Happy

Some days with Kade at the store are just horrible but today he was such a great helper and wanted to do everything. I love it when he likes to help! 

Just before I picked him up from school today I remembered something that was very sweet and special to me from Easter Sunday. When we got in the car ready to leave church and head home Kade was so excited to tell me something. He said, “Guess what Mom, guess what!? I told my teacher about my little brother Kooper!” He was so proud and happy. I am sure they were talking about the resurrection and how one day our loves ones will be resurrected too.

Thanks Kade for making my day way better than I expected it to be!    It also makes me happy when he is nice to his sister!

Oh and I can’t forget about these tulips(I think that’s what they are) that Ryan brought home Saturday night! They make me happy too!

Happy Birthday Ryan!

Yesterday was Ryan’s birthday and I am so horrible that I blogged about other things and not his birthday. But I wanted to keep things in order and my intention was to get to that post yesterday but I got sidetracked and it just never happened.  Also what I didn’t post about earlier was the awesome weekend that Ryan and I got to spend together thanks to our friends, the Burningham’s. They offered to watch the kids overnights so we could have a night away. We played like we were kids again. Saturday we went to a water park and had such a great time. I want to go back already!  Since we have been married we haven’t ever gone to one without kids so it was nice to go on slides and not have to sit in the kiddie area the entire time or worry about kids. It was just us!  Unfortunately we didn’t take any pictures so that is why there is not a blog post about our weekend….

Happy Birthday Ryan. I am glad I had the day off so we could spend it together and enjoy life! I love you so much and I am so lucky that you are mine!

Easter 2011

  Kade’s Easter Basket Kamryn’s Easter Basket Keegan’s Easter Basket(Kamryn ate all his Yogurt Melts. She wanted them before she even touched her basket)        Showing daddy her princess shoes! There’s nothing like a chocolate kiss!  Kade checking out his new book, Diary of a Wimpy Kid (one of his favorite movies!)  Darn Flash! Those eyes close too fast on me!

    

After church we had our friends, The Dunn’s come over for dinner and we had a little Easter Egg hunt for the kids! Kamryn was taking a nap so she missed out on all the fun.  Kade found the Gold egg and Landon found the silver egg!

    

Kade kinked his neck. Poor guy cried and cried. I talked him into taking some Children’s Advil. He was a little whiner all night!

Field Trip to the Desert Botanical Gardens

So Friday Kade’s class went on a field trip to the Desert Botanical Gardens. As soon as he found out that they would be going on a field trip he wanted me to be a chaperone. So when we got the permission slip I signed up. Well i guess almost every parent wanted to go, so to make it fair they put all the kids names in a hat that their parents volunteered and Kade’s name was drawn so I got to go…lucky me (eyes rolling)!

I loved going on the field trip to the Children’s Museum, but the Desert Botanical Gardens, not so much. The best part was going into the butterfly exhibit where there were many live butterflies flying everywhere and if you were lucky then one would land on you.

Here are a few pictures of us on the way there…

Here they are learning about plants….they were so bored! Not to rag on the program but the things they taught the kids and the 3 types of plants they looked at you can find ANYWHERE in AZ. They could have taught these kids the same thing at the school. Why not go to the Zoo that is only a few miles away from the school instead of driving at least 45 minutes? Then our guide only left us 10 minutes to spend in the butterfly garden before we had to get back on the bus. Oh well I was glad I could go and help out.

    This was Kade’s favorite butterfly!

Keegan’s First Haircut

For a while now I have been wanting to get Keegan’s haircut. He has needed that fuzz taken off badly! So tonight Ryan and I cut it off. I couldn’t get any good pictures of the after because with a flash he blinks and his eyes are closed and without a flash they are blurry. So we will go with the blurry I guess!

 The Before…. (like his seatbelt!?)

 

And after…

   

It’s a little shorter than I imagined but I am sure it will grow  back before we know it! Kade had his first haircut at almost the exact age (I had to look it up in his scrapbook). My little baldie!

