Rodeo Parade and Rodeo

This year we were invited to be on my company's float in the rodeo parade. The theme was Bring Your Wild Bunch so we made cardboard cutouts that looked like various bugs and animals. And we had a cow (the son of one of my coworkers) sitting at the back. Of course everyone thought it was the Chick-fil-a cow so the kids watching would get super excited. Oh and we had to dress like rodeo clowns. I don't think I will share those pictures here...... :) It was fun for me and Hailey. She got the pageant wave down pat by the end! Emma didn't smile because she was a little scared to be riding on this trailer with no real seat or stability like a car and Eli and Kayla apparently didn't realize just what they had signed up for to begin with! It has to be said that it was their idea to do it! I was asked, I asked them and they both got very excited, said yes and promptly got to work on their costumes.

We were given tickets to the rodeo by one of my coworkers that plays a big role in the rodeo even taking place here. I had taken Kayla and Eli only once before and they were both too young to really remember it. They have also changed venue's since then so it is much easier to see the whole thing now. For some reason this town decided to have our rodeo indoors in an arena for a few years but changed it to an outdoor stadium. Which makes a lot more sense! Anyways, I took my 4 kids plus my neighbor's 12 yr old son who was visiting from Houston, TX for the summer. The kid lives in Houston and his dad has never taken him to the rodeo! I couldn't get over it! But I was glad to help him experience his first rodeo! Oh and I didn't mention that our seats were in the front row next to the shoots for bull riding. The kids all had a great time and loved seeing the fireworks at the very end (we didn't get any on the 4th because of budget cuts). It rained on us for a few minutes but the majority of the seating is covered so the little girls and I just moved back a bit. The big kids didn't care that they were getting wet! and the funny thing was that at one point Hailey was on my lap to where she could see the crowd on the opposite side of the arena and started doing her little pageant wave!

Manitou Arcade

I had today off so I took the kids to Manitou to the coolest arcade this afternoon! It's still called the Penny Arcade even though the price is far from that. But what makes it so cool is that they have some super old games and some brand new games. They have this bank of "rides" that I swear are some of the same that I used to ride in when I was little. Like the helicopter that goes up and down...I'm pretty sure I rode that in King Soopers! And they have a "boardwalk" that all of these rides are on with a little creek that runs below it. Of course that kind of freaked out the kids a little bit!

Happy Easter!

We had a pretty low key Easter this year. Of course the fact that it was snowing all day long was part of the blame there since we couldn't even head to Nana's house for a bit. We colored eggs in the morning, had dinner later and then did the egg hunt. Emma woke up at 7 and begged and begged to be able to check out her Easter basket. It's fun to watch the kids when they start really getting the concept of things like the Easter bunny and Santa Clause! And even though it was snowing outside she insisted on wearing the tank top and shorts the Easter bunny put in her basket!

Easter egg hunting in our house isn't like other egg hunts. We have to keep it fair so we "hide" the eggs for Emma in almost plain view and we have the kids take turns each looking for an egg. It was driving Eli crazy to see the eggs for Emma! But the first one she found she said "yes!" like she had just scored big time! Too cute!

This is what happens when your 2 yr old doesn't get a nap....she beats up the poor innocent bunny cake that Nana made! This picture really doesn't do it justice but you can at least see the whisker's are a little off and one eyeball is missing! She took a nap after this.....

Updates on the family

Long time no blog! It's been longer than I realized since I had posted anything on here. Sorry about that! :) I don't seem to have much computer time at night these days. Anyways, here are some random updates for you.

Kayla made the honor roll at school this semester. We went to the awards ceremony at her school a few weeks ago to see her get it. She also just had her science fair last week. Her project was pretty cool. She would have the person sit at her desk and give them a sheet of various math problems, and while you were doing that she was also playing different songs and telling you the name of the song. Afterwards, you had to name the songs in order. Basically it was testing multi-tasking. And guess who did better?! The younger ones! The adults didn't do so well at that!


Elijah has been working at mastering his Lego Star Wars game on his DS. :) He hasn't had a whole lot of exciting things going on. Our main focus with him right now is organization and mastering his routine. He is an extremely smart kid, just lacks what he needs to help him along!

