Sami's 2nd grade Animal Report

For Sami's 2nd grade class, they were assigned an animal report. They got to pick their Animal that they are reporting on. Sami picked one of her 2 favorites. She picked the White Tail Deer (the other favorite animal is a Dolphin.) Sami wrote the report at school and then had to make a project to go along with it to show at school. We decided to try her hand at sewing and sewed a White tail deer family. Sami did great.

Grandpa Jim came to art night at Sami's school where she got to display her report on her desk. She was beaming.

The next day the 2nd graders all displayed their projects in the gym for the rest of the school to see. Lucy was so proud to see her little baby deer twins out for everyone to see.

Logan's date with Mom

Our sweet Logan!! He is quite the character. Most days after preschool, Lucy ends up going out for a play date and Logan ends up coming home with me. It really got to Logan this time, and I felt that he needed a special mommy and him date (with Huddy Buddy too.)

I took him to lunch, he picked Pancakes so we went to IHOP.  

After we were seated he exclaimed for the whole restaurant that he now wanted Mac and Cheese. 

The waitress thought that this was hilarious and made sure he got his Mac and Cheese quickly. He was so hungry that  he was eating with double utensils.  He is quite the funny man!!

Fun and Silly Tradition!

I read on Pinterest that if you take a cardboard box and attach it to your stairs, it makes an awesome indoor slide.

This is an accurate statement!! We played for 5 hours straight on this toy. Hudson was a slide hog. And wouldn't let anyone else go on it.

Highly recommended!

Hudson has discovered the AWESOMENESS of the car carts at the grocery store.

The kids have started playing board games together without Matt and I. These are 2 of our Pretty Pretty Princesses.

Matt started a Saturday night tradition. Dinner downstairs while watching the old school Batman episodes. The kids love this . . .including Matt. They even yell out the "Bash, Zoink" and all other words on screen during the fight scenes.

Definitely one to continue on with.

Sick . . .again . . .blah!!

Hudson is sick again. Not as bad as last time, but still pretty bad. Lucy fell asleep Sunday night watching a movie and Eston decided to use her soft tush to his advantage. Hudson wanting to cuddle with anything that had a pulse, moved in on Eston. Pretty darn cute!

Feeding the Masses

Matt was asked to feed the Relief Society for the big Birthday Meal. They asked us to feed 80 people fro under $175. Mission Accomplished . . .kinda!

Matt did wonderful. We had Chicken Cheddar Puffs with Armenian Rice and Green beans. My favorite part was that we feed 80 people on 8 cups of rice . . . that's making things stretch.

Here was our little chef in training . . .eating his dinner in the corner of the church kitchen.

"I hope they call me on a Mission . . ."

The boys get dressed every Sunday for church and every Sunday, 1 of the 5 kids tell me how much they look like a missionary. This Sunday since all the boys were dressed on time, I made them all missionary tags, and snapped their pictures.

These will be fun to look back on when these three are older.

Girls next. . .

Poor Sick Baby (or Babies)

The kid's had a fun Valentine's Day, but had I known it was the start of a SICKLY EPIDEMIC at our house I would have tried to enjoy the time more. Lucy had gotten what we had thought was the 24 hour flu bug the weekend before Valentines. She had thrown up in the car and then was out for 24 hours and then back to her normal self (or so we thought). I went in the day before Valentine's day on the 13th to see the doctor for a sore throat. I was informed that I had a severe case and was extremely contagious. The Dr. then asked if anyone else had been sick. I told him about Lucy being sick with the stomach bug 5 days earlier and the slight sore throat she talked about. He told me to take her in to get tested for strep that day. Matt took her to get tested even though she was acting 100% better. YEP, she had a severe case of strep even though she didn't look it. Apparently, if strep goes untreated it can turn into Rheumatic fever. Glad we went in and got her an antibiotic. Lucy has gone from throwing up, to strep, to throwing up, to a cold. Currently she is in good standing.

I also learned in this time frame, that children under the age of 3 (or 2 1/2) do not get Strep Throat. So I was told that I did not have to worry about Hudson getting it since he was only 12 months old. The one thing that I have learned about Hudson is that he is not your average child.  He started  getting Diarrhea, and sleeping a lot and wouldn't eat. I took him in to the doctor and told them I wanted him tested for Strep. Sure enough, Hudson was positive. Way to prove the medical world wrong Huddy Buddy. It was a long 2 weeks with him. He ate hardly anything for 1 week and looked like this for the entire 2 weeks.

As sad as he looked it was really cute and a lot of fun cuddling time.

The only problem is that he wanted to cuddle the whole time and not be set down. Normally that would be fine but since I myself had Strep I just wanted to lay and sleep myself.

Couldn't choose what pics to share. He is just cute and sad.

With being sick there was just a lot of laying around and cuddling. Eston got treated for Strep even though it was never confirmed. He just wanted some love and attention. Logan just wanted to do what Eston was doing, and Matt was the caretaker of all of us so he was exhausted. I love this photo.