Lazy Day!

Kade didn’t have school yesterday and Kamryn was excited for Kade to be home all day to play with her. They spent alot of time outside jumping on the tramp and coloring with chalk. It was a nice lazy day.

     

Later that day, Sara and Sami came over for to hang out for a bit and we made some bows. Keegan was pushing Sami on the Buzz push along thing (I have no clue what it’s called).  

The silver tooth…

I have felt so guilty lately. Guilty that I let Kade skip brushing his teeth at night because I didn’t want to deal with the whining and blah blah blah and now I am kicking myself because he has so many cavities. I warned him that if he didn’t brush his teeth that he would get cavities. He didn’t believe me until now. When I was a kid I never had cavities and I don’t remember being a great brusher when I was younger, so when I would have to fight with Kade I thought, they are only baby teeth and I didn’t get any cavities so I am sure he will be fine. I was so wrong! He has quite a few.

So today he got one side of his mouth fixed and because one of his teeth needed fillings on 3 sides they needed to cap it off with a silver tooth! Kade is not excited about this at all. I had to drag him into the dentist. He cried and cried. He did so awesome though. He got up in that chair like a big boy and didn’t even cry or whine. The dentist was so great with him about explaining things without “explaining” them to the point where he was scared. He was hilarious on the laughing gas. I myself have never had laughing gas or even seen someone who was on laughing gas. He would laugh at the dentist’s stupid jokes when normally my shy boy would just smile. He got the watermelon scented gas. When they first numbed his mouth he reached up and pulled on his lip. I can’t wait for when he goes again in a couple weeks so I can witness this laughing gas experience again. Of course I may let Ryan experience it next time. 

Anyhow as soon as he got out of the chair I think he fully realized what just happened. He got a silver tooth! He started crying and crying. They were all worried he was in pain. He wasn’t, he was just upset that he no longer had a white tooth anymore and that it was silver. He still is not very happy about it. Hopefully he gets used to it because there is another one coming!

We went to Target and I let him pick out a toy to buy with some birthday money from Aunt Ashley. I kicked in a few dollars since he did so awesome but the rule was he couldn’t complain about the silver tooth anymore if I bought him what he wanted. He decided on the Tangled DS game. I tried to talk him into another one, but that movie is a favorite at our house right now. We get out to the car and I opened it up for him and he said,  “ Mom, is this a girl game?” I said, “Well it could be either, but I am sure there are more girls than boys that want that game.” his reply was a laugh and then he said, “I will let my sister play it!” We stopped at McDonalds and I got him a chocolate shake so that he could have something to fill his tummy without chewing. When we got home he very willingly took some Children’s Advil! No complaints, now that’s a first!

This is what he is doing now! Hope his mouth doesn’t hurt too bad or going back to the dentist in a few weeks is not going to be fun. Hopefully he just remembers the yummy smelling watermelon!

Big Girl Bed!

Today I finally found a mattress that will fit on the bottom trundle of Kamryn’s bed. The bed we bought for her is tall and has a trundle underneath with drawers. So today after I put the mattress on it was nap time so I put her down for her first nap in her big girl bed. She did not like it one bit. She cried and cried and knocked on the door for me to let her out. She played for a little bit and then finally all was quiet and this is how I found her.

Don’t know where she is? She is under that blanket on the bottom trundle!

blanket

As church was coming to an end on Sunday I glanced to my right and saw a baby carrier/carseat and immediately recognized the blanket that the baby boy was wrapped up in.  My heart ached and my mind trailed off thinking Kooper who for a few short hours was swaddled tightly in that same blanket. (Well it looked the same. I knew mine was tucked away at home in my special box from Lanee’s Legacy.) I couldn’t see the baby’s head, it was covered up by the shade on the carrier all I saw was the bottom of his body wrapped in the blanket and his cute little curled fingers resting in his palms on top of the blanket. It was so cute. I couldn’t help but imagine my Kooper chilling in his little carrier. My eyes filled with tears for my baby boy that was gone too soon. I haven’t been able to take my mind off of it lately. I am pretty sure that this person had an older boy that is close in age to Kooper and that is why she has a blanket that was from Target around that time.

