Fun with Family

All of these pictures are from April 20th, when we went to visit Grandma and Grandpa Bassett.  Russ and his kids were there too.  We worked on some projects in the afternoon:

While these guys were deciding how to make the gate more secure...:

Alan and Hudson were trying to dig to the center of the earth.  They told me they knew that they couldn't really do it, but they wanted to try anyway:

Alan was thrilled to try out the big hammer:

Grandma showed the kids some of her rock collection and so the kids started making their own collections.  Conner was really interested in rock collections and is still collecting rocks now that we are back home:

Conner, Alan and Bentlie.  See that trench in the background?  The kids dug that so that the chickens could go swimming.  They were disappointed when we wouldn't let them fill it up with water.

I walked out to check on the kids and found Micah like this: one shoe on and one shoe off

I found his shoe a few feet away.  It looks like they tried to plant it:

Bentlie was trying to attach the wagon to the Jeep hitch.  He wasn't having much success so I offered to pull him around:

Pretty soon Micah wanted to join us.  Contrary to his facial expression he really enjoyed it:

Our fun little walk evolved into a race when the older kids joined in.  They found another wagon and had fun pulling each other around the garden:

Then the dad's got involved and the race became a little more competitive.  It ended with one of the wagons tipping over and dumping the occupants.  I thought I had a video of it but I must have actually been watching the race and not the camera because I wasn't filming the one who tipped over.  No one was hurt but the races ended after that.

Relaxing inside while Kelcie reads Grace, Brooklyn and Reed a story:

The weather was nice - warm but not too hot.  The evening was especially nice.  We let the kids stay up a little later than usual because it was so gorgeous out and because they were having so much fun together.  A cute picture of Grandpa and Brooklyn enjoying the evening on the deck:

9 months old

Time is flying by!  Our little girl is nine months old already.  She has hit a couple of milestones recently.  She started rolling over when she was about 8 months old.  It took her a long time to decide to do it but once she started doing that crawling wasn't too far behind.  She started crawling when she was about 9 1/2 months old.  She started crawling 2 days before her well child check, which was nice because when they asked if she was crawling I could say "Yes".  Here are a few pictures of Brooklyn at 9 months.

First time swimming (she seemed to enjoy it):

I love how she sticks her tongue out:

Dad's shoulders are a fun place to sit:



Figuring out crawling is hard work.  She would get on her hands and knees and rock.  Sometimes she lost her balance:

But she got right back up and kept trying:

Now she can get into all kinds of things.  I love her hair in pig tails, although she doesn't like it when I try to do her hair:

She always pulls the elastics out of her hair and then her hair looks like this:

We sure love this sweet little girl!
Random facts:
-  She is sleeping better.  She usually sleeps through the night, from about 7:30 pm till 6 am. 
-  Alan nicknamed her "Goo-Goo" and so that is what he and the boys usually call her (I don't know where he got that from).  He also calls her Brooky. 
-  Brooklyn has recently decided that she prefers "real" food, as opposed to baby food.  When she sees us eating dinner she wants to eat what we are eating and she lets us know by squealing and fussing in her high chair.  This week she loved our chicken stir fry and she today she ate all of the peas, noodles, ham, and broccoli out of the pasta/vegetable salad that I made.

Her well child check went well.  Here are her stats:
height:  29 1/4 inches  -  92 %
weight:  20 lbs. 14 oz.  -  79 %
head:  45.5 cm.

Time out for Women

At the beginning of April I went up to Canada to visit my parents.  Reed couldn't come so I took the kids up by myself.  The drive went fine until Conner threw up just past the border.  Micah saw Conner throw up and promptly did the same.  I have figured out since then that Conner gets carsick when he sits in the back seat and looks at a movie or plays the I pod.  Oh well, we made it.  My mom and I went to time out for women:

My dad is amazing and watched all 4 kids for me so that I could go kid-free (Reed and Steph helped him on Friday night):

The boys had a lot of fun:

We even went swimming while we were there.  I love the pools up there!  Oh, I wanted to record this funny story, even though I didn't get any pictures.  One of the nights we were all eating dinner around the table and Brooklyn was sitting in her high chair eating a cracker.  Well, she dropped it on the floor and Ace (Reed and Steph's dog) ate it.  Brooklyn was devastated.  She cried and cried and cried.  We gave her another cracker and she would chew on it, and then look around and see Ace somewhere on the floor and start to cry again.  She really held a grudge against that dog!

