What We Are Doing

Kate will be going into 1st grade next week! She is excited for two recesses and being able to eat in the cafeteria. The joys of all day school. :) She is kind of nervous about her teacher and classroom since it will be all new. I think she will do just fine. It's all new to me too since I don't know any teachers at the school. She did swim lessons this summer and will probably do a ballet class again this year. She really wants a bigger bike, likes watching you tube videos (we have to monitor those!), likes to play with friends, play with barbies, color and dress her dolls. She went and stayed with my parent's for a week while I was at Girl's Camp and she's still talking about it. She loves her cousins (they squeal when they see each other) and loves to swim. She's emotional (uggh!) and very persistent (not like me ;)).

Preston will be starting his second year of preschool. He will be at a new school this year. He went to a different school last year, another school for summer preschool and now a new one! Three schools in a year! Yikes! He will be with his teacher from summer school. She wanted him in her class. She's teaching this class where there are 4 kids with Austism, 4 kids with developmental delay (Preston will be one of those) and then 4 typical kids. We felt good about it and I have a friend from my ward that her son was in a class like that and she was very happy with it. His class last year had 12 kids with differing levels of delays. I think this new class will be great. We took him to his eye appt and was told to have him wear his glasses more (he got them several months ago and I haven't been having him wear them) and to patch his good eye more consistently so his bad eye will get strengthened. I guess your eyes develop until age 8 and then they are done. So to get the best vision from his bad eye we need to make him use it more. We patch every other day for 4 hours. He doesn't like it, but is good about leaving it on until we tell him he can take it off and boy is he ever excited to take it off! Lindsey is the one that will rip off his glasses and/or patch so we have to keep her away from him. He loves trains, Thomas TV shows, playing with cars from the Cars movie, doing puzzles and playing on the iPad. He will ride the neighbors trikes, but not his own. He still has his quirks and gets frustrated with transitioning to different things and sharing toys/taking turns, but he's improving. Too bad you can't snap your fingers and have everything be fixed. ;)

Lindsey is climbing everything. She is very entertaining to watch. She likes to plop herself down on your face, arm, leg, stomach...it doesn't matter to her. When Kate dances, Lindsey joins in and gets herself dizzy. Even her mini tantrums are funny. Kate thinks she is the funniest baby we have ever had! haha! (I tell Kate that she was a funny baby too!) She waves hi/bye, says mama and dada and then pretend talks like she knows what she is saying. She screams when you take something away from her that she wants and she teases Preston by taking his trains from him. She runs away fast! She really is fun to have around. It's amazing how different she is than Preston when he was a baby. Development does wonders! She's still taking 2 naps, but not sure how much longer that will last. She's an early riser, up at 6:30 am or earlier! not good! She's a pretty good eater and is hanging onto a few chubby rolls. Here eyes are definitely brown (all the other cousins and my kids have blue so she's the first) and her hair is getting longer. Fun times!

I went Camping!

My family took me camping for my very first time! We went to Ensign Ranch and camped with Melanie & Milo and their kids along with Grandma Dee Ann. I loved getting dirty. I liked eating rocks, sticks and anything else I found on the ground. Nathan, Kathryn and Dane entertained me a lot and took me on little nature walks.

Here I am sitting in a camp chair like a big girl.

I slept in the smaller tent. I was bundled up in 2 layers of pajamas because it got so cold at night. My family and Grandma Dee Ann slept in the bigger tent. I slept bad the first night and really good the second night.

Uncle Milo and my Dad had to move this heavy picnic table over to our camp area so we could have a extra one. A man from Ensign Ranch came around in the morning to make sure no one was stealing picnic tables from other campsites. He used a loader to move them around because they are so heavy. You wouldn't want to get caught stealng one! haha! This one was a freebie so we got it.

Me with Preston and Kate eating Pirate's Booty

The cousins found a creek nearby and instantly made it their fort and secret play area. Kate even swam in the cold water! Reed and Preston threw rocks and sticks in the water.

Roasting marshmallows and making S'mores. We were lucky to be able to have a fire. There was a burn ban in the county, but the place we stay at is pre approved to have contained cooking fires. We sure needed the fires for the cold nights. Grandma Dee Ann from Las Vegas was freezing! :)

The older kids rode horses. They loved it.

