Sisterly Love

This is Kate "gently" putting a sticker on Preston's cheek.

Preston still smiling after that sisterly love. :)


What a mischievious smile.

Kate is actually pretty helpful with Preston. She likes to play with him and it's fun to watch. Preston thinks she is funny. Preston is doing well. He hasn't been sick for a while (2 months- that's long for him) which has been SO nice. I think he's had his fair share of RSV/bronchiolitis bouts for a while. He is eating solids really well and is sleeping through the night. We had to have him cry it out a couple times before he would sleep through. A few months ago he was sleeping 11 hours, but then got sick and would wake up and he got back into the habit of waking up again. I figured he was old enough to sleep through the night and it's much nicer. He will sometimes wake up early in the morning, but most times he is doing well. He is rolling, sitting up and getting up on all fours (once in a while). It is weird to think that at his age, 7 months, Kate was already crawling and had a tooth. He gets frustrated when a toy rolls away from him or is out of reach so maybe he'll start to figure out how to scoot to get to it.

Activity Around the World

I am the Primary President in our Ward (it's the program in our church for children 3-11 years old). It's been a fun calling. I work with great people and the kids are fun to be around. We had a Primary activity this last Saturday and wanted to center it around missionary work. I had heard of other wards taking an "airplane ride" around the world to various countries and learning about being missionaries. So my counselors and I had fun brainstorming ideas and came up with a fun activity (or so we thought!). We had a good turn-out (for our ward) and I think the kids had fun.

First, we had the kids enter the MTC. We talked about being "member missionaries" and then they each got a missionary tag. (below)

We had them go through airport security (I waved two light savers around the kids to "check" them!). If they had metal it beeped. :) We also checked their belongings under our (cardboard) x-ray machine. Then, they went to customs and recieved a passport so they could get it stamped at each country we visited.

Then, we boarded our "plane". We had several kids really concerned about getting on a real plane! It was cute. We reassured them it was for pretend. Our budget isn't that good! One of my counselors works for an airline so she was our stewardess. She did great. She did the whole speal and then they watched a church video on missionary work while they ate M&M's (member missionary). For each country, we had men from our Ward who served in that mission to talk about their country and then serve a treat from that country. We made stops at Chicago and tasted cheese pizza then, Venezuela and tasted mango, some sort of juice drink and fried bananas. Our next stop was in Germany where we had nutella and then to Japan where we had crushed ice, sweet beans and this milky syrup. (Not too sure what is was called.) We went back to the MTC where the Sister Missionaries bore their testimonies and that was it. We had other activities planned for the end like relay games, but flying around the world took longer than we thought. :)

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!