Friday, March 18, 2011

Happy St. Patty's Day!


Did you get kissed or pinched? :-)



Saturday, March 12, 2011

Happy Birthday Bree

Our sweet girl is 3 today. I feel so blessed to have this little beauty. She brightens my day. Even though she is a firecracker and can definitely try my patience at this age, she is worth every moment of it. I still feel so grateful to have her. I will always remind her that she beat cancer and that she is strong...I still feel so grateful we have her every day.

I took her to the farmhouse to take some pictures of her for her birthday card. She had fun being the model and posing for the camera. She loves the camera. Whenever I pull it out to take a picture, she immediately poses and says "Cheese!"

This is the card I made for her 3 year announcement: 
front:
back:


I asked her what she wanted for her birthday and she told me a "pink burfday hat." She also wanted a "pincess cake." She is too cute, I could eat her up.

Here's the traditional "right when you wake up" picture. This was probably the only time she wasn't happy to see the camera. hahaha


 This is the "Pink Pincess cake" that I made per her request. I am SO professional, don't you think? Alright, cakes are not my strong suit.

At least the birthday girl liked it...



Oh it's so hard to resist...it's her cake after all!

This was the "Pink Burfday hat" that I made the night before...I thought she'd be so happy when she saw it. Instead I had to convince her to put it on...what a diva.

She didn't really want to wear it until I told her how beautiful she looked with it on. 

This was the best attempt at all 4 kids. Oh do they love their baby brother!

She loved opening her many presents...

...loved her new Prince & "Pincess Rora". Such a serious girl.

Dress up clothes and hats...

...and dress-up dresses for her polly-pocket Princesses. Oh the pink in this girl's life!

Ever since her 1st birthday we do the traditional balloon release with wishes for her. I still tear up every time we do this because of how special her life is. Every balloon that I let go I wished for her to have a long, happy and HEALTHY life. 

I loved this picture of her with her Grand parents. So sweet.

A few things about our sweet girl at 3 years old:

*She traded her babies in for princess dolls that can change their dresses.
* She likes to change her own clothes at least 4-5 times a day (Heaven help me!)
*She loves dress-up clothes and has to be in a "dress" - no more shorts/pants!
* She still loves her blanket at night. 
*She calls Daddy her "Prince" - When he's at work, she asks me "Where my Prince, Mommy?"
*She likes me to sing her 3 favorite songs to her every night.
* She loves to help me cook.
*She basically potty trained herself a week before her birthday!
* She loves her brothers and often says "I the queen" whenever they play. That's my girl!

We love you Breezy! Happy Birthday sweet girl!



Thursday, March 10, 2011

Soccer begins...again

Gunner started soccer again right after Bode was born. Since I had just had a baby, I wasn't able to attend many practices or games at the start of the season. Instead of the typical boring team pictures, my sweet friend Amy took these pictures of the team after one of the practices and they are just darling! Great job Amy!




She also took individual pics of all the boys. Gunner is such a Mr. Sensitive in this shot. I just love this boy.


Happy soccer season! 



Monday, March 7, 2011

Dance your way to Healthy!


I told my friend Kathleen that I would put this on my blog to get the word out. If you are able, please support her cause! Thanks for reading & get dancin'!! 
-Kari

Dance Your Way to Healthy as a Family
Submitted by Kathleen Thomas on behalf of Primrose Educational Preschools

Dance can be a fun, easy way to introduce physical activity into a child's life.  As a provider of educational child care, Primrose Schools has recognized and is actively fighting against the childhood obesity epidemic. Childhood obesity is a critical issue for young children in America. The Family Dance-off supports Children's Miracle Network Hospitals, a non-profit organization that raises funds for more than 170 children's hospitals, which collectively treat 17 million children annually for every illness and injury imaginable.

Through their annual Family Dance-off event, families are encouraged to record and submit a 30 second video of themselves dancing to promote fitness and strengthen family ties.

Participating in the Family Dance-off is easy:
1.       Record a 30-second video of your family's best dance moves. Don't be afraid to let loose and be silly!

2.       Visit The Family Dance-off site and upload your best take by March 19.

3.       Share your video with your friends via email, Facebook, Twitter, etc.

4.       View and vote daily (you can place five votes per day) for your favorite family dance video!

What would a competition be without prizes? Primrose Schools is providing prizes that aren't only great for your family but for your whole community, with $65,000 in donations to local Children's Miracle Network Hospitals:

·         Grand Prize: $5,000 and Primrose will make a $30,000 donation to a local Children's Miracle Network Hospital

·         2nd Prize: $3,000 and Primrose will make a $20,000 donation to a local Children's Miracle Network Hospital

·         3rd Prize: $1,500 and Primrose will make a $15,000 donation to a local Children's Miracle Network Hospital

·         All 14 Finalists will also receive a FLIP camcorder

Visit The Family Dance-off site  for details on how to take part in the fight against childhood obesity, participate in the competition, and view past competitors!



Friday, March 4, 2011

Out of Africa

For a family Christmas present, Justin's parents gave all their kids and grand kids tickets to Out of Africa.
This is a great place with animals you can see, touch & even feed! We all had a blast being together. It was our last "trip" before Bode was born so we lived it up. :-) I took tons of pictures so sit back and enjoy!

