Kaylee's Pictures

I had my friend's son, Breck Wightman, take some pictures of Kaylee for me a couple of weeks ago. I told him I didn't have any expectations at all. He is a senior in high school and just beginning photography so I was really excited to see how cute they turned out. In most of these pictures she is playing in a water fountain. She started preschool yesterday and loved it! I was a little sad when I dropped her off but they told me she did really good and her favorite teacher from last year was still there so that made it a little easier. Now I just have to decide which pictures to have printed!

Baseball, Baseball, And More Baseball

Spring and summer at our house usually means baseball is here! Cameron and Conner both played this year so we had games five sometimes six days a week. Now that the season is winding down we don't quite know what to do with all of our free time. Conner's team only lost one game all year and won the championship game. His team's picture was in the paper yesterday. He had a lot of fun playing this year. Cameron played on three different teams this year. They didn't win a lot of games but he still had fun and enjoyed his teams. I told him that losing builds character but he just rolled his eyes at me. He has a "wooden bat" tournament tommorow so maybe he'll win a few more. I don't have any pictures of Cameron's team so I'll try and remember my camera tommorow. The girls are just excited to be done babysitting!!

A Trip To The Doctor

This morning as I was shampooing Kaylee's hair I noticed a huge tick on the back of her head. I freaked out! It was embedded in her head and was fat from sucking her blood. It was one of the grossest things I have every seen. I called Stan to come home and help me try and get it out. We tried heating up a needle and sticking the tick but Kaylee wouldn't hold still so we took her to the doctor. He froze it with hydrogen something and then after it was dead he pulled it out with tweezers. The tick had some of her dead skin stuck to its pinchers. It was sad because we had four people holding her down and she was screaming her head off. I felt bad because she couldn't understand what we were doing. I am now paranoid about ticks, tick fever, lyme disease. Maybe I should stop researching things on the internet.

Memorial Day Weekend

Hogle Zoo

Okay, not sure why I have two of Makell.

An amazing view of Provo.

Conner being funny.

Cam and some of his teammates up on the dugout waiting to play.

We had a fun weekend. Cameron had a baseball tournament in Provo friday and saturday. He had two games each day. They lost all four games but I think the boys still had fun. We stayed at the same hotel as the Klingler's. The kids all had fun swimming and running around in the hotel. Baylee was sad that she couldn't stay another night and come home with us the next day so Conner made the sign above out of pretzels. Kaylee was so tired on Saturday so Stan took her for a ride around Provo and found a mountain to drive up and then later he took us all up there. The view was amazing and kinda scary at the same time. On the way home we stopped at Cabella's. Conner said it was the most evil place he had ever been in (he is an animal lover). He hated all the dead animals all over the place. Sorry Darren, he's not a future customer. We were there when they fed the bass fish in this huge tank. They fed them live gold fish,it was creepy. We finished our trip with a stop at Hogle Zoo. The kids loved the animals. Kaylee loves elephants so she enjoyed watching them. We watched a little program about elephants and watched them do some funny things and tricks. I really wanted to make a plastic molded animal but they don't have them anymore! Does anyone else remember those? Okay, I have no idea why I put all of the pictures on first and why some of them are so spaced out. This is why I never update my blog.

Peter Rabbit

Brianna's kindergarten class had a school play last week. She was a "reader" and did a really good job on her part. The play was about the peter rabbit and it was quite funny. Kaylee sat on my lap for a half hour watching and saying "Bri" every time she could see her. In fact watching the video back we can hear her saying it a lot. The kids also sang some songs about the flag.

Happy Birthday Conner!

I'm a little late in posting about Conner's birthday, but I thought I was better late then never. Conner turned twelve years old last Sunday. He was excited to graduate from primary and become a deacon. He couldn't decide what to get for his birthday this year. He finally asked for a ripstick and a wii game. I'm not sure about the wii game but he has spent many hours on his ripstick and has it mastered. We had a birthday party for him at Grandma Erikson's house and had yummy DQ ice cream cake. Once again I didn't get many pictures of his birthday. I always have such good intentions! I am really thankful for Conner and that he is part of our family. He has a very tender heart and is kind to his brother and his sisters-most of the time. We love you Conner!

The Rains Came Down And The Floods Came Up

This morning I walked into the boys bedroom and my feet got soaking wet! It has been raining here all night and most of the morning and apparently every drop of rain water ran off of our roof and right into their bedroom window well and then soaked through and flooded the whole room. I was amazed at the amount of water in there. From their door all the way to the tile was soaking wet. We have torn up the carpet and the pad and put the carpet in the garage to dry. We will be getting new padding, I guess. It was really sad to be pulling up brand new carpet. On a more positive note we have found some amazing therapists(speech and occupational) to work with Kaylee. We have met with both of them and were impressed with them. They both seemed really kind and smart. And she loves the room and all of the toys and things that they have to play with. Hopefully they can help her continue to progress!!

