Happy Easter!

The weeks have just seemed to fly by lately. We certainly have kept really busy with our schedules. It's been really busy especially for Ben. This semester has been a killer. We haven't had much time as a family, but on the other side the kids have had tons of cousin time.

 

  Natalie has recently become a girlie girl. Everywhere she goes she must take her purse with her phone, her keys, her dollar, her doll, and whatever else she thinks she needs. She just carries it around with her everywhere. She gets around on her Giraffe which she named "Church". Natalie and Church go all over the house and sometimes even the backyard together.

 

 

 

 

During one of the cousin visits in March we had some beautiful weather and I made sure to take advantage and kick the kids outside to play and even eat lunch. They really enjoyed it. I think this is going to become a typical thing for the nice days. Although, since then they have been far and few in between.

Macie Jo has been such a fun and cute little doll. She is one busy lady. She has been getting around the house quite well. Before she could crawl she would roll from one end of the floor to the other end. She never did quite get the regular crawling down. She went from rolling all over to crawling on her hands and tip toes. The Bear Crawl, as we call it. It is stinking funny to watch. She's busy making messes and preventing mom and dad from cleaning them up.

 

 

March 28th Macie Jo finally learned how to pull herself up to her feet. By the time I got to the camera she wasn't as straight up as she had been earlier, but that's the best I could get. Since then she has bee pulling herself to her feet using furniture of any kind. She has been able to go hands free about twice since then and then other times that I give her some help.

 

 

On the next few photos this was a day where the sun was out, but so was the wind. It was so windy, but the kids still had fun. Travis is getting too big for his push car, but that still doesn't stop him from trying. In fact he tried to convince Natalie that she needed to give him a push and then didn't understand why she wasn't strong enough. Crazy kid!

 

 

 

  This month we have had a pretty good time. Easter kind of snuck up on us this year. We still were able to get our Easter egg painting on. The kids had a Easter Egg Hunt at Grandpa Hall's and another one in the back yard with Grandpa and Grandma Cook. We didn't get one with Grandma Sue because she was in Virginia visiting Kurt. Travis had fun finding all the eggs Easter morning. Natalie found some herself too, but she was mainly concerned about eating the heads off all her peeps. Macie Jo loved her little basket that she got from the Easter Bunny. It was her first Easter this year and I would say it was a success!

 

 

 

 This next picture was taken Monday, the day after Easter. It is a picture of the kids and their cousins eating breakfast obviously, but it is also a picture of a miracle that happened in our family. The previous evening, about 30 minutes after Grandpa and Grandma Cook left we received a phone call from Ashley that she had been in an accident and we needed to meet her at the hospital. When Ben and I arrived we found Ashley, Haiden, and Ethan sitting on the hospital bed getting checked over by the doctor and nurse. Haiden got behind her ear super glued from a cut. Ethan also got a cut on his right hand super glued. Ashley got banged up with some impressive bruises, but other than that she was ok. We found out that it was a roll over accident and that in the roll over Ethan was ejected from his car seat from the left back passenger seat to the front passenger seat. He must have been playing with his seat belt straps or something. When Ashley opened her eyes she looked over and found Ethan laying on the broken window. It was truly a miracle that he survived. All the doctors and nurses were very surprised that he only received scratches. It was truly a miracle for our family!

 







Teddy Bear Clinic

A week or two ago I was able to take the kids to the annual Teddy Bear Clinic to get the kids' stuffed friends a check up. They had a lot of fun and they had some company this year.

 

 

The past couple of days we've been vegging out at the house. Ben's had a lot of study time and everyone has been interrupting his study time because we've all really missed our Daddy time. He's a good sport though and I think he really enjoys his little study breaks to spend time with the kids. On another note Macie Jo has finally started crawling on her hands and knees rather than just army crawling. Occasionally you'll see her try to stand as she crawls and it looks more like a bear crawl because she's using her hands and her butt is up in the air while she tip toes along. We have also all discovered Macie's love for spaghetti. Her new favorite meal if you couldn't tell from the pictures below! Natalie is all registered for preschool. She starts in the fall. She's pretty excited to go. Every time she sees Travis go off to school she gets a little jealous. Won't be long before she is going herself. I wish I had pictures from swimming lessons, but I don't. Travis has been doing so well. Michael Phelps doesn't have anything on this kid! He has passed every level every time. He is pretty hilarious to watch out in the water. He is definitely the craziest of all the kids and always the first to volunteer. I'm really excited to take him swimming this summer so he can show everyone what he's been working. on.

 

 



Just Awesome!

