My birthday

My birthday was on a Sunday this year, and Keith made me a yummy snickerdoodle cake and Lexi and Scott came over to help celebrate.

  Cute little Keeley wanted to use a fork to eat her cake like everybody else.

 She is such a silly poser!

Keith and I had received letters that we needed to renew our driver's licenses and get a new picture taken, so me and Keeley spent the 31st of July at the MVD. Yeah, we put it off until the very last day of the month. Keith still hasn't done it yet.

Keeley just looked so cute that day! I remember she was pretty squirmy and climbing around, and when she got really restless, I had to push her in the stroller around and around the perimeter of the room. However, I can't even imagine taking her there now--she is so much busier an crazier! Love this cute girl!

Stake Acheivement Day

We had originally planned on staying overnight at Grammy Jo's house on our way home from Utah, even though they wouldn't be there. Halfway through our trip, however, Sareny mentioned how excited she was for the stake acheivement day activity and asked when it was...that's when we realized it was in the morning of the day we planned to get home from our trip--which meant we would miss it. So instead of sleeping at Grammy's, we drove all night and got home in time for the special mother and daughter achievement day.

It was such a fun time! We made hair accessories, learned a new type of braid, and tied quilts together. So glad we got to have this special time together.

A date with my boy

I've mentioned before that we take turns going on dates with our children. Keith took Finley to see Epic, and the next day it was my turn to take Isaac. We had so much fun! I really like having special time with each of our kids.

Me and my Sareny Agnes

 I wanted some pictures with my oldest baby girl, of course, so we took a few.

 She is growing into such a sweet, kind, beautiful young lady.

 I think the next picture might be my favorite one.

 What can I say? Two teen mods. ;)

I like having these special photos with each kid so much, I might try to do this annually or something. Although I will probably actually style my hair next time.

 

The kids all gave me a kiss.

 

 I think we got some really precious photos.

 I love my little Sareny girl.

My Finney Lynney Girl

After taking some pictures of me and Isaac for school, I realized that I don't have enough pictures of me with my children. A big reason is that I don't love the way I look, but in twenty years or forty years, I think these pictures will be precious. Think how much you would value similar photos with your own mom.

My Finley Girl! She is sometimes a little stinker--in fact she was kind of being one during this photo shoot, but we persevered and got some that were pretty cute.

 I love my little girl--attitude and all.

 I think we may look the most alike out of all the kids.

 She's the only kid that has an obvious dimple--and she gets that from her daddy.

 I love my little girl so!

funny kids

The kids are always saying some pretty silly or strange things--here are a few of them.

Isaac adds endings onto nouns to turn them into adjectives. For intance, he has said, "that shirt is pretty Halloweeniful." 

Isaac knows how to say first, but if he is trying say an ordinal number that comes after that, like second or third, he will say "the twof," or "threef." At least he's aware the word should be different, right?

At Christmastime, Isaac's class had to color a picture of Santa stuck in the chimney and write what they would do to help him. Isaac's paper said, "if santa was stuck in the chimney--I'd jump on his bottom." That made me laugh.

On the drive back and forth from Grammy Jo and Bampa's house, there are a lot of empty stretches of road. The only real cities we pass though are Kingman and Wickenberg. On our last trip, after passing Hoover Dam and driving for a bit, Isaac asked, "Are we at Kingberger yet?"

One day when I was in my swimming suit, Isaac looked at my tummy (which admittedly is rather large, unfortunately) and said, "Maybe one of your eggs is trying to hatch."

When Sareny was younger, she had a lot of strange ways of saying things. Here are a few of them.
pretend--tootend, Hannah Montana--hanna tana, Hair-do--hair stu, Excuse me--weesies. She also didn't like sleeping in her big girl bed and always wanted to either sleep in our bed or have us lay with her until she fell asleep. She would say, "I'm too lonn," meaning I'm too lonely.

The other day, Sareny was asking us, "Who's that scary guy bampa is always talking about?" It took some detective work, but Keith figured out she was talking about when Bampa tells them spooky stories about Injun Joe from Tom Sawyer. Sareny said, "Engine Joe--I knew it started with a train, like Train Joe."

I have taken some flack over the years for mishearing the lyrics to a song from The Parent Trap. Apparently the line says, "A gruesome twosome we will be." And I mistakenly said, "A busta-chusta we will be." What is a busta-chusta, you ask? I have absolutely no idea. We've decided Sareny is as bad as me at mishearing song lyrics. The other day she was singing along to a song by One Direction that says, "Baby just shout it out, shout it out, yeah." And she was singing, "Baby just sha-vida, sha-vida, yeah." She didn't know what shavida meant either.

