Delia at 6 months

Our darling little surprise baby is already 6 months old and we can't believe how cute she is every day (you'd think we'd just get used to it).

Here's her stats:

Weight:  13lbs. 11oz. (10th percentile)

Length:  26'' (50th percentile)

Head:  40 1/2 cm. (5th percentile)

Her favorite place in the whole world is in this baby carrier.  Whenever we're out and about we stick her in this and she's perfectly content even if she's tired or hungry.  It's super nice, but there are still limitations...

Stuff you cannot accomplish while holding a baby in her carrier:

• Eating anything that those sweet little hands could grab
• Sprinting after wayward children who somehow cannot hear their parents SCREAMING their names.
• Driving
• Cooking
• Using the bathroom (trust me, I've tried)

She still hasn't gotten the hang of sitting or crawling, which I'm still happy with.  On the other hand, she's just not as content to snuggle and lay on the floor anymore.  She's ready to be more active, and there's nothing I can do to help, so it's a little frustrating for both of us.

She's super intense and curious about the world around her.  It's so fun to see the world through her eyes with new experiences, tastes, sounds, and textures every day.

We're so very grateful to have these kiddos in our lives.  I've never been so exhausted and overwhelmed, but so truly happy and filled with so much love at the same time.  It's one of motherhood's crazy surprises!

Grandma and Sarah Come to Town

We have a blast whenever out-of-towners come to visit. It's a great chance to get out of the house and explore all the fun places in our area. It's hard to keep track of all the kiddos when we're out, so we like to take advantage of the extra hands and eyes!

Chuck E. Cheeses, Inflation Nation, and Bowling- yep the kids were DELIGHTED.

Sweet eyes and freckles- I LOVE Grandma's camera!

To many, a picture of exhausted kids isn't cute, but I LOVE when my kiddos have had such a fun day, they crash on the couch with exhaustion!

Bry's secret goal in life is to beat every person he knows at Monopoly.

Ivy's excited about her new Rapunzel Barbie from Grandma.

We got to eat out at lots of yummy restaurants too.

We had to check out the Zoo one last time since our passes were about to expire... weep.. weep.

This is an awesome picture- not only because of the cute Ivy girl, but there's a battle to the Wii death going on in the background.  I strive to excell in every aspect of my life... even beating my 6 year old son at video games ... and yes ... he won.

We have happy kids when family visits!  Thanks Grandma and Sarah!  We love you!

Hyrum is 6

Our sweet Hyrum turned six on Christmas day and we had a great time celebrating our favorite little man.  We enjoyed a quiet family day (my favorite kind) with fun presents and an Ivy safe cake of course.

(I'm not sure why he tilts his head whenever we take a picture)

This is his "I'm 6 now" picture complete with his favorite colors, a picture of himself, and the all-important "color changing chart".  (An ingenious discipline device his Kindergarten teacher uses.  Pretty much, if he doesn't get a color change all week he gets to choose a prize out of the treasure box.  He's very ashamed to tell anyone who'll listen that he received one color change... the path of delinquency begins...)

He loves running around and wrestling with Daddy and Ivy.

He loves riding his bike even in the freezing winter.

He takes care of his little sisters even though he's not quite big enough for the responsibility yet...

He'll even play dolls and dress up once in a while- although he'd much prefer his macho Transformers and Legos.

He loves to sing Delia songs and make her laugh- she can't get enough of his attention.

 

He got to choose a "special place" to go for his birthday.  Chuck e Cheese's is ALL THE RAGE in Kindergarten so he HAD to go there.  We waited until his Grandma Trump and cousin Sarah came into town (good thing too- the more adults per child ratio the better).  We've never been before and I was hilariously surprised to discover that it's pretty much a casino for little kids.  There's tons of games where you use tokens to win tons of tickets that "buy" SUPER cheap toys (the kind you throw away as soon as the kids are distracted).  It was a total blast for Hyrum and the adults even had a fun time too.

I literally cannot squeeze and love and kiss this adorable kid enough.  We're so very privileged to have him in our family.  We love you Hyrum!!!

One of my favorite Hyrum quotes:

"Charlie is my BEF."

"BEF?  Do you mean BFF?"

"NO MAWWM.  BEF."

"What's BEF mean?"

"It means he's my teamate."

Christmas (a little early, and very late)

Hello Blog, I have missed you dearly.  Things have been so incredibly busy around here and you've been severely neglected.  Nope, not the "I'm on vacation and having the time of my life, so I'm too busy to sit at the computer" kind of busy.  The kind of back breaking, moving all our junk, taking up and down pictures and decorations 500 times, deep cleaning every nook and cranny, and touch-up painting until the wee hours kind of busy.  Yes, we spent the entire Christmas break staging our house to sell.  And yes, it might not even sell according to top market specialists, but we are gonna make the house look as beautiful as possible anyway- so HA!!! 

Finding out we needed to put the house on the market in early January was a huge shock (my little naive brain thought it would only take a month or two to sell).  So our dear friend Santa Claus came a week early so we could pack up all the Christmas stuff and start this crazy process.

Even though we were super busy and stressed, we did have time for a little fun...

We made Santa some cookies:

Decorated a Gingerbread House:

Took some pictures of Daddy's cool new beard by the tree and with Hyrum in it so people didn't think we were just trying to show off Daddy's cool new beard:





Opened lots of awesome presents

Hyrum proudly displaying his new Night Fury (you can see the "Christmas Morning" damage in the background)

Played some major dress-ups:

 Tickled and giggled:

Posed in our ADORABLE aprons Amanda Sorenson made:





 Had major fun in the snow:

And... had lots of Daddy time, which was the best present of all!



