Kate- Post Surgery

Kate's hernia surgery is over with and all is well. You wouldn't have thought she even had surgery if you saw her Friday afternoon. She was jumping, begging to go outside and climbing all over things. It's crazy how fast kids bounce back. Her surgery was at 9 am on Friday (we were there at 7:45 am for check-in) and then we left for home around 12:00. She was very emotional after coming out of general anesthesia and recovery. It took her until we got home before she was better. Once she found out she had an IV in she started pulling it out and so we called for the nurse who came and took it out. Then, she wanted her bracelets off and cried until those were taken off. We kind of had to laugh though when she was trying to eat a popsicle, she would miss her mouth and she was not herself at all. We are glad it all went well and it's over. My Mom and Sara came over to watch Preston for the day. Marci also came up to hang out for the day. It was very nice of all of them to do that. My Mom even washed all my downstairs windows from the outside as a surprise. Love it! Thanks for your ALL your help!

Kate- the night before surgery in PJ's from Grandma Dee Ann (she calls them her "cindebrella" pajamas because they are blue and white)

Playing with a doll and things they used on her at the hospital so she could get familiar with them.

She liked this hat- she thought it was funny

Recovery- I like how she still tried to smile even when she felt horrible!

Eating the grape popsicle and totally out of it. :)

Preston on the Go

On Sunday night, Kyle was at a Stake Priesthood Meeting and Preston and Kate were playing together and I was reading the newspaper. Preston has started crawling lately. He has been getting up on all fours for a while, but last week he started to actually move more. It's pretty funny seeing him get into Kate's stuff because she gets frustrated. :) She better get ready and so should I! But I was reading the paper and looked up to find him like this. Kate and I thought it was pretty funny. His head was in the container. Notice the huge spacey front teeth- love them.

This morning, after Preston's morning nap, I went to JC Penney's to pick up Kate's 3 yr old pictures (yes, Dee Ann you should get your pictures soon!), went to Babies R Us and then Target before coming home for lunch. Now both kids are napping and I need to clean bathrooms, iron, organize my messy office and get things ready for dinner because we have the sister missionaries coming over tonight. And all I want to do is relax and read my book! :)

10 Year High School Reunion!

I can't believe it's been 10 years since I graduated from High School. We had a small graduating class- only 37 of us! It was fun to meet up this last Saturday at the Desert Aire Park for a BBQ. It was fun to see one another and meet spouses and see everyone's cute children! We even looked at old pictures from back in the days that Shannon brought. They gave us a good laugh. We all looked so young and baby faced. :) Teresa organized it and so thanks to her for doing this. Only 12 of us came (more should have come!), but it was good to see everyone there.

The 12 of us that came- back row: Blanca (Ruiz), Mandy Hymas, Teresa Perez, Kurt Price, Bryce Christensen, Shannon (Hilliker), Quinanna (Lowell) and Lisa (Dobson); front row: Christina (Wood), Heidi (Sabin- me!), Loni (Summers) and Cindy (Zirker)

I don't know everyone's married names so maiden names are in ( ).

Enjoying our lunch- Kyle, Kurt with his wife Ashley, Bryce with his wife Sharee (due VERY soon)
Catching up with one another Looking and laughing over old pictures
More visiting (Shannon's parents and Loni's inlaws dropped by too)
Christina, her husband and their baby in stroller with Blanca and her husband
Lisa and her 6 day old baby!!! She won the award for the newest baby. She had just gotten home the day before from the hospital so we are glad she stopped by to say hi. She looked great!
Blanca talking with Bryce and Sharee (Mandy and Kurt in background)
Shannon's daughter, Sara, even got a nap in!

Cindy and Loni tied with having the most kids- 4 each. What's funny is that they both have a set of twins!!! Christina and Loni both have boys named Connor (Loni's is spelled with a "K"). Shannon, Lisa and I all have two kids (one boy and one girl). Quinanna and Christina have one kid and Bryce has one on the way. All the kids played well together. They had fun with the bubbles, playing on the toys and they especially liked getting wet from the water spicket.

