Katelyn is Seven!

Happy Birthday to my Kate!!

Here's a quick flash back over her birthdays:

2006

 2007

 2008

 2009

2010

2011

2012

and 2013!  

My sweet, silly, smart big girl is 7!  

Eric and I love her so much.

And her sister and brother adore her.

So grateful to have this precious girl. :)

Little Things

Whitney is finally starting to say her "r"s at the end of words, it's SO cute to hear her trying and even doing it accidentally sometimes.  That's how I noticed it, she said "go fastER!" when we were driving a couple of weeks ago, instead of "go fastoh", and I was like "whoa!  Whitney!  You just said '-ER'!"   Then I had her say a bunch of other words to practice.  It has been so cute though, I"m totally going to miss her Brooklyn accent!  But it's also cute to HEAR her growing up.  Don't worry, she still says Hamily Foam Eveling :)

A couple of other Whitney quotes:
Whitney, while making a map of her favorite places:"...and the Eiffel Leaning Tower of Pizza..." 

also "Mom, since it's such a Holy day today, we don't have to do a 5-minute pickup??" 

and the other day, when I was telling her to think of what Jesus would do if one of His friends was annoying Him- "Kids just aren't as good as Jesus, Mom."

She just cracks us up.  

Then today Katelyn cleaned the whole toy room just so we could get out the trains "for Owen".  Then she played with them forever while he was taking a nap, and it took me back to my little girl who LOVED trains!  I started humming the Thomas the Train songs and she remembered all the trains' names and it was so cute.  My little Katie!  So then all 3 kids had a great time playing with the trains and tracks. :)

Oh and I'd better tell the Rectangular Prism Story of Kate's.  So a few weeks ago we were making some frosting for Whitney's birthday, and I asked Katelyn to put 3 cubes of butter in the Kitchenaid.  Then I got distracted and when I came back a couple of minutes later I looked in the bowl and there were one and a half sticks of butter in there.  Very confused, I said "Katelyn, I asked you to put 3 WHOLE things of butter in there...(looking at her quizzically)" and she said "MO-om, you should have said '3 rectangular prisms' of butter!"  And at that point it clicked that she HAD put in 3 cubes- One and a half rectangles equals 3 cubes!  All I could do was laugh and shake my head and say"You're right, you are just too smart for me Katelyn!"  3 Rectangular Prisms, oh my.  I guess I need to brush up on my math vocabulary. :)

Whit end of school

 Whitney took a tumbling class this spring and loved it!  Here she is at the "fun meet" at the end of the class, waiting for her turn to do a tumbling routine.

 She was excited to get a medal and certificate. :)

Here was her tumbling pass- I've seen her do much better jumps and cartwheels!  But she shows her pretty awesome backbend here!

 Here is Whitney with her preschool group from this year!  So much fun!  I love these kids: Bekah, Tyson, Will, Courtney and Whitney!  And I especially LOVE their moms, so glad to have them as friends!  And they were all so nice to my little girl. 

Water baby

The boy loves water!  Anytime he sees a pond, stream, or fountain, he tries to dive right in!

A couple of weeks ago we went to a park in Springville, not knowing there was a new splash pad there.  As soon as he saw it, Owen wanted nothing to do with the regular park (which he usually loves!)  So of course I let him get soaked with his clothes on even though we had to go to Walmart after- he just went ghetto style in a diaper and sweatshirt I had in the car.

 He was so happy!  Whitney had fun too.

 The girls and their friends had the slip-n-slide out the other day, and when they were done Owen just walked back and forth on it for like 10 minutes!  he kept slipping, but he never stopped smiling!  

 trying to keep his balance!

He also loves to pour and stir and splash.

 Along with water, the boy loves watermelon!  He and Whitney and I devour it.

 and I decided to put these next pics on this post because we NEEDED water to clean him up!  I should have taken the picture BEFORE I took off his chocolate-frosting covered shirt!

 blurry but cute- still learning to take pictures with my phone

 It was Whitney's end-of-preschool picnic and someone brought cupcakes.  When I wasn't looking Owen grabbed one!  Little troublemaker.

and I just wanted to add this one- Owen loves Whitney's sparkly pink hat, and his little football!

