HAPPY BIRTHDAY KAYLEE!

I wanted to wish Kaylee happy birthday on her birthday, but we were out of town, and when we came home the computer wasn’t working. But we are up and running now so HAPPY BIRTHDAY KAYLEE!!! We are so happy to have our beautiful, smart and talented girl in our lives. We love you.

We had the previously mentioned pool party for Kaylee the weekend before her birthday because we went to California on her birthday to see a Dodgers game. We left Thursday night so she didn’t get to go to school on her birthday, much to her dismay. We took ladybug and bumblebee cupcakes before we left to ease her disappointment of being out of town. She still managed to get up early Friday morning and open the presents we brought along. She got clothes from mom, a book full of random facts called “Uncle John’s Bathroom Book” from Aiden and Dalin, a charm bracelet and notebook from Ashton, and a shirt with a character called Homestar from a website called Homestarrunner.com that Kaylee loves to watch. Ever the diplomat she was thanking us all and she said, “Those clothes are super cute, but I love the Homestar shirt.” Later we went to a children’s museum in Santa Ana which was really fun. We came back to the hotel for a swim. We were staying in Anaheim, where the hotels were cheaper and in a less scary area, so we decided to leave two hours before the baseball game started to make the 32 mile drive to Dodger stadium. Two and a half hours later and 30 min after the game started we arrived in the parking lot. It was more fun to watch the kids at the game than it was to watch the actual game, but it went by faster than I thought it would so it was a fun time. Our tickets came from a site where people sell their season ticket seats. So here we were with our crowd of five adults and eight kids eight and under surrounded by diehard season ticket holding fans. Luckily everyone around us was very understanding of our many bathroom and snack runs. At the end of the game I thanked the couple sitting next to us for their patience. The women said she was a little nervous when she saw us all coming, but she thought the kids were really well behaved. At one point Aiden leaned over to me and asked if I would switch seats with him. When I asked him why he said, “I don’t want to sit next to old people.” It worked out ok though because when he moved then the seat numbers coincided with the ages of all the kids which they all thought was fabulous.

My sister-in-law has a cousin who works at Disneyland so on Saturday we were able to take the kids for free. It was a lot of fun, even though we didn’t stay until the midnight close time like Chris wanted to. The lines were much shorter than they were when we went in February and we had a park hopper ticket so we went to California Adventure for most of the day, which was even less crowded and I actually prefer it to Disneyland. I was really impressed with the kid’s behavior so it was a really great time. I don’t like to tell potty stories, but this quote is Chris’s favorite so I will leave with another funny Aiden story. I took the kids to a restaurant the other day and when we were leaving Ashton said, “We did really good no one even had to go to the bathroom while we were here.” Then Aiden said, “Yeah, my poo and pee have failed me, I haven’t gone to the bathroom all day!” I don’t know where that kid gets his vocabulary from, but he keeps us all very entertained.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DALIN!!

Today is Dalin’s first birthday, and I can hardly believe how fast the last year went!! We rented out one of the public pools on Saturday and had a party for Kaylee, Dalin and their cousin Rachel since their birthdays are all in the same week, and because we have such a large family. It was the first time Kaylee has had a friend birthday party so she was very excited. Our birthday boy was less than thrilled with the pool and screamed his head off for the first half hour we were there. Luckily my sister in law is a former Baywatch babe (okay city of Henderson lifeguard) who taught the baby swim lessons and she was able to calm him down. He’s still not totally in love with the pool, but hopefully he’ll be okay when we take swim lessons this summer. Dalin was true to the first birthday cake all over the face tradition, thanks in part to his dad who kept giving him more and more cake. It was a really fun time. We are so happy to have our little Dalin in our family. HAPPY BIRTHDAY DALIN!!

Kaylee had a turtle made out of cupcakes.

Dalin had some Legos.

Birthday Boy and Daddy

Pesky Little Brothers

I have a funny little story about Aiden and Dalin. We went to the car dealership to get the oil changed on our van today. There is a bounce house in the showroom so I told Aiden he could play while we were waiting. He had taken his shoes off to get in, and away he went to bounce to his hearts content. I was helping Dalin walk around when he spotted Aiden’s shoes and made his way to them. He picked up one of the shoes and we kept walking around. Aiden noticed his shoe was gone and came after us to get it back. After that Dalin thought it was a game. He went back and picked up the shoe again and he started to get away as fast as his little baby legs would take him, but Aiden didn’t notice. He headed back to the bounce house and Dalin started grunting until Aiden looked up to see that he had the shoe. The chase was on. Aiden caught us, and in his words, “the battle is on.” We played for about 30 min, and Dalin made sure Aiden saw him every time before he would make his get away. It was so cute, but totally something Chris would do. We may be in trouble.

