Happy Month-Late Birthday Kyle!

So, I am still catching up, but I am well on my way. Here was the real celebration for Kyle's First Birthday. It was great, and hopefully he had a good time. Kyle got one of those fun glitter balls, mostly because I wanted one...but I did get a blue one, so we can say it is his.:o)

Julie and I dishing out cake and ice cream.

Our family with Kyle, his presents and his cake.

Happy Birthday little buddy. He was all tuckered out, it is hard work being a one year old.

Presents and cake for our buddy.

Here he is with all his presents, un-opened now.


Ryan and Kyle after the cake. Isn't that pathetic how unmessy Kyle is, he didn't seem too thrilled about the cake, I'm not sure he liked it much. Bummer. The one time we let them get all messy and he didn't like the cake, thats 2 for 3 of my kids that didn't like their birthday cake.

Pineview!

Finally, here is our update on Pineview. Every July Kevin's family gets together at a reservoir up Ogden canyon. We look forward to it every year and always have a great time.


A little pre-birthday party for Kyle. Since we were with family we had a small celebration.

The whole family on the tube. This is one of those pictures I would love to get blown up and put into my home as a poster size family picture. I love it so much and I think it is just a good family picture.

This was how Kyle felt at his party, so needless to say he didn't have very much fun, unfortunately.

He is not a "happy camper". :o)

Kev doing his awesome stuff on the slolam. He rocks, way to go Kev.

Hailee and her cousin Rylee, they had so much fun together. I am glad they are such good friends.

There I am on the wake board. Like I said my trick is to get up and stay up. Maybe next year I can learn at "real" trick.

Kev on the wake board. I didn't get any pictures of any tricks, but now that I am an official wake boarder myself, I think staying up is trick enough.

Kev and the girls playing in the water by the beach. They had so much fun that they basically spent hours and hours everyday just floating around in their tubes and floaties, they loved it, and I am so glad.

Kyle taking a nap on the beach. Thank goodness for port-a-cribs. I would have gone crazy with Kyle in the sand and dirt for 4 days. But thankfully he doesn't mind being in there as long as he has some toys so he hardly got dirty at all, it was awesome.

Rae helping Dad drive the boat. Look at those blue eyes! I hope they always stay that blue.

Hailee, me and Uncle Donny. It was such a great trip, I am so glad it is tradition.

15 minutes...

So, I seem to be too busy to blog, which is not necessarily true, but that is how it works out a lot of the time. So, I have given myself 15 minutes to make an updated post and then get off. It is not that posting takes long, but I am always amazed at how much time I end up spending on the computer when my one and only intent was to update my blog. I get sucked in and there goes my morning or afternoon. So, I am seeing if this works and then maybe I will actually post something every now and then :o)

I will call this section of pictures the "sleeping" segment. And just to keep your interest peaked I will give you a preview of what the next couple will be about. We will have "Summer Fun with the Arfmann's", "Pineview Skiing Trip", "several others I am sure and "San Diego/Wicked Trip" That one happens neext week and I am so stinking excited. It is going to be awesome! Wahoo!


Yes, Kyle sleeps with his blanket in his mouth, it is his pacifier, so to speak. Dang cute!

Kyle also apparently likes to sleep on top of his legs! OUCH! I took a picture and then moved him, it hurt me just to look at him.

Here is Rae asleep on the mower with Dad. It was pretty cute. Kev thinks that wearing one of these masks is pretty stylish, but he mostly wears it because his allergies go burzurk when he mows. :o)

OK! I ended right on time. My 15 minutes are now up. Until next time!

Lake Powell

Well it has been a week and a half now, and I am finally getting around to showing you about our trip. We had such an awesome time, we have both missed it a lot since we have returned. We are already trying to plan the next time we can go. It was an adult only trip, with the exception of Kyle, he is the youngest grand kid on Kev's side of the family and he is still nursing so he got to come. But since we were on a house boat we thought it wise to leave the rest of the kids at home. We skied, tubed and jet skied all week long and I don't think any of us were ready for it to be over with.


I tried to get a picture of Kev skiing, but he and his bother Mike look so much a like that I accidentally only uploaded pictures of Mike, so just imagine that this is Kev OK? :o) They are pretty comparable on the slalom so we can pretend.



Kyle was not a huge fan of the water, I guess it was too cold for him, which is hard to imagine because the temperature was awesome, it couldn't have been better.


One of our favorite things to do was jump off the top of the boat. This is Dave jumping, Kev's older brother. We have some sweet pictures of all the girls jumping together and all the guys jumping together, but it wasn't with my camera so I don't have those pictures yet.


Kyle, me, the houseboat and gorgeous Lake Powell.


He eventually fell asleep. My kids always fall asleep on the ski boat, it must be very soothing to them to ride because they always sleep. It is too cute. This is Kev's Mom holding Kyle with Brad (one of his younger brothers) behind.



This was on the ski boat ride up to Rainbow Bridge. The largest natural arch in the world. You have to take a ski boat up through a canyon for a few miles and then hike for about a mile up to the arch. We are very far away from the arch so it is hard to tell how enormous it really is. If there were a person standing at the base of the arch, they would be a pin prick from this view.


Kev and I tubing. We are both kinda wimpy on a tube, we don't like major injuries or massive headaches after going on a tube so we go kinda slow and try to do tricks, like standing up on the tube and stuff. I think it is a lot funner and not so dangerous.


Here's Mike again, when I thought I was putting up a picture of Kev. Oops!


