Little Helpers

Kenzie loves getting dishes out of the dishwasher to set the table. She doesn't care if they're clean or not. She also doesn't care how many she grabs. I thinks there's 7 plates on the table in the picture (and 2 on the ground not in the picture), a bowl and a cup. She has to stand on the dish washer to reach a bowl or cup, so I try to discourage that by putting them away before she tries to grab them.

The kids love helping me cook, especially Jordan. Anytime I'm going dinner he runs over to help. His favorite thing to help with is shredding the cheese because we have an electric shredder. Most the time when I'm making dinner he asks if we're going to have cheese. Jackson mostly likes to help with desserts. Kenzie is just starting to want to help some. She likes stirring things.

Nursery

Since Kenzie is 18 months old she gets to go to nursery at church. We were excited for her to be able to start going, especially Doug since he's the one that has been taking care of her the last 2 hours of church. She loved it. Doug dropped her off and said she didn't cry at all. The leaders said she was great. I was happy Jordan was in there with her to make the transition a little easier. Although I think she would have been ok either way. She could run around and play with toys and eat snack. What's better than that? I asked Jordan if he played with her and shared with her and took care of her and he said yes. He told me that she looked and one of the boys and he was mean to her. I asked if he told the kid to be nice to his little sister and Jordan said "No, he's not my friend." :)

Jack's Haircut

Before:

After:

Woe is me!

Yesterday, Jackson stayed home sick and at one point I asked him what hurt and he said his head, shoulder, tummy, knuckles, and cheek. :)

The top of Jordan's finger was peeling last night and he kept saying his finger was broken. When he was in bed he said sadly, "I don't want to sleep with my broken finger." I asked him if he wanted me to cut it off, but he didn't.

Jordan just came in and showed me his knuckles and said he "got hurt really bad." He wanted me to kiss it better. Then as he was moving away from me he hit his side on the nightstand and said he hurt it. I blew a kiss and apparently it went to the wrong spot because he showed me where his real owie was and that made it all better. I'm glad blown kisses work as good as real ones for him.

I love my kids. They say cute things that make me smile.

18 Months!

Today is our little Mackenzie girl's half birthday!

One of her pictures from her quick 18 month photo shoot I did right before bed... She wasn't real excited to have her picture taken. But that's a common thing with her these days.

Jordan, Kenzie, and Jack eating lunch. She's often happy when she's eating. Until she's done. Then she starts throwing or dropping her food until you wash her and get her down (or take it away, but then she just cries).

She had pudding for the first time last week. I think she liked it, don't you? The boys wouldn't touch it though. She loves chocolate and desserts. She must really be my daughter :)

Another pudding picture...

This is the last one. How could I resist putting up 3 pictures of a chocolatey girl?

Jordan and Kenzie.

I must have been her way of the TV. Maybe Dora was on. That's about all she cares about. She can say Dora and it's so cute when she does. She also says Boots.

I let her paint for the first time yesterday. She loved it. After I got her all ready and put gave her the paint brush and paint I went to grab the camera and when I turned around she was putting the paint brush in her mouth... I guess I should have showed her what to do before leaving her unsupervised. Luckily it was nontoxic :) She tried to eat some blue paint later too, but didn't think it tasted very good.

Happy to be painting.

After going to my sister's house last weekend and wearing this coat, Mackenzie wanted to wear it a lot yesterday. It's kind of small for her though.

After wearing her coat she found 2 of her Jackets and wanted them both on. She loves jackets. But she doesn't love getting her picture taken. When I try to take her picture she usually runs to me and says "see" to see a picture of herself. Sometimes she more willing to smile for pictures after she's one of her on the camera.

The rest are from tonight's photo shoot. As soon as I tried to take pictures she ran to hide back there. And wouldn't even smile from her hiding spot.

Does she look like one of her brothers here? I can't decide if she does or not...

After seeing the previous pictures of herself she sat down to have her picture taken and smiled when Jack sat down by her and started saying cheese.

