School

William started 1st grade this year. He is so excited, mostly because he gets to eat lunch at school. It may be a challenge for us to actually get up in time but we are going to try really hard. So far we have done really well.Doesn't Brandon look like he is just raring to go, ready to take William to school? Because of Brandon's crazy work schedule we make sure that Brandon walks William to school in the mornings. If we didn't William wouldn't see Brandon at all during the day, just on weekends.
My big first grader, and his crazy pose. Doesn't he look so excited? He has really loved the first couple of weeks of school. Even the first day that he brought home homework was exciting, I hope it stays that way.
Look who else is ready for school. Britton is obsessed with backpacks. The first day of school she grabbed William's backpack and lunch box, headed to the door, and told me bye. I hope you notice in the picture that she is wearing William's shoes. She insisted.
Isn't she so cute? And she knows it.

Happy Birthday!

William is six! I can't believe it. Minus the broken arm William had a great birthday. He had wanted to go bowling, but we are putting that off until after the cast comes off. Instead he got to choose a movie, Despicable Me, and then we had pizza and ice cream cake at Grandma and Grandpa Luke's. He had a great day and really lucked out, he got almost everything that he asked for.Here is the handsome guy. He spent all week wondering what he was getting for his birthday, mostly because he knew when Brandon took the girls to go and get his presents. Caitlyn did pretty well about not telling him what he was getting, she struggles keeping secrets (you would think she was three or something).
Here is William's ice cream cake. He chose cookie dough ice cream. He almost changed his mind about the ice cream cake after Brandon's birthday because he didn't really like the cake that Brandon chose. But when I reminded him that I was making what he chose, no Butterfinger or peanut butter Oreos, he was happy about it. He said that it tasted great.
Patiently waiting while the cousins sing to him. He is so excited about school this year and he is such a great helper around the house. We love you William and hope you have a great year.

Happy Birthday Honey

Brandon had a birthday this week. My favorite part of his birthday, he takes a week off of work. So he got to enjoy his birthday, at least I hoped he enjoyed it. This is definitely a week that we don't diet in our family, birthdays and our anniversary.Do you see how excited they are? I just love that Britton is so excited about Brandon's present. So what was it?
Giant Marshmallows! That's right! A friend told Brandon about these earlier this summer and he was excited when we found them and tried them. But then we couldn't find them again. So when I saw them at the store as I was grocery shopping I knew I had to get them for his birthday. He also got a treadmill, it showed up at our house last March.
This is what we did for his birthday. Extreme Makeover built a house in Pocatello and the big reveal was on Brandon's birthday. So we went down and got to stand in the crowd. We did get to cheer and chant as they filmed the crowd. We left before the family got home, we waited three hours, an hour after they first said the family would show up, and the kids were so tired so we left.
William did really well for the first two hours. He did see some of the designers while he was sitting on our shoulders.
Britton got really tired of the hiking back pack, but she was really good at cheering.
Bradley slept through the whole experience. Caitlyn and William took turns on shoulders, and Caitlyn said that she only dropped a few crumbs on my head.
Brandon was really excited about his cake this year. He picked it out himself and then I made it.
It's an ice cream cake. I found the recipe, Died and Gone to Heaven Cake, in a book called Devil's Food Cake by Josi S. Kilpack. Brandon requested mint chocolate chip ice cream in the middle and Butterfinger on the top. It turned out really well. William has decided that he wants ice cream cake for his birthday too, so we will be having a lot of ice cream this week.

Anniversary

This week we celebrated our seventh anniversary. That's right, seven years. Crazy I know. So what do you do to celebrate seven years and four kids later? Brandon took me out to lunch, chinese and ice cream. And then he took William to get his cast while I started laundry. William is really happy about his cast (notice the gap in his teeth, he lost his first tooth).

Rough and Tough

Our week started out a little rough. William has been working on learning to ride a bike without training wheels, he doesn't like to feel unbalanced, and he has really been making a lot of progress lately. So Monday he was practicing some more with Brandon while I went grocery shopping. When I got back from the store William was sitting very carefully in a chair and Brandon informed me that they needed to go to the doctor's. William had lost control of the bike, in his words he was launched, and he broke his arm. So Brandon didn't go to work because he was at the hospital with William waiting to go into surgery. Brandon said that William impressed all of the doctors and nurses because he was so brave. He was just very calm about everything and was telling jokes to everyone. He was kept overnight for observation, Brandon stayed with him, and then came home the next morning. He currently has a splint and a bandage wrapped around that in a sling, but he will get a cast next week after the swelling has gone down.He has been such a trooper and so tough.
He didn't like this picture as much because you can't see his sling. He thinks that the sling is so cool. Luckily it is his left arm, he is right handed and starting school in a couple of weeks would be so much harder with a cast on his right arm. He is excited to have people sign his cast, but his birthday is going to be interesting. We are going to have to revise our plans, he wanted to go bowling but we are going to have to save that for later. He said that he had fun at the hospital, he really liked being able to watch movies, and he is enjoying the attention he is getting at home. Ian and Becky stopped by with some activity books for him, and the girls, and William thought it was so cool that his cousins made get well cards for him. So not the best start to a week. Hopefully it will get better.