My birthday was this last week. Ben worked the night before my birthday and he likes to sleep in until 11 or so when he gets home. I don't really like to clean until after he wakes up because I don't want to wake him up or Macie during her morning nap. In the morning after I got Travis off to school I had several dishes around from breakfast that I just put in the sink. I planned to do them later, but after Ben woke up he wanted to go shopping so I quickly took a shower and off we went. When we got home we were starving so we ate lunch, but didn't get to clean after that because Ben wanted to start preparing for dinner and didn't want to pick up lunch because it was just going to get messy again and we would get in each others way. So dinner came and we scarfed it down and then Travis and I had to go because of swimming lessons. I fully planned on getting some dishes done when we got back, but when we did get home Ben said that Natalie had fallen asleep in the front room. I certainly was not going to wake her up because she can get quite crabby when she's woken up before she's ready so I just let her sleep and went downstairs and played Skylanders with Travis. I took a break and went upstairs to get a drink when I heard the doorbell. Charlie of course started barking and woke up Natalie. I normally would have ignored it and pretended I wasn't home, but because of all the commotion I was doomed to open it. It was two women from the Relief Society Presidency dropping in to say happy birthday. They came in and sat on my Charlie hair covered couch where there is a wide view of the disastrous kitchen. Travis was so excited to have company over that he grabbed one of the ladies by the hand and told her all about the birthday cake we ate and then proceeded to drag her into the kitchen by the stove so she could look at it. In the middle of the floor was two full garbage bags and one grocery sack that was completely see through with a Costco size box of Tampax.... Just awesome.
 On another note a couple of weeks ago we had a little family barbeque. Everyone had their assignments and everyone came through with their assignments except for Kurtis and Tristan who had the easiest assignment of all. All they had to do was send a postcard and they failed to do so. Freeloaders!!! Here are a couple of pictures from the bbq.

And this next picture is "Grandma with the yellow hair" getting talked into a game of Skylanders with Travis. Needless to say, he was not impressed with her lack of butt-kicking skills. When it comes to Skylanders he gets very serious!

 

 

 

 And one of my favorite pictures. This is what happens when a recipe calls for wine and the recipe is in the hands of Mormons who have never handled alcohol. I think it's safe to say that these here are some good Mormons.

 

 

 

 Today we had a visit from Grandma and Grandpa Cook. It was a short visit, but it was nice to see them. The kids had a lot of fun and so did Charlie.

 

 

 

Lastly, Macie is almost 9 months old. She has grown so much since she was born. She is definitely developing quite the silly personality. She has started to make these silly squinty face poses. She's so darn cute, you can't help, but love her. She's been really sick the last month, but you'd never know it if she didn't have a runny nose because she's such a trooper.

 





Tender Moments

I have found motherhood to be quite the challenge with three children. Someone is always crying and someone is always fighting it seems. Every once in a while I get to enjoy some tender moments. During this last weekend I took the kids to Rigby so give Ben some quiet study time. While we were in Rigby Travis and Haiden were playing and Natty started to follow them. She started to cry and said, "I want Travis, I want Travis". Travis stopped what he was doing and said, "Oh, sissy wants her brudder". He went over to Natty and gave her a big hug and a kiss on her forehead and then invited Natty to go play with them. It's those sweet tender moments that make all the hard things worth it.

Crazy Busy!

  The last two weeks have been crazy busy! Travis, Macie, and I have been little sicklings. In fact Travis had to go to the doctors office because he had an ear infection. He really enjoyed talking to the doctor though. He was very chatty with him. We are finally getting over it all though. We were so sick that even Natty and Ben who have the best immune systems of any human being on the planet earth have caught a few sniffles.

 
  I almost forgot to mention, about three weeks ago Macie had the experience of a lifetime and boy oh boy was she a happy camper. She experienced her first ever.... Oreo! She was in heaven and she thought she was something else! What an experience.

  Benjamin kind of was in the dog house this week. I made him a nice big lunch for his clinicals and he left most of it at home. Luck for me Natty was hungry and decided to take it over for him.

  Last Friday Travis and Natalie had a dentist appointment. Both of them were cavity free so they got to choose out of the treasure box. Here is what Travis chose.

  Last note, Macie Jo has hit quite a few milstones this week. She finally started to army crawl on Tuesday. She's such a lazy baby whenever she wants to get somewhere she literally just rolls and rolls until she gets there. It's really funny to watch her make her way across the room by rolling. Not anymore though. Now she's army crawling and I don't think it will be long until she is crawling regularly. She can get up on all fours so now it's a matter of building those muscles so she can put one knee in front of the other. She popped out two teeth on Wednesday and then another on Thursday. She's got two teeth now. She's pretty excited about it. She keeps chewing on her tongue. She has chewed a sore right on the tip of it. She is definitely a busy girl.