Happy Anniversary...

Can you believe that I have been married to this guy for 13 years!  My first thought about that is... "We must be getting old."  Thirteen years is a pretty long time.  Mike informed me that we "could" have a 12 year old by now.  Good thing we don't! (although it would be pretty sweet to have a built in babysitter)  I am content with my life the way it is.  So to this great, amazing, sweet, funny guy....Happy Anniversary!

I am treating myself to getting my hair done for our anniversary.  It has been forever.  I am in desperate need of a change.  So many decisions.  Over the past couple of years I have been from blond to black and every shade of brown in between.  What to do today....   I am also considering a good chop.... We shall see.

72 hour kits...

 

Well conference has come and gone.... I am very sad.  It is one of my favorite weekends of the year!  I always try and change out my 72 hour kits over fall conference.  Due to baby Ruby, last October nothing got accomplished.  So needless to say we were really overdue.  Nothing quite like 2 year old granola bars to choke down in an emergency.  What I thought I could tackle in a couple of hours took me 8!  Yes...I can't believe it either... 8 whole hours of complete madness.

 I unfortunately didn't get any pictures of when I started.  There was a huge pile of clothes, hats, gloves, shoes, food, first aid, activities... oh the list goes on and on.  This is just organized chaos above.

 Finally we are finished.  I made Mike take them out to the garage last night.  He could barely carry them... Oh do you think they are to full?  My opinion is that it is better to have it than not.  You can always discard items along the way.  Boy am I glad that the project is over... on to bigger and better!

SIDENOTE... Look at my babies...Aren't they so precious!  I can't believe how little they were.

I always make emergency tags with info for the bags with photo's attached.  I am such a nut because I am having a hard time parting with these sweet things.  I even considered keeping them for the scrapbook.  What!  who does that....scrapbooks their kids old emergency tags.  No I must throw them away... but they are sweet!

Well, For now I better put our newly organized bags in the garage to gather dust and pray we don't have to use them!  Goodbye to them until next fall when I do the whole thing all over again!

...Ruby...

Ruby is One...
I can't believe that my baby is one year old. It is hard to imagine that she being the youngest of four is growing up. Today she threw a tantrum and even got mad at me. What is up with that. She needs to stay a baby forever.

Happy Birthday to Me!!!

Ruby loves to eat. She will stay in her highchair for an hour and just keep eating if I let her. It is truly amazing that she is as little as she is. One of her loves is crackers!

Yummy!!!

Playing "Peek-a-Boo" with her cracker.

Well off to more things... Mike took the older 3 kids to the cabin tonight. So it is just me and Ruby. Wow life is so simple with just one kid. You forget!
I am tearing apart all of the 72 hour kits and updating them all. (I try to do this every fall conference) It is quite the project with a family of Six! Can't wait for Conference...

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER...

The First Day of School!!!! The girls were really excited to start at their new school. McCall loved it from the moment she hit the building. McKinley had a rough first week or so. She has grown to love the new school.

"Strike a Pose"


Spencer LOVES to close his eyes in photo's. Hopefully he will grow out of it. I can't believe that my baby boy is in pre-school. He is so adorable with his "huge" Spiderman backpack. When it is filled, it looks like he is going to fall over backwards.

We went to "Heritage Days" in Pleasant Grove. McCall's little choir sang at it. The kids had a lot of fun. One of their favorites was the face painting. It also gave dad a little time alone to recover from his surgery. Everyone was happy!!!

Summer Hiking

We feel so blessed by where we live. We have moved to a new house minutes from many awesome hiking trails. We tried to hike quite a few times this summer. We had a really good time. As you can see Ruby had such a good time that she pooped herself out! It was hard work for her!

Mike and the Kids!

Our cute kids. (spencer will NEVER just smile for the camera anymore)

I took photo's of the first day of school. I still need to download them. So I will post soon!

RUBY...

Ruby is getting sooo big! I decided that we needed to dedicate a whole entry on her. Being child #4 she doesn't get a whole lot to herself!
I can't believe that in just over a month she will be one. Where did the time go? Ruby loves crawling and pulling herself up on everything. She is even starting to walk around furniture.

Ruby is almost always happy!!! She loves to laugh and her favorite thing to do is crawl into Spencer's room and get into all of his stuff. (this might be foreshadowing the future)

Ruby's hair is finally long enough for "ponies." Now I have one more head of hair to do. Getting everyone ready Sunday morning by 9 was a little rough.
We love our Ruby!!!

What a CRAZY month...