We went for a canoe ride. It didn't last long though. My Mom and Dad were not doing good at working together to steer the canoe (!), I was about to go overboard because I was moving around so much, Kate was whining that she was done and Preston was playing in the water. It was a short ride.

The slip n' slide was the favorite. It was open all day long so we spent several hours there. I went down with my Mom and kind of liked it. I was a little scared at first, but was fine. It was really hot so it was nice to cool off.

L-R: Reed, Dane, Kathryn, Kate, Nathan and Preston

The die hard slip n' sliders!

It was fun to camp with my family. I will have to tell them to take me again!

Hanging with Grandma Dee Ann!

Dee Ann came up for her annual month long visit to Washington and split her time with Melanie and with us. She came over for a weekend before Girl's Camp and then came back over after Girl's camp. We took her to Alki Beach in West Seattle because she's never been there. It was overcast and not very nice, but then right before we were leaving it cleared up and was a nice day. We also went to the zoo, Children's Museum, Ivar's Restaurant (creamy delicious clam chowder!), Kyle and I went on a couple dates, went school shopping and a trip to the Temple.

Kate was building some serious sand castles

We were trying to figure out what to do with the kids and we were thinking of doing Ride the Ducks in Seattle, but then online I found out about this summer fair at Remlinger Farms in Carnation so we ventured there. It was a lot of fun for the kids. We'll definitely be going back. We thought we would spend 2 hrs there and we were there for over 4! haha. They have some fair rides, animals, train rides, pony rides and more for the kids and you pay like $10 a kid and they can do everything over and over. Cheap!

Kate loved the pony rides

Preston was fine until the pony moved, then he was done!

We got on the train and he was MUCH happier!

Watch out! Kate drove Grandma around in the car. Preston and Lindsey drove me and Kyle.

Flying Pumpkins

They had this huge area for a hay jump. The kids loved it and unfortunately brought home lots of the straw!

Barrel ride (like the tea cup ride), I got ours spinning and almost made me sick!

The little roller coaster. Preston is sitting next to me, you can barely see him, he didn't want to go on it, but at the end I made him go with me. He was fine once he got on and was raising his hands and screaming along with the other kids. It was funny! That's why I'm laughing so hard. Kate squeezed in with the 2 girls in the last car.

Pedal bikes on a course

The sign says it all!

Girl's Camp 2011

I was a Camp Mom this year for our ward. It was my first time back to Ensign and my first time to girl's camp since graduating from High School! Long time! It was a lot of fun and a lot of work! When you are a teenager you just bring your stuff to camp and don't worry about anything else. Now I know what goes behind the scenes. A lot of prep and work! Our whole YW presidency came and it was so much fun to be up there all together. We each had a different assignment and mine was over the food. We had frito banditos, spaghetti with cesear salad, hawaiian haystacks, yogurt parfaits, french toast, eggs with hashbrowns, bacon and croissants. It turned out really good. My Mom watched the kids while I was at camp (THANKS SO MUCH!!!) and so she met me up at Ensign to pick up my kids. Our camp was from Tuesday through Saturday and we stayed in Teepees.

These are the Valuables aka the oldest girls at camp. They got to stay with the Stake people and did the fun stuff and were in charge. They all were dressed in a value color the whole week of camp so it was fun to see what outfits they came up with. The girl in yellow gave Preston her bumblebee head band with a wand and he was lovin' life. He kept saying, "I a bumblebee!" over and over. The girls all were laughing and loved him.

Our theme was Flourish so each day we focused on a different topic: Plant, Nourish, Grow and Bloom. They had us plant seeds in the planters up front and each morning the flowers grew until the last day and they were like this...big beautiful flourishing flowers.

Our YW presidency: Danielle Apken- president, Christina Miller- 1st counselor, Erin Lolohea- secretary and me- 2nd counselor. We get along really well so of course we had fun. ;) We were by far the most involved leaders. The girls from other wards wanted to be in our ward because they thought we were so fun!