It's All Your Fault, I Screen My Phone Calls

Ashton’s friend Julian has been calling again and I think her patience is wearing thin, because she has started screening the phone calls that come into our home. She can’t actually read the names on the caller i.d., but she just assumes all of the calls are from Julian, and she’s usually right. We went to the drive in movies last night and we got home pretty late so the kids (except Dalin) slept in until after nine. Julian had already called three times before Ashton woke up. When he finally got to talk to Ashton this is what we heard on our end. “Julian I can’t talk right now, I’m helping my dad paint the bathroom…why don’t you call your grandma… well then talk to your mom…then talk to your dad.” I don’t know if she realizes that not everyone has most of their extended family in town, and how lucky she is to have that. At least she gives him options when she doesn't want to talk to him.

Chris has decided that Dalin is ready to walk so he practices with him everyday. I’m not really ready for that, but it is very cute to see how proud Dalin is of himself when he takes the few steps he can. It was funny to me how excited I got when I saw him take his first step, like I hadn't been through it three times before. I never wondered if I would have enough love for all of my children, even so I'm amazed by just how much love I do have for each of them. Dalin is just growing so fast, he will be a year old in less than a month and I just can't believe it. Speaking of time flying, Kaylee will be getting baptized next month. She is really excited because she will be the first one in her primary class to be baptized. I have to admit that I am pretty excited too. It just blows my mind whenever I stop to think about it.

Mother's Day

I hope all of the mothers out there had a nice mother’s day. Mine was great! My sister and my mother and I went to visit my grandma and grandpa in St. George Utah. They live in Idaho for most of the year, but come to Utah during the winter months. They usually go home in April but this year they had some things that kept down south for a little longer so it was a real treat to be able to see them. We went to lunch and had a really nice visit. They are the cutest grandparent couple I hope I can be like them someday.

Kaylee gets super excited about special occasions like holidays and birthdays, even when they aren’t for her. She can hardly sleep the night before. She came into our room at 6:15 Sunday morning because she was too excited for mother’s day to sleep any longer. Lucky for her Dalin was already awake and laying in our bed so Kaylee offered to take him into the other room. That was great for about 10 min and then we heard a thud and Dalin crying. Aiden had woken up and while Kaylee was getting the room together for her mother’s day plan she put him in charge of the baby except the baby was on the couch and Aiden didn’t know that watching Dalin meant hold on to him and make sure he didn’t fall off the couch. After that Chris was up so I got to go back to bed, and he and the kids made me breakfast. We have 9:00 church so I didn’t get to sleep much longer but it was nice. Kaylee Ashton and Aiden sang with another brother and sister during sacrament meeting and that was pretty cute. My brother arranged for all of the dads in our family to take care of dinner and another of my brothers made a video tribute to all of the moms in our family so it was a really nice day overall.

Ashton and Aiden have the best conversations on the way home from kindergarten and here’s the most recent one.

Aiden: “Hey mom I want to be a magician when I grow up”

Ashton: “Yeah, so you can entertain kids and then they will beat you up.”

Aiden: “No Ashton, I would have guards who will only let people in if they have an invitation and I won’t give you an invitation so they won’t let you in.”

I didn’t know being a magician was so dangerous.

Aiden is highly influenced by T.V., especially the commercials. He will come find me several times a day very excited about some product he has seen and believes that our lives just aren’t complete without these things in our home (i.e., “Mom the Sunsetter can make our patio 20 degrees cooler and it is only $300.00!” or “Mom roll ‘n’ grow has over 10,000 seeds! You just roll it out and put water on it and then you have beautiful flowers.” or “Mom space bags keep out water and bugs! I need one for my birthday.”) One day I was reading a book and he said, “Mom I just don’t get enough sleep. Dalin keeps me up and I just can’t get comfortable on those metal coils in my mattress. I really need a tempurpedic bed.” I looked over and there was a tempurpedic commercial on which is where he was getting his information, but he is very impressed by those mattresses and he thinks everyone in our family should have one. Kaylee was in a little program about dinosaurs at school and, biased as I am, she did the best when she said her part. The rest of the kids sounded like they were reading from the s-c-r-i-p-t when they spoke, but when Kaylee spoke you believed her excitement when they found the dinosaur bone! :) That’s all I have for now, I hope you all have a great day!

