Kate turns 8 really soon! She is so excited for her birthday and her baptism. We can't wait. She get's baptized on June 1st and we did a little photo shoot last Sunday. 

Lindsey wanted a photo shoot too. She was too fast for me with her poses so I had to be quick.

Mother's Day Weekend

We went to my parent's house for Mother's Day weekend because we got to talk to Jared from Brazil on Sunday!!! We went to my cousin Jessica's wedding reception on Friday night (my Mom made 400 cupcakes for it) then we got a babysitter and my Mom, Dad, Marci, Kyle and I all went to Ellensburg to see Iron Man 3 (which was awesome!). We got to swim because it was 91 degrees on Saturday. Kyle got to work on the farm and help my Dad cut hay. Marci, my Dad and I ran in a 5K to benefit Diabetes on Saturday morning. Dee Ann, Melanie and her kids came to my parent's for a BBQ on Saturday afternoon to celebrate Kyle's birthday. It was a fun weekend.

Melanie's kids loved the pool and Kate loved swimming with her cousins. They were like fish and stayed in all afternoon.

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

Preston jumping in. Reed is behind him and was making muscle poses before jumping in. haha!

Kate chasing Owen on the trampoline

Kyle took the kids on motorcycle rides and tractor rides.

Happy Mother's Day!!!

I love my kids. I'm lucky to be their Mom. :)

My Mom. 

I'm lucky she's my Mom! She has done a lot for me and I'm grateful for her example of how to be a good Mom. She always sacrifices so much for all of us. She's amazing.

Lindsey and Hailey deep in conversation. I thought this picture was cute of these two little girls.

Here we were all waiting for Jared's call to come through on Skype. He was going to call around 12:00 pm. We were SO excited and nervous hoping it would work! We were chatting when my Grandma Helen Gene said, "Oh it says Jared is calling now." We were busy talking and not paying attention! Good thing my Grandma was there to tell us!

Jared!!! Elder Sabin!!! 

He could hear us, but we couldn't hear him so we were fake doing sign language and he would write on a piece of paper because we were trying to troubleshoot the problem. Well, it turned out that his computer didn't have a microphone. So we ended up calling him back after his companion was done talking to his family and then Skyped at the same time. 

We are hovered around the computer showing him babies, kids and Marci is holding the iPad which Jeff was on through Skype since he couldn't be there. It was awesome having everyone there. Jared was making silly faces and the kids (well all of us) were dying laughing. It was pretty funny. The kids miss having him around like we all do.

Kevin teasing Jared by eating a cookie and drinking a tall glass of cold milk. He misses the cookies and milk most of all. They don't have cold milk down in Brazil like we do here. And Jared was a boy who loved his milk. :)

We ended up eating lunch and then calling him back around 1:30 pm. It's amazing that we can see him and talk to him when we are so far apart. Love it!

I liked this picture of my Dad while he was talking to Jared. We were all like this. Smiling and laughing while talking to him. It was fun to joke around with him, ask questions and get to know more about his life down there. He's in the Joao Pessoa mission, but if he gets transferred within the next several weeks to the Natal area then he'll switch missions and be in the Natal mission (they just created a new mission down there). He's working hard and has had several baptisms already. He said the members there are great and the ward he is in now is awesome. He eats rice and beans a lot. He doesn't have a working fridge right now so he was telling us how he only eats lunch and we were telling him how he needs to eat breakfast and dinner. We are all his little mother's. haha! We were all bawling by the time we had to say good bye. It was hard to hang up with him. He looked awesome and sounded so good. He's such a good kid!

Someone took this picture on my Mom's camera and it was so cute with most of the kids together. 

 My Mom with most of her grand kids. We were missing Reagan and Baylor. Pretty cute kids I would say!

Happy Anniversary and Birthday!

We celebrated our 13th Wedding Anniversary on May 4th. It was the most random day ever. We ended up doing a last minute yard sale because others in our development were doing it. I had a baby swing and other things that I wanted to get rid of. I went through our things the night before and priced them. Then at 8 am we put our stuff out and waited. And waited...for people! I guess one of the neighbor's was supposed to put signs out and didn't. Not too many people came through. We sold $19 worth of stuff. Not worth it to me. The kids played outside while I was in and out of the house. Kyle put together our new child carrier for my bike (for Lindsey to sit in) and our 5 bike hitch rack. I didn't sell the swing. My neighbor who is pregnant and due in June almost bought it. This was my first yard sale. I think it would have been better if more advertising was done. There were 7 or more neighbors that participated. 

After our successful yard sale (haha), we ate lunch then loaded up the bikes and trailer. We went to a trail close by at McCollum Park because we needed to get back for afternoon naps. We went on our bike ride which was awesome. Preston doesn't ride a bike so we needed more room to haul everyone so now Lindsey rides on the back of my bike. It worked great. The weather was amazing and the trail was pretty easy. We want to go to other trails when we have more time to ride now that we can haul our bikes. We came home, took showers, then Preston, Kate and I went to a birthday party while Kyle stayed home with Chelsea and Lindsey who were napping. We stayed at the birthday party for an hour then left to go to a baptism for Kate's friend in our ward. Then, we came home after the baptism because a babysitter was coming so Kyle and I could go out for our date. We went to Ivar's Landing in Mukilteo. I had reserved a table online and asked for a window seat (even though they say not to because it's first come first serve). Well, I checked us in and they told me they had a window seat for us. Sweet! When we sit down there is a personalized hand written card to us for our anniversary! Very thoughtful. Big points for that restaurant. We enjoyed our clam chowder and halibut fish and chips. Mmmm, delectable! After dinner, we walked along the pier and joked that we should go park the car and...take a nap! haha! We are lame. We ended up going to Nordstrom Rack and shopped. It was fun to spend time together.