Emma is...well what can I say....Emma. She is deep in the throes of being 2 for sure! The things that come of that girls mouth sometimes either causes our jaw to drop on the floor or we double over in laughter. Like, for instance, when she told Kayla and I that boogers don't taste good, food tastes good! Very wise little girl. :) She went through a short period of time while she was sick getting out of bed every night several times a night until she would finally crash out. Thankfully that was short lived! She is doing great potty training. We still put her in a diaper at night and sometimes at nap time too. She also has to be in a diaper if we are going to be in public doing anything that will distract her. She tends to forget to go potty and she has a fear of big toilets. So we are working on that part with her!

Hailey has come leaps and bounds over the last month. She can now roll over front to back and back to front. She had mastered back to front long before the other direction. Which is strange because going front to back is way easier! She can sit up on her own for quite some time before she topples over. She babbles a lot now too. Her first "word" already was dada. Of course! And I swear it has sounded like she said Elijah and Kayla at some point too! We recently started feeding her baby food again. Oh and she had her very first ear infection last month...not fun! Her weight is...drum roll please...22 lbs! My mom had her at the UPS store recently and the lady behind the counter didn't believe she really weighed that much. So she put her on the scale there and sure enough that was her weight!

Christmas '08

This year, Christmas actually seemed a little more relaxed than years past. Not exactly sure why since we still did the same routine. We open presents and have breakfast here at home and then sometime in the afternoon we head to Nana's house for more presents and dinner. My dad lives close to her so we usually go to his house to visit after dinner. Naturally, the kids had a blast and got lots of cool things. Emma is getting more into opening things and was trying to help Hailey with her stuff too. Anyways, here are a few pictures from the day.

The tree after Santa's visit

The stockings were laid out on the couch with care...we have a chimney but it is downstairs and we don't use that area!

Kayla's ultimate present....a gift certificate for Tangles Salon and Day Spa to get her hair done by my friend Sue

One of Eli's ultimate gifts from Darlin...it has this little alien with a UFO that sounds like the Jetsons vehicles!

Eli's ultimate, ultimate gift...a Nintendo DS. This is the first game system we have purchased for any of the kids!

Emma with her baby doll from Santa. Whenever you would ask her what Santa was going to bring her, the response was always "Santa's gonna bring me a baby doll"! So naturally that was what he had to do! The funny thing was that I went out one night to buy this thing and promptly showed JR and the big kids because I thought it was too darn cute. Eli is getting to the age now where he isn't sure if he believes in Santa or not. So he immediately looks up at me when she opens this thing and says something about me getting it but how can it be from Santa! Oops! And the really funny thing about this doll is that it says 5 different cheers and my 12 yr old has all of them memorized and moves to go along with them! I swear Kayla plays with this doll way more than Emma!

Hailey with her cool Peek-a-blocks from Darlin

Eli with his Nerf Vulcan from Nana....he also has a Nerf bow (he calls it his big, bad bow) so I have seriously been dealing with not just Eli playing with this thing....his father has been playing too! They love to have wars with them and we all get stuck in the middle! I even got ambushed one day by JR when I came in the front door.

One last little gift from Santa! This was at the end of the day when we finally got home from Nana's. Hailey under the tree with a portion of loot collected throughout the day!

Happy Halloween!

So despite the fact that I live in Colorado, have lived in Colorado for almost 31 yrs now (I was around 5 mo old when my family moved here) I just didn't feel like it was truly Halloween in Colorado. You see, Halloween to me always meant that it was either snowing, had been snowing or there was still ice on the ground from a snow fall a couple of days prior. Heck for years we would have had a snow fall by my birthday on the 18th! This year, we haven't even had a single snowflake hit the ground yet! Weird, very weird. As a matter of fact, it was so nice last night that JR and I only had to wear sweatshirts (matching I might add!) and the kids were fine without having to have layers on underneath the costumes! And typically, here in Colorado, we have to plan costumes for getting at least one warm layer under whatever you wear!