Finley is well known around these parts for her wicked temper tantrums. One day Keith and I were eating drumsticks, and Finley came in and saw us and wanted one. We had two kinds of drumsticks in the freezer--the kind with nuts and some with a cookie topping, and Finley only liked the cookie kind. I told Keith "Go find out if we have any of those cookie kinds left, or if Finley is going to throw a fit." When he came in, she said "Is I'm going to throw a fit?"

Finley had the spotlight bag for primary, and she was supposed to bring in some items that she liked. She packed the bag by herself, but not knowing that she had already put a watch in, I put in a pretty one that I knew she liked. When she pulled the first watch out, she said, "I like to wear watches." Later when she pulled the second watch out, I was wondering what she was going to say. Apparently, she's a fast thinker, because she said, "I like to know what time it is."

One day I heard her playing piano with her friend. Finley was playing the lower notes and the friend was playing the higher notes. Finley said to her friend, "I'll play the bad notes and you do the good ones."

A few months ago, she had to go to the dentist for some fillings, and it took two appointments. At the second appointment, she asked me, "Are my lips going to be yum again?" Since then she has said a couple of times, "Remember when I went to the dentist and my lips were yum?" When we left the dentists office, he said she should eat soft food and listed a few things, including scrambled eggs. When we got home, that is what she wanted to eat. Later in the day, she said, "I want some more rotten eggs."

Pretty much everytime she says a prayer, she includes, "Thank thee that keekee will stop biting mommy's boobies." I think we're all looking forward to that day...

One Sunday she was getting ready for church and said she was going to wear her boots and put on perfume because, "I want to look 'tacular."

The other day, Finley's friend Sydney said, "Keeley still looks cute, even though she had to get her beautiful helmet off."

One of Keeley's favorite things to do is pinch me repeatedly (rather hard, I might add) and say "Ow!" with each pinch.

Another of her favorite games is dropping her sippy cup repeatedly on the floor and saying, "Uh-oh!" each time. You, of course, keep handing it to her, and she starts dropping it practically before you even let go of the cup. She also likes to walk around the house holding various items (phones, remotes, crackers, whatever is handy) up to her head and saying, "Hi!" repeatedly.

I love these cute and silly kiddos!

The best picture ever

This is the best picture ever, because it completely captures the way my days go a lot of the time. This little tyrant wants attention, and she is going to make darn sure you know it and if you don't give it to her immediately, you won't be able to move.

If I'm just sitting there watching TV or doing nothing, she is usually fine playing. But if I dare stand up to get a drink of water, or go to the bathroom, or, heaven forbid, make dinner--this little girl comes running and screaming and pulling on my legs. It's been kind of hard, but I have to admit that I even love these little naughty faces to pieces. She's so cute and sweet and I just can't hold her neediness against her. And also, to be fair, these pictures were taken almost a month ago and she has been a tiny bit better the last few days, so I guess we'll just keep our fingers crossed. But yeah, a teeny-tiny small part of me is going to miss seeing that scrunched up, desperately angry face that wants me so badly.

Mother's day at Kindergarten

Isaac's class issued special invitations for the moms to come and visit the classroom for a special mother's day celebration where we could be "pampered." I couldn't wait to see what they had planned! When I drop Isaac off for school, the afternoon kindergartners all line up on the stage before following their teachers out to the classroom, so I got a couple pictures with his class. I was already thinking he only got to do this a couple more times before his kindergarten year was over. :(

Once we got to the classroom, our student pulled out a chair for us. Then we looked at these lovely watercolors our kids had painted. The sign above the pictures says "Are you my mother?" We had to guess which picture was of us. I originally thought maybe the bottom left one was me, but after some clues were given, I was able to eliminate that one since that mom's favorite color was purple. I had a few pictures in mind that might have been me, and the first one was the blond mom on the top left, which had the clue, "my mom's eyes are green." The teacher pointed at that one and asked if anyone thought that was them. I looked around, and nobody else was raising their hand, so I raised mine, and I was right! Everybody kind of laughed about that, since I am not blond and there were several moms in the room who were. (Isaac later said he forgot that I had black hair...so, either way, it would have been wrong!)

Then we started on the beauty and pampering portion of the day. Isaac painted my nails, rubbed lotion on my arms, and massaged my back. He is giving me a massage in the below picture, but his motion made him all blurry.

 He made sure he got the tube of lotion that had sparkles and rubbed my arms.

 He chose a lovely shade of green for my toes.

After all that pampering, we moved over to the dessert station, where Isaac made me a yummy strawberry shortcake.

Then we played a couple of learning games together. I think this one was called Guess How Many are in the Cave.

You start with a certain amount of these little figures, like 15, hide some under the cave and arrange the other ones around. The other person has to figure out how many are in the cave. Isaac was pretty good at it.

We also played a game where we had to toss something into a bowl and keep track of our points.

Here is Isaac with the picture he painted of me. I love how he put earings, bracelets, and hearts on the picture. I love my sweet boy, and we had so much fun in his classroom!