flag footballers!

 Okay, so none of these pictures are great, but I had to document Kade and Ky's first season of flag football!  This fall they played six weeks of flag football as part of the Orange Tigers team.  Based on the first week, which was a football clinic/practice, I wasn't sure we were going to see much of anything that resembled football from the 5-7 year olds.  But, over the next few weeks we saw lots of good running, passing, "tackling," a few interceptions, some good catches, blocking, and plenty of touchdowns!  Kade and Ky each scored a couple of touchdowns themselves.  Oh, and I can't forget about the awesome touchdown dances the boys gave us, as well as some great hip bumps!  It was so much fun to watch!

 Kade's favorite sport is absolutely football!  In fact, he did not want to mess with this flag football stuff, and just wanted to go straight to tackle football.  But he had a great time, and I think he learned a lot about actually playing a game of football.  Both the boys took the games very seriously and always did their best!

And, which team won the championship?  The Orange Tigers, that's who!!  Kade and Ky were so proud to be part of the winning team!  And Mom and Dad are pretty proud of them too!

Ky's proud daddy made this video of his touchdown, along with some awesome hip bump action!

one through twelve

Okay, I realize that this post is nearly three months late, but oh well.  I was thinking the other day about how fast my sweet baby Krew has grown up.  It boggles my mind how quickly he went from a tiny, helpless little baby to the walking, talking, funny, big, chubby guy that he is now.  Just think if we continued to learn and grow at that rate, the things we could do and know by now!  (Although the tripling your body weight in one year would not be a good idea after the first year!)  It was so fun to look back at his first six months last May, so I thought it would be fun to look at each month's photo from the first year.  

While these pictures only capture the physical changes, hopefully when I look back at them, these photos remind me of his personality and the fun, new things he was learning month-to-month!

Enjoy!

crazy hair day!

Last week at school, was crazy hair day!  The boys had been talking about it for days, and it wasn't until the night before that I came up with an idea of how to color their hair: water and art pastels!  I've seen it done on Pinterest, so I thought it was worth a try! I was surprised at how well it worked and how well it stayed throughout the day day.  I was also surprised that I had pastels at home and that I was able to find them!

 Kade thought he looked just like a rock star!  I'd have to agree.

Of course, Ky woke up that morning with a high fever so he had to miss out on crazy hair day! It always seems that when my kids are sick and have to miss school, they miss something awesome.  They've missed Christmas parties, and field trips, and late start and early out days.  There are plenty of non-awesome days at school, why can't they just be sick on one of those days?  Ky was pretty disappointed, but handled it like a champ.  (Plus, I'm not so sure Kade would have so willingly gone to school without his brother if it would have been a normal school day!).

sledding fun

 A couple of weekends ago, we took the kids sledding!  It was perfect sledding weather: 32 degrees and sunny, with plenty of snow.  (Unlike today when it is -3 degrees and with windchill it's -27, and we have almost no snow on the ground).  It was Krew's first time sledding, and he loved it!

 Daddy, Kade and Krew all went down together once.

 We stayed until we had used up every drop of sunlight then went home to warm up!  Perfect winter afternoon!

my 3 stripey sons

Before church on Sunday, I was able to snap a few pictures of my three handsome sons in their new, coordinating sweaters.  They make my heart melt!

kade and ky turn 7!

On December 29th, Kade and Ky turned 7!  They were super excited that their birthday was on a Saturday so that daddy could be home with them all day.  After much deliberation, we decided not to do a friends birthday party this year.  Not because we didn't want to...the boys love having a party and I love creating the invites, the decorations, games, party favors etc.  But, there were some issues with the invite list, so we decided to forgo the whole thing this year, and instead, we spent the entire day playing!

 The first stop was McDonald's for breakfast.  We tried to talk them into this yummy pancake place in town, but they are 7, so McDonald's was their choice.  Every time we went somewhere that day, they had to tell the cashier that it was their birthday.  It was so cute!

 After breakfast, we came home so the baby could nap.  The birthday boys decided to play a few hours of video games (even before we had made any plans for the day, they had decided that since it was their birthday, they should be able to play as much video games as they wanted.  I'm not sure that they wouldn't have played even more, but their birthday is only once a year, right?)  While they were playing, I decorated their cake.  Months ago, they had decided that their birthday party would have a Lego Ninjago theme.  And just because it was only the 5 of us, didn't mean that we couldn't stick to the theme!

