Name that baby

Time for the 3rd edition of name that baby!  Below are pictures of our 4 kids when they were about 2 months old.  They are dressed alike (otherwise it would be easy to guess that the baby wearing pink was Brooklyn).  Have fun!  Post your guesses in the comment section.
Question #1:

Baby A

 Baby B

 Baby C

 Baby D

Question #2

Baby A

Baby B

Baby C

Baby D

Canadian Thanksgiving Trip

Since Reed had Columbus day off we decided to head north for Canadian Thanksgiving.  It was delicious and nice to spend time with family.  It was also Conference weekend. 

Great Grandpa Pitcher holding Brooklyn:

On Thanksgiving afternoon we drove up to Calgary with my parents and checked into our hotel.  We decided that while we were up we wanted to go to the Calgary temple dedication so we stayed in a hotel that night so that we would already be in Calgary the next morning.  The hotel that we stayed in had a pool with a water slide.  It was a lot of fun to go down and watch the kids go down.  Alan tried it and loved it.  Conner was not so sure.  I finally convinced him to go down the slide on my lap.  We walked to the top and he chickened out.  We sat up there for a few minutes and I finally brided him with a kinder surprise chocolate egg.  So he sat on my lap and I said "Ready?" and he panicked and yelled "No!" and tried to grab on to the sides of the slide but I just pushed us off and we slid down.  When we got down to the bottom I held him up so that he wouldn't get his face wet.  Once we got to the side he said he liked it and he wanted to go again.  We went again and again and again.  It was funny how much he liked it after he tried it. 

The next day we headed over to the temple.  It was such a wonderful experience to be able to take our children through the temple and let them see all the rooms.  It was nice to be able to say this is where we go (or to one that is similar) when we go to the temple.  It is such a beautiful building, inside and out.  I'm so glad we did the extra drive to go there - it was worth it!

Reed holding Brooklyn, Conner and Alan in front of the temple:

Our whole family:

 

I think the kids favorite part was the cookies and water afterwards.  General Conference, Thanksgiving, a family temple trip plus a visit with family makes for a GREAT weekend!

All about Micah

Here are some facts about Micah:
1.  At his 2 year old check up he weighed 29 lbs. and was 35 3/4 inches tall.
2.  At his check up he could say about 50 words but he hadn't put any together yet.  Then a couple of weeks later his vocabulary exploded.  It seemed like he learned several new words every day.  Now he can speak in sentences and he is quite the chatterbox.  He has recently started saying "tank-you" a lot and in the last couple of days he has started to say "ah weh-cum" (your welcome) whenever he should say thank-you.  It is pretty funny.  He also makes a funny humming "mmmmm" sound when he wants a drink, although if I insist he will say "I want a dink mama". 
3.  He is a tough boy.  He will fall or get bonked and it looks like it hurts but he usually just gets up and walks off. 
4.  He hates to be left behind.  When anyone is getting ready to go he will grab his shoes and sit down and try to put them on.  
5.  He loves to play games.  One of his favorite pass times is to find one of our games, dump it all over the floor and then sit and "play" it. 
6.  We call him our little Russian, because when he answers in the affirmative he tries to say "yeah" but it comes out as "Da" (the Russian word for yes).

(August)

Cool Dude (July):

Micah likes to help vacuum and sweep.  If he is in the mood he is good at cleaning up his toys.  In the picture below he was helping me hang up some of the clean laundry: (July)

He is not my best sleeper.  He started climbing out of his crib when he was 21 months old and he hasn't slept great at night since then.  He is also an early riser - he is usually up by 6 am, no matter how much he was up during the night.  As a result he is often tired by 9 or 10 in the morning.  After Brooklyn was born he would follow me around with his blankets and if I was busy he would just find a quiet spot, like under his high chair and fall asleep.  As you can see, even the bottom stair works(August):

Some days he is a good eater but he is often picky.  One of his new phrases is "I no like it".  He sure does love corn on the cob though (September):

He loves when Grandma and Grandpas come to visit us or we go visit family.  As a funny side note, anyone that comes to visit us is called "gampa".  In the picture below he and Grandpa P. were putting the sleeping bags on their arms and banging into each other.  (September):

This is Conner's first day of Joy School and he is waiting for his ride.  Micah was eager to wait with him (holding his blanket).  He was so disappointed when the ride came and he had to stay with me.  But since then he has decided that it isn't so bad to have more of my attention (October):

 

He can be so silly - I love his smiles and laugh (October):

He can throw quite the temper tantrum (November):

On November 20th I decided to cut Micah's hair short (so that I wouldn't have to cut it for a while).  Here is what he looked like before:

And after:

That is a quick look at our little boy!