It is so strange because after Kooper passed away I don’t remember seeing babies swaddled in these popular blankets from Target. Maybe it was because I avoided looking at the little baby boys when I was out and about? I am not sure.

I remember Kooper was wrapped and swaddled tightly in this blanket and then another blanket that matched it. I didn’t want him to get cold. I wanted to keep him warm.

Kade’s Birthday Party

So today Kade had a birthday party with mostly friends from school. One of his friends from church was able to make it too. He had lots of fun but I don’t think we will have a birthday party at our house again. It’s crazy with that many 5-6 year olds running around! I thought my games would take up lots of time and that I had everything planned out perfect….Nope we were done and then the kids wanted to jump on the trampoline and I was afraid someone was going to end up hurt. All in all it was fun but next time he has a birthday party it will definitely not be at our house. I do have to say that I had a lot of fun planning it all!

Here’s the invitation I did. I just scanned a flat Lego building surface and used a digital scrapbooking program to add in all the elements and pictures.

This is subway art I made. I have it framed in my “subway art” frame that I change out for each holiday.

It has his entire name i just blacked out the rest of his name for privacy issues. Who knows I could have his entire name somewhere on this blog but it just seemed safer…

I was at the Lego store and found this ice cube mold for $7.99.  I ended up making chocolates and crayons with it.

To make the crayons I just melted the crayons in a microwave safe bowl or one you could just toss when you are done would work great. I kept melting and stirring. Then I just poured it into the mold and let it cool. I put it in the fridge to speed up the process. Here are pictures of my test batch. I ended up doing Blue, Green, Red and Yellow and put them in the treat bags for all the guests.

For the chocolates I did the same thing.

 

 

For the piñata I just used a shoebox and wrapped it in tissue paper and used the cardboard from the paper towel roll. Super simple and cheap! 

    

We played a Lego version of pin the tail on the donkey where they had to pin the circle on the Lego. I just got a big poster board and drew 6 circles and then cut out circles for the kids to try and stick to the circles blindfolded. (this was their favorite game and probably the cheapest game!

We ended up playing this one a couple times!

I also made my own BINGO game. I found a bunch of different Lego pictures and made 8 different BINGO boards. Then I printed off the pictures so that they were bigger and put them on colored paper. I laid them out face down and let each of them pick a card. Then they put a marshmallow on  the corresponding picture on their bingo board.

I just bought cupcakes (less work for me) at Sam’s club and then I made Lego chocolates to put on top.

  

                    

For the treat bags I just bought a package of primary colored small gift bags at Michaels and then filled them with the Lego crayons I made, a pencil, a sticky hand thing that Kade just had to get, their piñata candy, bubbles, and this cool Lego kit that comes with 8 little Lego sets that are great for parties!

I got lots of ideas from other blogs for this party and used different ideas from each blog.

Here are the links I used.

http://yellowfence.blogspot.com/search/label/Lego%20Party

http://rootsandwingsco.blogspot.com/2010/02/lego-agents-secret-agents-party-part-2.html (I didn’t really use anything from this one but loved the marshmallow shooter idea!

http://go.tipjunkie.com/pa/320/modernmomentsdesigns.com/2010/12/23/lego-birthday-party-actual-party/ (this one was my favorite. I really wanted to buy the Lego head organizer that she used as a center piece, but didn’t really want to spend the money)

I tried making these but Kade wanted to use JUMBO (they are bigger than the large) marshmallows and so they didn’t turn out as well and the edible ink I purchased did not write on my chocolate. So I didn’t end up even putting them out. http://www.livinglocurto.com/2010/06/lego-cake-pops/