Easter 2011

Our Easter celebration began on Saturday afternoon.......when we colored eggs! Haylie and Dylan came over and we let them at it...................

The next morning after the kids got up they got the baskets that the Easter Bunny had left them......



Rylie got model magic along with some other little goodies.




Owen got a camo hat, he's been asking for one a lot lately!



Katelin got a minnie mouse that goes on a flower pot and some other little things!

Evan also got a little camo hat and onesie and a few little toys.

The Easter Bunny doesn't get to extravagant in our house, having so many kids helps keep the spoiling down!!!

My boys in their matching hats!

My beautiful kiddos.......man I sure do LOVE them!

My Gorgeous Girls!

Cousins.....This is such a good picture of the 7 of them! I took about 10 and this was the very first one I took and the very best one of the bunch. Good Lookin' Group of Kids......I Love them all!!!!

Dylan, Haylie, and Xander!

 We go to my Grandma's house every Easter and the kids have an Easter egg hunt. They each have an assigned color of eggs (that way they all get the same thing and it is fair, they get one big egg and it has a dollar for every year of age!)

Katelin swinging!

Rylie was so proud that her feet could touch the top of the deck.

The best seat in the house!

I just like this picture!

Love. Love. Love. Love.

We not only celebrated Easter but we also celebrated Xander's 1st Birthday! Who would have thought 1 year ago when Natalie took in her cousin's 4 day old baby as an emergency placement that he would become such a special member of our family. Happy Birthday Xander......We Love You!!!!

Grammy and Xander!

We had a good Easter. After we left my Grandma's we went to Chester and Doris's house for a bit, my camera had died so I didn't get any pictures but it was great to see them. They had an easter egg hunt for our kids and for Mikayla and Kaylynn (our twin nieces). It was funny, like I said before we did a color for each kid during our egg hunt so when Katelin got in their yard for this egg hunt in an almost panicky voice she said, "what color do I get?" She was excited she could get any of the eggs she saw, no matter what color. They were each supposed to get 12 eggs and Katelin found 13.......it was a bit of a fight but we got her to give one to Rylie!

My sweet baby boy.....

is discovering and learning so many new things and I love seeing him do all of these things! And April 20th was a big day for my boy, he had several new firsts....................

Yeap....my boy learned to clap and man was he proud of himself! He would clap. And we would clap and cheer like crazy people. Then he would clap again and look at us waiting for us to clap and cheer some more. So....of course, we clapped and cheered some more. This went on for a while, he sure thought he was hot stuff.....but I can't blame him because we all think he is too! 

Then after we got done with the clapping game, Evan was playing on the floor and Chet said, "Look what he just did!"  And there he was standing at the end table. And almost a week later......he has it down and is pulling himself up all the time now!

Oh how I love this sweet boy and I love watching him learn and discover all these new things. Seeing things through a child's eyes is truly an amazing experience!!!

Over the past few weeks......

a lot has been happening and I have been busy and haven't had time to blog about all of it. So here I go......

Several weeks ago my cousin Erin (who is the only person I am still in contact with from my dad's side of the family) came for a visit with her family. I hadn't seen her in probably 2 years and we have missed her dearly. I think and I hope that she will now be coming around more often.



Jessica (Erin's girlfriend), Shaun, Erin, and Quinten!



Erin's adorable boys, Shaun is 7 and Quinten is 4 1/2.

 We had a great time visiting with them and can't wait to see them again!

Katelin can't wait to be able to drive this herself...........

Remember me talking about powerwashing (that's why Katelin had puddles to jump in), well yeah that was like a all day thing, guess which kid helped us with that???

 That would be my RyRy...........Isn't she pretty???  I sure think so!!! And there is the white screen door my grandma had painted black.....it took hours to get all the paint off but between Chet, Rylie and myself we got it.

Weeeee.....this sure is fun.........

Uh.....are you sure about letting her push me, she is the crazy one! 

Look at these good lookin kids!!!! This was taken before school the day of spring pictures!

