A look back at June...

CAYDEN TURNED 5!!!!

Cayden celebrated at home on his real birthday!
Then we were to have a birthday at the bowling alley. Now here's my chance to vent... Even three months later, I'm still a bit bitter. We invited some kids from Cayden's school (really daycare). I had three people RSVP out of 10. I am asking all people, if you are asked to RSVP, please do so! So... ONE friend came!!!!!! I felt like such a failure as a mom (I realize I had no control over the attendance of the party. Maybe it had something to do with the weather or the fact it was the first weekend after school was out for the summer. I don't know). Regardless, Cayden had a blast with his friend. He had an awesome cake. We have some AMAZING family friends who dropped what they were doing that day and came to have cake with Cayden. I should also mention that Mr. Bowling Alley Worker was amazing. He felt bad for us and thankfully, he didn't charge us the full amount for the birthday.

Tball started! This was our first summer of Tball. It was very entertaining.

Here is Cayden on third base (with helmet and red shorts)

Cayden playing catcher (red shorts)

Cayden batting!

A look back at May...

No real excuses for my lack of updates over the summer. Life got extremely busy/crazy/hectic and in my free time, I was, well, lazy about updating the blog.


Some updated pics from May...

We had a picnic in the garage.

And Cayden got an early birthday present from Grandma and Grandpa J. Here was everyone trying it out for the first time.

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Daddy is HOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We met Grandma and Grandpa at the airport to greet Scott as he came home. Each child had red, white and blue balloons, along with home made shirts that I made for them. The front says: "Welcome Home" and the back has "I (heart) Daddy"

Here's Aleah (left) and Cayley (right) showing off their matching shirts.

We had a tough time knowing who was who when they were wearing these with their matching shorts. (I don't usually dress them identically)

Here is Grandma trying to keep the lil' kids under control. (L-R:Bryce, Aleah and Cayley)

Cayden proudly showing off his "Welcome Home" sign he and I worked on.

Daddy saying hi to Bryce and Cayden

Brycey had no problems warming up to his daddy.

Aleah was pretty excited as well!

Group hug for Daddy from Aleah and Bryce.

I have more pictures to come...

We all fall down!

We are doing some remodeling in our house, which is consisting of tearing down a wall and putting up a new wall. We had to clean out the "office" space which was really just a paper storage room with a computer (it was a disaster!)

Anyway... This video was taken the day construction started. It was the first time that the babies had ever been in this room. They had so much fun. I didn't take the video, my dad did. I found myself laughing outloud while I'm watching it for the first time. People would think that I'm crazy (which I might be, the jury's still out on that one) ...

Really... I think these babies are crazy!!! (Aleah is in the pink clothes, Cayley has the blue shirt with purple, and Bryce is my blondie).

Brycey... AKA Elmer Fudd

Story behind the picture... We are having some remodeling done in Cayden's room and the office to prepare for Bryce and Cayden to share a room. While Mr. Bob is here working, the kids and I are downstairs (which is a new adventure for the babies). I was turing on some cartoons for the babies and I hear Bryce doing his "I want something"-grunt. I told him just a minute (and I'm sure he knows what that means). I turned around 30 seconds later and find him in the chair covered with the blanket. Now, he isn't our climber and really very seldom manages to climb on anything. So you can imagine my surprise that he was in the chair. And then to realize that he covered himself with the blanket. The hat, well... that is just one of the babies' obsessions. More to come on that later...

Lake Cabin

We went out to my parents "new" lake cabin on Sunday afternoon for supper. They have been working on it since last fall. There is no furniture in it yet, so the babies had a blast running around in all of the free space.

Here is an attempt of trying to get all four kids in a picture for their first experience in the new cabin. (L to R: Bryce, Cayden, Aleah, Cayley)


Attempt #2: Cayley is starting to make her break for it.

Attempt #3: Then there were 3... Cayley got out of the picture and Aleah was going to join her. Not sure what happened to Bryce - if he fell over or what...

Attemp #4: And then there was one! Cayden stayed for one last picture. Babies were long gone running through the cabin.

Prom...

Some of Cayden's favorite girls! (All are students of mine). He had fun cheering for them during Grand March :)

I'm in for trouble...