Our yard sale all ready to go! 

This is how the inside of my office looked. Is having a yard sale worth it? I'm not so sure! I used the table that normally goes in here and holds a bunch of stuff to use outside so it's a mess.

Kyle had a birthday last week. He is 35!!! He wanted a low key birthday. He wanted french bread pizza for dinner and four layer pudding dessert for his "cake". 

I gave Chelsea some to try out. She was hesitant at first, but dug in and loved it. 

Messy cute face! I love her!

Happenings

It was a beautiful day on Sunday a couple weeks ago (back in April, I've been horrible about blogging) and the kids went outside in our tiny backyard to spend some time reading. I thought this picture of Kate reading with Lindsey was cute. We don't let the kids go play out in the front where the play area is on Sunday because we try to make the Sabbath day a family day. If we were at my parent's house then we let them go outside, but since we live in a neighborhood it's hard to not let Sunday be just like every other day where they play with their friends. So to avoid that we had to just say no playing outside on Sunday. The kids are pretty good about it. We go for drives, go on walks, visit family or friends or chill at home. Then I attempted to get a picture of the kids and that was pretty unsuccessful. ha!

Chelsea likes to pull the baskets out and dump everything out. It's pretty cute. 

Kate had crazy hair or hat day a few weeks ago. She went with the crazy hair look. She even went with me to Walmart with this hairdo later that night. She was concerned that people would laugh at her funny hair. Good thing it's just Walmart and she'd fit in.

The kids love it when Kyle wrestles with them or throws them on the couches. Here they were all getting on top of him and giggling. I was in the other room and had to hurry and get a picture. 

Maddie, our niece on Kyle's side, stopped by for a visit on her way to watch a friends baseball game in Everett. She's going to college in Utah and plays soccer for UVU. She played with the kids and they loved having her around. Preston showed her how he knows where all the states go in the U.S. In this game called "Stack the States" on the iPad you have to put all the states where they go and he can do it. He's really good at puzzles so he just memorized where they go and can do it. He knows most of the names too. When we were eating dinner with Maddie, we had chili over chips, Preston bit off part of a chip then said, "this is the shape of Idaho!" It was hilarious. And it did look like Idaho!

And so it begins! The stage of getting into all my cupboards and drawers. I've already put in a request for kid locks on the cupboards. She keeps getting into the one under the sink and that's where all my cleaning stuff is. Not good. She has fun doing it though.

Service Project

Thanks for your comments. :) If I even mention to Kate about moving she gets sad and says she doesn't want to move. She was saying that her and Preston would have to ride the bus to get to school if we moved and I was like no you'd go to a different school. That didn't go over well with her. haha!

As for her school, Odyssey Elementary, our ward had a service project there last Saturday. They cleared blackberry bushes and put down bark on this trail in a wooded area. It's a nature walk/trail for the kids to play in, but it was overgrown and needed lots of work. It was raining that day so instead of us all going down there I stayed home with the younger kids while Chelsea napped and I cleaned the house (bathrooms, swept/mopped, dusted and folded laundry). I didn't think Preston and Lindsey would be much help anyway. The principal, Ms. Boze, was there at the service project and Kate informed me yesterday that she, and the other kids that were there, are in the school newsletter now. She was all excited. Ms. Boze is awesome and reminds me of my awesome high school principal Mr. Cordell. She goes out of her way to get to know all the kids' names and is very involved in the school. She is spoken very highly of by all the teachers. I'm thankful for good school leaders and teachers. Kate found out about the service project the Sunday prior and immediately went to school on Monday and asked Ms. Boze if she was going to be there. haha! She said she was. I just think it's funny how Kate is so social and not afraid to go ask the principal about stuff. Ms. Boze was impressed with all the work they got done and fed them pizza afterwards. Kate has been showing the trail to all her friends at school and led her class through it today.

We went to the Mukilteo Beach last Saturday after the kids' afternoon naps and the service project. We first got Jamba Juice to go along with the kettle corn I made (yummy recipe shared by Jeni. We use a stir crazy popcorn popper, add 2/3 cup mushroom popcorn (any variety will do, but that's my fave), 1/2 c vegetable oil and 1/2 c sugar. Let it pop away and then salt if wanted. Voila you have yummy kettle corn!). We drove around then went to the beach and got out. It started raining and was windy and cold. After 2 minutes of swinging and being there we got back in the car and went home. Gotta love the lovely spring weather we have on the west side.

Still Here

More families and friends are moving out of our ward. It's hard to still be here after so many people have come and gone. Our ward consists of a lot of young couples and families and a lot of older couples/families/people. There's not a lot of youth so usually people move in then move out after a short while. We've been in the ward for 8 years now. That's a long time for this ward. It's been a good ward for us. I'm just itching to move because everyone else is! Well, and plus I want a bigger house really bad. We are busting out of this 3 bedroom townhouse of ours. But with the lovely housing market that tanked after we bought this house we are kind of stuck right now. It gets depressing when I think about it too much. I have to try to focus on the positives like: I have less house to clean (big positive), I love the kids' schools (a lot), we have friends here (well the one's that aren't leaving), we are close to everything (freeways, shopping, schools, parks, beaches), our mortgage is fairly cheap (compared to buying a bigger house- homes here are SO expensive, ugh), our neighborhood has a nice park for the kids to play at (even though there are some annoying neighbors) and the kids are happy. Kyle and I don't even like change or handle it all that well so I don't know why I even want a major change. {sigh} I keep telling myself, "the grass isn't always greener on the other side." Or is it? Who knows. Time will tell what will happen.