We're Thankful

Family, Church, Friends, Freedom, Home, Neighbors, Beauty, Laughter, Food, Love- it all sounds so redundant and simple, but we're so very thankful for the amazing blessing we've been given from our Lord.

Even though we weren't with family this Thanksgiving it ended up being a wonderful day (and not quite so stressful as our Utah Thanksgivings where we try to make it to both sides of the family's meals).  The food was amazing and the company was the best...

We're thankful for our dear friends the Lamms who had Thanksgiving at their house (nothing's better than going to someone else's house, pigging out, letting your kids trash it, then going home to a nice clean house.)

I'm thankful Bry made all 10 layers of my Mom's famous rainbow jello. And Bry's thankful he has such an AWESOME mountain man beard.

We're thankful our kids have such great little friends and they're so healthy and happy.

I'm thankful Delia's hair is long enough to hold barrettes now, so it doesn't look quite as crazy.

Who wouldn't be thankful of this little baby doll?

We're so thankful for this silly little boy for keeping us all laughing.

We're so thankful for our saucy Ivy girl who is in charge and knows it.

Yes, we have so very much to be grateful for- what a BLESSED life!

(The boy up top with Hyrum is our friendly neighbor with his cute little puppy)

Bry and the kids colored pictures of what they are thankful for.  I thought they turned out so fun:

Ivy Girl's

Hyrum's

Bry's (love the teeth:)



Grandma Comes to Town

We were so lucky to have my Mom come visit us last week. It was such a fun visit.  The kids love the unlimited games and books and snuggles, I love the perfect in-house babysitter and dishwasher and an actual adult to talk to during the day, and Bry loves the fact that no one's grumpy when he comes home from school- WE LOVE GRANDMA!

We had lots of fun going on walks, visiting Hyrum's school, and going out to eat.  But the bestest activity was picking apples at Carter Mountain.  It was such a great day:  the weather was perfect and the view was amazing... too bad I forgot the camera.  The above pictures are the only ones I captured the entire trip- I'm honestly ashamed of myself.  The kids only get to see their Grandma three times a year at the most and I completely spaced capturing those precious moments.  Too bad,  maybe I could guilt-trip her into another quick visit because of my faux pas...

Here's some fun pics from when both my Mom and Dad came right after Delia was born:



Passing down the great art of the "wet willie".  Thanks Dad.



Hyrum The Reader

Hyrum has been in Kindergarten for two and a half months and it seems like he comes home a more mature and smart little boy every day.  I can't believe the rate of his progression nowadays.

Before attending his Parent/Teacher conference I was a little bit apprehensive.  I didn't know how I was going to react to a semi-stranger critiquing my precious child.  I have a difficult time with standardized tests that are supposed to sum up a child's intelligence.  I also know that Hyrum isn't perfect when it comes to paying attention and following directions (unless it has to do with dinosaurs, dragons, or Lego's).  I was amazed to find out she only had shinning compliments for his behavior and class work.  He is truly excelling and I'm so proud of him.

He must get his "brain genes" from his dad because I was never quite so successful in school.  I always wanted to be in the smart kids' groups, but no matter how hard I tried I could only scrape average scores.  This resulted in a life-long struggle with low confidence.  I had the attitude of, "why should I even try if I'll never be good enough?" (No one's fault but my own.)  Don't get me wrong- I perfectly understand the need to separate those children who need more of a challenge, it's so important to give them tools to excel in life.  Now that I look back I realize how silly I was.  I wish I hadn't let letters or numbers on a paper influence my self worth.  Now I believe every person has their own version of intelligence and the term "stupid" is just a myth.  I've also realized that getting good grades has more to do with confidence than actual brain power. 

("Mom I love you, Hyrum.  Mom I want to learn from you.")

Hyrum's most exciting news right now is he's reading!  Before embarking on my "teach Hyrum to read adventure",  I never realized how complicated and crazy our language is!  All you have to do is teach them the alphabet and coinciding sound and they can read, right?  WRONG!!!  There's all these complex rules for those little brains to digest and then there's hundreds of words that just throw those rules out the window.  How in the world am I supposed to explain words like: "thought", "again", "their", "language", "English", and even the word "word"?  There's been so many moments when I've wondered how in the world any of us learn to read. It's been a difficult process, but all of a sudden, just in the last few days, reading has changed from a frustrating chore to super fun and easy!   Hyrum constantly has a book in his hand reading through them like an old pro.  He's starting to discover the magic of reading that I've been trying to convince him of all along.  I'm so excited for him, it's such a huge step to be conquering so quickly.  What a champ!

(We had lots of help from starfall.com, Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, and way too much time in front of the TV with PBS kids on.)

This little note from Hyrum's teacher is semi-off-topic, but I had to share it:

Soccer Escapades

We tried soccer again this year (even though our last attempt was disastrous) and Hyrum actually did great.  Turns out he is a gifted little goalie.  He also loved running around with his friends and kicking the ball (most of the time in the wrong direction).  But hey, at least he's a great keeper, right?

We spent most of the games running to keep Ivy off the field (maybe she'll be the Forward in the family).  She can actually dribble the ball better than most of those 5 year olds (including Hyrum).

The only difficulty was the fact that it cut into our precious Saturday.  The early Fall would have been the perfect time for day trips with the family, but it was impossible with the soccer schedule.  I never realised what a hassle sports can be.  I participated in soccer, track, and softball for so many years and never thought about the huge sacrifce it was for my whole family- not only financially, but the amount of time it takes.  My parents were (and are) such an amazing support to me.  I never heard them complain- they were just there, every game and meet cheering me on.  So, so amazing, I will be forever grateful.