4th of July

We had  a great 4th of July. After just getting back from vacation a few days before we decided we were going to do a low key 4th. I had a fun time running a 10K in the morning. Scott was nice and brought the kids down to see my finish and Jade loved finishing with me again. I loved the race and it made me excited to start running some races again. After the race we grabbed some breakfast and headed home. We spent the rest of the morning/afternoon just watching shows, reading, and taking naps. My idea of a great afternoon! :) My sister had a BBQ in the evening and the kids had a grand ole time playing with their cousins. We ended the night with a great firework show at my sister's! I loved spending the whole day with my little family. It was honestly a great day!

Miss Haddie eating her food! Man I love those food packets!

 Miss Jadyn is such a poser!

Grandma and Haddie

 I L.O.V.E this picture! My cute grandma, Haddie and Uncle Dave! My grandma is amazing. She is 80 and could run circles around me!

Scott and Jax watching fireworks

The girls watching fireworks

 Sparklers!

Easter

I just realized I never posted about Easter. We will have to let pictures do most of the explaining because it feels like it was forever ago! I know we had a great one though. We always wish that Scott could be here to celebrate with us.

We had an Easter Egg hunt at Roy and Belva's the Sunday before Easter. It was cold outside so we ended up doing the hunting inside.

The day before Easter we had a hunt and breakfast at Megan's house. The kids loved playing and of course hunting for the candy!

 All the grandkids. Pretty rare to get a picture of them all together!

Easter morning my kids were happy to see the Easter Bunny had stopped by! He sure left them quite a bit of a maze finding their baskets!

All ready for church! Hads stayed home with my mom because Scott was gone and I didn't want her in nursery!

I'm not crafty at all but I wanted to make my kids these sock bunnies. Thank Heavens my mom was willing to help me! 

Preschool Graduation

Jaxon graduated from preschool the end of May. Well...I should say he participated in Preschool graduation with his class but gets to do a repeat. When I put him in preschool last Sept I was 85% sure I was going to hold him back but went ahead and put him in the older kid preschool class because they went 3 days a week and I thought it would be good for him. He had a fantastic year. He loved school and Miss Amee was WONDERFUL with Jaxon and loved him despite all of his energy! There were several occasions she would tell me she wished she could have just an ounce of her energy. That was a good indicator that he was in true Jaxon form while he was there. I think the most telling of how Jaxon's year went was during the end of the year video. The video showed individual pictures of the kids and when Jaxon's picture came up all the kids laughed! I realized that he was probably the class clown and decided that I would probably prefer that to the bully right?!?! We went ahead and held Jax back so instead of starting Kindergarten next week Jax will go ahead and do another year at Miss Amee's. He can't wait for preschool to start....again! :)

Cute kiddos

Miss Amee and Jaxon. We love her!

Jax and Iz

Mom and Jax

Jax and one of his "Best buddies" Simeon

And his other best buddies Brody and Carter

Jaxon's maps

Jaxon loves his Lego's. He loves putting them together and although he plays with them, I have to say that up to this point, he has put in more time with his Lego "maps" than with the actual Lego's! The Lego "maps" are what he calls the building directions that come with each set. He loves to just look at them page by page, which I think is pretty funny. I am always happy for anything that provides him entertainment!

Annie

One of Jadyn's best friends was in the play Annie and we went and saw her perform. My mom came with us because Olivia and her family used to live in my mom's ward and my mom was friends with Olivia's mom. (memory: When Jade and Olivia first met in 1st grade they realized they lived close to each other. When Jadyn said Liv lived across the street I figured she must be in my mom's ward. Jadyn didn't know her last name-only first name and color of her hair! ;) So we gave that info to my mom to see if she could think who it was or if she knew her. My mom wondered if it was this Olivia and told me that if it was, that she came from a great family and my mom thought the world of her mom. Anyway, I told Jade that grandma knew liv's family so Jade took it upon herself to draw a picture of my mom and wrote "This is my grandma. Do you know her?" and gave it to Olivia's mom. Olivia's mom called my mom and related the story...while she was laughing....and said "You should see this drawing! It is a spitting image of you! We laughed so hard! We have never seen the picture but I wish I had!)
We had so much fun watching Olivia and her mom in the play. They did such a good job!

Cute Girls!

Weekend Get away!

