water to grow bigger!

I wish I would have taken a picture but the moment lapsed and it was over so I didnt have the time to snap it. we just got done planting our garden and the kids helped/ watched and love going out everyday and watering with me, they are soo excited for the seeds to pop up and show little sprouts. Lincoln(3)says everyday that "we are going to make the garden grow really big so we have to water it so it can get bigger" and we always tell him yep its just like people, we need water and food to grow bigger too. So we had the back door open after school yesterday and we heard Lyla just start crying so our first thought was she probably climbed on something and fell down but we walked out there and she was soaked in water and we looked at Lincoln and he was grinning from ear to ear and we asked him why in the world would you do that? And in such a simple way he said he was trying to make "yiya" grow bigger and be big like him! we all laughed and thought it was the cutest thing ever!

ps..we have our first sprouts of a cucumber plant popping up!! yay

Thanksgiving 2011

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays of the year. I love all the greatfulness and I just love how we wake up that day and its spent with family baking and cooking in the kitchen and its the start to the holiday season!! Plus the good food definately helps everyone enjoy that day. I had seen some cute ideas on pinterest for the kids to do something crafty with turkeys so I had everything ready and the kids had a blast putting these super cute turkeys together, they didnt last long because the min they made them they ate them. I am soo greatful for my beautiful family and I love that I am a mother to a bigger family and with that comes really fun holidays and lots of craziness.

halloween2011

Halloween this year was soo much fun, the kids were definatley into it this year. I think the years of Bailee being something sweet and nice are over. She wanted to be a vampire but not a cute princessy one she wanted to be a bloody scary one!!but its such a fun day to get all dressed up and get too much candy!!

                                cleaning out the pumpkin!! not the kids favorite thing to do

                             look how gorgeous she is! she was a pretty princess of course

                               reg gramma came over to help with the trick or treating

Honor roll

I know Bailee is only in 4th grade but because shes my first and I have never experienced this stage in life I am soo proud of her accomplishment of getting on the honor roll!!! I was so overwhelmed when she came home with her certificate that I had to hold back my tears. I asked her if she knew she was on the honor roll and of course after the fact she told me that last week there was an assembly and her name was called so she got to stand up but she forgot to tell me that last week..lol.she is turning into such a caring, sweet girl and most of the time she works hard to do the things she needs to do. The other day she came home and said her teacher needed some things for her class and I just didnt have the noney at the moment to provide those items and she said she had money and that she would buy her teacher some dry erase markers. I told her that she is more than welcome to do that but she didnt need to do that. She was very insistent, so she did and she even wrapped them up with a homade envelope and a note. I love that as shes getting older she is thinking about others before herself and as a parent, thats what we are always teaching is to try and serve others whenever you can and its working, I am sooo proud to be her mommy and look forward to seeing how she strives to do good and learns more over the years.

Lincoln's funny words

so anyone that sees us on a regular basis knows that Lincoln probably needs some sort of speech therapy! I have been told by multiple people and I have even brought it up to his pediatrician and I have an appointment at the end of the month to get him evaluated. I am super excited to see if there is anything they can do for him. Its a two way frustration, not just that he cant say words right and articulate them but we cant hardly understand anything he says. Most days it leads to lots of fits and lots of me getting annoyed because I cant always know what he wants. He has definately improved over the last month but I had my visiting teacher come over the other day and Lincoln told me something in a very long sentence and I just have to nod and say "ya" and hope I am not saying something naughty for him to get into..lol Then she asked if I have ever thought of speech therapy so I guess now is the time. So at the end of the month they will let me know if he qualifies for the program or if they feel its just a developmental part of being almost three. If he does qualify than he will go to a nearby elementary 4 days a week for 2.5hrs get the help he needs to learn how to talk normally. Bailee and Bryce never had this issue and we could always understand them and now even Lyla I can understand almost more than Linc. So time will tell but I have a funny story about what Lincoln said the other day while we were all eating a carmel apple. Mike kept cutting up little bites to to give out to everyone and Lincoln said "i want mores" and because we dont always know what he really is saying or what he wants we kept asking him if he wanted smores and he kept saying no I want mores, then we figured out that he meant he wanted more than one at a time and he was trying to make it plural!! It was soo cute at the time.

