Dr. Seuss had a birthday

...And Finley and Isaac both celebrated at school with their own hats.

I love how Isaac's says "Isaac in the Hat," and I love how Finley painted her hat so cute. Isaac is also wearing the shirt he won at school for filling out his exercise log and getting the most hours in his class. Way to go!

Vampire Baby

Keeley's top teeth came in in the wrong order, and it was pretty cute! She looked like a little vampire baby.

It was really difficult to get a good picture of them, but I tried.

Her middle teeth poked through not long ago and within a week they were all the way in, so it is farewell to our vampire baby.

First Babysitter

A couple of weeks ago, I had to go to the dentist and needed someone to watch Keeley. My friend Deseret said she would do it, and I realized that it was KeeKee's first time being watched by someone other than me, Keith, or Lexi. I was a little nervous about how she would do--I worried that she would scream the entire time I was gone.

Fortunately, she had a fun time playing with Max. He was so cute with her!

I was pleasantly surprised to find out that she did so well while I was gone. Here she is when I went to go get her--perfectly content with Deseret. I expected her to burst into tears and come running at me when I came in the door, but she was quite happy. Yay for nice friends and happy babies.

Chillin' at the Playground

Sareny has lunch right when I drop Isaac off for afternoon kindergarten, so I frequently stop in and see her in the lunchroom and playground. She likes to play teams foursquare.

It was a really cold day and she left her jacket in the classroom. I was nice and let her wear mine, but then I was freezing!

It has been fun stopping in at the school more frequently this year--she loves having us visit and her friends all know us and come over to talk to us as well.

Top Banana

IJ Isaac was selected as the top banana for his class a couple of weeks ago; he was the second one from his class to be picked. We were supposed to make a poster and send it in for him to show the class. We were also supposed to write a letter to the class that said how much we loved him, and the letter could be a story about him, or whatever we wanted. Isaac said we were supposed to write a story that said how we had waited and then our first little baby girl came...I'm pretty sure that is what the first girl's letter said. Anyway, Isaac asked me to write a story, so I sent in a story about Sarenyanna, IJ, and Flynney. 

Here is a copy of the letter I wrote for his class:

Dear Ms. Isaacson’s Class,

In our family, we have three little girls but Isaac is our only boy, so I get to say that Isaac is my favorite boy in the whole world. Isaac is my kind, sweet boy and he is always making us laugh. Several years ago when we were spending the night at his grandma’s house, I had put him to bed downstairs, but he just wouldn’t settle down and go to sleep. The adults were upstairs and we heard his little feet pitter patter over to the bottom of the stairs, and then he called up, "I down here! Not hweeping!" (sleeping)

Isaac likes to play soccer, basketball, wii and computer. Recently, he saved up his money and bought Mario Party 9 for the wii. He also likes to ride his scooter, play at the park, help with his baby sister, and help make dinner. Isaac loves books and stories of all kinds, but he especially loves to hear stories about a little boy named IJ who has sisters named SarenyAnna and Flynney, and he asked me to write a story about IJ to share with the class.

****************

One day, IJ’s mother took him and his sisters to the zoo. After a long day spent looking at his favorite animals, the snakes, giraffes and panda bears, they headed over to the children’s play area where he loved to play on the giant, human-sized spider web. This was IJ’s favorite part of the zoo—climbing around with his sisters and pretending to be spiders.

While IJ was busy dangling upside down from the web, he felt a weird shaking feeling kind of like an earthquake. He looked at SarenyAnna and Flynney, and he could tell that they felt it too. Their mother, however, was listening to music on IJ’s ipod and didn’t seem to notice anything unusual, nor did she hear SarenyAnna shout, "Look! There’s a giant hole in the ground!" Sure enough, a huge hole had appeared right by the web. IJ jumped down to investigate.

He peered into the hole, which was bigger across than he was, but didn’t see anything unusual. He turned around to face his sisters. "I don’t see anything. That weird shaking must have just opened up a hole in the ground." IJ looked at his sisters, who were staring at him with big eyes and pale faces. "What is it?" he asked them. SarenyAnna just raised a shaking finger and pointed at something right behind IJ, her mouth opening and closing, but no sound coming out. Then suddenly, with a sick feeling in his stomach, IJ guessed what was lurking right behind him. When he felt an enormous furry spider leg tickle the side of his neck and come to a rest on his shoulder, his fear was confirmed.

IJ and SarenyAnna both ran to the other side of the web and were about to run clear out to the parking lot, but then his sister grabbed his arm. "Wait! We forgot Flynney!" Sure enough, their baby sister was still standing several feet from the spider’s giant legs, it’s body so big that the spider’s golfball sized eyes and saber-like pincers towered over her. Without thinking, IJ ran back and stood between the spider and his sister. He yelled at the spider to go home, but it reared up its legs and charged him instead. It was a good thing IJ had taken karate lessons, because he delivered a powerful roundhouse kick to the spider’s face that sent it flying clear over the web. It spun comically through the air and landed right on the edge of it’s hole, where it swirled around and around a few times, legs flailing in the air, before being sucked down deep into the hole. The ground gave a little tremble, and the hole filled in on itself once more. Flynney cheered, "You made a basket!"

The kids ran back to their mother, who saw their dirty, disheveled appearances and said, "Well, it looks like you guys played pretty hard today! Let’s go home and get you dirty kids in the shower!"

"But mom! There was a giant spider!" IJ told his mom excitedly. "Yeah, it came up out of the ground and was even bigger than an elephant!" Flynney added. "But don’t worry," put in SarenyAnna, "IJ karate chopped it and sent it flying through the air!"

"Wow," their mom smiled knowingly, "Sounds like I missed a lot of excitement! Well, I think all that bravery deserves a reward. I guess we’ll stop for IJ’s favorite, Panda Express, on the way home."

