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...

Thinking about my babies

I was looking through old photos of my girls and put a picture together of all of them at ~ 1 year old. Mia is not quite there and neither was Hailee but the other two are right on.

Might as well update the ol blog

So we have had an eventful December thus far. I grabbed Kim and Mia and stole away with them on our Anniversary to Seattle. I had a great time with my beautiful wife of 9 years and Mia actually slept well for the first time in a long time. We went to dinner at a great restaurant on the 2nd and the next day we just hung out in Seattle. We walked downtown and ate at a seafood restaurant.

We came home and have really enjoyed being around family. Mia is back to her old sleeping habits so I have been trying to let Kim sleep as much as possible but some nights it gets to be too much.

The kids are doing well in and out of school and I am so excited for our older two who are in piano. I love the sounds of the piano in our home.

I have taken up a new sport and am decent at it until I get tired. I tweaked my back playing it but still live to play squash. For those who don't know it is a bit like raquetball just on a smaller court, with a smaller squishy ball that doesn't bounce and a racquet that is smaller but longer. It is a lot of fun as a winter sport but I miss boogie boarding. I love the snow but summer is great.

We are looking forward to Christmas and have come up with ways that we can serve others this year. I love the way that Kim's family takes an active role in serving and I look forward to this time of year just for that reason.

Busy as life gets

Life has been nuts lately. I was gone last week after hurting my back. I drove 7.5 hours in pain last Sunday and I was in Spokane for 5 days. I drove 7.5 hours back Thursday night. I have been home 3 days and am headed to Phoenix for 3 days starting tomorrow. As much as I enjoy work, I am tired. I sit here in church after hours of meetings with my back still hurting. I miss my wife. She is at home with sick kids. I want to take a break for a few days and just spend time with her. Then I want to take a few days and just do stuff with my kids and her. Money and time takes away from me being able to do that. My girls are growing up and I miss out on it.

Hailee got chased by a dog the other day while she was riding her bike. She is such a funny girl. She was so excited to tell me about it.

Abigail is growing up so fast. She is learning to control her emotions. She makes me laugh when I tease her and she gets mad and comes at me swinging. She likes to wrestle me and I never would have figured that a year ago. I am proud of her doing well in school.

Natalie is a little tank. She gets mad and drives her mom crazy with her super scream but it makes me just want to cuddle her more. She is getting so smart and loves racing to help out.

Mia is getting bigger and sweeter. She still likes held but she is much more content. It makes life easier.

Kim is my world. She struggles with me being gone and I feel horrible. We are working on a few ways to get her off of her paper route. I enjoy every second that we have to spend together and I relish the opportunity to be a better man.

Girls will be Girls

We took the girls to the fair and were showing them the cows getting milked. Abby so gently asked why our milk doesn't taste like barn. Not sure how to answer that we went and looked at all the animals. We had fun at the fair, but were lightly afraid for our lives with all the scary tube tops and mullets. Rooster shows up to my office today and Kim asked me if I liked how she was dressed. I looked at her and thought, "Holy Cow, she really needs to start caring what the girls look like before they leave the house. Nice snow boots in August Rooster.

Mia has been WAY better, but has been really touchy while she sleeps. She will wake up and scream every 15 minutes if you don't stay on top of her. She is sure getting cute. She smiles at me every time I get home from work. It gets me so much that I have to sit there with her for a while. Abby and Hailee are about to start school again and I am excited for that. I really hope that Hailee continues what she started last year and I hope that Abby stops with her gang building skills. She is the biggest ring leader I have ever seen. She teams up with other girls and picks on the boys. I see it every day when I get home because she gets all the girls all pumped up and they jump on me almost every day. Rooster is getting so smart, we are starting to be able to have conversations but she also realized a few weeks ago that throwing a fit is somehow fun. She throws them so much now that I can hardly stand it. Kim is still Kim, the best woman in the world. Sorry all you other women out there reading this. It is true, you have no chance at taking that title away from her.

CUTE GIRLS

We just got the girls pictures taken and they turned out great. Good thing you cannot see me behind the camera because I was pulling out every trick in the book to get them to stay in the picture and look the direction of the camera. I wasn't even asking for a smile, a smile was a bonus. Natalie had a bottle of bubbles in almost every picture, but she would scream and cry if we took it away. Hailee was my big helper with the baby. Abby was tired and hot...it was very hot that day so I completely understand the grumpiness. Mia was a good sport. With all of that...Christie did a WONDERFUL job. We are getting ready for school to start and are very excited. It will be nice to get on a regular schedule. Hopefully. We have had a fun summer. The girls are lots of fun and make me laugh a lot all the time.