Let's Go Fly a Kite...

We went to a park tonight after dinner to try and fly a kite. This also was our family night activity. :) Kate watched Mary Poppins recently and has wanted to fly a kite since watching that movie. The kite wouldn't stay up for very long because the wind would come and go. We need to go to Mattawa or Ellensburg since the wind blows there all the time! So instead Kate played on the play toy, we walked down to this little creek and threw rocks in it and then went for a walk around this large play field where there was a baseball game and football practice going on. Then, we came home to get Preston into bed. I went to the gym after the kids were in bed and Kyle folded laundry. So nice of him since there was quite a bit.

This morning I took Kate to the library for this story time where the man who does it plays his guitar, sings, dances around (with the kids) and reads books. It's very entertaining and Kate loved it when we went before. So I wanted to take her back there. I invited her friend Alyssa to join us for the morning. So after Preston's (very short) morning nap we picked up Alyssa and went to the library. It was very interesting watching Kate vs the other kids during the story time. Kate was almost always moving around. There were 30 plus people at story time and she would wander around the room (this is actually okay, but still!). I kept telling her to sit down to listen to the story, but she would watch other kids instead and wander around. She's such an active girl. We probably need to work on her attention span a bit. :)

On Sunday, Kyle went home teaching in the morning before church. I was busy making rolls, special potatoes and jello while getting kids fed and dressed along with getting me dressed and ready. I was in the kitchen all day! But I had bought a ham from Costco because Kyle LOVES ham so I was making him a yummy Sunday dinner. We had to cook the ham and potatoes after church, but our dinner was yummy. The rolls turns out okay. They tasted good, but didn't look like my Mom's. I ended up taking dinner to this girl I visit teach who is pregnant with twins and on bed rest. It was fun to visit with her.

Kyle and I will celebrate our 8th wedding anniversary this weekend so we are planning on going on a date for that. Plus, there is a primary activity day on Saturday morning that I have to finish planning and preparing for. I better get busy with that!

Family Night Out

For Family Night we decided to go to Jump Planet. It is a place where they have 11 blow up bouncy toys for the kids to jump, climb and slide on. It's a lot of fun and Kate loves it there. The last time we had been there was with Grandma Dee Ann and Melanie's kids last summer. So it has been a while. Kate was excited when we told her where we were going. I didn't know if she would remember it or not, but when we walked inside she was so excited. At first, she was "scared" to climb, which isn't like her at all, but once she finally did it she was fine. Kyle and I traded off holding Preston and one of us would go inside the toys with her. It was fun. There were lots of other families there and it was funny watching the other Dads go down the slides. Some were bouncing quite a bit on the way down. :)

They have this kiddy toy and so Kyle took Preston in it and he liked being bounced. I liked his smile in this picture. Kate was probably flinging herself off the toy. She was doing that earlier and Kyle and I were laughing at her.

This scary alien was inside the entrance of one of the bouncy toys. Kate wanted to go inside the toy, but there were all these rambuncious boys going in and out. When Kate finally got in she got so scared when she saw this alien! It was actually pretty funny because she quickly got out and she wanted me to hold her. She even screamed a little. I tried showing her that it wasn't real, but she didn't even want to look at it. She stayed away from that toy the rest of the time. :)

Kate liked going down this slide. In this video she was trying to be "tricky" by rolling down instead of going feet first.

Is This Really Spring?

We got snow, rain, hail and more snow on Friday.

This is what it looked like on Saturday morning! Almost 5 inches of snow in April!!!

Kate loved playing in the snow and this is her attempt at a snow angel.

Another Use for a Punch Balloon

Kate did this on her own and I thought it was hilarious!

Happy Birthday Dad!

We went to my parent's house (again, and many more times to come) this last weekend because it was my Dad's birthday! Plus, Jeff was coming home from Rexburg for his spring break so we got to see him too. It was lots of fun especially since the weather was FANTASTIC! It was hot! We were outside the majority of the day on Saturday. We watched Sara's double header softball game and the kids played outside in the dirt most the time. My Dad's parents came over for dinner Saturday night and we celebrated my Dad's birthday. My Dad is awesome. He is so patient and generous. I'm lucky to have him as my Dad. He would always take us kids around with him on the farm and wouldn't even get mad when we wrecked something. :) He's still young at heart and we tease him that he is a teenager still. It was fun to spend the weekend with him and the rest of the family.