I just thought this was too funny.....

Rylie sure loves her baby brother.....she always tells me,
"mama, i'm glad we have Evan" and I always tell her, "me too"!

 Oh man, my little Katelin....she is such a ham! She loves wearing the fluffy skirts and they are so cute on her!

 Owen got mad at me one morning before school and I got the face on the left, then I said something that made him happy and I got the face on the right (reminds me of the comedy/tragedy symbol).

Well that is it for now.....I have pictures from when we planted flowers and Easter pictures to share so hopefully I will get to all of that this week. I'll go ahead and give you a sneak peak of Easter. You may remember me saying I was going to take a picture of the kids together every month....well I did my April pic on Easter so here it is...............

How many spoons does it take......

to feed one baby???

 Well on this particular day.......it took 4!!!

 That would be one for me to feed him, one for Katelin to feed him and two for Evan (one in each hand)!

 It used to be Ev only required one spoon but as of today he has learned........he can have a spoon in one hand and grab the one i'm using with the other so I had to give him 2 to occupy both hands.

It also used to be that I would tell Katelin "No, mommy's gonna feed Evan." however, this is me trying to be a little less of a control freak with the kids when they just want to help. I did have to tell her to use smaller bites and he is getting a bath anyway so whats the harm in baby food all over him. She was done after about 5 bites anyway and she is happy she got to help so it was worth it!

Oh, and you know when you feed a baby......you do that ridiculous thing where you open your mouth as you give him/her a bite?!?! Yeah well it's not just grown ups who do it, even the little kids do too.......so funny!

At least as grown ups, we learn to keep our tongues in our mouth! We wouldn't want to look completely ridiculous, now would we?!?!?

A baby's feet touching grass for the first time......

a moment of excitement, adventure and joy?!?!?!

Or.........a moment of discontentment, anger, anxiety?!?!?

Actually, I think he was just downright ticked off............

My poor baby.....Don't worry, I promise I picked him up as soon as I snapped a few pictures!

What is the signifigance of...........

this glass of water and.............

 and this sweet angel of mine..............

Oh boy, that's an open ended question with soooo many possibilities because I often find my girl with water and cups, bowls, anything that will hold liquid but not tonight.............

You see....every night Chet makes a big old cup of ice water in a quicktrip cup and tonight I found Katelin filling up the above cup with water from the fridge and she asked me for some ice. My first response was...uh, no...what are you doing? My sweet angels response, "I'm making this for Daddy!"

And there went my heart.....yeap it melted right there! So of course I gave her ice to put in the cup.

Evan Wade - 8 months

I know I say this each month but I really can't believe my sweet Evan is 8 months old......he really is such a special little boy!

Owen snapped this pic of his baby bro!

That sweet smile melts my heart over and over again everyday! Evan is crawling everywhere, it is so cute. I love when he crawls into a room with a big grin on his face. Today, Chet came home from working and went into the bedroom....Evan followed him in there and got so excited when Daddy came over to pick him up. Then when Daddy carried him into the living room, I started to wave to him and he started moving his arm up and down with his big smile. So he now knows how to wave.....too sweet!

He is real close to pulling himself up, i'm sure he will hit that milestone sometime in his 8th month. He still loves all of his food. He takes bottles well but prefers to nurse. Weighs in at a little over 21lbs and is wearing a size 4 diaper. His clothes are pretty much 12-18 months, he's my little chunk.

His name should have been Billy because he is a little billygoat, everything goes in his mouth. My other kids didn't do that nearly as much. I vacuum at least once a day but he still finds stuff. Mostly pretty harmless stuff like a tiny scrap of paper but I did find a thumbtack in his mouth not too long ago. I kind of freaked there for a minute so just constantly checking the floor now.

He says "mamamamamama" a lot and is really learning to show off his vocals. He has also moved up to a big boy carseat.

My monthly bear pics are becoming a little harder since Evan can crawl..........

But I did manage to get one decent shot. For some reason the text that said 7 months keeps disappearing but this is 7 and 8 months!