Family Reunion

We had a great time at my family reunion this year. We once again went to Anderson Cove. We all got to spend lots of times with siblings, cousins, parents, aunts and uncles and of course grandparents! Here are some of those fun times!
Most of us had our bikes or scooters up there. We all took turns on each others bikes. It was a lot of fun. Here is Bryan on one of the scooters.

Claire's cousin Cole helped her have a turn.

I took a turn on Claire's bike and Claire had a turn on Janey's bike.

Mia liked to be a part of everything....even when we were trying to prepare meals. So we did what we could to make her "a part" of the meal.
As we have posted many times before we enjoy playing lawn games; the latest lawn game we like is one called Kubb. In this picture my brother-in-law (Mark), sister (Shannon) and niece (Cortney) are doing their version of the Haka.

Here is a picture of an intense game of Kubb....it was a popular thing to do this year.

We also had a net up and we could play volleyball (with a jumbo blow up ball) or badminton. This is a game between my niece (Summer) and my nephew (Braxton).
Even though we were camping we had technology with us. All the kids enjoyed playing games on the ipod, iphone or whatever smart phone they could get their hands on. One good thing is well all shared some of our favorite apps and now we have some new games to play.
One of the days we were there we rented a canoe. Aunt Ginet and Aunt Shannon were gracious enough to take all four of the littlest girls on the canoe. Claire loved every minute of it.

That same day we rented a stand up paddle board as well. Here is Bryan trying it out.

Claire even got to try out the stand up paddle board; thanks to her cousin C.J. for helping her out with a ride.

Here are some of the little girls, with Cortney, enjoying the cold water of the edge of the dock.

Last but not least...we let Mia get in on the beach fun. She wasn't so sure of the water (I don't blame her it was freezing), but she loved the beach. She even tried to see how it was as a snack. From this picture you can just tell how much fun she had at the beach!
It was a great family reunion. It was so much fun to spend so much time with everyone. The sad part is we don't all live close enough to do this more often...it makes you cherish these moments even more.

All About Claire

For the past six weeks Claire had swimming lessons. Here she is one day before the lessons started...she said she was a bathing beauty!
This pictures is from her first swimming lesson. She was terrified of putting her ears and face in the water. I wasn't so sure she would want to go back after this lesson.
She now owns swim goggles and that made her braver in the water. She loved this kick boards so much. She now owns and Little Mermaid kick board of her own now.
This pictures is from her last lesson. She will now put her face in the water and her ears. She is getting so good and she loves the water. She can't wait to have more swimming lessons.
Here is Claire with her swimming teacher...teacher Terry. Claire really loved teacher Terry!
Her is a video of Claire and her fifth swim lesson. We are so proud of her. She went from being terrified to put her face and ears in the water to really enjoying doing it....as long as she has her swim goggles on.

All About Mia

Mia is now 9 months old. I can't believe it. She is in the 90th percentile in both her height and weight. She is just a joy to have in our family. I mean look at this smile...
We recently went to a birthday party where there girls got to be fairy princesses. Mia even got to join in. She was so proud of her crown, wings, tutu and wand.
In our household we don't teach our children to throw their hands in the air and say "so big" we teach them to throw their arms in the air and say "TOUCHDOWN"! Mia is catching on...if you listen carefully at the end you can hear her attempt to say touchdown.

The other day when I took Mia to the doctor for her 9 month check up, she started doing this in the doctor's office.

Graduation and More

We will start with the "and More" part of the title of this post. We can't believe how quickly Mia is growing up. Next week we will take her to her 9 month doctor appointment to see how big she is. Her newest thing is standing on her own.
She loves crawling all over the place and she also loves to pull herself up on things and walk around them. We hope she'll crawl longer, but I am sure before long she will be trying to walk. Another new thing for her is grass. We took her outside the other night to play on the grass before bed...the picture below is her reaction to the grass.
This past Tuesday was preschool graduation. Bryan and I have spent countless hours in preparation for the graduation. We started out having the kids paint a picture frame and then we had our program (a video of the kids and pictures from the school year) and handed out diplomas. We also had a giant soccer net and ball to play with and a parachute. The kids loved it. We finished off with a potluck type lunch. Overall I think graduation was a success.
We tried Claire's graduation 2011 glasses on Mia, but all she wanted to do was eat them and Claire just likes to see them glow in the dark.
We did body outlines of the kids and then the kids got to color them. Here is Claire's body outline. She had pony tails the day we did the outlines and she wanted me to trace them too. She tells everyone that her piggy tails look more like doggie ears.
This is one of my favorite pictures I have seen (so far...I am still waiting for mom's to send me the pictures they took) from graduation. Claire has so much fun with these two kids. They are also in our ward. Ella is such a bubbly happy girl and Jaxon always says something to me to warm my heart.
Here is Teacher Stacie (that is what the kids called me) giving Claire her diploma. I loved being her teacher, but I love being her mommy even more!! I am proud of my girl for her hard work this year.
I can't believe that the preschool year is over. It seems like it just started, but Mia was only two weeks old when it started and now she is almost 9 months. It is nuts. I will truly miss the eight kids I taught! The kids learned a lot this year, but I think I learned even more!

