Mckay's Birthday Party!

Mckay had his first birthday party today! We had the party a few days early since our spring break starts tomorrow and some of Mckay's friends are leaving to go out of town. Mckay decided he wanted an airplane party since he loves airplanes. Thanks to the internet, I was able to make up some boarding pass invitations to give to Mckay's friends. At the party we painted small wooden airplanes, played airplane-themed games, and ate airplane-shaped brownies! I think Mckay's first party was a success!

Skiing!

Once a year our family goes skiing, so we finally decided we could afford it last weekend (thanks to getting our tax money recently). We decided to teach Kaitlyn (since it was her first time) and reteach Caden since he wasn't able to go last year because of a broken leg. The kids had fun and it was a perfect, warm day. We did night skiing at Brighton which was a plus since Friday nights are a 2 for 1 admission. By the end of the night, the kids got the hang of it and were skiing great down the easier slopes. Too bad we probably won't go skiing again until next winter. But we had a great time! We look forward to someday skiing more than once a winter and having the whole family go together!

Jackson's Eye!

We had a fun trip to the Urgent Care last night! Jackson and Mckay were fighting over a piece of paper. Unfortunately when Mckay finally got the paper away from Jackson it got Jackson's eye too. It ended up being a scratch on his cornea, pretty much like a paper cut on his eye. Apparently this hurts a lot because Jackson was not happy. The doctor put some ointment in Jackson's eye and then put a patch of gauze over it to protect his eye. Amazingly he kept the patch on all night even while he was sleeping. The good news is that his eye will be completely healed by tomorrow. For now we just get to put some drops in his eye, which is difficult to do with an 18 month old! We decided to take pictures of what happened so that we could remember this. We even got the actual paper that got Jackson's eye! The funny thing is that the kids are all smiley in the pictures!

Jackson's Walking!!

Jackson finally decided to learn to walk all by himself! He took his first few steps a couple of days ago and yesterday had fun walking around the house. He still falls a lot, but he's doing great! It's so fun to watch him walk without any help and get excited about it! He turned 16 months old yesterday, so we think he was just waiting for this day to start walking. He's been running around the house with his push toy, but deciding to walk on his own was a big step for Jackson. Yay Jackson!

Caden's First Pinewood Derby!

Caden had his first Pinewood Derby yesterday! Thanks to Caden's grandpa for his help and for letting us use his cabinet shop. After learning how to use the band saw, Caden was able to do most of his car by himself. It was fun to see Scott get excited about helping Caden with his car. Our family had fun going to the Derby to support Caden and the whole stake. Since Cub Scouts is on a stake level here, there were 35 boys/cars. So it took quite awhile to get through all of the cars. Caden did great on the first round. Out of the four times his car took first place each time! The second round didn't go so well. A lot of the boy's cars were having problems. Some of them even went off the track, including Caden's. So he didn't get to move on to the finals. But we sure enjoyed watching the first round! Caden had a blast and was a good sport the whole time even though he only ended up with a participation ribbon.

We had fun cheering for the last three boys in the finals since two of them were from our ward. They won first and second place! It was fun to cheer on the boy that won first place since his dad just had a brain aneurysm a few days ago and couldn't be there to see his son win. (Thankfully his dad will make a full recovery after being in the hospital for a few weeks.) We're looking forward to next year's Pinewood Derby. And Scott and Caden are already planning how they can make next year's car even better!

Happy Halloween and Kaitlyn's 7th Birthday!

Happy Halloween!
The kids had a fun Halloween! Kaitlyn dressed up as Sleeping Beauty; Caden was Harry Potter; Mckay was Tigger; and Jackson was a cute chicken! We especially enjoyed the warm weather on Halloween night because it made trick-or-treating more fun with the kids. As usual we came home with too much candy!

Happy Birthday Kaitlyn!
Kaitlyn turned 7 the day after Halloween! I'll never forget 7 years ago going into labor on Halloween night. I even had one neighbor in Provo who came to my door trick-or-treating with her kids and predicted that I would have a baby that night because of the full moon. She was right! It just ended up being the next day by the time Kaitlyn came. We celebrated her birthday by eating at Denny's (one of Kaitlyn's favorite restaurants!).

It's Snowing!!

We woke up this morning to snow! And it's only October 12th! The kids went next door to feed my sister's cat this morning and bundled up to go. You can see in the picture my poor flowers getting snowed on. And to top it off, our furnace is not working! We turned it on a couple of days ago when it got cold and nothing happened! The repair guy came yesterday but said he won't have the part he needs until Monday. It's been pretty cold in the house. We've used double blankets on the beds at night and put a space heater in Jackson's room to try to keep him warm. We can't wait until Monday when we'll be able to have a nice toasty, warm home!