quit good at gymnastics, and has a lot of strengh in the arms and legs.

Brooklyn the monkey

Brooklyn has firgured out how to climb and she does on everything that she can. I couldn't resist taking this picture though of her showing off how balenced she is. I get a kick out of it.

She didn't fall and for that we were both glad. (what am I going to do with my monkey now!)

Summertime swimming

This summer found all of us spending plenty of time outside in the back yard swimming. The kids loved to play with the sprinkler under the trampoline, and then they would move it and just run through it. I found out early on that my Brooklyn is a fish and then some, she learned the word swimming, and even figured out where her swim suit and dipers were. She would come up and bring them to me each afternoon and say "side" that means swimming outside. My other girls didn't complain, they love the water also.
Here is my fish Brooklyn jumping on the trampoline having a great time. She mainly has fun when she is by herself, she doesn't like it too much when the other kids get on. They bounce her around too much.
This was one afternoon when A by had invited a friend over to swim they had fun playing on the trampoline, and then playing on the slip and slide. My girls were funny to watch on the slip and slide it took them a while to figure out how to slide.
This is Brooklyn taking her turn on the slip and slide, she liked to splash in the water, and try to drink it. lucky for me I use house water only when I do things like this. I didn't start out the summer with a swimming pool, I didn't think that the kids would want one, but I found out that they did, and so we ended the summer with a samll pool for the kids to play in also.

Fixing the fence

On of Ryan's "favorite" (ok not really) projects this summer was to help the neighbors to the south of us replace the fence between our two yards. We really weren't planning to do this until next year, but the neighbors got two big dogs, that chewed through some of the fence posts, and slats, and started coming into our yard, and scaring the kids.
Here you can see Ryan digging up one of the fence posts, I dont' know who put in the fence in the first place, but they definatly buried the posts deep enough.
Look at the muscles on that hansom man. :)
You can see how deep it was and how much cement was used. (I think he was just showing off for me, but hey I am easily impressed anyway.)

My Beautiful Girls

I have recently been appropriatly chastised for not keeping up on my blog. I should say that I have been slacking. I love reading other people's blogs and find myself always wanting others to update their blogs, and so this also means that I should keep mine updated. In my defense my summer seems to have slipped by and I have not gotten around to it and I am sorry.

Earlier this summer my kids were playing outside, and I couldn't resist because they were so cute so I started snapping pictures of them. I know the pictures look posed, but they did that themselves.

I love this shot of Aby, if you look close you can see the freckles on her nose. I am sure that one day she will hate the freckles, but I will always love them.

Kenzie is such a beauty, and she grows more lovely each day.

More Mud!

My kids love to play in the mud (is this normal I hope) anyway on this day, it was a little cool so I sent the kids out to play while I fed Brooklyn and did some quick clean up, as I was cleaning I heard the kids come in and go out and then come back in. When I went to see what was going on the girls were taking cups of water outside with them. When I looked outside too see what was going on, I found the neighbor kids and my kids had brought over a large pile of dirt and had then turned it into mud. As much of a mess I knew it would make, the kids were having so much fun that I told them no more water, and ran for the camera.

What you don't see in these picutres is me cleaning up their feet and legs and hands with the hose, and then cleaning off my porch. We did have a discussion about the fact that we don't make mud puddles on the porch, or in the dirt pile.

sprinklers (%$#%@)

Ahh sprinklers...for homeowners I could leave it at that and they would empathize completely with what Ryan is doing, however for the rest of you at the beginning of the summer each year is the fun job of seeing which sprinklers have made it through the year, and which have broken. In our case there are usually more broken ones than ones that are fixed. Here is Ryan working on one of the many that he had to fix. The fun part was the girls followed him around the whole time even Brooklyn trying to do what they could to help.

Here Brooklyn is giving Ryan a part that she thinks he should use to fix they pipe. (too bad it was wrong.)
So she tried again, and this time got it right. I am so greatful for the patience that Ryan shows with the girls when they are following him around like this.

****Just as a side note this was the easy fix we later found out that we had to fix one by digging a whole new line to bypass an area that was bad. This took roughly two weeks to dig the trench fix the pipe and put everything back together. (thanks to Tiff and Nate who came over to help us dig the trench and put in the new line.) I can only hope that the sprinklers will get better over the next few years as we slowly replace all of the bad ones with better new ones, but only time will tell.

Mud...mmmmm

Brooklyn loves to be outside with the other girls, and she loves to play in the dirt, which if mixed with liquid will turn to mud. On this day I had given the kids popcicles to eat while they were outside. Brooklyn took hers away from me to "do it herself" and this is the aftermath of that decision.


To be honest she finished the popcicle and enjoyed ever bit of it mud and all.

Summer Fun with Dirt

Summer time brings out the dirt in my kids. Ryan and I were planning to build a sandbox this spring, but our backyard neighbors tore down a shed at the end of the summer last year, and this made a perfect pile of dirt. The kids have enjoyed it so much that we haven't had to build the sandbox yet, maybe next year.
Here you can see the kids are makeing and pretending to eat dinner on my little table that I keep outside. Even Brooklyn was getting into it.
Aby is making a dish of some kind for the others to eat.
Here are Josh and Kenzie playing with more dirt.

Brooklyn jumping

Soon after we put up the trampoline at teh beginning of summer Brooklyn decided that it was a spot to play and have fun. She learned how to get up the ladder and onto the trampoline without any help at all. (this is a little scary for mom) She loves to have the girls jump softly and bounce her, but gets upset when they bounce too hard. The girls are pretty good, and they will let her have a turn. Really Brooklyn doesn't jump, she runs around and falls down and then grins like she has accomplished a major feat. It is so funny. (you can see in the video at the bottom.)

This is how I can tell when she wants to get off, she will lay down by the ladder, and either cry or scream for me to come and get her.

Enjoy the video!

My little Tiger

Aby has finished her Dance class, and this was her final costume. She was a tiger in the zoo, I have a really great video of her part of the performance, but it is too long for the blog, sorry. I thought that the performance was really great, but Ryan didn't like it at all, he thought Aby was cute, but hates dance in general. Luckily Aby didn't want to do dance anymore.

She really wanted to take some pictures at home, she was trying to be scary, but I don't think that it worked.
This is the only picture that I have to the performace, and it shows all of her class, they really did a great job, and I am glad that Aby stuck with it until the end of the year.

Childrens museum

Lately my kids and I have been spending a lot of time at the new children's museum at the gateway mall in Salt Lake city. These are some pictures of the first time that we went. When I go Mckenzie always askes that we take Brynn. I love that they are such good friends, and they play so good together. The other fun part is that we usually will take the new frontrunner train into the museum. (the girls call it the fastest train.) they love to watch out the windows, and see how fast we are moving.
This is my little Brooklyn being a fireman. The girls like to play in the usptairs theater where there are costumes that they can put on and pretend play.

On the main floor there is a "kids world" everything in the back 3/4 of the main floor is kid sized and the kids can play in a small house, a construction site, on a farm, grocery store, or a water area. Kenzie fell in love with the little house and spent a lot of time in the kitchen.
If only she was this happy to clean the dishes at my house.

In the front part of the main floor is a ball zone, this is really cool becuase there are a million things to do with ball that are different and fun.
Brooklyn loves the balls.This is Aby in the construction zone.
Maybe I will have engineer in the family yet.

This is in a special area for 0-3 year olds, Brynn and Kenzie have fun in there also.

This is another fun things for the girls to play at, Brynn and Kenzie had a great time moving the tubes to creat a fun path for the ball to go down.