Teresa and Lisa live in Mattawa. Quinanna lives in Spokane. Blanca is in Seattle, Bryce is in Kenmore, Shannon is in Eatonville (near Puyallup) and I live in Everett. Mandy, Kurt and Christina live in the Tri-Cities. Loni lives in Dayton and Cindy lives in Othello (they just moved there last week from Ellensburg).

It was fun to see everyone there and see you in 10 more years, right?!

A little something

Swim lessons are officially over and Kate did great the last few times. Right after her last swim lesson we headed down to Children's to get Kate evaluated by a pediatric general surgeon. She has an inguinal hernia and needs to get it removed. So we scheduled for surgery next Friday. I know things will go fine and she'll bounce back quickly, but it's crossed my mind "what if something happened to her?!" I would be terribly sad. She's a fun girl. She can't swim for a week after getting the surgery so it's good we waited until after swim lessons.

When we were in Rexburg we were eating dinner at Jeff's "clean and tidy" boy apartment (note the sarcasm there!). Kate noticed an ant on the outside of her cup. She watched it very carefully while holding the cup and moving it to allow the ant to walk around the cup's rim. Well, later we were going on a little walk with the whole family and Sara asked Kate, "who is your favorite Aunt?" (Sara was thinking she would say her or maybe even Marci.) Kate's reply was, "the ant on the cup." We just thought that was so funny!

Rexburg or Bust!

8 adults, 5 kids and 1 trailer loaded with motorcylces and a 4-wheeler headed out this last weekend to Rexburg, Idaho to visit my brother, Jeff, who is attending BYU-Idaho. It was quite the undertaking, but ended up being a lot of fun. We are all still alive and no one got hurt. :)

We made our arrival on Friday night and went to eat at Fong's (most of us were dreaming of eating here for a while because of yummy memories). Well, let's just say the service wasn't anything special and the food wasn't like how we had remembered. A little dissapointing. Once the kids were sound asleep at the hotel the adults (minus my Mom who stayed with the kids) went bowling. It was cosmic bowling and we had a great time.

Saturday morning, we headed out to the sand dunes and my parents rented another 4-wheeler so we were set. It was fabulously fun. :) Sara was my sidekick and we cruised up and down and all around the dunes. It was scary, but fun. We almost died a few times because the sand dunes are like illusions and you don't know when you'll get to the top of the dune and it will drop off like a cliff or you'll be able to keep riding. I included lots of pictures below... After the dunes, we went back to the hotel for some swimming and then got ready. We went to dinner at Craigo's (which was really good pizza, pasta and salad) and after dinner us girls went out for some serious shopping at Walmart (HA!).

That is me at the bottom of the hill. Sara hiked to the top of this sand dune and took pictures.

That is me on the 4-wheeler climbing the sand dune. It was fun!

Me and Sara. It was really windy towards the end of the day and especially up on top of the higher sand dunes.
Kyle on his awesome motorcycle
Us girls- Aubree, Sara, me and Jeni
Carter, Aubree and Kate swimming (we didn't bring swimsuits because we didn't know there was a swimming area so nothing is better than white panties, right?! By the end she was freezing.)
Making lunch at our make-shift camp.

Kevin, Jeni and Paige

Preston hanging out in his car seat. He bonded with his car seat on this trip- not really.
Jeff having fun on his motorcycle.
The family (minus Marci who couldn't make the trip- sniff, sniff- we missed you!) in front of the Rexburg Temple. The picture was taken with the camera on the timer and we thought it turned out pretty good.
The kiddos in front of the Temple. We walked around the temple grounds on Sunday before Church. Kate loves looking at temples (probably because they look like castles) so she was loving it.