The kids loved playing in the dirt.

Marci, Paige and I at Sara's softball game. We got sunburned.

Jeff brought a small BBQ grill up to the game on the 4-wheeler so we had our own little BBQ. It was fun.

My Dad opening presents!

Back to Work

I ended up deciding to go back to work one day a month. I posted before how I decided not too, but I found someone that is willing to come to our house to watch the kids the one day I work. It will work out better that way. (Plus, we are refinancing our house and we need the extra money now.) I even had patients of mine call me and offer to watch the kids so I could "further my talent" and work once a month! I thought that was so nice of them.

So yesterday I went to work and of course, Preston was sick. He started coughing last week and through the night Monday night he would cough so much and gag on his phlegm he would throw up after every time I fed him. It was annoying, but Kyle stayed home from work (he had to use a vacation day) and watched the kids. Darbi was going to watch the kids because the lady that we set up to watch him was gone this week visiting family. Darbi was kind enough to even be willing to watch Preston even though he had a cough. But when he was having a hard time Monday night I decided it would be better for Kyle to stay home. Kate went to Darbi's all morning and played with her girls and had a blast. Preston took a 2 hour nap so it was a "piece of cake" morning for Kyle! I told Kyle I don't get a good break like that in the morning. :) He teased me and said staying home was easy. HA!

The best thing about work is that everyone there treats me so well. It's like I'm royalty. Not really, but that's how they make me feel. They tell me they are glad I'm there and so how can you not feel good being there with all those good comments?! I'm lucky to have such great co-workers. We talk about eveything you're not supposed to talk about at work; religion, politics and other hot topics. :)

But really, I told Kyle I'm so glad that I get to stay home with our kids. I like it. It's not easy at times, but I can't imagine working full-time and being a Mom. I admire those that have to do it.

I've Been Tagged... My Favorite Things

MY FAVORITE THINGS around the house...

My favorite thing in the kitchen is... the island. I fell in love with the kitchen the moment I saw it when looking for a house. I love all the counter space and the cupboards. My next house has to have a big kitchen too. :)

My favorite thing in the bathroom is... my flat iron. It's new from my parents for Christmas and it gets super hot so I can fix my hair fast. That's important when time is limited.

My favorite thing in the bedroom is... our dresser. Random, I know. I don't love, love our bed and we don't have much in there, but our dresser is from IKEA and I have been really happy with it. It's tall and has huge drawers.

My favorite thing in the kid's room... the cow dresser we painted in Preston's room and the vinyl lettering we put up in Kate's room that says "Sugar and spice and all that's nice, that's what little girls are made of". They make the room more fun and unique. Kate still loves her pink "castle" (aka her pink bedroom!).

My favorite thing in the living room is... our DVR!!! Love, love, love it. I don't worry about missing any tv shows if I'm gone to the gym or to a meeting because I can watch them whenever I want. It's great. However, there's too many Ellen's and Oprah's so it takes me a while to watch them all. :)

My favorite thing in the pantry is... the food we have for food storage and the awesome shelves Kyle built for me when we first moved in. They are way more sturdy than the flimsy wire/mesh ones they had available.

My favorite thing in the "office" is... our computer with high speed internet. I can check email, read blogs and surf the web faster than when we had dial up internet. It's so much nicer.

My favorite thing in the garage is... my washer and dryer. Great inventions and I don't have to drag our clothes to the laundromat like I did for several years before we moved into this house.

Now, I tag these people: Kati, Jeni, Melanie and Sally

Happy 6 months old Preston!

Preston is 6 months old today! Where did the time go? On one hand it seems like it's been that long with everything we've been through with him (doctor visits, evaluations, concerns and sicknesses), but then it doesn't seem long at all. He is fun to have in our home. He is always smiling and Kate wants to see him the second he wakes up.

