Have to update

Since so many things have happened in our home, I have to update our blog a little. Last time I did it was in the first part of March. Time has flown and now it is June. I meant to update this thing once a month but it hasn't happened that way. Let's go month by month:

March, Mia turned one, Hailee turned eight. Our family was healthy. That is pretty much all that I remember.

April, Hailee was baptized, which was a huge part of our April. We are so proud of her for making that decision, but even more proud of her for learning to decide for herself. We asked her to read her scriptures every night and pray for herself. She did it by herself, without any motivation from us, for ~6 months. I didn't want to motivate her because I didn't want her to think that she had to make that decision. So we showed her to way to find out and then we left it alone. She took it very seriously and made the decision to be baptized in early January after she had read and prayed for a few months. I was so surprised every night when I peeked in her room to find that she was doing it on her own. I would catch her reading almost every night and I would catch her praying by herself in her room. It was awesome to see my daughter make those steps and come to that conclusion on her own. I hope that she continues on that path. I know that she has the tools to make good decisions in life no matter what.

May was crazy. I am a constant worrier and I worry about my job, about life, about finances, etc. I give myself headaches worrying too much. May was full of that. In the end I learned a lot about myself and my surroundings in May and hope that I can slowly learn my lessons and move on. I am blessed with my family. My wife is amazing, supportive, beautiful, and everything that I have always wanted. My kids are a little wilder than I may have expected, but in the end they are the best kids that I could have ever hoped for.

Abigail has been keeping a bit of a secret from us. She is a bully. Our littler than other kids her age, sweet, innocent Abigail has bullied a few people in school. The typical stuff: You are not my friend, I don't like you, etc. Bullying none the less. She is way better now, but a phone call from the teacher was needed to prompt us to take action. She had evidently been talked to a few times at school, but we honestly never knew.

She has also been going to what they call in Kindergarten circles, "The White House". This is the cool place for kids to be, evidently, and all kids aspire to go there. A caring parent never wants to admit that their kid is behind in school, but that is what the White House is. What ends up happening, is that these kids usually just get left behind, from experience. Kim and I were obviously concerned. We took action once we heard that she was going to the White House. We started reading a few times a day with Abby and she took like a duck to water. She started reading quite well and eventually got out of the White House. She graduates from Kindergarten tomorrow. So proud.

Natalie is getting bigger. We have been involving her in prayers at night and as we ask everyone what they want to pray for, she says everything that everyone else said the night before. There are three things that she always says, McKenna (her cousin that is her age), her baby(no not a real baby, her fake, toy baby), and Grandma Dree. The fun part is that when it is her turn to read or pray she starts out and we try to tell her what to say and she will stop us by saying, " I know how" and then repeating us. She waits again for help, we try to provide it and in an annoyed tone she says, "I know how." It is so cute and we love her more and more every day. She is a huge part of our lives and we enjoy her every day. All she wants to do is please and do things that we want.

Mia is Mia and always will be. From facial contortion at some thing that is annoying, makes her laugh, etc. To whining, waking me up in the middle of the night, she is Mia. She makes life fun and she is really cute. I love her every day and she is getting more and more cute as time goes on. Mia, just like the rest of our children, has never worn shoes. She hated when we put them on her and acted like her legs were broken so we only tried a few times as she was a baby. Something always clicks in their minds that tells them that shoes are cool and that thing clicked in her mind. She suddenly wanted to wear shoes all the time. The unfortunate part is that all of our kids have progressively fatter feet. She kept trying to wear shoes that, for all intents and purposes, were her size. Her feet were just too fat. So for about a month we tried to hold her off. Kim went and bought her some sandals the other day that accomodate fat footed children and she wears them all the time. Hailee started out with jelly shoes, Abby loved flip flops, Natalie loved Crocs and Mia loves her sandals. Just like the rest of the shoes, I am sure that she will wear them till they stink. Every time our kids walk in the room, once they acquire their fascination with shoes, you can smell their stinky little feet. She will carry that tradition on with her fat little feet.

See you at the end of June. (I am committing now so that I am motivated to do it)

Things that make you go, "hum?"

February can't be summed up by any other phrase than "Holy Cow". Honestly I cannot believe half of the stuff that has happened thus far this month. I will begin by saying that a month that is supposed to be full of love has been full of crap.

In February Abby lost not one tooth, but two. We started out with this dangling tooth that was impossible to pull. I had been so traumatized by my first attempt at pulling one of Hailee's teeth that there was no way that I was going to do the same thing to Abby. I had tried everything and finally ended up pulling one of Hailee's first teeth with pliers. I was not ever going to do that to another child again, until Abby's tooth had been hanging there for two weeks. Every time I tried to pull it with my fingers, it just kept hanging on. I tried paper towels to try to get a grip. Nothing worked. Abby, surprisingly, was being a good sport about the whole thing so I mentioned the pliers and she said, "Ok dad, that sounds awesome". What actually happened was that I told her about it, she said no. I sweetened the deal with, "If I get it out, you get a new toy. If I don't, we go to Maverick and you get anything you want." This was just as much for me as for her, cause I knew that I would need a stiff Mt.Dew after submitting myself to the same horror that I had experienced with Hailee. So I reluctantly pulled out my trusty pliers, grabbed a hold, and pulled. Nothing. Stupid tooth. We tried it a few more times and nothing. One day I decided that I was going to do the unthinkable and tie her face to a door knob and slam it shut. Every parent and child's dream. I tied her tooth to one side and then the door to the other and had Kim hold on to her. I decided to make sure that the string was short enough and it wasn't. I had Kim move her back and the string came off. I was putting the string back on when I had a brilliant thought. Pull the tooth with the string. It worked and it was only kind of traumatizing for me. She didn't even realize what had happened. 3-4 days later I did it again.

In February Abby got all jacked up after school. She decided that she was going to face plant as she ran from the bus. The problem wasn't that she fell. It was that she fell so fast and hard that she didn't have time to put her hands down. As you can see from the picture, she bruised her forehead, she scrapped her nose (somehow getting under her nose), and she scrapped the tops of her wrists. She was mildly upset, but Abby has turned a new leaf and is kinda funny about stuff now. She doesn't get upset or scared by literally everything now. It is kind of fun and amazing how far she has come in that way. She used to be a huge cry baby and now she is just a huge baby sometimes :)

In February our whole family has looked like this at one point or another, except Kim. We started out with Mia puking and sharting. A week later and she was still sharting and then it was my turn. Somewhere in the middle the rest of the kids had their turn. Poor Rooster has lost some weight. The funny thing is that no one lost their appetite. We are all slowly leaving the bathroom and headed back into real life. One of the funnier things that I heard was when Abby was sitting on the toilet screaming with excitement that she had diarrhea. So exciting!!! NOT!

In February Mia started walking. As usual I was nowhere around when it happened, but I got a glimpse of her doing her thing later that night. Since then she has decided that she is too cool for school and she tries to run, she walks sideways, she tries to walk up the stairs (scary), and she is right in the middle every time the girls are playing. From this video you can tell that she REALLY wants to color too. In short, she is crazy. In short, she is short. Here is a short video...