"Hurray!" all of the children shouted, and they ran to the van while IJ declared that he wanted some orange chicken, sweet fire chicken, and noodles.

*********************

From this story, I think you can tell that Isaac likes panda bears, snakes, and giraffes, his ipod touch, karate, basketball, and Panda Express. Isaac also loves going to school each day to learn and see his friends.

I am so glad that Isaac is a part of our family!

From:

Isaac’s mom

I know you'll have a hard time believing this...

...this cute little girl could ever cause any problems. I kind of have a hard time believing it too when I look at that sweet little face.

These days, if I sit down at the computer desk for a moment, I have a little helper who hurries right over. That doesn't sound too terrible until you consider that she is doing one of two things: Option one is she is either trying to climb up on my lap to help me type and wallow around trying to grab everything on the computer desk, also making me type one handed. Option two is she is scratching at the holes in the wall that are lurking just beneath the desk. The holes are left behind from the previous owners and I had completely forgotten they were there until I heard some scrabbling under the desk, and when Keeley had something in her mouth,  it turned out to be drywall. Not ideal situations either one.

It was a sad day around here when she discovered that she no longer needed to lunge for whatever cupboard someone was looking in--she could open whatever cupboard she wanted all on her own. I was getting very frustrated putting the contents of every cupboard away multiple times a day. One day she dumped an entire bag of Rice Krispies all over the floor while I did the dishes.

Fortunately, I felt the cereal was no big loss, since it had been banging around in there for a while and nobody was eating it. But the mess! It is just no fun to have somebody running around making messes faster than you can clean them up. We promptly went out and bought some cupboard locks.

There are a few cupboards that can't lock, but we have seven side-by-side lower cabinets that she can no longer get into. And yeah, I did say seven. That is a lot, hence you can imagine just how big of a mess she was able to make. It's too bad there isn't a magic button solution to all of life's problems. Like the universal truth that if it is time to make dinner or you have some other deadline, there is going to be a little girl screaming and pulling on your leg, preventing you from moving. Every time.

It's Secret

This is Isaac's friend named Secret. Isaac met him at the park almost three years ago right after we had moved here, and instantly decided they were friends. We frequently would see him and his family at the park, and then Secret's dad was Isaac's soccer coach two years ago. They've gone to each other's birthday parties and are always thrilled when we run into each other at the park, which seems to be the place we usually see them. We set up a play date one day before school, and the boys played Mario Party 9 and outside on the swingset. They had such a fun time--we'll have to do it again soon!

Look Who's Walking!

Keeley decided really early that she was a biggie girl and wanted to walk. She started taking steps when she was six or seven months old, and by nine months she could walk clear across the house, stop, and change directions.

Now at ten months, she is really steady and has finally figured out she doesn't need to be holding on to something to stand up. These days she rarely crawls.

This was her yesterday, walking to her big sister. It's kind of fun to watch her learning and growing so fast, but kind of sad at the same time.

Another thing Keeley has started doing is giving kisses if you ask, which I love. She also likes to blow raspberries with her lips all the time, and this morning she fell on Finley's leg and immediately blew on her leg. We have all noticed that Finley likes to roll KeeKee onto her back and blow and blow on her tummy. We've also noticed that Keeley must like it, because she will lay there and let Finley do it for quite a while.
Right now as I type this, she is squirming around on my lap and is quite excited by the pictures of herself. She insists on climbing onto the desk and grabbing at that cute grinning baby above. And she wants to help me out by pounding on the keyboard as well. So cute!

I've been working on the swingset, all the livelong day...

Keith has been building a swingset in our backyard for a couple of months now, and the project is finally nearing completion. A friend from work lent him a jackhammer, and that has been very helpful digging out trenches and the area for the sandbox. Plus, there's just something awesome about using a jackhammer that looks tough and cool.

 

One of the best features of the swingset is the skateboard swing. Kids and adults alike think it is pretty cool. We saw the idea online, and Keith ordered a skateboard base and built one for us.

This swingset has a station for each of the kids to use simultaneously.

Sareny is the undisputed champion of the skateboard swing. Seriously, I have no idea how she gets it that high.

Keeley loves the baby swing. Plus she has vampire teeth. Strangely, her upper outer teeth grew in before her middle teeth--silly and cute.

Finley has lots of fun on the swings.

She looks cute in both these pictures and I couldn't decide which one I liked better, so I went with both.

Here is the clubhouse, slide and fireman's pole. This was before the roof had been put on.

Monkey bars.

All three kids on the skateboard swing.

So glad we finally have something in our backyard for them! The best part about this swingset--it's sturdy enough that adults can play too.

Valentine's Day

Isaac came home from school on Valentine's day wearing this cute little hat he made in fun centers. He did a great job on it and was so cute.

 Finley wanted to try it on.

 Finley's preschool class had a party, and Finley got this cute heart eye mask thing.

 She looked so cute running around in it!

For dinner on Valentine's, we had pink or red food, and it was pretty yummy. On the menu was pink breadsticks, strawberries and pink fruit dip, and spaghetti with a yummy meat sauce.

When I went to take a picture of the breadsticks, Isaac and Finley thought it would be cool to have their hands in the picture, grabbing a breadstick. Pretty cute and funny--it just kind of makes me giggle.



We finished the meal off with some delicious vanilla flavored pink cupcakes, and ice cream that I picked out for it's flavor, not it's color, so rather than pink it was peanut butter. Yum!

The kids all got some candy and a giftcard to their favorite--QT. Keith got a giftcard to Lowe's, which he of course promptly spent on supplies for the swingset, and I got a couple rolls of vinyl for my Silhouette. I think we were all pretty thrilled!

 What sweet, adorable kids. Have I mentioned that I love them so?