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.

more independent

get this folks, tyler will be done with his second year of medical school soon. wow. our first year here i used to look at the fourth years and think...lucky. but now we're not that far off anymore. he'll be moving on to rotations for his third year, and i know he can't wait. but first things first, he must do well on his finals then, dun-dun-dun...the boards. only 44 days left to study my dear husband.

as for the kiddos, they keep growing and wanting to do a little more on their own. take tanner here. he wants to eat everything we give him and everything we don't give him. we have become a huge fan of this hand held net he can eat out of. we can stick almost anything in it, and he can happily suck away. no worries about choking.

katelyn's desire to read has increased ten fold. she practically always has a book in her hands and always wants to read the book by herself. one of her favorite things to do is sit in the bathroom while we shower while reading a large pile of books. fine by me. this way i know she's not getting into trouble.

we found out recently that mr. tanner loves showers. he just can't figure out how to get a good grasp on that water.



we taught katelyn how to play candy land. this is a good thing and a bad thing. it's good because we love that she's learning new skills that come with playing games. it's a bad thing because it takes a long time to get through the game. she gets easily confused with the twisted path and makes her guy move backwards quite often.

katelyn has decided that she wants to be the one to comb her hair after her baths. i think she's found a new style for hair. wonder why i hadn't thought of that look before?

and look at how excited this little cutie is that she's turning three soon. can't wait to celebrate. only 9 more days until the big day.

easter

there were a lot of easter festivities this year to keep us busy. katelyn had 4 easter egg hunts scheduled this year. a little crazy, fun and ridiculous all at the same time. she ended up only doing two of them though due to the fact that she got sick. probably a good thing since this girl can down her candy.

this year we went to our neighborhood easter egg hunt. it turned out to be quite a cold day, and we weren't very prepared for the cold weather, so we didn't stay long.

i loved how they set up the hunt. they roped off a huge area where they had put all of the eggs out. they let the youngest group of kids "hunt" first for their 10 eggs, then the next age group and the next. it was nice to know my kid wasn't going to get trampled while searching for eggs. i guess searching isn't the right word since there was an egg everywhere you stepped.



the cheeser grin. gotta have the cheeser grin.



and wow, an actual picture with me in it. i'm so used to being behind the camera.



katelyn talked and talked about seeing the easter bunny, but when it actually came time to say hi to him, she didn't want to. since i had already given my camera to a stranger to take our picture, i made her get in. thankfully there were no tears since i was holding her.

of course there was also dying easter eggs. we actually did this very early on in the month, and it was a hit. i think katelyn could have dyed at least 3 dozen eggs by herself if we had let her.

she was very proud of her eggs.

the easter basket. we obviously didn't prepare katelyn for her easter basket. the day before we were at the doctor's office for katelyn. everyone kept asking katelyn who was going to come visit her house the next day. she had no clue who they were talking about. i'm even pretty sure she knows we gave her the basket. oh, and that tinkerbell painting kit. not even from us. my visiting teacher gave that to her.

we loved having conference and easter in the same weekend. since conference didn't start until 11:00 sunday morning, we had time to sit down as a family and talk about our Savior and the Resurrection and were able to read some accounts out of the Bible. katelyn actually listened very carefully and made appropriate comments.

conference was a whole different story. we were up and down trying to keep kids quiet. thank goodness for the conference ensign.

heading to the park

right now i'm listening to the rain coming down. april showers here we come. it rains a lot here during the month of april. rainboots are practically a must around here unless you want your kid to have wet shoes all month.

before this rain hit we headed to the park to enjoy the beautiful weather. it had been so long since the weather has been really warm that i forgot what it felt like. i dressed the kids and myself way to warmly.

tanner hid in the stroller protected from the sun and wind. don't babies have it so easy?



our original plan was to push tanner in the stroller while katelyn followed on her bike. too bad we didn't have her practice riding her bike all winter long like we planned. she can get her bike going, but has frequent set backs. this just frustrated her.



so she gave up and decided to push elephant on the bike instead. at least somebody is getting use out of the bike. i think we'll have to let katelyn practice often. darn it-we'll just have to spend lots of time outside this summer.



katelyn was very excited to be back on the playground. she went down the same slide again and again and again.



she even made a friend. see the girl up at the top? somehow katelyn always finds a bigger kid that will follow her around and play with her at the park.



this was one of tanner's first experiences outside, and he loved it. can't wait to get him on the playground later on and into the water. this is going to be a great spring/summer. i can feel it.