I am glad to say that we are all doing much better. On a side note, I mentioned that Hudson is my one of a kind kid. We found out the month before all this that Hudson has an allergy to Penicillin. Oh, and is Lactose Intolerant. He keeps us guessing.

New Camera Fun!!

Piano Recital Firsts!

My kids have been taking Piano lessons recently. Sami gets to take from me and we try our best to be consistent, but house stuff gets in the way. She does really well if we stay on track. Eston really really wanted to take piano as well. I didn't think that I had it in me to take on 2 NEW students, so I sent Eston to the best place I know, my dear friend, Kristen Spere. He loves everything about it except practicing.

Since Eston is taking from Kristen it came time for her annual Piano Recital and he was so excited.  

Kristen was kind to let Sami join in on the Piano recital. She thought it was so neat to play in front of a crowd on a big piano.

He played two songs, one of which he wrote himself. I thought he would be too shy to perform but he proved me wrong. He went up, bowed and played perfectly.

Sami was beaming from ear to ear.

Good Job guys!!

Happy Valentines Day!!

Eston informed me yesterday that I needed to decorate for Valentine's Day! I am not great when it comes to decorating or celebrating holidays. However, when my kids have grand plans and want it to happen I suddenly get motivated to do something! So the extent of my planning was this wall display for when they woke up. On the back of the individual named heart is things that Matt and I love about them. The kids loved it, and then Eston told me he was excited to see what else I would have done for when he got home from school. I raised the white flag and told him that this was it. I don't have the energy to put into it. Because my bubbly Lucy gave me Strep.

Speaking of Strep, this little angel and I were each other Valentine's dates. The two of us had strep and hung out this morning. However, her heart was taken quickly by cute Jordan Spendlove up the street. Lucy for the last year has declared that she is going to the Temple with him one day. He is her "boyfriend." 

This morning Jordan came by and dropped off a single rose and a box of chocolates for her. Lucy hasn't quit grinning since. Jordan told his mom today that he loves her.

And lastly what would Valentine's Day be without Sami having her annual Valentine's day hair do. She loves it when I put a heart in her hair for this day. I love that she asks.

Because I have been sick with strep Matt told me that we will have our Valentine's day tomorrow. I can't wait to feel better to celebrate.

Hudson's one year stats

Isn't he just the cutest little thing in the world. Hudson is so independent and hilarious. He is our only kid at this age (or at all) that will just sit next to you on the couch and hang out for 10 minutes or longer.

Hudson went in today for his 1 year check up. 

Height: 29 1/2" 50%

Weight:  19 lbs. 9 oz. 20%

Head: 75%

Happy 1 YEAR Cheese ball!!

Look who is turning "1" . . .

I can't believe that my baby turned "1" today. Time has flown by. We started the day with a birthday breakfast of Pancakes. Hudson loves pancakes! He ate to whole big ones by himself! Grandma Brenda and Papa Dallas came down to celebrate and spend the day with us! It was very humorous to watch the other kids try to spoil him and to see how excited they were about his birthday! I think watching the older kids excitement made Hudson even more goofy!

Hudson is a character! Some things we have either discovered about Hudson or grown to love are: 1. Hudson is a very mellow baby. He goes with the flow unless he strongly feels otherwise. 2. He loves cars, mostly Hot Wheels, but we make him play with the Little People ones instead. 3. He thinks he is a big kid. He wants to be running and playing with the big kids. 4. He thinks he is so funny and so smart. He is constantly laughing at his own Genius! 5. Hudson learned how to walk at 10 months. 6. He has milk issues that we are still trying to figure out. 6. He LOVES when his daddy comes home. Matt can even just walk into the room from another and Hudson gets super excited. The two of them love to wrestle with each other. 6. Hudson's nicknames are H. Burke and more commonly Huddy Buddy!

We Love you Huddy Buddy, happy FIRST BIRTHDAY!!

The snow day(s) that never end. . .

This January has been crazy with storms. I feel as if I haven't seen blue sky since Christmas. The sky has been filled with clouds and inversion on and off and the snow has been crazy. We ended up with over 30" of snow within a 24 hour period. I haven't seen snow like that since I was around 13 or 14. It took me 3 hours that day to shovel out of our driveway.

About a week after that big storm we ended up with a big ice freeze. It was raining outside and the second the rain hit a surface it froze into ice. Driveways, streets, parking lots were all ice skating rinks. I went to go pick Eston up from Kindergarten that day. As I stepped out of my car to get him my feet went out from under me. Luckily I caught myself, but it took me 5 minutes to get out of my car and just get to the sidewalk that was 10 feet away. I was at the school for about an hour trying to get Eston and then getting stuck behind cars who were stuck from the ice.

As tiring as all this snow has been to work around, I must say it has added a lot of fun and excitement to. We got great stories from all of it.

Hudson got to go play in the snow for the first time with the kids. He didn't know what to make of the white stuff falling on him. He kept looking up and squinting as it hit him and then he would laugh. I let him feel the snow and he instantly started to cry because of the cold. That ended his play day.

I look forward to when the snow has melted and we can spend more time outside with clean air.