Owen's words

Here are a couple of videos I've taken of Owen recently.  My favorites are him yelling "Kate!" and saying "chocolate" haha!

Random cutes

A couple of weeks ago the girls wanted to play in the sprinklers (it was the first time we'd turned them on).  Then they were laying out to get warm/dry and Owen tried to copy them. :)

 At the last preschool at our house for Whitney, I tried to be ambitious and let the kids make rainbow cupcakes- we dyed the batter every color and they got to spoon it into their cupcake liners.  So then at the end, I left Owen siting in his chair eating a cupcake while I went to answer the door for a parent, and of course ended up talking to her for a couple of minutes.  I looked back a couple of times to make sure Owen wasn't standing up in his chair, and he wasn't, but I thought he was still eating.  And then when I actually walked back I found THIS:

 "Didn't think I could reach that bowl of batter and spread it all over my arm and the table, did ya Mom?"

 Okay these pictures are so blurry because I didn't have my flash on, but we went to Cleo's birthday party and she is adorable!  

 She kept kissing Owen, it was SO cute!

 A shoe I made for Donny and Christine's coming baby girl!

 The girls and their friends made this awesome snowman during an April snowstorm, and the next day it was the only snow left in our yard. :)

 Owen learned how to climb on chairs a couple of weeks ago!  Terrible!  In the last few days alone, he has fallen off 3 times and bitten really deep in his tongue one time (it's still healing) and gotten huge bruises on his head the others.  Crazy child, I need to find a way to keep him off...

 And he learned how to go down slides on his tummy- he LOVES it!  He giggles the whole way down. :)

Whitney's 5th Birthday

As usual Whitney was up bright and early on a special day!  (She usually sleeps in until at least 8, even occasionally 9!  But on her birthday she was up at 6:45!)  Ready to open presents!

 One of her favorites- a book about Space!

 Another favorite- a green playground ball!

 Breakfast was Millenium Falcon french toast.  It is Star Wars day after all! May the Fourth be with you...

 Then Owen woke up and was being his usual big smiley morning self, so we had a little photo shoot:

 And I caught this face on camera finally!  His big cheeser happy face!!

 Little cutie, look at all those teeth!

 Then we went to the girls' Let's Play Music recital!  There on the back row is Katelyn with her class-Sahaja, Katelyn, Adalie, Madison, and Quentin.  She's been with these kids in class for 3 years, so they're good friends!  Especially her and Adalie, since we've been sharing rides.

 Here's Whitney playing autoharps with her first year class.  She has great natural rhythm and sings very enthusiastically!  She learned a lot in music this year, and greatly improved her vocal range.  She also got really good at reading "bell maps"- bell playing pictured farther below.

 Whitney doing the classical music puppet show with Reese, with me and Owen helping behind.

 Whitney's grumpy genie face- so awesome!

 Katelyn singing and concentrating on snapping to the beat of "Let's Find the Root"

 Katelyn with her trophy at the end!  I'll have a separate post with a video of her playing- she has learned so much and we are so proud of her for all her hard work practicing!

 Here's Whitney playing the bells- the bell maps tell them what to play- it's an early form of reading music.

 The girls with their teacher Miss Cathy- she's awesome!

It was a fun birthday activity.  And then instead of another birthday cake, Whitney chose to have....

SNOW CONES!!  for her birthday treat!  It just so happens that our favorite Snow cone stand in Payson opened on her birthday, so it was perfect.  

The rest of the day we had Millenium Falcon grilled cheese sandwiches and hung out and watched Charlotte's Web and had a Darth Vader pinata.  Then the girls and Eric went to a movie while Owen and I went to Costco and then we went out to dinner.   It was a good day.  

We love our Whitney Mae and don't know what we would do without her enthusiastic personality!  There is no middle ground with her, she's full on excited or full on upset!  Sometimes changing quickly back and forth!  She's trying to learn to read, she loves to sing, she LOVES to play with friends and have parties.  She and Katelyn are best friends, and she is so sweet to Owen most of the time.  She asks lots of deep questions and says many insightful things and her prayers are just priceless.  So real and sincere. :)  

And now she's FIVE!