I know that I have been a terrible blogger! We have been crazy busy with our house up for sell. It has been quite a month. We figured that we have had somewhere around 40-45 showings... Finally we are under contract. But life is not going to get any better. The person who is buying our house needs it to be a quick sale... so we have less than 3 weeks to be out!!! So starting this weekend we will be packing, packing, packing. We are going to be moving into mom and dad's (I bet they are excited) until we find a place and school is out. We are going to move in 2 weeks.
Spencer had a great birthday... I can't believe that he is 3. WOW does time fly. He is so funny and ALL boy. I have decided that one boy is enough for me! Ruby gets more and more fun every day. She is trying to crawl, but can't get the hang of it yet. She is starting to get up on her hands and knees and rock. It is so cute to see that little bum in the air. McCall's birthday is on Sunday. She can't wait to be 8. We have her baptism the week that we close on the house. So it will be a little hectic... but she is sooo excited about being baptized. McKinley just dancing around the house singing. She is so funny.
Life is good. I will attached photo's later...

McKinley's 100th day of Kindergarten

McKinley had her 100th day of Kindergarten. Her teacher is AMAZING... She does so many fun things, I don't know how she does it. For the Hundredth day, the kids had to dress up like 100 year old people. They also had to bring a collection of any 100 things. They were suppose to be creative. McKinley made a collection of 100 different stamps. She had fun making it. Their class did a big 100 party with all sorts of activities. They also paraded around the school walking like an old person into many of the older classes. McCall said that she came into her class and it was hysterical...

McKinley in her 1oo glasses that she made. The kids had to pass off counting to 100. They had to do it by 1's, 2's, 5's, and 10's. If they did they got to join the hundreds club. They could become gold medal members by counting backwards from 100 down to 1.

A photo of all of the "old" people in her class.

Another picture of the feeble 100 year old's (you should have seen the kids walking around hunched over and shaking... It was sooo funny)

Baby Ruby...

Our little Ruby has not had much face time on the blog. I decided you can't miss out on this sweet thing! These pictures were taken yesterday after walking up to get the girls from school. Don't mind the red little nose... It is wintertime.

Ruby is now 6 months old and all smiles. She went from really grumpy to probably our happiest little baby. She loves to laugh and will smile at almost anything. She just had her 6 month check up and weighed in at 15 pounds (way to go Ruby!!!) Look at those fat little cheeks...

More Smiles!

Chillin in the stroller...

McCall

My McCall... what can I say about her. On Sunday we had baptism preview. She was sooo excited (and a little nervous too) It was so fun to go to the stake and learn about what is going to happen on her special day. Mike was working, so when she got home she had to call him up and tell him every little detail about the night. She even did a play by play of the talks given. It was quite impressive! The stake leaders wanted a picture of McCall for her baptism. I dug this one up of the first day of school. I love those dimples!
Another funny thing about McCall... For Christmas grandma midge gave her a children's encyclopedia. Last week McCall made it a goal to read the entire encyclopedia from cover to cover. As she told me "there are a lot of interesting facts mom." This morning she finished! She was so proud of herself for finishing her goal. And she feels like she is a whole lot smarter too. If anyone has any particular questions about telescopes, different insects, etc. she is your girl!

The Shirt!!!

This is what Spencer wears every other day... He LOVES his fire engine shirt! It is actually a hand-me-down from cousin Matthew (a blessing or a curse, I am not really sure right now). Every morning Spencer wakes up and says "how bout I wear... My fire engine shirt." But because we have to wash it he can only wear it about 3 times a week (sometimes it just happens to stay in the laundry a little longer so he can wear a few more outfits). Sorry Josh and Lauren... this is one shirt that may not be salvageable for baby Blake!

My silly Spencer!!!
This week Mike took Spencer up to Washington for a few days to pick up some things from my aunt and uncle. It is amazing how quiet my house is without this crazy little kid. I found myself wondering where he was all day long. It would make me panic. I miss him like mad, but boy am I getting a lot done!

Today She is SIX...

I can't believe that my little Kinners turned six today. Wow... where has the time gone. We have had a great time celebrating her birthday. I love birthday's because it is one of those opportunities to really make your kids feel special. They just eat it all up! This picture is when we took McKinley's birthday treats into her kindergarten class. She was so excited because I took her to the store and let her pick out whatever treat she wanted. She chose large powdered doughnuts. (which i thought was funny, because I have never really purchased those before so I don't know where she has had them)

OOPs this picture didn't get turned right! Grandpa showed up at our door on Saturday morning with this gigantic balloon . It was a huge hit! All the kids at the party loved it.

McKinley wanted a cooking party like what I had done for McCall. I made all of the kids canvas aprons and then we decorated them with fabric markers. They also decorated their hats. It was a lot of fun. We made homemade pizzas. It is always fun to see what toppings and how MUCH kids will put on their own pizzas.

We also decorated cupcakes. Some had so many toppings I was a little grossed out. They loved it though.
It has been so fun celebrating McKinley! Mike was on shift today for her birthday, so we are doing a birthday breakfast tomorrow morning. Grandma and Grandpa, and grandma midge are coming also. It should be a lot of fun! The party never ends!