Micah turns 2!

Micah turned 2 back in September (I am going to try desperately to catch up on my blogging before the end of the year).  His favorite food is corn on the cob so we made sure we had lots of that for dinner. 

I love how he brings his face to the corn, rather than picking the corn up.  He could polish off 2 or 3 cobs in a meal.  

 

I showed him a couple of cakes online and he got excited about this turtle cake, which is actually a bunch of cupcakes frosted together.  It turned out cute:



Happy Birthday to you!

 

Make a wish!  Daddy helped him blow out the candles.

 

Mmm, chocolate icecream

 

Micah eating his favorite part: the frosting

 

Love that smile!  Micah is wearing the hat he got from Grandma and Grandpa B.  He also loves carrying around Brooklyn's backpack.

 

We gave him a stick horse for his birthday.  I have loved watching him run around with it, yelling "Giddy up!"



 

Happy Birthday Micah!

Brooklyn's first 2 months

Here are a few pictures of Brooklyn from 1 to 2 months old. 

Almost one month old:

1 month old - I have had so much fun dressing her up in all the cute clothes we were given:

I love her hair! - 1 1/2 months old

Brooklyn giving a little smile while being snuggled by Conner:

Trying to get a picture of a smile.  She started smiling around 4 weeks but I couldn't get any on camera until closer to 3 months old:

2 months old and all ready for church:

I realized that I never got a good full length picture of Brooklyn in her blessing dress, so I took one when she was 2 months old:

 





2 months old and ready for church

In the middle of September we had the kids sit on the steps and we took some pictures and, amazingly, they actually turned out great!  Hooray - it is possible!  In the picture below we even got Brooklyn to smile, but Alan wasn't looking:

I like how Alan is snuggled close to Brooklyn - so cute!

Smile!

We took Brooklyn in for her 2 month well child check and she is a healthy girl
weight:  13 lbs 9 oz
height:  24 inches
She has filled out a lot - I love her chubby cheeks.  She has been my easiest baby.  She is content to lie on the floor for a long time, or sit in her swing.  She does love attention though - she will give big smiles to anyone who comes and picks her up or lays next to her and talks to her.  She rarely cries, even when her brothers are being loud and crazy around her.  When she was about a month old she started only waking up once at night to eat.  When she was 2 months old she would go to sleep around 10 pm and sleep until 3 or 4 am and wake up and eat and then sleep until 7 or 8.  I am so grateful that she is such a relaxed little person, it has made the transition to 4 kids a little easier. 

First Day of School

Alan started Grade one this year.  Here he is on his first day:

He was excited to go back to school.  His school only has 2 grade one classes so some of his friends from last year were in his class again this year.  His teacher's name is Mr. Stevens.  Alan came home really excited and told me that his teacher can swing across the monkey bars.  They also do a reward system where the kids earn pennies and can trade them in for a prize from the treasure box after they earn 25, 50, 75 or 100 cents.  Alan has responded really well to that incentive!

Pitcher Family Reunion

Towards the end of August we went to the Pitcher family reunion.  We met up with my parents, and brothers and their girl friends at Flathead Lake.  My parents rented a cabin and boat which was so much fun.  It was so neat to sit out on the deck and over look the lake as the sun set.  The weather was great most of the days. 

The first morning that we were there the boys got up early and went fishing off of our dock.  It was kind of chilly (notice Conner shivering) and we didn't catch anything :(  

We bought some life jackets a few years ago and have hardly used them.  We brought them with us and I am glad we did - we made the boys put them on everytime they were down around the water.  They came in handy - one time when Conner was throwing rocks off the dock he got a little over enthusiatic and he fell off the dock.  He popped right back up and his uncle grabbed the back of his life jacket and lifted him back onto the dock.  