Blessing and Summertime

Okay, this is going to be a long post, but I'm not sure if I have the energy to do more than one and if I don't do it together the second post probably wouldn't happen. So here we go.

We had the baby blessing over the weekend of the 24th. So of course we headed to St. Anthony for the parade. William had asked me, before I had the baby, when we were going to go to a parade so I told him we would try to make it to the 24th parade. The kids love it because they always get a ton of candy. We met my parents in St. Anthony, because we were running a little late and then Britton threw up in the van, and we were really lucky this year because we got to sit in the shade. Thanks Megan for letting us sit in front of your house.
Britton wore her swimsuit for most of the day because of course we didn't have a spare outfit with us, just the swimsuit. But they are ready for the candy.
All of the kids ended up with a lot of candy. And we had quite a few together.
Doesn't Bradley look so comfy?
The Blue Angels were doing an air show that weekend and Brandon got free tickets. I told him that I couldn't do two outdoor events in one day and there was no way Britton wouldn't go crazy and Caitlyn had told me that the jets were too loud when they did their practice runs over the house. So Brandon took William and Zach, our brother-in-law. They had fun, doesn't William look happy in the picture? I don't know who the other two people are, but their in front of a plan.
Brandon took a lot of pictures, some of just the sky, but here are the Blue Angels in action.

We blessed Bradley the next day. Brandon's folks came up and some of my siblings and my folks were there. William and Caitlyn were excited that they weren't going to Primary cause we were eating afterwards.

I had to get a picture of all the boys. William was so excited that the boys and girls are even in our family now.
So cute, and he even has his eyes open.

I have been a little lazy this summer, something about having a baby, so I haven't taken a lot of pictures. But we went to feed the ducks the other day, Brandon was home which is the only way I would even consider taking all four kids to the river, and I actually remembered the camera so here so go.
The ducks and geese were so happy to see us and our large bag of bread loaf heels.
Brandon thought that I should be in some pictures.
The kids were dancing for me.
William and Caitlyn had a lot of fun walking down this wall and balancing.
Bradley just hung out in his car seat in the stroller.
Britton wanted to balance on the wall too but she wasn't very steady. So that is a little of what has been going on at our house this summer.

Baby

Alright, I know that it has been a month, okay more, and I have been quite the slacker. We finally did have our baby, a little late but I did make it to the hospital before my dr's appointment that week. I didn't really have any contractions until that day, I noticed them about 4:30 in the morning but I was able to get a little sleep. When the rest of the family got up, I told Brandon that we might want to just load up the kids and take them to Mom and Dad's because they live closer to the hospital that I was going to deliver at. So we loaded up bags and everything else we thought the kids might need. I offered to call work for Brandon, mainly because Carissa, a coworker, really wanted to be the one to answer the phone when I was in labor. She was lucky enough to answer when I was in labor with Caitlyn and had to call work and tell them to send Brandon home. A different coworker answered the phone and when I told him Brandon wouldn't be coming in, he told me that he hoped Brandon felt better. We chuckled about that as we drove to Mom's. We got the kids settled, hung out for a couple of ours, but that seemed to freak Mom out (sorry Mom) so we headed to the hospital. Whenever I sat down my contractions stopped, so I didn't have any in the car on the way to the hospital. So we went to the park across the street from the hospital and walked around a bit. Brandon finally told me that we needed to get to the hospital. I didn't think that they would admit me, because my contractions weren't really consistent, so I didn't take my bags out of the car. This was a new experience for us, going to the hospital during the day. I was admitted around 1, a couple of hours before I was supposed to be at the clinic for my appointment. I decided around 3 that I wanted an epidural, and about 10 minutes later as they finished giving it to me I was ready. So the baby came around 3:30. He didn't listen when I said that I didn't want a baby bigger than 8 lbs, but he had really round cheeks.Bradley and Daddy.
Bradley and Mommy, I always look so lovely in the first pictures.
Britton thought that he was her baby. She was so excited to hold the baby, and she would scream baby when she came in the room. She still does sometimes. She was not very excited to let anyone else hold the baby.
Caitlyn and Grandma and baby.
She is literally screaming.
Here he is ready to go home. His shirt says My Aunt Rocks. He has several aunts that rock, but Suzanne sent us that outfit. She said she just couldn't resist. Bradley was born on his cousins birthday, she turned eight, so he and I spent Saturday at home alone while the rest of the family went to the baptism. I told her that I will never ever forget her birthday. He is the first of our kids that the nurses didn't think they were a little yellow, the other kids looked really yellow but were fine.