End of school stuff! May, 2012

Here is Lydia's Kindergarten graduation. She was so excited to sing for us and did an awesome job! And, yes, she is the tallest in her class! Check out her slightly toothless grin.

This is a woodpecker she drew that went with a song they did. What amazing drawing skills!

I love this song!

Joy represented her high honors group at a school wide assembly. Their teacher suggested them dressing as nerds and Joy decided to take it to the next level. She practiced this little routine, and even did a nerdy laugh. If you don't recognize the dance she did, it's the Sue Heck dance from the TV series The Middle. I don't know where she gets her motivation!

This is at an awards assembly where Joy was the only one in her Junior High of 1400 students to receive 4 awards! There were only a handful that received 3. We are so proud of her! If you click on the picture to enlarge it, you can read what each award was for. Mary was so close to getting a 4.0 award. She only had one A- all year, the rest straight A's making her grade point average 3.98. The only reason she got that A- is because she had pneumonia and missed school for a week. So not fair! There's always next year!

Adam received his Readyman and Citizen patches here and also his Webelos! We'd been working hard all winter with his leaders and he was very excited! It was the same day I had those nasty polyps taken out of my nose, so I wasn't able to go with him and David was oncall and stuck on a work call. So, Joy and Mary went with him and Joy acted as a parent for him (which she already has alot of practice with) He, He! Mary took the pictures, that's why they're a bit dark, but I'm so thankful they could get what they did.

Life with a dog!

April, 2012
These last few months have been fun and challenging with Thor. We love our "puppy" and feel he's a part of the family already! He's quite obedient and it's been so great for the kids to have him. Even when he's destroying shoes, toys, electronics, and many other things, I still haven't questioned our decision in getting him. We've had alot more opportunities to do family activities too. It's amazing how much a new dog motivates people to do fun things together.
Here we went on a walk on a path through hobble creek canyon. It was so beautiful and Thor and the kids loved it!

Over spring break we set up the tent in the back yard and the kids attempted to sleep in it. They felt more protected with Thor with them. But, Thor wanted to come in after a while (it was very cold) and then Mary and Joy couldn't fall asleep. Adam and Lydia had fallen asleep, but we didn't want to leave them out there alone, so we had to wake them up to bring them in. They were pretty mad, but still an adventure anyways. We left the tent up for the rest of spring break in which it rained a lot! So, it was a fun distraction and they read books, colored and even watched movies out there.

Thor absolutely adored David and we constantly find him carrying around David's shoes and sometimes his clothes. Here David had left for a few minutes to pick one of the kids up and Thor grabbed his jacket and laid down with it waiting for him to get home. It's very endearing!

Hazel has BIG MUSCLES!

Thor and his best friend Boots!! They have absolutely loved each other from the first sniff! Their first play date Boots had to teach Thor a few things about how to really play with another dog! He was quite a challenge for Thor. But, he caught on pretty quick after we dogsat Boots a few times, and now that he's over 80 pounds at 7 1/2 months  ( about 25 more pounds than Boots), he doesn't have any trouble.

Hazel's invention! She needed a little variety in her movie experience.

MAY, 2012
Our growing puppy at 6 1/2 months old

Adam and Lydia covered Hazel in tissues for a blanket after she fell asleep on the couch. Crazy kids!

David's new haircut, or should I say, nohaircut!  I actually love it, and he likes how intimidating he looks!

What a silly puppy! We cracked up for awhile when we found him sleeping like this! He has no shame!

Thor!

We added a new member to our family yesterday. He is a pure bread Rottweiler, he's 5 months old, he will be mostly an inside dog,and we named him Thor. Yes, we know he will grow to be about 150 pounds and that he will shed and drool and that his poops are already enormous. He is already 55 pounds! I'm sure many of you are thinking we're crazy and what are they thinking?! Especially, since for a long time I didn't like people wearing shoes in the house and am kind of a clean freak! But, I have definitely mellowed over the last few years and David had an experience that we just could not ignore. David had this very vivid dream that we had a Rottweiler named Thor and in that dream he was protecting our family from some unseen danger. Well, he kind of shrugged it off at first, and just out of curiosity  looked up the breed to see what they were like, having absolutely no desire to get a dog in the near future before this. But, it was after he had the same vivid dream  the very next night again that he felt like it was some kind of prompting. He told me about it and after the shock wore off that David even wanted a dog, I felt very impressed that we needed this dog too.
We found Thor in Salt Lake through the want adds, and even though we wanted a younger puppy, we just kept being drawn back to him. The price was right, so we decided to go meet him. David went up with Mary, Adam, and Lydia and right when David saw him, he knew this was Thor. Unfortunately while David was putting some things in the van, Mary witnessed the old owner kneeing him hard in the side because he had barked, and it made him yelp. When he came home he was very shy and timid and a little jumpy. Then this morning David caught him starting to pee inside and yelled to scare him into stopping and he yelped and flinched expecting David to hit him. We are sure he was abused at the last home and we are just so thankful that we were drawn to him to rescue him. We're pretty sure he wasn't exercised and he was on a very poor diet so his back legs are very weak, but the vet said he should be fine and able to recover. He's already had two play dates with Marby's dog and a neighbors puppy and he LOVES playing with other dogs. He's been so friendly toward everyone and is much more comfortable and happy today. He's a sweetheart and we all love him already. I can't even tell you how extremely excited the kids are! So without anymore delay here is our monster puppy!

All I want for Christmas is my ONE front tooth!

Lydia's front tooth had been barely loose for a very long time and just wasn't getting anywhere. It was taking so long that her permanent tooth was growing in behind it, and I was NOT going to pay dentist to take out a loose baby tooth. So, I thought, we've got to get this thing out, she can tough it out. We tried and tried, and finally with a quick hard tug, and a scream, it came out, with the WHOLE root still there! I felt so bad, but Lydia was so brave, and she got over it in a minute because she was so excited to show off her new space. And, I bribed her saying that the tooth fairy would bring extra if she was really brave! This is one of my favorite stages when they're missing their front teeth. Soooo cute!

Picture with Santa

Oh, what a wonderful time of the year, making memories and traditions, but sometimes making those memories is quite challenging. We were having just a wonderful time waiting in line to see Santa for only about 45 minutes. During that time I was just enjoying watching my children wildly running about, fighting, tripping, harassing an old lady, putting their hands all over everything they can think of, almost breaking the decorations, taking off shoes, hair in dissaray, and crawling/laying on the floor in the middle of the mall.  We were up next to see Santa after such a joyous wait and his helper was talking to me about getting their pictures taken when Lydia bumped into Adam (possibly on purpose, we don't know who to believe), and Adam decides to let loose and shove her as hard as he dare, almost knocking over a statue and Lydia! Well, Santa's helper handled it with grace and said very nicely, "Oh, we don't treat our sister like that", and I, well, it took every ounce of control not to slap him on the back of the head and drag his sorry butt out to the car. But, I did not stand in line for that long to miss out on getting our traditional Santa picture. Adam's pouting, Lydia's  crying and somehow I gathered every ounce of patience I could, dried their tears and amazingly came home with this wonderful picture.

 

Hazel loves putting on makeup, lipgloss especially. She's not happy unless she has at least three in hand and gobbs them on, sometimes dripping from her chin. Needless to say, all of Joy and Mary's lip glosses are infected with Hazel slobber!