June

We have a lot of pictures for June...

My birthday was in June (30 years to be exact - ugh) and Danny splurged and got me the nicest camera I have ever owned. It takes still shots as well as video, so I've been having a blast with it (when I can and when I'm not busy packing or unpacking another box.)

First, we have lots of pictures of my cute kids. While playing around with the settings on the camera, I figured that they're my greatest subjects to practice on. :)

For my bday, I decided that I wanted to try making homemade ravioli. It sounded yummy! :) It was actually delicious. Our only complaint was that we didn't have a pasta press so the pasta was a little thick, but other than that - YUMMM! Ellie just really loved the bread; which we happened to buy from Macaroni Grill. She ate more of that bread than she has ever eaten of anything in one setting.

We also had some friends come over for a "birthday party". (We miss you Angie and Chad.) Chad let my kids play with his iPhone and they had a hard time putting the thing down. What is it with kids and electronics these days?

Chad and Angie brought over Dance Dance Revolution. We played that and Guitar Hero for my birthday. I know, strange request... but we did do what I wanted. :) Even Danny danced for us. :)

In other pictures, Ellie the banana head was eating some yogurt and decided that it would look great on her nose. Then the next day, she decided to finger paint with her yogurt. Again, I had just gotten the camera and was a little picture-happy. :)

June was about the time when Ellie decided that she loved trying on other peoples shoes. She is still in that phase and still loves to wear others' shoes (whether it's mom's or dad's or her brothers', it does not matter).

When Danny and I were in the process of looking for a house in Boise, we had our computer set up with his laptop beside it and we went through hundreds of homes virtually in the matter of a weekend. We narrowed down our list to give to the realtor. Basically, we did a TON of the work in finding this place. It was actually at the top of our list before we even came to Boise to walk through homes. Anyway, Danny took a picture of our computer setup... we called it our command center. We spent a lot of hours at that command center!

When the kids woke up for Father's Day, they wanted to draw pictures and make cards for Danny. They all did a really great job and were so cute while making them.

In between moves, I tried to take the kids to the park as many times as possible. It was my way of trying to make up for the lack of fun this summer. That is also when Preston finally learned how to keep himself going on a swing. Now that's all he ever wants to do.

I also have a couple of videos that I recorded of Ellie. They are so cute that I can't help posting them. :) It's also one of the first videos I recorded with my new camera. It's not completely in focus, I'm still working out how to download it off my camera, etc. Just bear with me. In explanation of the first video, Ellie's favorite cartoon is Dora. There is a Dora episode with "super babies" and there's a song that they sing in the episode. She LOVES that episode and loves to sing that song. In the second video, Ellie was really starting to talk a lot and say different words.

I guess that sums up June. It was a busy month, and worth the post!

Pics

Video 1

Video 2

May

Ok... so, obviously I am way behind in my posting. It has been a CRAZY summer to say the least. With 2 moves in 2 months - well, that right there is worth the label of "crazy".

I decided that instead of giving each "event" a different post, I would give each month it's own post. So we will start with May since that's about where I left off.

I'll be honest, when we were still in Springville, we had a lot of packing to do. We organized everything into boxes that would stay packed after the move to Mapleton and boxes that we needed unpacked. We managed to keep a lot of stuff packed that some people would have thought of as necessities - like dishes. Instead of unpacking all of our dishes, we ate on plastic (which Danny absolutely hated - especially when a fork broke while trying to eat dinner and splattered him in the face with food.)

With all of the packing and sorting and cleaning and chucking (we threw away a lot of unneeded stuff!), our kids watched more cartoons and movies than I care to divulge. I felt pretty bad for them and I've been working on making it up to them lately; but that's for a different post.

So we have pictures of them watching tv, pictures of them eating licorice while watching tv, and even the pictures where you can't tell they're watching tv - they are. :(

Also included in our pictures this month is Ellie's first hair cut. She was beginning to have a mullet. One day I just couldn't stand it anymore and while she was in the bathtub I took the scissors to the back of her hair. It wasn't much, but it sure made her look more like a toddler than my little baby girl. Since then, she has definitely grown into the toddler stage; but I still call her my little baby girl.

And finally, Kaden is always such a big helper. He is always willing to be my little babysitter whenever I need him to. One of those days when I was busy packing, the kids were very bored. I finally suggested that Kaden take the other two on a walk around the neighborhood and he gladly accepted the task. They were so cute - all holding hands - and I had to take some pictures. They are so adorable!!!

Well, that was May. And HERE are pictures.