Then Jordan wanted to join the picture too. But he wouldn't smile and look at me. 2 out of 3 isn't bad though.

Kenzie spent a lot of the time like this, trying to hide from me and the camera.

This is how I put Kenzie to bed. I think she likes all her blankets on and around her. She looks so comfortable. But she probably doesn't really care because half the time before I even walk out of the room she's rolled over and is out of the blankets. And when Doug puts her to bed, he doesn't put any blankets on her.

Here's some facts about Kenzie:
She loves her binky. She only gets it in bed, but is often sneaking up to room to find it. She usually will stay upstairs for awhile before letting anyone know she has it. She's usually happy to go to bed because she gets it. She also is happy to stay in bed after she wakes up for awhile so that she keep it.
She says "stop" a lot. If we tickle her and she doesn't like it, she tells us to stop. If we do anything she doesn't like she tells us to stop. It's very cute.
She's usually grumpy from around 11:30 until we eat lunch.
She doesn't nap very good, at least not compared to my boys. She generally doesn't sleep more than 2 hours (and often less than that) and I'm usually happy with 2 hours. I would have never been happy with 2 hours from my boys, especially Jackson.
She doesn't like to get her hair done.
She loves doing animal sounds.
She loves wiping things with rags.
She loves helping clean things up.
Today she opened the dishwasher grabbed some clean plates and started setting the table for dinner. Then she climbed on the dishwasher and grabbed some bowls out of it to put on the table.
She loves throwing things away and gets really happy when I ask her to.
She loves to try to play with cell phones, the remote controls, wii-motes, and computers.
She likes to open the bottom drawer in our kitchen and climb in and grab things off the counter. Once, by doing this, she grabbed my cell phone without me knowing and texted my sister. I make sure my phone isn't over there anymore.
She likes babies and says baby when she sees one or a infant carseat.
She's recently learned how to give hugs and is very good at giving them.
She has a very cute kissy face.
She loves jumping.
She likes to be chased at bedtimes. Doug doesn't mind this... I don't really love it though. I try to enjoy it because it is super cute when she runs away smiling and laughing. But I'm usually tired and ready for her to be in bed by that time :)
Her nicknames are: Kenzie-girl, Princess, Pretty (only by Jack though)
She's super cute and we give her pretty much anything she wants. Even the boys know Kenzie gets what she wants because "she's a baby."

Forest Grove

We went to my sister Michelle's house last weekend. It might be our last time there because they're moving to Texas in July. I'm sad they'll be living so far away and we'll probably just seem them once a year. We had a great time at there house. We played at their house, went to a kid play place that we always go to called Out of this World, had a campfire, and watched movies.

Jordan in the play house and Out of this World.

Kenzie loved this slide once she figured out how to get up there.

Jordan and Michelle eating pizza.

Kenna going down the big black slide.

Jack going down it. I tried to get my pictures to not be so dark, but couldn't figure it out. Doug thinks I should read the manual to figure it out.

Jordan at the end of the slide. I was surprised he went down the slide. He's not usually very courageous.

Kenzie went down once with Doug and loved it. But after she just cried the rest of the time. Doug tried to take her again, but she cried. She just wanted to climb up the slide, which isn't safe, or allowed.

Jack (refusing to look and smile for some reason), Kenna, Jordan, Nati. We roasted hot dogs and barbecued chicken since it wasn't raining. (At least not most of the time.)

Kenzie and Natalie. Kenzie wasn't so happy to be able to walk around outside and play in the rocks.

Michelle, Kenna, Natalie, and Jordan warming up by the fire.

After dinner we roasted marshmallows and had s'mores.

The kids had a bath that night and I took a picture so I thought I'd include it.

2 Days of Birthday Fun

Since Jordan's birthday was on a Sunday this year we let him choose what he wanted to do on Saturday since we couldn't go anywhere Sunday. When I would ask him if he wanted to go someplace fun he would always say Chuck E. Cheese. Doug is against going there on a Saturday (although I don't think it would be as crowded in the morning) so I suggested bowling and he was really excited about that. We went in the morning on Saturday and everyone had a lot of fun.

