{9.13.2021-9.19.2021}

I love this smiley little boy! He loves to swing, and I think he's going to be so sad when he's too big for the "baby swing." 

Alya started her second year of ballet this week and Lyla started her first year of tumbling! They are both so excited and I am excited to see all their improvements this year! 

And my little girls are officially eight years old!! They are beautiful little girls and I hope they had a great birthday! 

The boys love that they get to play at the park while the girls are in ballet/tumbling! They are getting so brave and climbing to the top of the caterpillar! // The girls got to go have a birthday sleepover with Jeni this weekend, so Matthew took me and the boys to Strawberry to go see the salmon run! 

 

Of course we had to stop and look for bucks while we were out and about! But at least Dad found a spot that had plenty of piles for the boys to climb on. 

Rainy days sure make beautiful days! It was fun to see the salmon and spend some time with my boys!

{8.17.20 - 8.23.20}

The girls started 1st grade this week. Thanks to Covid, and as much as I don't like it, they have to wear masks to school. I think they are kind of a novelty though and they have been excited to have new accessories! I hope they don't have to wear them all school year, but I don't have high hopes. 

I am not used to having to get kids ready and looking cute and out the door by 8:00 a.m. so we were kind of in a rush to get pictures done! This year they have Mrs. Jarvis. Lyla's favorite book is "That's Not My Mermaid". Her favorite colors are red, pink and purple. Her favorite food is pigs-in-a-blanket and when she grows up she wants to be a "draw-er." 

Alya is also in Mrs. Jarvis's class. Her favorite books are books with tabs that she can flip. Her favorite color is black and her favorite foods are macaroni and cheese with bacon and BLTs. When she grows up she wants to be an inventor. 

It's been a big week at our house! We are officially done with binkies!!! Eli decided he wanted to cut his last binkie and now he wants absolutely nothing to do with them! And look at those lips!!!

Eli brought a stick inside that he has just been playing with. He got quiet for a minute so I went to see what he was doing. He had gone and pulled a marshmallow out of the pantry and piles some toys into his "fire pit" and roasted a mallow! So funny! // He has also been cooking me dinner every night. He goes to our drawer and pulls out all the toy food, puts it in the strainer and sets it very carefully into the oven. Then he waits a few seconds and says "hot" while he waits. After a bit he lets me know it's done, so he pulls it out, puts it back in his bowl and we pretend to eat, then he puts it back in the drawer. Except for the one day when he forgot to pull a couple pieces out and I preheated the oven before checking if anything was in there. Oops!! I caught it before anything caught fire, but it made me nervous. 

The boys have been wearing their jammie shirts up on their heads like this and they pretend to be long eared puppies. It's pretty funny! 

Getting in couple more trips to Palisades before the weather starts to cool off! // He's doing so good on his little bike! 

I love these happy boys! 

Axel became fast friends with another little boy we saw at the lake. I think this was our first time at the lake by ourselves. It's always more fun to have friends, so thank goodness Axel was able to find one! 

How cute is that face!? He's pretty excited about the new truck Nana got him for his birthday! 

{1.22.20 - 1.26.20}

This boy is not at all afraid to climb whatever he needs to climb to reach whatever he wants to reach. And he's a darling little climber! // I love this boy and his sweet smile and his bright happy eyes. He is just full of so much joy and I love him so darn much! 

Axel is so good at pushing Lyla's buttons, and he bugs her constantly because he always gets the (over)reaction that he wants from her! So when moments like this happen it makes my mama heart happy. // Eli is in his happy place helping Dad in the basement! I love his dirty socks and shirt and that big ol' smile on his face!  

The cutest boys enjoying some of mom's chocolate chips!  

Progress on the basement! Matthew is working hard on the mudding and taping! He also has textured the ceiling!  

Eli loves to play with Matthew's tools! It's so cute!  

Matthew got the beautiful accent wall up! I can't wait for the bookcases to go in! 

I think Matthew was given this little rubber-band powered plane for Christmas and he and the kids had fun outside flying it! 

I'm loving all the bows in his hair! Haha! Oh man, he makes me laugh!

The girls are reading so well! Alya loves her new Frozen book and I love listening to them read!