My Uncle Jon bought a cabin about a year and a half ago up by Strawberry Lake. He has worked sooo hard on the cabin and added on to it-doing all the work himself. He also managed to fall off the roof while working on it which led to crazy surgeries as well. Anyway, he has asked up to go up several times but it has just never worked out. We decided it was finally time to take him up on it-and I am so glad we did! We left Friday after work and only stayed one night but we had so much fun! The kids loved playing in the tree house, doing the zip line (over the river....gulp), making smores, playing in the little cut out for kids and for Jax-eating about 100 otter pops! I told my uncle now that we have been up there once we will for sure be coming again soon! I have always loved spending time with Jon and Susie and I am grateful for their kindness towards are family. We enjoyed having Jake and his family up as well. It is always fun for the kids to have cousins to play with!

Catrina, Hads, Me, Susie

 Jon, Jake, Scott

Jade on the Zip line

 Don't let go!!!

Jaxon taking a turn. He didn't want anything to do with this when we started. I kept telling him he would like it and he just said no. The I resorted to telling him he had to come try just one time or he needed to go inside (I am nice like that). That led to a lot of crying, stomping around saying "UGHHHH but I am TIRED!" So I told him fine, if you are too tired you have to go in and lay by Hadley. Shockingly he said "Fine, let's go inside". Oops. So I took his hand and he thought we were walking inside and I just walked to the zipline and lifted him up. I told him I was going to push him so he had better hold on tight-and then off he went. And whattayaknow.....he LOVED it and continued to go over and over again! :) Scott and I even took a turn!

The tree house

As we were leaving Jax and Isaac had both found logs they really wanted to keep and we did not want them taken home. Oh my....you would have thought they were prized possesions. This is them being very reluctant to put them back

The even both tried to hide them in the trees so that we could find them next time! :)

Miss Hadley loved playing with these blocks

and she loved being outside-especially in the swing!

Something she didn't love? Sleeping in her pack and play that night. Oh my. She went to bed for about 2 hours and then woke up. She stayed up for about an hour with us and then I tried to lay her back down when everyone was going to bed and she screamed and screamed. Normally I would have left her and she probably would have eventually quieted down but with other people in the house I couldn't do that. I tried holding her and she really doesn't sleep well that way so she fussed. We went from me holding her, to laying her in her crib back and forth all night. Needless to say we didn't get much sleep. She slept for about an hour like this: on my stomach with her feet on Jax. Silly baby!

8 months!

Yeah....time just wont slow down for me-despite my pleading for it to do so. Miss Hadley is getting so big! It's just not fair. I was reading what I had written for 7 months and not too much has changed. She was obedient in waiting to crawl until after our St. George trip. I was definitely grateful for that. She is so close though. She has realized that she can push with her toes to inch forward and has been on her hands and knees trying to figure out what she should do from there. Our time of being immobile is limited!
She still just has two teeth and her hair is definitely starting to fill in. It's so cute!
She is a momma's girl through and through and I think it has only increased this past month. I have teenagers coming to my house to watch the kids while I work. Hadley is not a fan of that at all! She is very vocal about her preference. There are many times that she is crying and whining when someone else is holding her and when I take her back she stops immediately. There are also times when I am out of the room and someone has her and she is ok-but the minute she sees me the whining/fussing begins and she wants only me! What can she says....she loves her mommy! It is a mutual infatuation though, so that's good! That being said, we are headed out to Lagoon today and...I am leaving Hadley home! She still won't take a bottle so I never have left her for more than about 3 hours. Here is to wishing us both luck! I just decided it was going to be WAY too hot for her (over 100 degrees) to just sit in a stroller all day and that she would be happier at home and it would be more fun for the older two to have both Brandee and I riding rides with them! Gosh...it is causing me anxiety though. It took me two days of going back and forth to finally decide to leave her home.
She loves to eat baby food and I have found these squeeze packets that make it easy for both of us. Yay for convenience!
Sleeping....well she isn't great. My other 2 were definitely sleeping through the night by 8 months-probably sleeping 12 hours. Hads will go to sleep around 8:30 and will usually wake up at least once during the night to eat. She is good to go right back to sleep after (in her own bed) and then will sleep until about 6:30. Sometimes she will wake up again around 5 or 5:30 but I have been just leaving her in bed and she will usually just go back to sleep for a little while. I probably just need to do a few nights of letting her cry it out and not feeding her and we would be well on our way to a good nights rest. Yes, I think I should try that really soon.
She is just getting so big and I am so happy to have her. It's so weird to think of 8 months ago when we were just a family of 4. I am so grateful she is in our family and she makes us all so much happier to have her around. We all love her to pieces!

This is Hads and her BFF Annie on 07/07/12! These two are only 6 weeks apart and she lives right across the street! We love their family!

Miss Hadley went one week in St george without any bows on the entire week. It was a mistake because this is what happens within 10 seconds of putting one on now that she can get her hands on!