We usually trick-or-treat down our street and then one other street to the east of us. Don't know how we started going to the east except for maybe that you have to tackle a hill, albeit a small one, to go that direction and we didn't want to bother! Anyways, we obviously had Hailey in the stroller because I wasn't too interested in carrying her in the Bjorn. I debated on whether Emma should even participate since is only 2 and won't be eating most of the candy she gets. But I figured since she was able to say "trick-or-treat" and "thank you" that she could go ahead and do it. We started her out in her stroller but as soon as she got out at the first house, she didn't get back in! I think she walked about 3/4 of a mile once all was said and done! And we didn't even do both sides of the other street because it was so late! Of course, Kayla and Eli could have kept going. But every year we go to Nana's house so she can see the kids all dressed up.

Eli's costume from the front view.

And then the side view. That is a green glow stick in the jar to make it look like his head is in formaldehyde. However, it fell out a couple of houses down the street so it was in his candy bag the rest of the time.

Here are all 4 of them all dressed up and ready to start walking! Or riding! Kayla is dressed up as one of those High Voltage boxes, Eli is a man carrying his head in a jar, Emma is a dalmation and Hailey is Tigger.

This was some hard work for Hailey! She had to take a nap after a while!

All in all, it was a good night. Nice weather. Happy kids. Well until the end of the night and Emma was up past 8! JR did have to run back home halfway through to poke some more holes in Eli's costume because it was fogging up from him breathing!

Halloween Partay!

We had our annual Halloween party at work last night and as usual it was a blast. The kids always have such a great time at these things. They had a dessert contest again this year so naturally Kayla and I had to participate in that! The sad part is that Kayla made a cake that dropped right as she was about to put it on the table at the party! So I let her submit my ice cream cake. See what a nice mom I am?! My original intention was to compete against her! :) So she took 2nd place again. She rocks! And I rock! :) The girl that won made these really yummy chocolate chip pumpkin bars. They didn't do the costume contest like they have done in the past. But all the kids ended up in some kind of ribbon.

I forgot to get a picture before we left the house so this was the best I was going to get at the office. As you can see, Emma was a little distracted. This picture doesn't really do Eli's costume justice. I will try to get better pictures on Halloween. Emma is a Dalmatian from 101 Dalmatians, Kayla was a fairy, Hailey was Tigger and Eli was a headless science project!

Mrs. Claus put Hailey to sleep! Eileen is who we can thank for doing these parties.

Emma's bff Morgan as a giraffe. Emma just loves to see Morgan and that was all she could talk about until we finally left the house last night!Eli getting ready to hit the pinata. He had to shed his entire costume just so he could play games. Trick-or-treating will be fun for him!

8 Weeks

WOW I cannot believe it. Hailey is 8 weeks old already! And of course they have just flown by. We have watched Hailey go from that distinct newborn look of a wrinkly baby to having chubby little cheeks and wide eyed expressions. She smiles at us and will coo and try to talk to us now. You can tell she really has a lot to say. I watched her interact with Nana today and it was awesome. As my mom held her and talked to her she just wriggled her little body and would raspberry right back at her. And of course, give Nana the occasional smile. Everyone thought for sure that because Hailey was the 4th child she would be a quiet, mild baby. Boy were they ever wrong! It is quite the opposite actually. Because she is the 4th child she has to make sure we know she is there! She is probably my most demanding baby out of all of them. If she wants to be held, she will make sure you know. If she is hungry, she will make sure you know. Lord help us all when this baby can talk! Who knows what she will be saying to us.

Kayla is a great help with Hailey for sure. About the only thing she doesn't want to do is change a poopy diaper. She likes to help me give the girls a bath and washing Hailey is her favorite. If Hailey is crying, Kayla will go get her out of bed (or wherever she is) and hold her or come find me if she isn't sure what is wrong. But you can also tell if it is too much for Kayla because of the look she gets on her face. I had asked Kayla to keep an ear out for Hailey one day while I was in the shower and Hailey decided that it was a good idea to cry pretty much the entire time I was in there. So when I come out, Kayla is standing up rocking Hailey (this was pre-rocking chair - we all got tired of being a human rocking chair so Nana gave us one of her glider rockers) and her eyes are glazed over and she has this panic expression. She didn't realize she could have come to tell me Hailey wouldn't quit crying so that I would get out! But I am very grateful that she was on summer vacation for the first several weeks. I don't know how I would have done it without her!