Freakin' Crazy May Showers!!!!

I know the old saying goes that April showers bring May flowers but today we had this happen in front of our house.

Welcome Home

This is going to be a longer post because there were so many great things to talk about and to post pictures of. Here are majority of the grandkids holding welcome home signs and waiting patiently for them to come down the escalators.
We were all so excited to see mom/grandma and dad/grandpa come down the escalator. Claire was the first one out of us all to reach them. Here is what I got to see. It made me cry to see her run to my mom.
I was so excited to introduce my mom and dad to Mia and to let them see how big Claire has gotten. They were nervous Mia would cry when they tried to hold her. That was pointless because here she is being held by grandma for the first time.
After the airport we all went back to mom and dad's house to exchange gifts. They brought each one of us something as well as each one of the grandkids something. We gave them the quilt we had made for them. Here is their reaction after opening it (great job capturing the moment Bryan)!
We helped them unpack a lot of boxes and had a lot of their stuff put away so that when they got home they had the basic necessities all ready unpacked and put away. With this unpacking we had empty boxes and bins. One of these bins came in handy as both Claire and Mia loved playing in it. Claire even realized she could lay down in it!
As siblings we put together an open house to welcome our parents home from their mission. We had lots of extended family and friends come to visit and welcome them home. I think we had a successful and fabulous open house for them. We were also able to attend, at least a little bit of, Drew's, Cole's and CJ's baseball games. It is great to watch them play and to be able to support them. We only wish we could have watched longer, but after a trip to instacare with Mia (ear infection and bronchitis) and a trip to a pediatrician with Claire (ear infection) we thought it would be best not to stay out in the cold wind for too long.
We spent Easter Sunday in Utah. It was the day of my parent's homecoming address. It was so great to hear them talk and to hear more stories of their serve in Sweden. Of course the girls had Easter dresses...very girly ones (Thanks Grandma Lois). Mia loves her fluffy Easter Dress.
Claire loves to pose for pictures. You just never know what you are going to get. Here she is in her Easter dress.
After Church we had a great dinner and then the Easter Bunny came and all the grandkids in attendance we able to go on an Easter egg Hunt. Here is Claire hunting down her share of eggs.
We had lots of opportunities to spend time with family. Claire loved the time with all of her cousins. Here are some of the cousins showing their tongues from their Easter suckers.
Claire got to have her cousin Summer sleepover at Grandma's with her. The funny thing is their sleeping bags were mine and my sister's from when we were younger. So Summer and Claire got to sleep in their mother's sleeping bag. Well sort of, Claire picked Aunt Ginet's sleeping bag and Summer slept in mine.
There were two grandkids born while my parents were serving their mission. So it was great when they got to spend some time with each other and with Grandma and Grandpa.
The day before we came home was a great event. My nephew Drew was baptized. He was 8 in March but was able to wait until my parents came home to get baptized...that way they were able to be there to support him.
This is a picture of my parent's backyard when we woke up Saturday morning. We guessed that there was about 6 inches of snow, but the news reported it was approximately 9 inches of snow. By late morning most of it had melted away.
On our way home we stopped off at our usually spot in Nampa and had lunch and played around for a bit. We let Mia try frozen strawberry lemonade for the first time. This is what her facial expression was after trying the lemonade.

April Fool's and Such

I have a sister that is super creative and she does a fun dinner for her kids every April Fool's Day. This year I thought ahead and called her to find out what she did. We had some friends over and we had an April Fool's Day dinner. (Thanks for your ideas Ginet!) Here is Claire with our main entree of "cake"!We let Mia try some of the "cake" and here is what she thought of it!

Here is Bryan giving Katie her "bag of Cheetos". You can see from her face that she isn't impressed with them.

Here is Claire trying to drink her yummy drink. Despite all her efforts the straw just wouldn't work. We also had a yummy "taco salad" dessert. We had a good time. We just hope our friends did too!!

Great things have happened this week. Mia got her second tooth and she started moving in a different way other than the "baby seal" army crawl.


I love moments where I look at my girls and see the relationship they have and it warms my heart. It makes me so happy to see how much they love each other...I just hope it will always be so loving! Here is just one of those moments.