Kayli's First Haircut Photos

Here's our little princess with her first butch - oh, I mean haircut - that he daddy took her to get. :-)  Her bangs were down to her nose before her haircut as I could decide whether to grow them out or cut them.  Obviously her daddy decided to cut them.

I have my camera back! Yippee!!!

I accidentally left my camera at mom and dad's in February.  It took until yesterday to get it back.  I've noticed that if I don't have pictures, I don't blog usually.  (See, no pictures and no blogging since then!)  Now I can get back to sharing pictures which say a thousand words, right?  Which means I don't have to type a thousand words. :-)

The one thing I did miss having it for was the kids' ice skating lessons.  Karina and Tyler took lessons from January - March and Braden did just March.  For spring break, we all went ice skating for the first time together as a family.  Happily we found a babysitter for Kayli both days and we ended up having a blast.  She wouldn't have enjoyed it nearly as much we did.  Barry went with us the second day, his first time ever, and he only crashed once that I recall. I, on the other hand, was using hockey skates and kept forgetting I didn't have toe picks so took more tumbles than he did, as my very bruised knees can attest.  I'd love to have had the camera to take pictures that day.

The newest activity the kids are in is jump rope for heart activity at school.  They go once a week for 6 weeks and have a competition the last day.  Since Braden is in 6th grade, he is a student helper/teacher this year instead.

Kayli just keeps on growing and keeps us laughing.  I substituted in the nursery a few weeks ago and we found out who the real ring leader of trouble is in there - Kayli!  Everyone was laughing pretty hard when I told them her antics.  I saw Kayli and one other girl, who are the only ones with big brothers, were the only two girls playing trucks with the boys.  Gee, imagine that. 

Then when snack time came, I found out Kayli is the big eater of the group. I was informed that when they have sandwiches, she'll have eaten four quarters in the amount of time the rest of the kids will eat one.  She also pounded the goldfish crackers when I was there.  You'd think we never fed the kid.  I thought about and asked if she was the kid that had the most older siblings and sure enough she was.  In other words, her mentality could be "if you don't eat now somebody else is going to and you might be out of luck" where the rest of the kids don't have quite so much competition for goodies at their houses.

My favorite, though, was the wild rampage.  Some of the kids started running around being wild.  Kayli was sitting on my lap pouting (because she wanted Dad) when this started.  She promptly cheered up, got her mischevious look on her face, got the hands up in pounce mode and said "I'mmmmm gonnna get you!" and started chasing all of the kids.  Obviously this happens a lot because all of them instantly when into group mode and started running while she chased them stating she was going to "get them".  I laughed really hard and don't think I can adequately describe how funny it is, mostly because Tyler plays that game with her all the time.  It is their favorite but since he wasn't there, she turned the tables and took his normal position, chasing all the rest of the kids and getting them really wild.

That's about all that has been up in our lives since we last posted.  We've been sick, gotten better, done activities and normal life.  We hope everyone else is doing well and Happy Spring!

Kayli's first haircut

The big news at our house for last week was Kayli finally got her first haircut.  I'd been putting it off, and off, (and off some more) because I have such a hard time emotionally getting the girls' hair cut.  Their hair takes so long to grow I hate to cut it. 

Well, while I was at orchestra practice on Saturday Barry took her to get her hair cut.  Sneaky little devil.  He says he didn't think I'd mind and it needed done.  I came home and Braden promptly showed me Kayli had gotten her first haircut.  The poor thing now has hair shorter than the boys!  The lady at Walmart gave her a boy haircut and so, of course, I cried and cried on Saturday knowing it will take years to regrow her hair.  She was finally starting to let me put hair things in and now it is too short.She was finally starting to let me put hair things in and now it is too short.  I've finally resigned myself to it, though, (what choice do I have?) and even though her bangs are way too short she does look better in the back and her hair looks shinier.  Why does getting girls hair cut have to be so trauamtizing for their mommy?  (Picture coming later.)

Busy, busy...

This week has been a fun and busy week!  Wednesday night was Tyler's Pinewood Derby, Thursday was Braden's D.A.R.E graduation, Friday night was Karina's mini-cheer camp performance at the Skyline-Highland game and Saturday was an interesting date night.