I had to post this picture because it makes me laugh. Erin was sitting next to me in the amphitheater and she put her hand on my leg. She left it there and I HAD NO IDEA! Finally, after several minutes Christina and Danielle were laughing and then I noticed her hand. Hahaha! I guess I'm used to being touched my kids all day and didn't notice! Erin did it a few more times and I still didn't notice right away. Too funny.

Our Ward sign that Christina made. I noticed the "A" in "Park" is missing. She did a beautiful job making it and even got this cool faux wood kit to make the cardboard look like wood grain! Amazing! She's crafty like that.

The girls making breakfast one morning. The girls were great and chipped in and helped all the time.

Yummy!

Some of the girls in the amphitheater. The girls liked destiny hour (spiritual talks), solo time (time to be alone and read scriptures, we were given packets with talks and scriptures to read), golden hour (big activities and/or presentations or videos on the theme), singing in the trees and of course the crafts and water activities. I got to go on a horse trail ride with the 3rd years and that was fun. I attempted to climb the rock wall, went on the slip n' slide, canoed, went on the rope swing in the lake and the rope swing on dry land. I also did the polar dip at 6am in the river the last morning. Brrrrrr!

We ate all those cheese balls gone! There were A LOT! The valuables had the same container so we were trying to eat our bucket before the did. They won.

We had 10 girls come to camp this year. They were L-R: Dominique (friend), Mari Perez, Danielle, Rebecca Croft, Christina, Laylani (friend), me, Paula Butlay, Emma Croft, Jacque Herrmann, Karen Thorp, Jasmine, Erin and Sandra Butlay.

For an activity with our Bishop and his wife we had to make this quilt to sit on for dinner. They gave us random fabric and duct tape to put it together with some rules. We did pea pods, sweet pea flowers and a block "b" and "p" for our ward Beverly Park. We were pretty proud of it. All the white squares are pictures that the girl's drew.

As we were cleaning up and getting ready to go home, Erin moved her air mattress and calmly said, "there is a snake under my mattress." We rushed over to see and were grossed out that there was a snake sleeping under her! eeks! Good thing it was only a gardner snake. One of the girls picked it up and named it Beverly and showed it around. Gross. We had a great time, but were all glad to go home to shower and sleep!

Happy First Birthday Lindsey!!!

Lindsey Joy is ONE!!!

Her birthday was Thursday August 4th and we had fun celebrating with her.

She had her favorite breakfast: scrambled eggs, hashbrowns, toast and milk. And don't you love her scraped nose? She fell down the front steps and face planted on the cement. I saw it all and felt horrible. This happened Monday and her birthday was Thursday so I was sad she would have a scraped up nose for her birthday pictures! Poor girl. And no more bottles!!! With me going to girl's camp and the next weekend camping I had this week to get her off the bottle and she's done great. She babbles, walks, gets into the garbage and everything else, likes her brother and sister, very social, likes to be held, likes to take Preston's trains to tease him, takes 2 naps, sleeps through the night, likes to swing, keeps losing weight because she is so active, likes to dance, likes to clap and likes to play peek-a-boo and patty cake.

We went to the zoo with Grandma Dee Ann. She is up visiting for a few weeks in the summer and came over from Melanie's to spend the weekend with us.

Showing me her maracas that she loved to shake. This was inside the play area at the zoo.

Kate's Giant Cupcake!!! I had NO idea what kind of cake I was going to do, but once a friend of mine said she had a mold for this giant cupcake I decided to go with it. But then I didn't know how I was going to frost it. I was going to pipe the frosting on and then put sprinkles, but then as I as starting frosting it, I remembered seeing this rosette cake before on a blog and so I did a bunch of rosettes all around the top. Voila! I was happy with how it turned out.

We had Italian Chicken over penne pasta and broccoli for dinner. Lindsey's a good eater and usually tries most foods.

Lindsey was opening her presents with the help of Kate and Preston.

She decided climbing on them was more fun.

So we all helped her and she got some fun stuff!

Awww...love that double chin profile.

Not sure about the candle, but she tried blowing it out. It was funny.

Yummmm

"I'm messy enough! Time for a bath!"

What a fun day. I can't believe it was a year ago that I was overdue and anxiously waiting to get called into the hospital, waiting for a room to open up, to get induced. Now we have a fun little girl in our family. :)