{9.16.19 - 9.22.19}

My girls turned SIX! Time really does go too fast! They got to celebrate at school on their birthday and picked Cosmic Brownies for me to bring into their classroom. (Lyla on the left, Alya on the right.) 

They have been looking forward to this day for a long time! They love anything that has to do with "How To Train Your Dragon." I took them to see the new dragons movie this year and they loved it so much...as you can see by their cakes. Alya asked for a Toothless cake and Lyla wanted a Light Fury cake. My house got so hot so all the frosting was melting but I think they were both still very happy with their cakes this year.  

I love this picture of Lyla opening her gift. She was too worried that Alya would open her gift faster and therefore would see what the gift was before she would...so her strategy, I guess was just to watch Alya rather than focus on her own gift! Haha!  

They are SO EXCITED to dig out their dino fossils! These girls and their dinosaur knowledge just astounds me! We will sit down to read a dinosaur book together and sometimes they disagree with the book's identification of a dinosaur, or correct my pronunciation even when I've read the name of the dinosaur phonetically. Some of their favorite facts (that I can repeat) about dinosaurs are that "Triceratops" means three horned face and that the Stegosaurus's plates changed color to show their mood. 

The girls are doing so well in Kindergarten. They love their teacher and her aide and they have made some new friends in their class. Alya even has a crush on one of the little boys in her class! I just can't believe how grown up they seem while I watch them run around the playground with their friends. They are some of the tallest in their class (obviously) and they are all arms and legs! Haha! I love it! They are reading so well and they bring home their little math homework assignments and don't even need my help to complete them. I just think they are doing so great! We read Stuart Little and have been reading Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory at home for our twenty minutes of reading every day and I will usually stop and ask them a question to see if they are paying attention...especially if I feel like I have lost them...but they always know what is going on! If I read something funny they always react to it. They have a great sense of humor.

They love to play together and usually will let Axel play with them. They even assign Eli roles in the games they play sometimes. They often ask me if I will be their Grandma (I'm usually the grandma because one of them is the mom and is about to have a baby so I get to babysit the one who is pretending to be the older sister. Axel is usually a dragon or a horse or something but he plays right along side them, and Eli gets the be the baby brother, or the baby dragon or the baby horse.)

These girls really take care of each other and their brothers. They love to try to help me with Eli, even though it usually just makes things worse because he doesn't quite understand that they are trying to help him. When he is in a good mood, though, he loves the attention that he gets from them. And they are so cute with him! 

Like I said earlier, these girls have a great sense of humor. They love to laugh and their genuine, real laugh is music to my ears. They make up some funny...and some not so funny knock knock jokes. They like the funny parts in our books we read and they always laugh at the funny parts in their shows. 

They are getting better at playing games and I keep thinking how much I want to do more board games/card games with them. They like Slap Jack and Sorry. We also played Checkers together the other day! Lyla wanted to get her guys to the other side of the board so she could "king" them but she also thought it was great when she could jump my guys. Alya wanted to badly to jump me but forgot to watch for those opportunities because she was so focused on getting her guys to the other side of the board. It was quite funny to see how Alya would ask me for a second chance everytime I jumped her and how Lyla would just get mad when I jumped her guys! Haha! 

I love them to pieces! They push all of my buttons every chance they get but they are so sweet! They want to make people happy and they want to be helpful every chance they get. They love to color...especially Lyla. She loves to create and make things beautiful and everything is a treasure to her. Alya likes to be around people. She likes to play with her friends and likes to do things that she is comfortable with. She's a little hesitant to try new things but she is almost always instantly good at them once she really tries it. They are both amazing and I am very excited to see where life takes them. I hope I can keep up! 

We met up with my sisters Sara and Cori and their families, as well as Kevin and Marcy this weekend. Kevin and his wife flew in from Georgia so they could go visit my Grandpa in Idaho, but we got to go up Millcreek Canyon and have dinner with everyone before they headed North. It was a fun little get together!                                                                  

                      

   

{6.17.19 - 6.23.19}

 Axel fell asleep on his couch the other day with his head on the ottoman. I went in to take a picture of his just as he was waking up and as he stretched and moved he just fell right off! I caught this picture just as his head was hitting the ground. Oh man, it was funny but he was not happy! (He didn't fall that hard, I promise!!)