Mike...The big three five

Sept 9th is Mikes birthday and this year he turned 35!! I jsut love this guy and I am so greatful he chose me to spend his birthdays with. I am so greatful to his mom for raising such a sweet man. Things have been kinda crazy around here so all he wanted to do was get a sitter and go out without the kids and get to relax and have fun. Bailee was a little turned off by the idea so I promised her that I would have a cake made before they got home and we would sing happy bday to him and eat cake before the sitter came, she was happy wit that. We ended up hanging with our really good friends Paul and Amanda and went to dinner at texas roadhouse (sooo goood) and then saw the movie "the warrior" and to my surprise it was actually good. It turned out to be a fun night.

fox 10

Fox 10 morning news came to Coronado elementary and cory mcklosky did his weather report and interacted with all the kids. Lincoln was in heaven going into our back yard and watching the helicoptor hover over our house and then land in the feild directly behind our house. It was pretty cool for me being able to see everything from my own backyard. The kids got to tour the helicoptor and some of the kids from the school got interviewed, not Bailee or Bryce but they loved it.

mmm..good

Look at this precious face!! Don't let it full you, this is what she looks like after every meal and then she LOVES to rub it all in her hair just to show us how pretty she is..lol. This happened to be a peanut butter and nutella sandwich and she literally was eating from the middle of the bread and taking bites out of the center, shes such a character

batgirl

Heres Lyla learning from her big brother and loves to be batman too!! she actually keeps it on and walk through the house, shes soo cute

art

one of the last days of summer the kids were bored so we got out the paint and they painted these awesome art pictures. I love how they are such different personalities and it shows in their art. I am soo proud of them and who they are turning into. Its so much fun to watch them grow and become their own people.

awesome sun

The one thing awesome about living in az in the summer is the monsoon weather. we have gotten pretty jipped on our rain but on this particular day it was raining and what you see is the sun under the clouds. I have never seen something soo pretty before. The coloring outside was soo weird and eery but I loved how these pics turned out.

"super batman"

I love the stage that Lincoln is in right now. He's starting to get easier as far as not whining soo much and learning so much from the older kids. But his favorite movies right now are "the hulk" and I dont mean the cartoon, the actual real one! But he loves anything superhero and loves to wear his cape all day and put his mask on, in these pictures hes a "super batman" haha. Ijust love how this sweet boy is turning out, he has his moments still but hes getting sweeter by the day.

summer fun

 Summer here in AZ is soooo stinkin hot its rediculous, but we did find some time one day to let the kids play with a slip n slide..Lincoln wasnt a fan but the other kids loved it. Mike would have them lay down and he would push them down the slide and Bailee thought it was soo much fun but Mike got pretty tired I'm sure from pushing and pulling the kids. Lyla is not afraid of anything except "puppies" any animal in her eye is a puppy but she is terrified of them but water or rain or the pool, she is totally fearless.

Bryce is soo skinny that he would go flying down the slip n slide and we would all laugh, soo funnyHeres daddy in action pushing Bailee, I bet he was sore the next day..haha

yummy cookies

I loved it when the other day I was making cookies and Lincoln asked me to turn the light on for the oven(which he does now ever since Amy was here for 2 mo because she always turned on the light..so cute) but then all of a sudden Lyla came up to me and said cookie so clear and looked into the oven just like Lincoln, it just makes me think these two peas in a pod will be such good friends.

 Here are the cuties in there aprons that gramma Porter made them, so they can help me in the kitchen making cookies

so much going on...

I really wish I would be better at blogging my life. I really do have so much to be thankful for and have such great, cute kids and so much happens in a day but I just despise computer "stuff" except for fb or googling something..lol. Any ways I am going to try and post more and try to remember cute sayings and stuff the kids do...