Braden's graduation was at one of the jr. high school's and was really fun!  Unfortunately, Barry said he "never saw my camera" after Wednesday night so I couldn't take any pictures.  He found it yesterday hidden on his tool shelf.  Hmmm.....so, no pictures to share.  I don't remember having a cool graduation like the 6th graders here did.  Diplomas were awarded, winning essays shared and then an awesome video was presented to the kids that they had all made.  I may cave and pay the $5 for it but we'll see.  They showed clips of kids touching a real lung pumping oxygen and their faces were great!  I think the favorite, though, was the videos of the kids trying to walk with beer goggles on.  They were falling all over the place and it was a good practical lesson on why not to drink. 

The last item of the night was a surprise.  Apparently their is a band of police officers called "Police Line" and they played for the kids and were so good!  Braden must be his mother's child because he got really into it, jumping up and down with his buddies and bouncing all over.  The group ended up doing three encores the kids loved it so much.  There were a bunch of little kids Kayli's age dancing in the aisles and it was so cute to watch.  Kayli decided she was too tired to join them, though, and just hung out in my arms instead.

Friday night was Karina's mini-cheer camp performance for the girls' basketball game.  She had workshops on Tue-Thur and then they performed the next night.  She was having a great time at the game - until she fell off the band performance platform.  I kept watching for her and didn't see her get down with the other throngs of girls as I was behind her and thought she had jumped off the end to join the rest.  Apparently someone had pushed her off accidentally.  She ended up hitting her head, getting a bruise and scrap on the shoulder and banging up a knee.  She cheered up quick, though, and had fun cheerleading for the 2nd quarter and doing the half-time dance performance.

Karina's words on the night:

"I liked it when I got a blue balloon and a blue necklace.  I loved cheering in front of the people because it is so fun.  And I liked it because I got a little stamp on my hand and a cheer t-shirt."

PINEWOOD DERBY TIME!

We had our last Pinewood Derby this week with Tyler now becoming a Webelos Scout two weeks ago.  He and Barry had a fun time making the car this year.  Barry says now that he has done this for three years previous, that he thinks he's got it figured out how to make a car go faster.  He was grinding wheels with his grinder, measuring wheels and the whole nine yards.  I had a fun time teasing him while the car was being made.  Tyler did a great job picking the body style and doing his part, too, because he won 2nd place overall!  The kids had so much fun that Braden, the pack den chief, didn't have to do his little kids' activity after all and everyone, including Kayli, just watched the races.

The crew and our VERY happy Pinewood Derby racer, Tyler!

Tyler tearing up the track on his first race.

Tyler as a new Webelos Scout with his Pinewood Derby Car.

Tyler won "Best Driver" thanks to his lego creativity.

Another one bites the dust...

Well, after two weeks we have all finally gotten the stomach flu and hopefully we are done. Tyler was our last holdout. I think this is the worst stuff we've had at our house for awhile. Last fall I bought a Kirby carpet cleaner/shampooer and it turned out to be good timing. We definitely got good use out of it this week. Braden had it first and he definitely had it the easiest of the bunch and then shared with the rest of us. Does anyone else find that unfair? I am he didn't get horribly sick, though.

As a consequence of being sick, Karina and Tyler ended up missing their first day of ice skating lessons. I was rather bummed out about that but we got to do a make-up day on Thursday. They both said they loved it and had lots of fun. Yay! After doing a quick calculation of how much it cost to rent skates for all three sessions, we decided to look into buying them. We managed to find a pair for both kids that were on clearance and are adjustable, so they can wear them next year, too! I am so happy that they both enjoyed it as we need something to replace ballet for Karina and Tyler just hasn't shown much interest in sports for a couple of years now. It was great to see him so excited and find something he likes. I'm not so sure I want to mention hockey teams, though. I think that is one of the more violent sports out there.

We really enjoyed our Christmas break but I think everyone (except Barry) was glad to get back to a normal routine. Structure is nice. The kids did miss their music lessons this week since they were sick so we got to gradually work back into everything. Next week will be full bore back into activities.

You'll NEVER see this again...

Barry's coworkers had a small contest to see who could grow the best beard during the month of November and I just have to share the photo of right before he shaved. As he said, "You will NEVER see this again!" I'll admit he might have complained, ahem, a lot about how itchy it was. He came back from Thanksgiving break and everyone else had caved and shaved so apparently he won because he held out the longest. He was so happy to shave it off. He actually looked pretty good with it, though, and I was kind of sad to see it go - momentarily. I think the girls were quite happy to have it be gone, though, as then they didn't get scratchy daddy kisses anymore. I had to laugh as they had started cringing at his scratchy kisses like I used to with my Grandpa Scott.

New Year's Resolutions - hmmmm, really?

Well, it's a whole new year and that means time for New Year's resolutions. At first I didn't plan on making any and then I thought it through and decided I would.