Aleah (in pink) and Cayley (in green)

One afternoon, I'm off in the kitchen doing something. I hear all of these giggles and squeals of delight coming from the living room. I go to investigate and find the little girls sitting in the chair. Those little climbers! (And I have to say that I love the static hair). Aleah can now climb up all things in the living room. Cayley is bit more reserved, and doesn't climb quite as much as Aleah. And well, Brycey is just a bit more "husky" and doesn't quite get up on things as easily as the girls. Although I did observe him climb up on the couch the other day.

Picture says it all

I don't normally like to draw attention to myself, but I thought I would share this for two reasons.

1). My hubby is deployed and he missed out :(

2). Because of the writing on the cake. Now the cake maker (not going to mention her name) did a very nice job. But she did point out to us (Myself and the kiddos), that she kind of messed up on the "Y" on birthday. Then Cayden says, "But Grandma, you also messed up on that "A" oops, said I was going to say who the cake maker was -wink, wink ;). The "A" Cayden pointed to was the A in Happy.

You wouldn't believe how much the babies love cake! Cayden on the other hand could take it or leave it (he definitely doesn't get that from me!)

Easter

Cayden and Bryce HAVE to have matching shirts whenever possible. I think it is funny because it is ALWAYS Cayden's idea. I wonder how long Cayden will "be nice" to Brycey and want to match Bryce.

The girls... Well, they are peanuts! I bought these dresses for the girls last fall to wear from Thanksgiving (size 18 months). The girls are 20 months, and still wearing 12 months clothes. At their 18 month check up (which was really at 19 months), Aleah weighed 20 pounds and Cayley weighed 21 pounds, and that was with clothes on and WET diapers. (By the way, Bryce weighed in at 26 pounds, or was it 27 pounds-I can't remember).

Easter Egg hunt was fun. The "big kids" had fun, even running on little sleep. As for the "little kids", the girls did fine. Bryce wanted nothing to do with the grass! I set him down and he immediately stood on his tippy toes and screamed and cried! It's going to be a long summer for us if doesn't want to go on the grass!

Here is some pictures from Easter.

Cayden checking out the gifts from the Easter Bunny

Bryce

Aleah

Cayley

Cayley with Grandpa

Aleah with Kara (babysitter)

Bryce staying clear of the grass.

Cayden and cousin Ash looking for eggs.

Counting eggs to make sure they found them all!

Easter Lunch
(L to R: Cousin Ash, Cayden, Cousin Addy)

Basketball obsession

I need to preface this post with some information. I'm guessing sometime in January, I took Cayden to a high school basketball game. We HAD to sit on the floor next to the student section and by the cheerleaders. For WEEKS after this game, we had to cheer for "Team Minot" who happened to be the team wearing whatever color shirt Cayden was wearing. If it was just me watching him, I had to be the cheerleader cheering for Team Minot. If it was me and one of my parents, I had to the cheerleader and my parent had to be "the announcer person". Oh, and Cayden was playing basketball in the living room with one of those hoops that hooks over the door.

So now to the post... While we were in MN for Easter, we took the "big kids" to the Harlem Globetrotters. It was a blast! Here are some pictures of the action. Unfortunately, I didn't get any of Cayden or the rest of the crew that went.

Here is Globie, their mascot. Can't remember who he was supposed to be in this picture...

... But this would be Globie as Beyonce. I thought this little skit was hilarious.

And some action shots of the actual "game".

Let's Pretend...

Let's just pretend that we went to a Twin's Game. The MN Twins had their home opening games in the new Target Stadium over Easter Weekend. We ended up driving by the new stadium on our way to a different event. So, I thought I would snap a few pictures and pretend we were there.

Easter Egg Dying

We went to Minneapolis to spend Easter with my sister and her family. Unfortunately, the day after we got there, I felt really ill and spent all day in bed. I did get out of bed long enough to snap a few pictures of the "big kids" dying Easter eggs. For some reason when we are all together, I stop referring the the babies as babies and call them the "little kids". So, the "little kids" dyed their own Easter eggs later, but I unfortunately missed it not feeling well.

Here is the start of the egg dying. One of our babysitters came along to help me in the car and with the "little kids" in general during the trip. Here she is helping Cayden (far left), and cousins Addy and Ash are also dying eggs.

Lisa (my sister) snuck in the picture. She was helping out with the egg dying.

Getting a nice smile from Cayden can be quite challenging. Here was two attempts. I would say these are decent smiles, but not true Cayden smiles.