On that note heres a pic of where we caught lyla the other night..all the kids were outside so I wasn't being a horrible mom but I was getting dinner ready so I came in for a few mins and thats all it takes for this little teeny tiny stinker to climb

San Diego 2011

We go every summer to california, this year was no different but we got to stay at my aunt pams house in Del mar and it was soo awesome to stay there for free which made it possible to do other fun things like Legoland and shopping and stuff like that. we left on a friday and came home the following friday. It was so nice to be able to sleep in a normal house and be able to get ready in the mornings and the kids had alot of space to move in and not crammed into a tiny hotel. Took a ton of pictures of the big stuff like the beach and legoland but I guess I didn't get too many of anything else..so im just gonna post a ton of pics the best way I can and hope its not too annoying with the layout because I dont really know how to post on the site

the beach this year wasn't the funnest with a 2 year old and a 1 yr old.. Lyla was fearless and wanted in the water soo bad and didn't care if waves were headed her way but Lincoln on the other hand didn't want anything to do with the waves and mostly stayed in the sand. we lasted about 1.5 hrs and that was plenty for me. we had so much fun but next year we are going to go on a different week. we went over 4th of july and it was crowded and very warm but I have heard the week after is really nice so we will see next year

Now Bailee's birthday

 Bailees birthday was on a monday afternoon and since it's summer than we could have the party on her actual bday. we had about 8 girls come and go swimming and what kid doesn't love to spend all day swimming with their friends? these girls could have stayed out there all day and finally I had to get everyone in and eat cake, the best part of all..lol Any ways these girls can eat, I made a nrmal sized chocolate cake with whip cream as frosting and swirled choc syrup on it and it must have been a hit because those 8 girls ate it gone!! with ice cream too..I think Bailee had a good time, its hard for her to make friends because she is soo shy but the turn out was great and everyone had fun. I am soo greatful for Bailee in my life, she is such a great helper and is always trying to please everyone. She loves to help her siblings and has such a kind heart..we love this girl soo much

heres a few of the girls swimming

Heres everyone about to sing happy birthday and devour the cake

look how cute she is, this cake was my attempt to make it look like a zebra stripe( per Bailee's request) but I am not sure how zebraish it looked..haha

Bryce's birthday

Posting has been hanging over my head so I figure now that sunday church has turned into 8am church I should have plenty of time on sundays to post. I have to go back to June because Bryce and Bailee both had birthdays and I have only posted about Lyla's.

Bryces bday was fun, we had water balloons all filled up and ready for the boys and I had some fun games planned but that pretty much went out the window because the boys weren't interested for too long and they REALLY wanted to just throw the balloons. So I finally gave in and the balloons lasted about 5 mins, and it took Mike over an hour to fill them all up:( then we turned on sprinklers and that didn't last long either because they all complained that it was too cold..so then it was cake time and everyone at out side which was nice but the rest of the time was spent inside and I was definatley ready to have a quiet house when they all left..lol We had about 10 5-6 year olds running up and down the stairs and in the bedrooms and every where..all in all it was a success and Bryce loved every min of it. We are soo very greatful for Bryce and how sweet he is. He is extremely smart and understand very easy all the "school" stuff. He loves to read and never fights me on it, hes very willing to learn new things

heres one of the games I planned but I think it was a little harder than I thought it would be(look how smart bryce is, he figured out a way to go faster and not let the balloon fall)

here are some group shots of the boys playing..so cute

here are the cupcakes and goody bags we put together

Look at this handsome face, I love him soo much

 

Fun outside

here are just a few pics of me trying to be a photographer and I think the pictures actually turned out pretty cute, then I had Bailee take a few pics of me and Mike.

                              Shes already a model..haha

                                                look at the button nose

                                                          shes growing up soo fast

We make a cute couple dont we?

                                 
I had Bailee take a full body so I could see what the picture actually looks like because I have lost 28lbs now and I feel so much better about myself and think I am looking a little better and I really wanted to see what my hair looks like in a picture because I have been growing it out for a while now and I really want to cut it, but it looks pretty only when I do it and thats not very often because it takes too long to blowdry.
 I couldnt capture any pics of Bryce because he was running around too much so I promise I love him too but I just didnt want to stop him from playing