The Big 4-0 And 14

April 15th was Stan and Cameron's birthdays. Can you believe Stan is forty? I really like to tease him about it! I took several pictures but they are not on my camera. I have no idea what happened to them! This is the only one I got. We got a new ping pong table for them and Cameron got new baseball cleats, itunes cards, and money. Stan had already purchased himself some toy broncos that he collects. But we still surpised him with a few gifts. The farm also bought a new potato planter and it was delivered on his birthday so I think that counts as a present too! When it it someones birthday in our family they get to pick a place to eat out at and so they picked Bajio's. It was delicious and we all ate so much we didn't have room for cake, so we had to have it a day late. Stan is still waiting to finish planting grain after a few days of snow and rain. He starts to get antsy this time of year! Luckily he has that new planter to keep him occupied. Cameron is starting baseball and loves every minute of that. He his playing in two leagues this year so he will have plenty of playing time. I am very grateful to have both of these "boys" in our family. Thanks to both of you for all you do for our family. And for those of you with nothing better to do I have several other things I posted about today since I haven't been keeping up at all.

Happy Easter

Easter is always fun at our house. The kids always get up too early to check out their baskets and find eggs. It took them quite a while this year to find all of the eggs in our new house. They pretty much knew every spot in the old house. For some reason we have never hide them outside (weather maybe?). Makell got double dutch jump ropes in her basket which has taught our family a little lesson called "TEAM WORK". You would think the world was ending when the four of them try to double dutch together. We actually had to look on you tube to figure out how to start out and the title of the video was "It takes team work". I really should video them and then have a lesson on this concept. Oh well, the weather is finally nice enough for them to take it outside!!

Kaylee's Eye Update

We took Kaylee back to the eye doctor last week. It had been the four week mark for the eye patch. The doctor said everything looked really good and he could see a lot of improvement but he wants her to wear the patch for two more weeks and then go four weeks without it. If her eye isn't drifting by that point she won't have to wear the patch anymore. Yeah!! Thanks to everyone for their prayers on her behalf.

Conner And His Lizard

Conner has been begging me for about a month to buy him some sort of lizard, reptile, amphibian, scaly creepy gross thing but I refused because as I told him several times I refuse to have a creature live in our house that eats other alive creatures. But as you can see I caved in when he came home one day after a hike up on the hill behind our house carrying this lizard. After he brought it home we went to Valley Wide and bought some "meal" worms, little did we know this lizard will not eat these! He then caught some lady bugs only to read on the internet these are posionous to lizards. He has spent a HUGE amount of time researching lizards. He was really starting to feel sorry for him and had decided to let him go when the lizard finally ate some ants. Happy day in our house and for the lizard! On a side note I also mistakenly told him he could keep any animal he could catch thinking there would be no way he could catch a wild animal. Imagine my surprise when he and his friend caught a rock chuck and then thought they could keep it!! Needless to say I didn't cave and let him keep it.

The Love Of A Big Brother

Kaylee's right eye has been "drifting" to the outside quite a bit lately so yesterday we took her to the eye doctor. She did really good during the checkup. The good news is that most cases like hers can be corrected easily with eye exercises. She has to wear an eye patch four hours everyday for four weeks on her good eye so that the muscles in the other eye strengthen and we have to do what the doctor called "pencil pushups". Meaning we have to take a pencil and get her to cross her eyes as much as we can twice a day. The bad news is that in four weeks if her eye muscles haven't strengthened she will most likely have to have eye surgery. The eye patch is just a band-aid made for eye injuries. When the doctor showed these to us I thought there would be no way to get her to wear one for 4 seconds let alone 4 hours! She absouletly hates bandaids. But much to our surprise when we put it on she only tried to take it off twice and today she hasn't touched it at all. I'm going to give Conner credit for this one. During the blessing last night at dinner he prayed for Kaylee and asked that she would wear the patch. Then after dinner he made a homemade eye patch for himself out of toliet paper and tape. He thought it would help her if she wasn't the only one wearing one. He even left it on for about two hours! My children amaze me everyday with the love and kindness they show to Kaylee.