Elijah is just in love with his new baby sister. He loves to hold her too. Most of the time he can lay her on his chest and she will just lay there quietly. He will also pick her up if she is crying to calm her. Of course he isn't too interested in bath time or diaper changes or dressing her up. But he does enjoy feeding Hailey her bottles. He just knows that he and Hailey are going to have a special bond.

Emma has handled having to share attention way better than I had expected. The only trouble we have with her is that she doesn't understand what it means to be gentle with Hailey. So she will try to make Hailey hold her hand while I am feeding her. And she likes to rub Hailey's head but will eventually end up patting her a bit too hard if I don't watch her! But she does sometimes ask us to hold her "Like Hailey" which means to cradle her in our arms. She especially likes that after her bath. But I think most of the time she forgets Hailey is even there.

So I have one week left of maternity leave and I am trying to make the most of it despite a million appointments and activities for the big kids this week. I will certainly miss spending the days with the little girls. I know Nana is looking forward to having her Emma back and now she gets to form another special bond with Hailey. I do feel blessed that I have my mom to watch the girls instead of having to send them to daycare. The good news is that for the last 2 nights Hailey has slept for 7 hours. Up until then, she was waking up typically at 3 and 5. Emma did the exact same thing - started sleeping at longer stretches right before I went back to work. It's like they just know.

Sky Sox

So apparently we haven't done our parental duty with Eli by taking him to a baseball game of our local team the Sky Sox. Let alone the Rockies! Well the kids participated in the Summer Reading Program at our local library and the final reward was 2 tickets to a Sky Sox game. So we decided to have a night with just JR and I and Kayla and Eli since that is a rare occurrence these days. I don't know that Eli would want to go back because he didn't seem to really find it very exciting. But at least now he can say he has been to a baseball game!

Kayla and Eli at the beginning of the game

Can she be any more of a teenager than this?! Talking on the phone during a baseball game!

Eli being goofy

Zoo trip with friends

We decided to meet up with my friend Valerie and her daughter, also Emma's BFF, Morgan at the zoo. It ended up being a fairly nice day, not too hot not too cold and was overcast so we didn't have to deal with the sun. It was a trip with just us girls because Eli stayed home and hung out with JR.

Emma did actually try to feed the giraffes this time but she was still a bit nervous about it. I don't know that she has a favorite exhibit because she is so quiet as we go through looking at the animals. She must be just taking it all in and one day will know what she loves the most! Of course my favorite exhibit is the primate house. The silver back gorilla is such a fascinating animal to me. I can't wait to see how Hailey will eventually react to everything at the zoo. For now, she just gets to go along for the ride in her stroller!

Kayla and Emma at the cool giraffe exhibit.

Emma checking out the big fat pig in the petting zoo exhibit. She did pet it for a split second and that was enough for her!

Emma and her BFF Morgan

Lovin' It

Nana, the kids and I all went up to the Outlets at Castle Rock on Tues to check out the Carters store to see if they had anything good on sale and because Nana had never been there. Of course she couldn't resist buying cute outfits for her grand kids either! 1 of the outfits that she bought from Carters for Emma and Hailey were the same. I can't resist matching outfits for the girls and obviously neither can Nana! Kayla is lucky they don't have the same thing in her size because I would make her match too! :) And since we had cooler weather for a couple of days, they got to wear the outfits since they were pants. Oh and Nana has found a new place to Christmas shop now! She found herself some great deals at a kitchenwares store. It started to rain quite hard so our trip was cut short (plus we had already been there for 3 hrs or so) so I sent a map home so she could see all the stores that are up there. I think we only went into 5 stores so we hardly brushed the surface of what they have!

That look on Emma's face is just too cute! And see that mini mohawk of Hailey's....her hair does that on it's own after her bath.

Emma loves her little sister and I think Hailey is gonna dig Emma too

It's so funny to look at these pictures and see Emma look so big next to little Hailey

All the kids....it was hard to get a good picture because Emma wasn't happy that she couldn't hold Hailey anymore.