some of reese's favorite things

reese loves, loves, loves hats!  if she finds one laying around, she wants it one and will keep it on.

reese loves the water.  hopefully we'll have another little fishie on our hands as she continues to get older.

reese loves animals.  since we don't have any real ones at our house, stuffed animals do for now.  she cuddles and coddles every stuffed animal we have in our house.

this is reese's favorite way to stand right now, especially when she's tired.  it's her tripod pose.

and last but not least, reese loves these magnetic letters we have on our play kitchen.  she can be found dumping them out time and time again through out the day, singing her abc's, then picking out the letters one by one and identifying them.

mother's day

i feel truly blessed to be the mother of these three kiddos. how did i luck out?  they are by no means perfect little kids, and i am certainly far from a perfect mother, but i love that we all work together to be the best little family that we can be.  i know these little ones humble me and teach me always how to be a better person. 

 

mother's day was a little different this year.  tyler was on a busy rotation, so he wasn't around that day.  tyler was around on saturday and did a great job of making that day special for me. 

on the actual day i was able to spend lots of quality time with my kids and felt very grateful that i was able to do so.  love these kids!

 

katelyn's birthday

our dear, sweet katelyn turned six years old this year!  it is so fun to celebrate with this one.  she can hardly stand waiting for her big day to come.  she spends tons of time thinking about and dreaming about her birthday activity and the presents she wants.  honestly, this girl could come up with about 50 things she'd be happy with for her birthday.   so when it comes to finding the perfect present she's happy with just about anything.

 

katelyn on her actual birthday with her new birthday outfit and her school treats she made to share with her classmates.  katelyn is one of the youngest in her grade, so she had all year to think about the treats she was going to bring in.

for her birthday katelyn requested a visit to chuck e. cheese.  i'm not a huge fan of that place, but it was all she really wanted, so we went.  it turned out to be a very nice, clean chuck e. cheese, so it wasn't too bad.  and look at that smile on her face.  she had a blast!

happy birthday to one of the most thoughtful, kind-hearted, obedient little girls i know.  we can't wait to see what we have in store for this next year with you!

my mother's birthday

the main reason we planned this big trip was to celebrate my mother's 60th birthday. although i think the large crowd wore my parents out, i'm still so glad we could be there to celebrate such a special occasion for her!

 

i still can't believe i only took these two pictures when we celebrated.

 

overall the trip to texas was a huge success.  we got to see all of the nieces and nephews and were able to watch them deepen their relationships with each other.  and we got to catch up with siblings and spouses and got to visit with my wonderful parents. 

the major downside to the trip really was all my fault.  when we left utah on our two day drive i ended up getting a nasty cold that i passed on to my sister's son.  from there it snowballed out of control to pretty much every single person in the house.  some caught it early on, others right as they were leaving and still others didn't get it until they got home.  i'm still sorry about that!

zoo day

while we were there we took the whole crew to the zoo.  i love going to the zoo, and i love taking kids there.

 

tanner discovered a bug while we were there.

reese fell and got a fat lip while we were in texas, so that is why it looks like she has blood on her lip.  this is reese's cheese face.

beach day

beach day was so much fun!  i think we could have gone back two more times and enjoyed it just as much. 

 

we started off letting the kids play in and near the park while we were getting lunch set up.

katelyn found a cool looking bug and was inspecting it trying to get others to come and look at it.

reese loved playing in all of the rocks!

 

i love this picture!  same and Abigail's sunscreen was coated on and made them look quite white.  they played the zombie part on their own.

 

and finally we let the kids in the water, and they went crazy and ran around loving every minute.

i have more pictures of this day, but they are on my sister's camera.  hopefully i'll get those soon!

carnival day

to entertain the kiddos one day we set up a carnival for them.  they loved it!  we had six or seven different booths, snowcones and sprinklers afterwards for them to run around in.

 

tanner at the dress up booth.  he took this very seriously.

a fishing booth.  I think this was by far a favorite with the kids because fun prizes were involved.

my dad testing out one of the booths.

i don't remember if this was actually a booth, but the kids loved playing in the water nonetheless.

baby eli enjoying a chew toy during the festivities.

sprinkler time!  what kid doesn't love running in the sprinklers?