Jackson after sending the ball down the lane.

Jordan kept touching things he wasn't supposed to. He pushed the reset button which made the bar thing come down in front of the bowling pins and Jack's ball hit it.

Jordan about to push the ball down the lane. His ball rolled so slow.

Kenzie spent most of the time in her stroller. She didn't really love being in it though so we let her out for the last few frames.

Doug after he let go of his ball. He has good form huh? He did take 2 bowling classes at BYU. :)

The kids.

Jordan's follow through.

He never waited long enough to watch the ball knock down the pins. Shortly after rolling the ball he would run over to watch the ball come out of the ball retriever.

He was so excited he kept jumping.

Happy boy.

After awhile Doug taught them how to throw the ball down instead of just pushing it. I though it would be to heavy for them, but it wasn't. The ball rolled much faster down the lane.

Jordan and daddy.

Mackenzie happy that she finally got out of the stroller.

Jackson bowling.

After going home for lunch and nap time we let Jordan pick where we ate dinner. He chose McDonalds. We went to one that the kids and I ate at with my mom last week that they thought was more fun than the one that is closer to us.

Jordan at the top of the play structure.

Kenzie on the alligator.

After playing for awhile we ate ice cream.

Jordan is a messy eater.

The boys were very nice to share their ice cream with Kenzie. (Jordan apparently feeds babies like I do... He opens his mouth when he wants them to :))

Kenzie happy that she ate some ice cream.

Jordan was very excited when I went in his room on Sunday morning and his clock said 6:56 (or something like that). He asked if it was because it was his birthday that he could get up then... What he didn't realize that it was really almost 8:00. He was really excited it was his birthday.

Jordan dressed in his Sunday best.

I think he was helping me cook for his party later.

I think Jackson was mad because we wouldn't let him change his clothes yet. I wanted to get a picture of the 3 kids in their cute church clothes and so I needed him to wait to change until Kenzie woke up. Jack was pretty grumpy in the morning and right after church. But once we started wrapping presents and decorating and getting ready for the party he was happy (other than during this picture) and really excited.

Jack is always excited to wear a party hat.

I think this was the first time Jordan was excited about wearing one.

Here's the photo shoot Doug took of the kids... It's very hard to get all of them smiling and looking at the camera.

Kenzie was getting sad after awhile of Doug trying to get a good picture of the kids and once he let her up she grabbed her blankie and sat back down on the stairs and smiled so cutely.

Maybe Doug wanted them to do a Monster pose?

After the photo shoot we let Jackson change into his summer jammies (he loves wearing them... and asks often if he can wear them until bedtime. I think he'd love to live somewhere warm) and then Doug played games with the kids while I finished making dinner. Even Kenzie was playing Go Fish and Bingo with them. It was pretty cute to see them all playing together. I wanted to take a picture but the camera was charging. Then my parents and Ashlee and her family came over to celebrate.

Jordan's birthday cake. I asked him what color of frosting he wanted and he said red. I told him I couldn't do red (because it always turns out pink) so he said orange. Then when I showed him the color and asked if he liked it, he told me he didn't and that he wanted pink. But I stuck with the orange anyways. He says red and pink are his favorite colors. I guess I was wrong about it being blue.

Cute Jordan.

Jordan and his presents.

He was very excited to open them.

Opening a present.

Jordan and his cake.

Blowing out the candles.

So happy and excited that he did it. He wouldn't eat any of his cupcake. Actually, I think he may have taken one teeny tiny bite. But he didn't want to touch it so Doug held it to his mouth. He only wanted ice cream.

Jordan playing with his new train tracks.

Jackson (in his summer jammies) reading a book with grandpa.

Jordan doing one of his new puzzles with grandma.

I think Jordan loved his 2 days of birthday fun. He kept saying he would get what he wanted because it was his birthday. He's a cute boy and I'm so glad he's my son. I love my little Jordan!