My biggest goal is actually a family resolution. We bought the book "The Children you Want With the Kids you Have" by Marie Ricks last week. We've been to a number of her classes at BYU-I Education Week and LOVE them. If you ever get a chance to go to one of her classes, GO! We've tried her system a number of times, it works, then we fall off the band wagon as we forget exactly how it goes. Hopefully now that we have the book and the family rules in writing it will help. So basically our goal is to get on a better family contribution/cleaning schedule with the kids.

Okay, onto me! I've still got to ask Barry what his goals are. I think his foremost one is going to be to finish his Master's Degree - and then have a textbook burning party probably.

1. Participate in NaNoWriMo, a writer's challenge I found out about from one of Barry's cousins to write 50,000 words during the month of November, aka a novel. I can about 100% guarantee you it won't be great but I will at least have done it! I've always wanted to write one so hopefully this will actually get the job done.

2. Potty train Kayli. Okay, so this might not exactly qualify but it is must for this year and one I hate to do so I think it counts. I'm hoping she'll be fairly easy about it. She already likes to come and tell me about needing changed and say "Ewww, gross!". It's really funny. You should hear it.

3. Teach Karina to ride a two-wheeler. Hmm, now that I think about it, this goal should go under Barry's list and he's the one that taught the other two. Does it count if I make a goal to have Barry do it?

4. Actually update our blog. See, I'm already doing great! My goal is to update our family blog, or have kids do it (I know Barry never will) once a week. It'll be fun to read it at the end of the year and review everyone's antics.

5. Get a full 3-months worth of food storage and household items. Seriously, I am bad at keeping track of this one. We may very well have it and I don't know it because it's not kept track of. Years ago Barry got me the Food Storage Planner program and every so often I get on and use it. (Like, maybe once a year.) I'll get on, update everything we have, get gung-ho for a little bit. Theoretically every time something is bought you are supposed to add it onto your computerized inventory or remove it every time it is used. Umm, never happens. I'll totally quit because it just seems like such a big task and so long away to finish. So, I figure 3 months ought to be a lot easier, right? I'm thinking we might be realistically close to that in some areas but this way I can actually see a big fat 100% at some point in time where the other way I never will. Plus, it's nice knowing if something happens we can survive. We definitely enjoyed having it last semester while Barry was only working part-time.

You know, I think that is plenty of resolutions for this year. Here is a big Happy New Year to everyone and may you all have joy and success in your New Year's Resolutions and I'll look forward to seeing mine all done at the end of the year.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas....

Because it's snowing and snowing and snowing! Hello, everyone! It's been awhile so I thought I'd do a end of the year post.

We've gotten a lot of snow the past couple of days. We went down to Pocatello earlier this week and we were all amazed that once again they had pretty much no snow! The kids were saying they would have to come up to our house for Christmas if they want a white Christmas. Then when we were there that night it was snowing enough we ended up staying the night. Hopefully it will stick around for all of you for Christmas (just not to the roads).

As for us, we've got lots of snow. Barry had to snow blow the driveway TWICE yesterday so people could get in our driveway for a meeting. Then the roads were bad enough only two people came. Unfortunately that also meant Grandma and Grandpa Hansen didn't come up since the roads were slick. We missed you and we'll make our cake again for you the next time you are up.

Enough about the weather. The kids and mom are all very excited to have school out for two weeks. I thoroughly enjoyed sleeping in until 8:30 today. They are already planning out cousins sleepovers and play dates with friends.

Barry will take his last final on Wednesday and I am hoping maybe he can actually hang out with us for Christmas and not be stressed he should be doing homework. I think the next week, though, he will have to spend starting his 60 page paper. I asked him if he had lots of charts and graphs he could stick in it so we can see him occassionally once school starts. Since they don't offer 9 credits worth of classes that he needs (and we're discovering he may only need 4 more!) then he has to go back to work full-time. They only let him work half-time if he is going to school full-time so now he will be trying to write this massive paper while maintaining a regular schedule. Please keep him in your prayers. He is really discouraged right now and wants to just quit due to a number of reasons but he is so close he is going to try to stick with it. Unless of course I said I'd be fine with him not finishing. Then I think he'd run while he had the chance.

Braden, Tyler and Karina are all doing fairly well in school. Karina had an absolute perfect grade and behavior report card at parent teacher conferences this month. Her teacher said you don't get any better students than her. I'm hoping some of the boys past teachers will get Karina to make up for the boys. Haha. The boys, amazingly enough, BOTH had good conferences this trimester. Normally I get frustrated teachers that don't know how to get them to focus and both teachers said they are doing well and are very smart boys. If they'd focus, they could get even better grades so the teachers are challenging them on that.