Take your child to work day

Today was “Take Your Child to Work Day”, so Kaylee and Ashton went to work with Chris. Since Chris is the tech support for most of the state agencies in Las Vegas the girls got visit a lot of different places. They went to the governors’ office, sports, film industry, buildings and grounds and the taxi cab authority. They even got permits to be taxi drivers; it’s nice to know they will have something to fall back on. They got slurpees and ice cream and they ended the day on the rooftop of the office building. It was almost better than Disneyland for them. They started making a video at the beginning of the day, until the camera battery died, but the part I got to see was pretty cute. It was interesting for me to see because I hear all about Chris’s job, but I have never actually seen his office or any of the people he works with.

This is a conversation Chris overheard last night between Ashton and her new phone friend. “Julian I think you should only call here five times a day. Okay only two or three times a day. No Julian 100 times a day is just silly. Okay six times, and that’s my final offer.” She really is too nice sometimes.

Kid Cash

A few months ago we implemented a sort of reward system for the kids called “Kid Cash”. When the kids do their chores they get a kid cash and if they have ten they get to pick a prize from the treasure box on Saturday afternoon. This has worked out pretty well, although there is a flurry of chores being done on Saturday mornings (you gotta take what you can get I guess). This past Saturday Aiden picked a Spiderman wallet and he was so excited to fill it up with money. I have a mason jar that I put loose change in, and Ashton and Aiden found their own jar and started putting money in it as well. Oddly enough as their jar got fuller, my jar got emptier. After a discussion about not taking things that weren’t theirs we made a deal, and I let them keep some of the change. Back to the treasure box wallet, after Aiden chose it he ran to his room and dumped all of his change into the wallet and proudly showed me how great it was going to be to have a wallet. I told him that it was actually made for dollars, not coins. Seeing the disappointment on his face I suggested that we go to the grocery store and exchange it for dollars. Since they didn’t really earn the money I told them they would have to split the money with Kaylee. The grand total ended up being about $18.00 which was surprising because I took back over half of what they had collected. Now they are all about saving their dollars, but they are more than willing to ask me to spend mine.

Ashton and her friends decided to exchange phone numbers today, which is fine because in my experience when little kids call they talk for two maybe three minutes then it’s over. I obviously underestimated Ashton’s appeal. Her friend Julian called six times today! It makes me wonder if his mom actually knows he is calling.

The other day Kaylee was playing a video game where you have to get a marble through a series of obstacles to get to the goal. It was getting pretty intense for her and she asked Ashton to get her a paper bag to breath into to help her calm down, because that’s what they do on TV. She decided that it did the trick so now she and Ashton run for the paper bags whenever they get a little anxious about anything. I will leave you with a joke Kaylee made up today. What do you call a friendly alligator? A Paligator!

The County Fair

Happy Birthday (yesterday) Brandon!

We were able to go to the county fair on Saturday, and as much as I hate crowds and traffic, we actually had a pretty fun time. A guy that Chris works with gave us tickets and fed us, so aside from the sno-cones and cotton candy, the day was free. Chris has gotten pretty queasy in his old age so I ended up going on the swinging, spinning and/or flying rides with the kids. Kaylee was the brave on this time and she was determined to go on all of the rides. I think the rides swing higher and spin faster than they did when I was a kid, because while Kaylee thought I was holding on to her to make her feel better, it was actually for my own comfort. One of the rides we went on, (the Tornado), lifts you up in the air and spins around and you can spin the individual car that you are in as fast as you want. As the ride started and we were spinning I asked Aiden if we were going to fast, to which he replied, “No my bum thinks this is great!” Who knows when that kid’s bum became the barometer of fun? We tried to let the kids have a true fair experience by taking them to see the farm animals, but being the city kids they are they decided it wasn’t worth enduring the smell. You’d never guess they are related to farmers. We were lucky to have gotten there when we did, because by the time we left the wind was blowing so hard, that most of the rides had been shut down and the lines for the rides that were open were ridiculously long. So our timing was just right.

Dalin is getting cuter everyday. I hang a dish towel on the refrigerator handle, and Dalin loves that he can reach it when he is in his walker so he takes it down whenever he get the chance. The other day I was sitting in the front room, and Dalin comes zooming out holding the towel on his shoulders like he was a superhero. It was pretty funny.

For any of you who were following the Hafen for council campaign I have an update. You may recall that my uncle won by a slim margin. His opponent decided to ask for a recount, but the results were the same, so we are celebrating again. Then again our life is always a party right?