It was such a nice time to recharge.  The messages were great.  I came away from it thinking that I wanted to do a little better and make sure that I enjoy life more as it happens.

Mess Makers

Micah has been going through a phase where he loves to make huge messes.  I will suddenly realize it is quiet and then I know that there is trouble.  It has been very frustrating, especially since he seems to wait until I am nursing Brooklyn or doing the laundry. 
I found this scene right before I was supposed to leave the house.  Micah had smeared hydrocortisone cream all over our Ipod and computer screen:

In April we finally had some nice days.  Alan and Conner driving cars in the dirt:

Micah riding his bike:

Brooklyn enjoying the sun:

On this fine day I decided that it would be fun to go for a bike ride at the park and have a picnic dinner.  So we came inside and I started making sandwiches.  As I am making them I can faintly hear water running upstairs and I figured someone was washing their hands.  After a couple of minutes I suddenly realized I could still hear the water running.  I had my foot on the first stair to go upstairs when Micah came running to the top of the stairs.  He was very excited and kept pointing to the bathroom.  Uh-oh.  I ran up there to discover that he had plugged the bathroom sink and turned the water on.  When I ran in the water was flowing over the side of the counter like a water fall.  I turned it off and yelled for everyone to gather towels.  We all worked to mop up the mess. 

The pile of wet towels afterward:

When we were finished I looked at my watch and decided we still had time to go have fun at the park.  Until I walked out of the bathroom.  Alan and Conner were sitting on the floor of mine and Reed's room surrounded by dark brown bead flake things.  They had been tugging on one of those neck pillows and it ripped open and sprayed the flaky things all over.  Oh, so frustrating!  So then we scooped up that mess and vacuumed:

We had used up most of our time but we still went and had a picnic dinner since it was already packed and I REALLY wanted to get out of the house.
All of our kids have made messes when they were toddlers but Micah seems to be much more extreme. 
Remember those yummy looking pistachios in my last post?  A couple of days after Reed received them I walked into the kitchen to see Micah stirring the whole bag of nuts into the orange juice:

To name a couple more recent ones, he dumped a jumbo bag of rice crispies all over the table and floor when he tried to pour himself a bowl of cereal.  As Reed and I were about to leave the house to go to my brothers wedding I walked into the bathroom of the house we were renting and found him finger painting with his bright blue toothpaste on the bright white bathroom rug.  There are so many, many more instances but I can't think of any more specifics.  I just keep reminding myself that this is a phase and that some day I will look back and laugh.  And I have considered adopting this motto: cleaning the house while the children are growing is like shoveling the walk while it's still snowing.

Happy Easter!

We had sick kiddos this year for Easter so it was pretty low key.  We did our traditional egg coloring.  I kept waiting for a time when Reed would be there but he has been really busy with work so I just did it.  It started with lots of waiting:

and waiting:

and more waiting:

That's all the pictures I got of egg coloring because shortly after I took that things went crazy.  Multiple people needed help at the same time.  We ended up with several badly cracked eggs and some tears when things did not work out.  Finally Micah spilled the cup of yellow die all over the table and carpeted floor.  After that I was done, and the eggs were mostly done, so everyone got down from the table and got ready for bed.  Maybe we will try again next year.  Maybe.

We had fun looking for the eggs on Saturday.  The boys are getting so good at finding them now:

Conner found a tricky egg hiding in our tulips:

Brooklyn was fascinated by all this activity:

I was really surprised at how well Micah did.  He didn't need any help, and he knew to look under and around things:

Pointing out where his eggs are:

Then we came inside and found our Easter baskets.  Brooklyn found a new dress that she can wear to her Uncle's wedding reception:

Mmm, pistachios:



We like those chocolate eggs:

Brooklyn's treat: banana puffs

Conner showing off his new skylander:

We didn't go to church the next day since 2 out of the 4 had fevers and runny noses and coughs but we still had a nice ham dinner.