My cute kids!

I need to send a shout out to my three adorable kids! I feel like this summer has been tough on all of us! I now know why my mother always despised summertime! I have tried to keep us all busy-we have swim lessons at 9 every morning until 10. One whole hour. One whole hour that is filled up with something to do. What next, you might ask???? GOOD QUESTION! It is so blasted hot during the day & we don't get much relief in the evenings, so we live for swim lessons in the morning & then struggle to make it through the rest of the day! We do "Miss Jen's Summer School", but even that is a hit & miss! My boys are always BEGGING to go over to a friends house & so we have had lessons on proper manners.....We Do Not Invite Ourselves to Other People's Houses. They didn't like that too much, but I think they are figuring it out. They want to have kids over at our house every day, but I am a mean mom & don't usually let that happen too often. I think we have the "Summer Blues", kind of equivalent to "Winter Blues". They have a hard time listening & I have NO PATIENCE! Seeing that today is the beginning of a new week, I am going to set some new week resolutions!

1-No more yelling! I resort to yelling after asking or telling 100 times! Seems to work, but I know there is a better way! :)

2-Less stressing about having a "clean" house! I need LOLA (she cleans for a lot of my friends)!

3-Have MORE fun! We have had spurts of fun, here & there. A birthday party. Boating at the lake-both boys even tried to knee board. Teagen got up & did great! Swimming at the river with friends. A few play dates. Bowling. Movies. Sea World (not so much fun for me having to lug around 3 kids with out losing one of them!). Ya, we aren't lacking too much in the fun category!

4-Enjoy my kids while they are young-they are already growing up too fast!

I do love my kiddo's! Each one of them adds so much to our family! They are always making me laugh & occasionally cry! The other day, Teagen asked me as we were driving in the car:

Teagen: Mom, who puts the chicken poop(what we call eye boogers) in our eyes at night when we are asleep?

Me: What do you mean?

Teagen: Who goes around to all the sleeping people at night & puts chicken poop in their eyes?

Me: (trying so hard not to laugh hysterically) Well Teag, who do you think does it?

Teagen: (thinking really hard) I think it is definitely the parents who do it!

Me: Well, I think we had better ask daddy what he thinks when he gets home tonight!

Teagen: Ya, my daddy will know. He knows everything.

Me: (well this is what I was thinking-I never said it out loud) Does this kid really believe his daddy knows everything??? Sometimes the man doesn't even know where HIS wallet is! :) ***LUV you Ki! :)***

Teagen did ask Kiley later that night & I believe Kiley gave him the "medical" version of where eye boogers come from! Cute boy!

Hope everybodys summer is going by quickly & enjoyably (is that a word!)!

OOOOWWWWWWWW!

The boys had swim lessons this morning & since they are on base, I figured I would take Liv over to the hospital to get her one year old shots & blood test. She is quite the fiesty little thing & I kept wondering how on earth I would be able to hold her still while she was getting 4 shots & I knew it would be even tougher getting her blood drawn. She laid down on the table & looked up at the two men & then started to cry. They quickly gave her the shots & she was wailing! She kept saying, "Ow! Ow! Ow!" Then she'd proceed to sob! It was quite heart breaking & I felt like a terrible mother putting my baby girl through that. We then headed to the Lab. She was still crying a bit & kept saying, "ow!" She finally calmed down & they called us back. The gal that was going to be taking care of us realized that the labs were for Olivia & not me. She said she didn't want to do it (she was new, in-training-I didn't want her to go near my baby! :)) So she grabbed the guru who was WONDERFUL at drawing toddlers blood. Liv was great until they put the handle down in front of us & she realized that something was going to happen & it wasn't going to be fun! I had to hold her down & the new gal held her arm down while the Lab Man stuck the needle & collected the blood he needed. Liv was spent! She was sweating to death! I felt so bad-in the civilian world, labs are not done on little kids. I think it is cruel, but obvioulsy there is some reason for it! She was out before we pulled out of the base. Poor baby!

Brayden's end of the year program & water party!

