tey-hos

back in june the kids and i high tailed it out of wisconsin while tyler was cramming for the boards. partly to let him study in peace and partly for my own selfish reasons. i wanted to see my parents and my sisters and my brother! i love, love, love my family. everyone is so positive and happy, we get along amazingly well and most of all, everyone is such good example to me. it's hard not to miss being away from this crew after a while.

it's difficult for me to go through these pictures and try to sum up the trip. there's so much to say about a 12 day trip.

before we headed down to texas, we kept getting emails about my parents setting up a nice box garden in their backyard. i had no idea what that entailed until i saw the actual garden. it was beautiful! my parents have put so much work into that thing and it looked amazing. we spent a couple of morning out by the garden looking around, much to katelyn's delight.

my mother working out in the garden.

katelyn has never been a very good eater. she has never even eaten a carrot before. i think she was wondering why grandma would hand her something like that.

these boots were a favorite and were worn in and out of the house.

more bug chasing. there are lots of bugs here to look at just like in wisconsin, but the bugs are a little bit different and sometimes more exciting to look at.

even benson boy joined us on this trip. this was my first time meeting him. he is such a cute baby, and is only about a month and half younger than tanner.

katelyn and sam became pretty good pals and played together a lot at grandma's house. don't be deceived by all of these outside pictures. we really didn't spend a ton of time outside. it was way too hot out.

we spent one afternoon letting the kids play in grandma's blow up pool. no, we don't have a real one in our backyard. we tried to convince our parents to install one while we were growing up. there's plenty of room, but we could never convince them. we still tease our parents that we are the only ones left in texas without a pool in their backyard.

all of the kids in the pool. i had to wake katelyn up from a nap to come and play, so she was acting a little shy.

my sister, sarah, holding tan the man for me so i could snap some photos

we did so many fun things while in texas, but i barely pulled my camera out. i did manage to get some photos while playing at the bounce house place, but only of the adults. these are two of my sisters and my sister-in-law which we consider one of the sisters.

katelyn was terribly afraid of our outisde cat, but finally warmed up to him by the end of the trip. i think the cat loved the attention. everyone else just ignored her now.

tanner thorougly enjoyed himself on this trip. he won over the hearts of everyone with his million dollar smile as my dad calls it. he had a huge smile plastered on his face literally the entire trip.

i had a chance to take some pictures of these three cousins together. they are so close in age, so it was really fun to have all of them together at the same time.

and of course, we had to take a picture of the boys in the tub together. i'm sure they'll all thank us someday for that.

we had the best time in texas. we were sad to leave everyone, but were grateful for the time we were able to spend with everyone.

bug watching

katelyn is obsessed with bugs. not as in catching and collecting bugs, but as in finding them and killing them. she is not a big fan. i think she developed her dislike for bugs from me, but i promise i tried really hard to act brave.

one of her new favorite past times on the way out to the car is to stop and find some kind of bug, it doesn't matter what, watching it for a bit, then stomping on it.



this girl has a great sense of style. her brothers link chains as bracelets? who would have thought?



you can't forget the sunglasses while bug watching.

found one. and did anyone notice how short katelyn's hair is? the back of her hair has been cut at least 4-5 times in her short three years of life, but not the front. it's taking forever to grow!

the birthday bash

*thank-you so much to everyone who took pictures for me! i wouldn't have any without you guys!

this year i promised myself i wouldn't go all out for katelyn's party. well, that promise was thrown out the window when i saw martha stewart's idea for a carnival themed birthday party. i enlisted two other moms whose daughters had birthdays around the same time of year, and we got to work planning a joint birthday party.

we had four carnival games where kids collected tickets for winning, a prize table to redeem those tickets, and way too many sweets available for everyone to eat. now that all is said and done, i think the party was a success. i absolutely loved that the kids could run around from game to game and play as many times as they wanted without much adult supervision needed. probably my favorite thing about the whole party.

all of these pictures are out of order, but since this is my third attempt at posting about the party, i'm just going to leave it that way. just know that katelyn had a great birthday due to her friends and family who gave very generous gifts, well wishes, phone calls, cards and emails.

katelyn turns 3

we are very excited to say that we celebrated katelyn's third birthday back at the beginning of may. i can hardly believe she's three already. where does the time go with children?