I turned the sprinklers on for the kids again and they all thought it was great! They let me turn it up to where even their faces were at least getting splashed. Eli had a blast!!! He thought it was just the greatest thing! 

Grandma and Grandpa came down to stay with the boys so Matthew and I could take the girls to see the pageant since this is the last year in production. I think they had fun! Alya's favorite part was "all of it but especially all the angel and Jesus." Lyla's favorite part was "the part where Jesus came down and the children got to run to him." 

The primary also has the chance every year to go help pick up garbage the morning after one of the performances and when they announced this in primary a couple weeks ago the girls were so excited to go clean up the temple grounds! So we got up early on Friday morning and went to the temple. They did so good walking around picking up garbage! I was so glad they were so excited to go do a little bit of service!

We made a paper chain to help count down the days until the girls were done with pre-school. It's been quite a challenge lately to get them at all motivated to do school. I think it made it so hard for them when they realized that their friends were all done with school so they just really didn't want to have to keep doing it. This week they got to tear their final chain off the wall! // Axel is getting pretty good at his winking skills! 

We headed to the park today after summer lunch and had so much fun! Eli loved the swing, which was a little surprising to me because he usually doesn't love it...he tolerates it, but doesn't seem to like it much. But today he did! And he was just so darn cute!  

The girls had their little pre-school graduation this week! They were so funny! We kind of went our separate ways after we signed in so the kids could all go take their final testing. When they were done with their tests they got to come into the room all the parents were in one at a time and pose under the balloon arch. Each child was introduced by the Upstart staffers..."This is Lyla. She just graduated from Upstart and she wants to be a doctor when she grows up." // "This is Alya. She just graduated from Upstart, and she doesn't know what she wants to be when she grows up, but her favorite food is macaroni and cheese with bacon." Haha! Also, she walked down the hall and stood there with this look on her face the entire time! It was so cute!  

I think they are pretty excited to be done with school and they cannot wait until Kindergarten!  

 Here is my burn for "historic"

 I made a couple of tweaks to it after I posted it on social media. I added a few more details to the tree on the left and obviously put our last name and the year we were married. I think it's pretty! 

 This is a commissioned piece I finished! She has a son name Max so she is going to put this in his room above his bedroom door! 

This prompt was for trees. I decided to free-hand this one instead of sketch something out and transfer it onto the wood. It's far from perfect but I'm pretty happy with it! It was good practice if nothing else! 

At the park there is a little dirt BMX-type track behind the playground. The kids luckily rode their bikes to the park that day and actually spent most of their time motoring around the track. They were so brave and did so good and I was very proud of them! 

{2.4.19 - 2.10.19}

2.4.19     Eli has just been cruising around the house like a little pro, crawling everywhere! It's so fun for me that he can follow me out of one room and into another, or that when he is done nursing I can just put him on the floor and he crawls around entertaining himself! He loves to walk with us holding his hands and he tries to pull himself up onto everything! Sometimes he can't quite figure out how to get his feet under him but other times he does so good! He has even pulled himself up to standing and let go completely to sit himself down. He doesn't like to be left in a room by himself and he thinks Axel is hilarious! He bonks his head on everything but he's pretty tough and rarely cries about it. Axel is getting very impatient for Eli to get big enough for them to wrestle around with each other. He is 19 lbs 13.5 oz and is 2ft 5 inches. He has four teeth for now and he is kind of taking a bottle for one of his feedings. He only likes his purees for breakfast, otherwise he wants very little to do with them. He is so easily distracted while he eats so it's an adventure for sure! We love him dearly and I hope May isn't in any hurry to get here!

Matthew and I brought the kids back these little M&M blankets from Las Vegas! The kids were excited about them and I loved that they were all wrapped up in them watching Alya do school. // I love this boy! He has lots of Spiderman swag but he really doesn't even know who Spiderman is...he keeps telling me he's a "scary guy." Haha!  

Eli was trying to eat his snack one day but couldn't focus facing the kitchen, all the fun stuff was outside! // I keep finding pictures like this that Axel takes on my phone.  

He's just showing off some of his new skills! 

The girls are learning so much with their school and I'm grateful because I know they wouldn't learn this well from me. They are becoming beginning readers and it has been so fun! They are doing so good! (This is a video of Lyla)