The whole group, except Kyle. He must have been taking a nap. Thanks for an awesome time everyone. We had a blast.


I can't get enough of the beautiful cliffs and rocks at Lake Powell, they are amazing.


This was on the drive home, from the Lake. I think Kyle was getting bored of sitting in the car seat for 9 hours and so he thought eating his toes might be an fun form of entertainment.

Yes, we are still alive...

So, here I am, posting at my new rate of once every few months or so. Sorry that I haven't been more consistent, I just feel like there is something else that needs my attention or needs getting done at the moment and being a Mom of three busy bodies that is pretty much always the case. But the kids are in bed, Kevin is off playing basketball and I do have a talk I need to prepare but posting on my blog sounds a little funner at the moment. :o)

So here is the latest with us...

Kevin had a wonderful experience with the youth at Martin's Cove. It rained and hailed and "tornado-ed" basically the whole time, but it seemed to give everyone that much more appreciation for the pioneers and all they went through. As you can imagine the kids loved him, several times since they returned the youth have come to me saying how much fun he was and the girls have suggested that he be one of the Priesthood leaders at girls camp this year because he is so much fun. :o) Why does that not surprise me?

Kyle is officially crawling now, no more commando crawling, but the real deal. And boy does he get where he wants to go and fast. It is so super fun to see him exploring new sights. He loves balls and he loves to be by our new glass door that we have on the front door, so he can look outside and watch all the kids play.

Raelyn is just her sweet self. She has loved me putting sponge curlers in her hair at night so her hair is super cute in the morning. She reminds me of Shirley Temple with all her bouncy curls. And she looks great with them in too.

Hailee is our artist. She still spends a couple of hours a day drawing beautiful and very coherent pictures. She found a picture in a book and tried to mimic it and it truly was unbelievable how well she did. She had every tiny little detail in there and it was basically identical to the complex picture...I hope she will want to truly excel at this obvious talent she has been given.

I am doing good. I keep busy with the kids, the house, our yard, my calling and volleyball or tennis everyday. I love tennis and volleyball so I am truly having a blast getting to play all the time.

Our garden is hanging in there, I think the raspberries will be great, the strawberries aren't flourishing quite as well, but we shall see. Our lawn looks better and better every week. The grass is coming in fuller and stronger all the time, from our back sliding door it looks just as good as the front good section, when you walk out there though you can still see some weeds and bare spots but it is coming along great. We are very encouraged with how it is doing.

So, that is us in a nut shell...life is good, no complaints. We especially won't have any complaints next week when we are on an adult trip only to Lake Powell with Kevin's family! Wahoo, I am so excited. We'll tell you all about it when we get back...party on.

Here's some pictures from the last few weeks

Hailee was scared of "Zurg" on Toy Story 2 so Rae was cuddling her to keep her safe...too precious.


Our Shirley Temple girls!


Rae wants me to put curlers in her hair every night but we keep it to the nights that she has a bath.


With all the rain these last couple of weeks some of our yards have been flooding and the girls discovered that all too quickly, it was cute to see them have so much fun though.


You will be amazed that with a little oxyclean that shirt is still white...thank goodness.



Thanks to our neighbors for allowing the kids to mess around in their yard.


I went to get Kyle out of his crib, I could here him babbling and knew he had woken up and to my surprise I found him standing up in his crib. That was a first and he was so proud of himself it was so stinking cute.


Kyle's favorite toy by far is an empty water bottle, he could play with one for hours and be completely content. I usually save it for a last resort when I need him to be extra good, like in Sacrament meeting or something.


Thanks to a little positive peer pressure Hailee decided she wanted to learn to ride her bike without training wheels. Our neighbor learned and Hailee was so jealous she could hardly stand it. Thankfully for the both of us it only took her about 20 minutes to learn, starting and stopping included. I have decided I would be a terrible teacher, I don't have much patience, so thankfully it was a relatively painless lesson. :o)



Hailee on her "two-wheeler" as she calls it. She shed her very first "happy tears" the first time I let go of her and she road by herself. She was bawling because she was so excited, it was the sweetest thing ever.


Girls in their "grandma caps" to help hold in their sponge curlers as they sleep.


My pride and joy, my tulips. I look forward to them coming up every spring, if only they would stay in bloom for more than a week. :o(


Hailee with Daddy in preparation for her dance recital that went awesome. Way to go Hailee, we are so proud of you.


Anxiously awaiting her turn to take the stage.

2 1/2 months later...

Jess & Kevin just before heading off to the "Second Chance Prom"

Little Miss Hailee before bed

Our little Stud Muffin Kyle in his cool new outfit from Aunt Betsy... is he a stud or what!?!

Princess Raelyn before Church, showing off her brand new dress - what a babe!!!

Oh, how Mom & Dad enjoy feeding Kyle (with his swinging arms & tendency to grab everything he can reach). Kyle was a little tuckered out after this meal...


No children were harmed in the taking of this photograph.

We think we're pretty cool with our sunburns & sunglasses...

Aunt Betsy recently came for a fun visit... and she came bearing gifts... new dresses for the girls, and a studly soccer outfit for our little man.

Who can refuse this?!?

Our beautiful girls

Kyle thinks he's pretty cool, too!

Hailee has some strange obsession with tying things up. Normally it's just a sock or a hair thing around the bannister, but every once in a while it's something a little more shocking like this.

"I see you like to chew... why don't you chew ON YOUR BINKY!!!"

Before church (that's all I have to say about that)