Here is Lloyd, the green Ninja, and the Ninjago cake.  It turned out pretty good considering my lack of cake decorating skills.  (Sorry Mom!)

 Just before lunch, the boys got to open their presents.

 I don't have pictures of the next activity, even though it may have been everyone's favorite part of the day.  After lunch, we went SWIMMING!  I know I've mentioned here before about how much the boys like to go swimming.  It's always their favorite part of any vacation, so it seemed like the perfect activity to do on their birthday.  We all had a blast, and it felt so nice to swim in the warm water on such a cold day.  Even Krew thought the pool was awesome!

Next we did a little shopping to spend some of the money the boys got for Christmas and their birthday.
Next stop:  the jumping place at the mall.  Kade and Ky have asked to do this several times, but we've never forked over the cash for it. But, their birthday seemed like the perfect day to splurge and let them jump to their little hearts' content.  Kade was the first one to get strapped up, and he looked pretty nervous at first.  But, slowly he got more comfortable, until he was doing back flip after back flip!  By the time he was done, the bands holding him up were so twisted.  Just before getting him down, the guy working there changed his bands to tighter ones, pulled him down far, and launched him into the air.  He went higher than the tops of the support bars, and he got to do this 7 times since it was his seventh birthday!  He loved it, and my cheeks hurt from smiling so much while watching him!

 Ky was quite nervous at first too.  But, soon he was jumping really high on his own.  He didn't want to try a back flip, even though the rest of us kept encouraging him to give it a try!

 After jumping, we headed home for dinner.  The boys had requested cheeseburgers as their birthday dinner, so Bart fired up the grill in the cold.  We ate burgers and watched the original Superman movie (which they got for their birthday).  After that it was time for cake and ice cream!

This year they decided they wanted to be sung to and blow out the candles by themselves.  They decided that Ky should go first.

 When it was Kade's turn, he wanted all the lights out.

 He had such a hard time blowing out the candles. He would blow and blow and nothing would happen, which would make him laugh and then he really had a hard time blowing any air out.  By the time he got them all blown out, they both had the giggles.  It was pretty fun!

 Neither one of them ate very much dessert.  They both complained that they were too tired to eat.  I couldn't believe it--we had worn them out!  I'm not sure that's ever happened before.  But, we did have a very fun day, full of excitement.

Happy birthday Kade and Ky!  We love you both so much!!!

christmas morning 2012

Let me just start by saying that Christmas is so much fun with 3 little kids!  Of course Kade and Ky are at a perfect age for Christmas excitement.  They can count down the days until Christmas, they love visiting Santa and writing a wish list, they can make and wrap presents for everyone, they remember some of our Christmas traditions and make sure they we keep them up, and their excitement on Christmas morning is contagious.  Krew is at the age where he likes the Christmas lights and decorations, he sort of got the hang of opening gifts, and everything that everyone opened was exciting to him!

 Krew got a rocking horse from Santa, and he loves it!!

 All my boys by the tree in their Christmas Eve jammies.  Love it!

 Krew is basking in the after-Christmas-morning-present-opening-spree mess and reading his new Mickey Mouse book.

We had such a great Christmas!  Kade and Ky kept saying, "This is the best Christmas ever!" and I would have to agree.  The only thing that would have made it better was if we would have been able to spend Christmas with some family.  We were without any family for Christmas again, but we were able to spend the evening with some friends and we still had a great day!

merry christmas 2012!

Merry Christmas!

We had such a great year in 2012.  I can honestly say that it was one of the happiest years of my life.  Our family feels so blessed and our lives are so full.

Some of the highlights from this past year include:

Krew's baby blessing
Spring break trip to Madison, WI
Krew grew soooo quickly
Kade and Ky played T-Ball
Krew and I traveled to Utah for a friend's wedding
Kade and Ky graduated from Kindergarten
The Star Wars night at the baseball game was one of our favorite memories from the summer
We spent a fun weekend in Milwaukee as a family
We played in Chicago for several days when my mom came for a visit
We went to Six Flags
Kade and Ky started 1st grade
Krew turned 1!!
And since October we have been busy celebrating everyone's birthday, Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas!

We are so lucky to have such great family, and friends, and to be able to feel the love of our Savior every day!  We are excited to see what this next year has in store for us as our children continue to grow up too quickly and we continue to make memories together as a family!