Our first stop was inside a caged area with lots of friendly reptiles. The boys loved this.

Caleb brought his own dinosaur and I think was trying to introduce him to this big guy.

Some of the family. ;-)

My sweet in-laws. They are so fun!


Next we boarded the bus to see & feed the animals like the giraffe and camel. They gave us all carrots to feed the giraffe. I sat next to this cute guy. 

Breezy and Daddy had a good time being together.

Our first stop was the giraffe. I forget his name but I remember there were 2 of them and they had to be kept in different spaces because they fought over an imaginary girl giraffe. That's a man for ya! 

What happened next was funny. As we pull up, all of the kids on the bus start waving their carrots around excitedly thinking this giraffe would come right over. 

Little did we know that the giraffe was sleeping with his eyes open. So our tour guide got out of the bus and tried to wake him him by throwing carrots at him! It was great entertainment!

Finally when Mr. Giraffe woke up he realized we were all yelling at him to come and eat the carrots so he came right over. The cool thing to do was feed the giraffe by putting your carrot in your mouth then he would give you a big wet slobbery kiss. 

Gunner was pretty brave and got his ready. 

I didn't have my shutter speed set fast enough so I missed the tongue-to-the-face shot but this was taken just after Gunner got a big fat kiss! He loved it!

Krista (or Aunt Kissa as Bree calls her) definitely got a good kiss. My bro in law, Ryan is a goof. He kept teasing the giraffe with the carrot and putting it over his wife's face so she would get licked over and over. It was so funny. 


 Me & my boy!

One of the next feeding spots was the camel. It wasn't quite as cool as the giraffe, but fun nonetheless. Caleb loved him!

Awww, how sweet. I love her chunky little face.

Gunner definitely had a great time. 

After our bus tour ended we headed over to the white tiger show. They do lots of tricks with the tigers. It's crazy that they really are just very large cats that like to play the same as house cats...only they could take your head off with one swipe of their claws!


Action shot!


After the white tigers, we walked around and looked at some of the wildlife just hanging out. I made sure that fence was sturdy before letting my children wander so close to these animals!

The next stop we made was at the reptile show. They brought out lots of reptiles including this very large, very scary looking python. They invited groups of people in to come hold it and touch it. The guide told everyone they could touch anywhere on the python except for his head. 

What happened next was classic Caleb. He sits right down to touch it and I guess Mr. Python's head was getting too close or Caleb thought he might want to eat his play dinosaur so he decided to give him a good bop on the head!

As soon as he did that everyone around him gasped and some kids started to back up. You can see the scared look on everyone's faces.... Mr. Python, however, just raised his head up tall wondering what just happened. He was very gracious not to strike back at my child for smacking him in the face :-)

We decided it'd be best if Caleb stayed closer to his mid-section instead of his head. 

The last show of the day for us was the hyenas. It was neat to learn about them and hear their "laugh."

I love this last picture. Bree had enough and crashed on Grandma. So sweet.

All in all, it was a fun trip as an entire family. Thanks Mom & Dad for a great time and great memories!!



Thursday, March 3, 2011

Backing up a bit

Since this blog is a record of what our family has been doing, I need to go back in time a bit to remember a few things from January. 

On the second day back into school after Christmas break, Gunner's face smashed into another boy's head during a game of ball. It got ugly. Not really, the two boys just rammed into each other. The nurse at school was so impressed that Gunner didn't cry since his eye was so swollen. He didn't cry until he saw me, and saw the expression on my face with how bad his eye looked. :) But, I reassured him that black eyes and scars were cool and he'd be the talk of the town over the next week. 

After all, chicks dig scars right?

Every person that saw him would greet him with "Wow, buddy, what happened to your face?!" After a while he got sick of explaining the story so I just told him to say, "You should see the other guy!"

Lil miss Breezy got a dress up chest for Christmas. It had all sorts of dresses, tiaras, shoes and jewelry in it for playing "dress-up." She wanted to dress in this get up one day and I couldn't help but take lots of pictures of her. Justin was showing her how to do a curtsey (sp?) and this was her rendition. More of a squat, but still cute right?


Over Christmas and New Years break Gunner had the opportunity to play flag football for the first time and loved every second of it. He didn't understand too much in the beginning of the season, but by the end, he was a pretty good little player. 

One of my favorite things about Gunner playing football is he would get so excited for his games. His team was the Cardinals and each week his coach would tell them, it's us VS the Colts or Chargers, etc. So pretty soon, Gunner took it quite literally and would ask me, "Mom, who are we versing this week?" 

As a mom, I'm always a little aprehensive about my kids playing such physical sports. I know it's flag football and they don't get hurt (or at least they're not supposed to) but I just get so nervous watching from the sidelines. Boys will be boys though, even if mom is nervous!


Last of all, I had to throw this picture in because I love Caleb's hair. It got so long and we finally cut it off. I'm jealous of how fast his hair grows. I love that he's my surfer boy!

Peace out!