This year Brayden went to a Mother's Day Out preschool. He absolutely LOVED it & had several of his good friends from church in his class. He had the best teacher-Ms. Kim! She was so great with the kids & would always tell me that she loved Brayden & wanted to take him home. The MDO program is at a United Methodist Church & so Brayden learned some pretty awesome songs. For their EOY Program the green & yellow classes sang "Our God is an awesome God." It was pretty funny to see Brayden up their singing his heart out with his BYU shirt on. It was a cute program & I of coarse shed a few tears! The last day of school was a fun water party. I went for the last 30 minutes & again shed tears when Brayden said good bye to Ms. Kim. We had gone in on a gift for Ms. Kim & Ms. Rose with a few of our friends, but Brayden insisted that he give her a necklace, too. So he picked out this darling silver necklace with a heart & gave it to her. She loved it! She gave him a big old hug & shed a few tears herself! What a great teacher!

Soccer Party!

So, I am behind & have lots of stuff I'd like to blog & seem to put it off because I get so discouraged----I have decided that I am going to just keep posting new blogs with old stuff until I am caught up!

Let's head back to May....

Teagen had a great soccer season! He really improved from the beginning of the season to the end. He is so fast out on the field & really has a love for the game. The last several games he made at anywhere from 4-7 goals. He talked about that for quite a while-yes he sure is humble! His coach put on a fun end of the season party at Cici's Pizza. The kids all got a fun trophy.

A year has come & gone......

It is hard to believe that our little miss Olivia Beth is a year old! What a fun year it has been! I have loads of pictures to share & I don't want to put it on a slide show, so hopefully y'all will enjoy the millions of pics! Hopefully they will be in chronological order!

These pictures are obviously right after she was born. The second one is of the Doctor who delivered Olivia. She just happens to be our neighbor across the street & also a close friend whom we all love & adore! Thanks Dr. Berryman for the special treatment! We love you!

*Her brothers have adored her since day one. Yes, I would find little action figures surrounding the poor girl every now & then. She didn't seem to mind, though!

*Grandpa Tom was able to visit & be here when she was blessed in July '07!
*Olivia has grown leaps & bounds this past year. She conquered eating food at a very EARLY age. She mastered the baby stuff & moved on to the real stuff by the time she was 6 months old. Some of you are probably in shock, but my kids like food & they are not fooled by the baby goo-they know at a very early age that what we are eating is way better than what they are eating!
*She didn't sleep through the night until she was at least 7 months old. Of coarse, once she finally did, she has slept through the night since then!
*She mastered crawling when she was 9 months old & then started walking when she was 11 1/2 months old.
*She loves baby dolls. She has several & can be found cuddling them & patting them on the back.
*She is already pretty girly & loves to hug daddy when he gets home from work. She has been a mommy's girl from the get go, but has done really well with others this past month.
*I have mentioned to Kiley several times these past few weeks that I just can't get enough of this girl!
*She has an amazing smile & beautiful blue eyes.
















*She loves the water!

*I love this girl!
*We can finally put her hair up in one little ponytail on the top of her head! She LOVES to pull it out, especially when she is tired.
*This picture is from last Sunday. I gave her an oreo on the way home from church & apparently she devoured it! That's my girl!
*I also have to add that since sleeping through the night, she has been an excellent sleeper/napper! This picture of her sleeping is how I find her a lot-her little bum up in the air. So cute!
*These last few pictures are from her birthday party. We didn't do anything big, just had a few friends over for pizza & birthday cake. Liv was sick that day. She had a temp of 102.8. So I had to drug her up so she could put on her party face. Didn't last long.....we sat her in her highchair to do the whole cake thing. She started to dig in right away & then before I could blow the candle out for her, she grabbed the flame with her little fingers! Luckily they were covered in chocolate frosting, but she did start bawling & then she pretty much was done for the night. It was still fun!





*Olivia & her birthday loot!

*It has been so fun to have a girl-she is so different from the boys already at this age. She is our little cuddle bug!
*She can only say a few words: mamma, dadda, Teagen, & hi.
*Happy Birthday Sweetheart!