We also got Braden's ISAT scores back and he was advanced on everything so then we found out from his teacher that those scores are what they use to determine honors classes. She let him know how important it was to keep those up and to work hard on his math since he wants to be a scientist. Tyler got advanced on math, too, so we were excited to see that. They both absolutely love science and by now know more than their mother. I never could stand it so I think I promptly forgot all of it as soon as I passed each test.

Kayli is getting to be a big girl and is SUCH A TEASE! She just loves to play with Tyler and they tease each other constantly. She is a smart little bugger, too. We were helping her to say words and the conversation went like this:

Dad: Say "I"
Kayli: I
Dad: Say "Love"
Kayli: Love
Dad: Say "Daddy"
Kayli (with a very mischevious smirk and a laugh): Mommy!

She did the exact some thing to Angela and Jared, throwing in Jared instead of Angela and then laughing.

Kayli is also a dancing and singing girl. Right now we are working on teaching her Jingle Bells. I keep telling the kids they can't sing the silly versions of songs from school as they will confusion, especially the Jingle Bells ones.

As for me, as my family knows, I've been busy with Angela working on our website, Coupon Stretch. Some of my family members went to a internet boot camp conference and so we started picking their brains for information. We've made the website awhile ago but dropped it as we couldn't figure out how to monetize it well. So now we've got it set up and are already making money. It's very nice and is lots of fun to do. If anyone else has web pages, could you please add the link to ours to yours? Right now we have deals, printable coupons, a store and review on there. We will slowly be adding more stuff to it as time goes on but it is finally ready for everyone to see. I think my favorite part is the coupon codes feature, though. I had no idea there was a nicely organized place with all the coupons and deals for lots of major stores out there. Since you all know how much I love to bargain shop this is a good fit for me. No more scouring the internet for a coupon before I go to a dept. store. Even Barry liked it.

Debra, I went and looked at your website when I found the link on this page (that I apparently haven't been to for awhile) and love it! You two are doing a great job with that and it looks great. I was really impressed with the whole Spanish section.

Okay, thanks for stopping by everyone and have a great Christmas!

So much to do, so little time and other fun stuff

Oh, I'm starting to regret my time decisions earlier this week. I have tons to do before we leave on Friday and I'm starting to feel stressed. I forgot to factor in Braden's 5th grade patriotic performance tonight and the big one, pack meeting tomorrow night! I will be spending most of tomorrow and some of today doing awards, going to the store and preparing for that.

Plus there are lots of other things I need to get done before we can go. I look forward to taking Kayli with me to get the tires rotated and transmission flushed on the van "like a poke in the eye" as Barry puts it. However, they really need done before we drive somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,500 miles these next two weeks.

On a very happy note, only 2 1/2 days left until we leave. I caught Braden sitting at the bar last night with a smiley dreamy look on his face as he said to himself "only 2 1/2 more days until we leave". Hahaha.

For other news, the kids all started a 6-week jump rope program at school last week. This is so fun for them and a great $5 deal for mom to get them to EXERCISE. Tyler got his jump rope at school yesterday as they didn't get the older kids in on time. Last night after dinner he was begging to go out and jump rope so he headed for the back deck. The last time he tried this program he was frustrated because he tried and tried and really couldn't do it almost at all. Last night he was jump roping backwards with a huge smile on his face! Looks like he has finally figured it out.

Braden has been telling me about all the things he can do with a rope but I haven't seen them yet. I am going to go outside with them later today and have everyone show me what they are learning. They came home with a list of different skills by level and a point value for them. I can guess what most of them are but are at a loss for the others. Apparently Braden has gotten past his mentality that jump roping is a "girl thing". He has been getting comments from his classmates about how good he is at when they jump rope during P.E. So, that makes me a little curious because he certainly didn't learn it at home.

Karina is really excited about it, too. Once the kids are in 1st grade they can join an actual jump rope team that I think will start doing competitions. One of the ladies doing it was a jump rope champion for some high level like national or world or something. THAT would be very interesting to watch!

From the frying pan and into the fire as they say...

Barry got his new calling at church today and was released as the Cubmaster only to be sustained the Scoutmaster for the 11-13 year olds. We both got a good laugh after church when we were visiting about it. He said he had a lot of people come up and comment to him and somewhat express condolences on his new calling and I got the same from a few people! Fortunately we are both really excited about the new calling and he is very enthusiastic so we just had a good chuckle about it all instead of agreeing with all of them.