Things he likes to do or is doing now:

Grabs his feet

Rolls over to reach for toys

Eats solid food

Sits up for a short time

Likes to pull hair

Puts everything in his mouth
Smiles A LOT

We lounged around all day watching General Conference on TV. It was great to listen to our new Prophet President Monson and the other Apostles. It was also nice to be lazy at home. We were excited to be home so the kids could actually get their afternoon nap instead of normal Sunday's where we have church until 3:30 pm and they miss their afternoon nap. So it's ironic that Kate would not take a nap today and Preston's nap was super short too! Of all Sunday's... We went for a walk since the sun was shining and we needed to get some fresh air.

Kate "made" spaghetti for Kyle and her. I thought it was too cute she used her necklaces since they looked like spaghetti. She has a good imagination. :)

Scary Experience!!!

I forgot it was April Fool's today until I was reading other friend's blogs. But this following story is for real. It isn't a joke and it was scary! It's just a coincidence it happened today, of all days!

I had just gotten home from going to Fred Meyer to get groceries. Kyle had just gotten home too. He was stopping by for lunch before going back to work. Well, Kyle had taken Preston inside and I was still outside. We still had groceries to carry in and Kate was wandering around. Kyle and I were talking outside when this strange man was speed walking down our small street. I was only feet away from this man. He had a tank top on and was walking fast. Kyle said out loud "I wonder what he's up to?" The man probably heard him, but kept walking. Then, seconds later another man in a black jacket was scooting around Darbi's fence (a neighbor and good friend). He was scooting between blackberry bushes and their fence to get into their yard. Kyle knew something was up because there were these two weird men. So Kyle grabbed his cell phone and started crossing the street to go look in Darbi's backyard for that guy. At that moment a white unmarked police car came speeding down our street and we knew these men were running away!!! Yikes! We were all outside and these two weird men were within feet of us and our kids!

So anyway, we tell the officers where these two men went and they see one of them and both of them jump out to go after the tank top guy. He had gone to a swamp area past all the houses and past a metal fence. It is full of blackberry bushes where he went. (sidenote: Blackberry bushes are super prickly and they hurt!) Meanwhile, Darbi was having lunch with her kiddos and saw this man in her backyard- scary! She picked up her phone and was about to dail 911 and saw he had moved into her neighbor's yard. (Her backyard only has two side fences so this guy could scoot around between the fence and lots of blackberry bushes to get into the neighbor's yard.) Darbi came to the front door and saw Kyle and I pointing to the policemen. We told her what we saw and she told us about the guy in her backyard. The police told us to stay inside. Darbi and I watched from our front window hoping they would catch these guys. It was scary just watching it play out in our little neighborhood!!!

A few minutes later a group of policemen came with a K-9 dog. Eventually, the dog went down into the swamp area and found the tank top guy and bit him on the leg. So they caught him. They couldn't find the other guy so Darbi told them he might be in her neighbor's yard still. I told the policeman to check the crawl space and that is when he said they found him in the crawl space under Darbi's neighbor's house. Phew! We were so glad they caught both of them. Kyle left for work while 4-5 patrol cars, ambulance and fire truck were pulling into our development. It was crazy so I had to take a picture. The guy in the crawl space was bit by the dog too so he was limping! I hope these guys learned their lesson! They had both guys out of the police cars and were bandaging up their wounds before taking them away. We got to watch it all... I asked one of the police officers what these guys were doing and he said they were robbing a house up the street and there were 3 guys. They caught one earlier and then got these two guys in our neighborhood. What an adventure!

I normally feel very safe in our neighborhood, but we don't live far from all the crime and nastiness that goes on a street or two away so this is an example of how it effects us.

Snow In March?

Yes, it's true. We got snow and hail here this last weekend. It was crazy since it was at then end of March! But I had to take some pictures of it as evidence. Kate was excited to use her umbrella in the "fun" weather. Sunday night we got 1-2 inches of snow, but it was pretty much melted by the next day. This week we are supposed to have sunshine and warmer days all week.

Following Daddy to get the mail in the hail.

Snow!