I Spoke Too Soon

Remember me saying on my last post that Brianna is always nice to everyone? Well I guess I was wrong! Tuesday night during Cam's basketball game I got a phone call from a frantic Makell saying that Brianna kicked her in the face and knocked out her front tooth! Her tooth has been loose for a few days but not loose enough to come out. She is now missing both front teeth. I am shocked that any of my children would do such a thing to one of their sibilings! (Not)

Happy Birthday Brianna

Brainna proudly displaying her new cars

She counted them and she got 27! new cars

Brianna claims she is allergic to fire so she was rubbing her eye the whole time we sang "Happy Birthday"

Kaylee enjoying some cake batter

Yesterday was Brianna's sixth birthday. She was so excited for her birthday to come. She has been counting down the days for a month. Makell woke her up at 6:30 to open presents! We got her an art easel, a blanket, new cars, High School Musical 3, a car mat (that still needs painted), shark attack for hot wheels, a barbie (just to keep her a little girlie) and a new shirt. Makell gave her a calendar and Cameron and Conner gave her candy. Brainna is our little comedian of the family. The video of her opening her presents is hilarious and a little long to post. All day she kept saying she had butterflies. When I asked her why she said because we were going to sing to her and so was her class at school. For the last two years we weren't allowed to sing to her and the year before she cried during the whole song! So we are making progress. Everyone knows she loves hot wheels and so everyone that came to her party gave her new cars. She has been playing with them all morning. She even keeps the packaging they come in and pretends they are the cars bathtubs. We are thankful Brianna is a part of our family. She keeps us all laughing all the time. She is kind to everyone and is especially kind to Kaylee. When it's the kids birthdays we let them choose a place to eat out at and Brianna choose Artic Cirle. When I asked her why she said because I know Kaylee will love the new playgound there. We love you Bri!

Kids These Days

I came downstairs the other day and this is what I saw. I thought it was funny and had to take a picture.

Enjoying Winter

Makell and Shadow
On President's Day the kids didn't have school so they invited Cody and Baylee to come over and snowmobile. They were outside all day having a lot of fun. The girls pulled Conner around in a sled behind a snowmobile and Cody and Cameron just had fun riding around. After lunch Stan, Kaylee, and myself decided to join them. Brianna hates to ride so we took her up to Grandma's to play with Kynlee. Kaylee on the other hand loves to be outside and riding on the snowmobile. We took them up on the hill sledding but I think they enjoyed just riding around more. It was a really nice day and some faces even got a little sunburned/windburned!

That's What Parents Are For

I am forbidden from posting pictures of Cameron on my blog......but I think that part of the job description of being a parent of teenager is to embarrass them as much as possible. Cameron made the 8th grade basketball team this year. He practices 2 hours three times a week and has two games each week. Needless to say I do a lot of driving him around! He really likes his coach and has fun with his team. On game days he has to wear dress clothes to school so I was trying to take a picture of him dressed up and then I wanted some of him at his game tonight but he wouln't cooperate saying that I would just post them on my "stupid" blog. Stan decided he would intervene and help me out by holding him down for the picture. He also told him he was going to stand under the basket tonight at the game taking pictures! Can anyone see Stan doing that? Cameron didn't believe him for a second. I am going to get some pictures of him playing sometime. I may even video him!

Hepatitis??Gingivitis??

No, that is not an actual picture of Kaylee's throat but the doctor did say her throat was all swollen, red, and had pus on it...yuck! Sunday morning she woke up with a fever and continued running one all day and into Monday so we took her to the doctor. They checked for strep, ($60.00 test by the way) ruled that out, diagnosed tonsillitis, and gave her a prescription. What I was wondering is if they were going to give her the prescription anyway why the strep test? I think doctors just assume everyone has amazing insurance that will cover all kinds of things. They gave her zithromax and she is all better now. She didn't eat much or drink much for two days so she made up for it yesterday....I think that's all she did was eat and drink. Cameron thought I told him she had had hepatitis and then he thought it was gingivitis. It was kinda funny! Makell stayed home sick from school today because of a sore throat but amazingly she was better about 15 minutes after the bus came. It really is amazing how that happens somedays!

First Day of Preschool

Today was Kaylee's first day of preschool! She was so excited to wear her packback and when we got to the school she didn't want to take it off! I was worried that she would cry when I left but she ran in and started playing. There is a little black boy in her class that she is intrigued with. It was pretty funny to watch her watch him. She had a lot of fun and started saying "school" as soon as we left. There is a speech therapist and a developmental therapist in the classroom so hopefully they can continue helping her progress. She continues to say new words almost everyday. It is fun listening to her. Two days ago her new word was "me". Her siblings think it is hiliarious to say things like: "who is a dork?" or "who thinks Cameron is cool?" and then she keeps saying "me"! It is pretty funny.