this birthday was much anticipated by katelyn. all we had to do was say the words presents and cake in the same sentence, and she was sold. all she could talk about for weeks was that she wanted to eat a white cake on her birthday and open candy for her presents. not too demanding, and definitely something we could handle.

we did do a little more than white cake and candy though. that morning we took her to eat at denny's where she ordered some chocolate milk and pancakes with chocolate chips.

tyler had to study most of the day, but when he came home we gave her her tinkerbell cake and let her open and play with her presents. she loved the cake and really loved the frosting. that's actually all she ate when we gave her a piece of cake. and yes, we ordered way too much cake for our small family. i did ask if they made smaller cakes, but sadly, they didn't.

we love our sweet (and very sassy), giggly, happy, joyous, loving, sensitive, funny, stubborn little girl. seriously, she is one happy little thing. she (almost) always has a smile on her face and she really loves people and being around them. lately almost every other sentence out of her mouth has made me smile or laugh. what would we do without our katelyn?

tanner's first encounter with a balloon

wow, i feel like i'm buried in pictures i still need to go through and edit. but putting it off isn't helping any, so i'm finally sitting down to take care of some of my pictures.

we went to a restaurant a while back (i don't even really remember when anymore) where katelyn got a balloon on her way out the door. tanner couldn't keep his eyes off of the balloon, so we let him have his turn. he was having the time of his life! i love that babies can be so easy to please.

eyeing the balloon. i'm pretty sure he was trying to figure out how he could get his hands on it.



touching the balloon=one happy baby



watching daddy play



obviously daddy is hilarious



and i do realize there is no balloon in this picture, however, our little guy has six teeth. a whole mouthful. he seriously got all six teeth in one month. he didn't have any teeth at six months and had all of those suckers at seven. needless to say we weren't getting much sleep during that month.

i guess i'm playing catch up here. these pictures are from back in april. some of them from march. but doesn't this always seem happen this time of year? we, along with everyone else, are too busy enjoying spring and the great outdoors. but katelyn, tanner and i are hoppin' on an airplane in one week to go to texas, so i want to play catch up. (yeah for texas. can't wait).

while we're in texas tyler gets to stay behind and study, study, study like mad for his upcoming boards. i can't even begin to describe the time these boys put into studying for the boards. tyler has sacrificed a lot of sleep and energy to take care of us and his studying. this test is a big deal. so hopefully going to texas (yeah again) will give tyler a little extra time to just study.

my friend amy invited us to tag along with her at the zoo. always a fun trip. i must say we have a fabulous zoo here. it's well taken care of and there are lots of fun animals to see. the girls wanted to spend some of their time playing on these seats.



one sunday evening we decided to make some chocolate covered fruit. katelyn helped (wanted to do everything herself) and did a great job. here she is anxiously awaiting for the chocolate to harden.



the closest temple to us is about 1 hour and 45 minutes away. not too far away, but far enough with two kids. so we always turn our temple trip into a small getaway. there is a hotel about five minutes away from the temple with a pool that we love to stay in. it's perfect. one of us attends in the evening, one in the early morning, then we spend the rest of our time swimming or visiting the chicago area.



katelyn and two of her favorite things. her brother and her red car. she's not letting either one go.



tanner enjoys the outdoors as long as he can get to the grass. i have to watch him very carefully. i did stop him from eating the dirt.



and wow to tyler. he noticed our fridge was dirty and what did he do? he cleaned it. no prodding or poking from me occured. seriously a superstar in my book (yes i'm bragging, i know). katelyn is at that age now where she wants to help with everything, so she decided to help daddy load the fridge back up. i had just gone grocery shopping so there was plenty of stuff to stick inside. notice anything that doesn't belong?



and lastly, amy i know you've been dying to see some pictures of your adorable baby. here is a very small sneak peek. maybe i'm just torturing you now though!

the park

the weather has really been cooperating here lately. i'm loving that. we can open our windows and let the fresh air in, turn our heat off and pull out our shorts. and the slight breeze (sometimes more) isn't so bad either.

on one of these gorgeous days we planned a little get together at a park to let the kids get some energy out. and of course so the moms could chat. maybe that's the main reason we got together in the first place, but our kids don't need to know that.

here is katelyn and her cute friends playing at the park.