He was really excited to tell me that the troop already has planned a 50-mile (or is it 150-mile?) bike trek later this summer. I had fun needling him about getting to relive his "glory days" as a scout and finally getting to go on a scout bike trek. There are lots of other ideas floating around in his head (some quite wild) so I'm sure the scouts are going to have a fantastic time with him, especially Braden.

Ahem, yes, it's been awhile

Now that I haven't posted in over a year, maybe I should do that, eh? I would upload some pictures but I don't have any recent ones. Another thing I seem to have been slacking on. I'll rectify that later this week since Karina is having another ballet on Saturday.

As for what is new in our neck of the woods - not much. Kayli is still a big tease like always. Having learned it from Tyler and that is who she teases the most we all just get a good laugh. Her favorite game with him is to go over, sit on his back and bounce up and down while he laughs and tells her to sit on his head. They have a great love/tease relationship. She is also signing to use more so we are having a better idea of what she is wanting. Fortunately she is attempting to throw in the words she learns on the signing time videos so she is at least saying something, too.

Karina Ballerina is still loving dance and we are trying to decide what to do with that. As you can guess, it has extra costs and other things associated with it so ballet isn't the cheapest of hobbies/sports. However, she absolutely loves it so we will keep at it awhile longer and debate for a few more months what to do when Barry goes to work part-time.

Tyler is such a sweet smiley boy. He had his first piano festival last weekend and got a superior. He was expecting something more like a recital apparently. When we got all done and left, later that day he asked me when he was going to have his festival in the chapel. He didn't realize that festival was just walking in the room, playing your scales and pieces for a judge and you were done.

Tyler also finally got qualified for speech therapy through school. He started that a week or so ago and is very happy about that. He is working on his "th" sounds at the moment and is practicing them fairly well.

Braden is still in the "the oldest child who thinks he knows everything" phase. Exactly when does that go away, if ever? He thrills in learning all kinds of new stuff - and then "sharing" it with all the jocks/bullies at school who harass him about being a nerd. I'm sure that doesn't help the situation but at least he is being true to himself I suppose. He is still playing the cello and had his first concert with the jr. high and high school this month. Oh, hey. I even have video of that, too, now that I think about it. I'll add that a little later. If you see the camera bouncing around it is because Kayli wanted to help.

Barry is busy with school, work and as of next week a new church calling. We are a little nervous about how he is going to fit that calling in as it involves lots of time, money and effort but I'm banking he'll be blessed for saying yes and everything will work out. More on that later since it hasn't officially been announced in church yet.

As for me, life is just regular duties - cook, maid, chauffeur, errand runner, cub scouts, etc. With no bear leaders at the moment I've added that onto the Webelos leader and advancement chairperson assignments so that Tyler has some cub scouts to go to. I have fun with the boys, though, and since Braden is the only consistent Webelos it gives him someone to do activities with.

So there is the rather mundane (happily so) update of our lives for the moment. Hopefully I won't take a year to post the next one.

Lose Weight! Feel Great! Or something like that...

Haha. Barry is a student this semester so we were able to get a gym membership to the Apple Athletic Club for less than the cost of a regular individual one. We have had SO much fun. My favorite part, though, is I feel GREAT this week!

The boys' particularly love the youth area. When I worked in the nursery there a couple of years ago they didn't have anything in this area. Now they have the WII equivalent to Dance Dance Revolution (with bigger industrial strength footpads), stationary bikes that had video game monitors on them so the kids can race together and some cool kind of laser game that gets you moving. It honestly looks like something off a sci-fi show. They have some other fun stuff in there, too. Dad, you would get a kick out of seeing how excited my kids are to go "work out" at the gym. They never want to leave!

Karina's favorite part is swimming. Barry is working on teaching her and Tyler how to swim. When we went this week it was Kayli's first time ever. We had size s/p swim diapers for her and guess what - they were WAY too big! The little peanut only weighs 12.5 lbs so they looked like Erkel pants on her.

We even managed to get Barry to finally work out yesterday. I got a kick out of his, "Wow. You can just drop them all off and go workout?" comment in a somewhat stunned voice. Yes siree, and now we all know why I like the gym so much! Hehe. I love my kids but it's nice to see them so excited to go get some exercise while Mom goes and does hers.

Our membership ends May 30 since it's a student one but until then - play on kids aka go get some exercise!

Scratch that last post

Braden says:

"Scratch that post. I win at video games. He does not. It's the other way around. And I still don't get why he likes school."