Micah made us all laugh with his fishing technique:  he would stick the tip of his rod in the water, swish it around and say "here fishy, fishy, fishy, here fishy"

Later that day we went to an interpretive center.  We had fun trying to guess which pelt belonged to which animal.  Here is Conner modeling one of the pelts:

Here is Micah trying to move a big antler:

After that we went for a short hike.  Micah hiking with Brittney:

Then we stopped and had lunch and a rest:

On Sunday we went into Kalispell for church and that evening we took some pictures.  I was so impressed with this picture, everyone is smiling and looking at the camera (except Brooklyn which is okay).

The big group shot.  Drew and his girlfriend Brittney and Reed and his girlfriend Stephanie and their dog Ace plus our family and my parents.

My boys were very interested in Ace.  Micah really liked to put the leash on him and walk around the deck.

We rented a boat from Monday thru Thursday.  It was so much fun!  We used to do a lot of boating in the summer when we were growing up and I have missed going since the old boat broke down.  Everyone except Brooklyn tried something.  Uncle Drew convinced Alan to go on the tube with him.  Alan really wanted to go really slow though.  He went for a short ride and then he wanted to get off because they were going too fast:

Drew and Brittney

 This is the only picture I got of Reed on the boat.  He had to go back home to go to work on Monday evening:

Micah helping Grandma make a salad: 

One evening we went fishing:

Cute picture of Conner:

This was Brooklyn's first fishing expedition.  She is about 6 weeks old:

Micah speared a hot dog on the end of his pole and then he swished his pole through the water.  Surprisingly, we didn't catch any fish.

Carissa skiing

Mom working on her form:

Dad skiing.  I wish I could have been in the boat.  He is still a pro!

Drew wakeboarding.  He made it look easy and he even started doing some tricks.

 Me and my brother, Reed

Carissa wakeboarding.  I pulled up easily most of the time but staying up was kind of tricky.  I did manage to go for some short rides before I crashed.

We did a campfire and roasted marshmallows one night.  Grandma is in the background holding Brooklyn.  Everyone was so kind, they all took turns watching my kids so that I could go out in the boat too.

Our cabin was on a protected little cove.  You can kind of see the cove behind the boys.  In the evenings the water got so calm.

Uncle Reed holding Brooklyn

Uncle Reed skiing and skimming the water with his hand:

Steph got up on the wakeboard!  I'm not sure if her face is showing surprise, or excitement or maybe both.  And Brittney got up on skis but I didn't get any pictures.

A bald eagle landed in a tree in our cove and let us admire it:

Towards the end of the trip we convinced the boys to go with me on the tube.  Grandpa promised to go really slow and Uncle Drew promised to give the boys candy if they did it.  So we all piled on the tube and set off at an extremely slow speed.  The picture below was taken right before the people in the boat got tired of watching our slow float and decided to slowly speed up.  Well, that might have worked except that with my weight on the front the nose of the tube submarined.  All the kids slid off face first into the water.  Micah and Conner started crying.  We got all the kids back into the boat and worked on calming them down.  Uncle Drew was holding Conner and Conner was still sobbing after a minute so Uncle Drew says "At least now you get to have some candy" and Conner stopped mid sob and said "what kind of candy?"  It was pretty funny.  They were fine after that although they had no interest in going on the tube again.  

Reed and Steph brought their floating living room.  One afternoon we took it out for a paddle.  Alan abandoned ship after a while and swam back to shore:

We were looking for pirates to squirt with our squirt guns but we didn't find any.  Micah was really eager to help me paddle and Conner stood guard with his squirt gun:

We celebrated my parent's anniversary while we were there.  They took us out for Mexican food in Kalispell and then we went to an icecream shop.  They had all kinds of different flavors.  I tried lemon dill ice cream - it actually was pretty good.  Here is Drew, Brittney and Reed enjoying some icecream:

My parents with their 3 children and 4 grandchildren:

 On Friday we took the boat back and packed up and left.  Conner held Brooklyn and helped her be happy while I packed up:

The boys playing the cat and mouse game with grandpa: 

 Alan entertaining Brooklyn while we packed up:

 

It was fun to get together and play games and spend time out in the fresh air!