Sunday, we attended Jeff's church and met more of his friends. Then we made dinner at his apartment and hung out. My Mom ended up getting sick Sunday morning so she was in bed until 4 pm when she started feeling better. We all felt bad for her and we were glad she didn't stay sick for very long. Yuck. We met Jeff's girlfriend, Sadie, and went to a park to let the kids play. My friend Meegan and her son came with us the park and it was fun to visit with her and see her again- it had been 3 years. We made breakfast for dinner and then we all went back to the hotel to put the kids down for bed and us adults stayed up talking.

Monday, we left early to head back to Washington. I went to school here when it was Ricks College (before they turned it into a 4-year school and renamed it BYU-Idaho) so it was fun to see what has changed and visit old places. It was a great trip and lots of memories were made. Thanks Mom and Dad!!!

Swim Lessons Part II

I posted earlier about Kate's swim lessons and how much she loved them. Well... Last week she would NOT get into the pool. I was so frustrated because she loved them for the first three times, but now she was screaming and wanting me to hold her! I tried bribing her with all sorts of things, but she didn't care. I told her she could go in the water and listen to Chris and have fun (her scary looking teacher as some of you have commented!). She told me "Chris not fun." What?! Then, I asked her if she wanted to go to swim lessons or get a spanking. She chose the spanking. My, oh my. We didn't stay for the rest of the lessons. We went home and I was really annoyed with her.

As some of you know she LOVES the water and is like a fish so I couldn't figure out why she wouldn't even get into the pool. So fast forward to the next swim lesson and I had all sorts of ideas of how I would get her to go in the water for her lesson. I showed her previous videos from her first day of swimming lessons so she could see that she was having fun and I talked up Chris and how fun swimming lessons were. Well, we go to the swim lessons and she is instantly scared and emotional. I try putting her in the water and Chris actually took her, but she started screaming and I went to go sit down. Chris let her go after a minute of trying to distract her and she wanted me to hold her again. Long story short, she eventually put her feet in the water and then class was over. You would think she would be fine with class being over, but no she starts to cry again "I want more". I can't win with her. :) There was "free swim" after her lessons so we stayed and I let her swim for half an hour. And of course, she loved that. The other Mom's were commenting that obviously she loves water!

This morning we had swim lessons and she went in! (Granted, I had her favorite blue gummy sharks in my purse- she only got them if she went in the pool for swim lessons.) She was still wandering off and I kept reminding her to stay with her class, but at least she went in with no tears. I've decided though that she must be scared of Chris because whenever he tries to talk to her she walks away from him. Ha! He did get her to come to him so he could help her learn to float on her back by asking to see her painted fingernails. It was pretty clever of him. So only 3 more lessons left and then we're done with swimming lessons. I hope she enjoys the rest of them. We shall see...

First Real Haircut, Granny Great and Cousin Reed

Aunt Melanie is cutting Prestons hair. He had a little mullet in the back that she trimmed up.

Doing fine for now...

Not fine anymore!

Preston with Grandma Great (aka Arlene)

Preston pulling her hair!!! Ouch! Notice Kate's blue mouth. I think she's had enough candy this last weekend to last her for awhile.

Preston with his cousin Reed

Thanks Grandma Dee Ann

Hear Ye! Hear Ye! All Princes and Princesses...

We went to my parents this weekend for my sister's, Sara, High School graduation. Then the next day we had a birthday party for Kate with all her cousins. It was a Princess Party and fun was had by all! Here are a lot of pictures from that day (you've been warned).

Cinderella cake made by my Mom.

All the guests on the red carpet. :)

Video of a visit from Cinderella!

What puffy sleeves you have?!

Aunt Marci reading "The Princess and the Pea" followed by a game where they had to guess which pillow had the "pea" (a small bouncy ball) under it.

A treasure hunt ending with lots of yummy treasures- ring pops, chocolate gold coins and candy necklaces.
So CUTE! A ballerina outfit made by my Mom and her gift to Kate.

Kate checking out her cake.

Way to blow those candles out!

So cute. (These last three pictures were taken by Aunt Melanie and they turned out so cute. I didn't know she took them so they were a fabulous surprise. Thanks Melanie!)

Gotta love a cute naked bum! :)