All Better

Karen has healed phenomenally well. By the 5th day after surgery she was hopping around and wanting to do everything like normal. The doctor insisted that she stay down for 10 whole days and it was quite the battle to get her to sit or lay on the couch for the last 5 days. After 7 days she won more often than I did. But she is all better now and eating more than she ever has before. For example, the other day she had 3 cinnamon rolls for breakfast, a snack, 2 drumsticks for lunch, cookies, popcorn, candy (we went to a movie) and everything on her plate at dinner (can't remember what we had). She's like a bottomless pit. I know that she will be growing in no time. We feel that this will bless her life in many ways and we are glad we did this tonsillectomy.

We also had school pics taken of the kids. We love to have a local photographer take the pictures rather than get the real school pictures. The school picture packets are very expensive and you get a bunch of wallets that are never used anyway. The lady who takes their pictures get much better and cuter photos anyway for a much better price with a CD of 5 poses. We love it and are very grateful to her for them. Karen's pics are even posted on her blog because Karen is just that cute! http://capturedpix.blogspot.com/2011/09/more-dates-for-school-pictures.html Scroll down at this link to see them. I'm posting my favorite of Karen and Michael below.

It was a beautiful area where she took their pictures, so I took the kids back to get a few more of my own with both of them together. Mine didn't turn out quite as good as hers, but they did turn out cute.

June

June is always a busy month for us, but it also bring us a lot of fun too. Early this month Michael graduated from preschool! We are so proud of him for all he has learned this year, especially to sit still for more than a couple of seconds. He's also learned all his numbers, letters and is now reading. Thanks to his wonderful teacher Miss Angie, he has also learned his numbers in Spanish and all his colors in Spanish too. She had a darling graduation program and we are grateful to her for all she taught our boy.Michael had an early birthday party so his school friends could come. We had uncle Anthony come and do a magic show for us which everyone loved especially Michael.
Mom did face painting and cousin Jeremy made balloon animals for everyone.
And everyone enjoyed the goodies.Here is a picture of the girl Michael wants to marry when he grows up. She's so sweet. Unfortunately they will be going to different schools in the fall so Michael will have to find a new sweetheart.We celebrated on Michael's real birthday too and I'll post about that later.

Starting School

School has started and we now have 2 students in our home. Karen has started 1st grade this year. A full day, lunch at school and best of all 3 recesses has Karen loving 1st grade. She's so excited to be such a big girl and loves making new friends. Here she is on her first day.
Michael has also started school this year. Preschool that is. He's watched his sister go to school for 2 year and has wanted so much to go too. Well, it's finally his turn and he's so excited. He loves his preschool and new teacher. He told me that he loves the girl with the princess backpack in his class. Look out girls, here comes my heartbreaker!

Michael turns 4

Two days after we came home from our vacation, we had Michael's birthday. I didn't have as much time as I wanted to do the cake, so this is more simple, but I think it turned out really cute anyway. He loved it! And the cars were a present for him too. He was extra excited about that!

He's been borrowing his sister's pink princess scooter for the last year, so we decided that it was time to get him his very own. He was thrilled, especially since the deck lights up too!

We had a quiet family party at the park. Michael & Karen both rode their scooters and then played in the splash pad. When we came home a few cousins and grandparents stopped by for cake and presents. It was a lot of fun and Michael is very excited to be 4 years old, especially since 4 is his favorite number.

Happy birthday to my favorite son!

Is he really asleep?

At night before we go to bed we like to check on Michael to make sure he has blankets on. We've often found him in strange positions, but this time was the all time craziest! This was what we saw when we walked in.

from the topand just in case you can't quite see it, from the sideI couldn't believe he was asleep, but he actually was. Amazing!

Michael thought this was terribly funny when we showed him the next day and tried to repeat it that night, though this time he wasn't asleep. Silly boy!

Michael

Daddy made chocolate chip oatmeal muffins one day and Michael loves the chocolate chips in them. He decided that he only wanted to eat the chocolate chips though and not the whole muffin, so he got his tweezers and tried to get the chocolate chips out as seen here in this picture.

He actually did it and used the tweezers to eat the chocolate chip that he'd extracted. I thought it was so funny that I had to get pictures as he did it again.

Daddy also took Michael to get his hair cut. The last time we went to that particular place was last summer when we got it cut short for the warm weather. When they came home it was much shorter than expected and there wasn't a whole lot I could do to style it. I played around with it and thought this fauxhawk (sp?) was kinda fun, though daddy didn't like it as much.

I loved his face in this next one. Couldn't stop laughing.

Budding Artist

My daughter is constantly developing her artistic talents. Sometimes it's a bit overwhelming how many pictures she makes and tapes up around the house. Yesterday I found both her and her brother's door covered with pictures. They were so cute I had to take a picture. Only one of them were Michael's and I'm sure you can tell which. The one with writing on it says "Karen is sick dont deestrv(disturb)". Most of the people depicted are Karen and Michael with a couple that have mommy or daddy or a friend.



Another day after naps I found Karen had decorated her shirt with stickers. I guess it didn't have enough bling on it for her.Another day she decided to make a crown and become a queen. I had to help get a crown the right size, but she loved it. When the crown was finished and declared beautiful, she announced that now all she needed was a throne. This is what she devised for her throne.

Just a funny picture. One morning I woke up to find my kids on the far side of the bed on the floor with Karen reading a book to Michael and Michael playing games on daddy's iphone.

Ute Cheerleader

We love the Utes and have taught our kids to love them too. Michael loves to put on his Ute shirt to be "just like daddy". It's so cute. Karen has sadly grown out of hers and I've been looking for a new one, but when I saw this cheerleader outfit I just couldn't pass it up. It's got a separate shirt and skirt so she can wear just the shirt if she wants too. When I brought it home and showed her she immediately wanted to put it on. She looks so adorable!

Michael saw her and told her she looked like a princess and asked her to dance. They danced around the dining room for several minutes while Michael sang "dancey dance, dancey dance, dancey dance....." It was really cute and had to share.

Hair Dressers

My kids got bored one day and asked if they could do my hair. I said sure. They got the spray bottle and the brush and comb and both started pulling them through my hair and getting me and everything around me wet. I quickly took the spray bottle away and they decided that they now needed clips to go in my hair. They went and got the box of Karen's clips and they proceeded to put every single one of them in my hair. We took pictures to remember the fabulous job they did on my hair, which they were very excited about. Fun eh?

Dad/Michael Day

Yesterday we celebrated Father's day and Michael's birthday. It was fun and busy. We started out with me actually getting up early so that I could make French toast for Neils' breakfast in bed. Church actually went better than usual. Then we had lunch and presents.


After naps we went to Neils' brother's house for dinner with his side of the family and had more presents and birthday cake. Michael was ecstatic and really enjoyed his Wall-E cake. Thanks to everyone who helped make this a wonderful day for both Neils and Michael.

Neils Birthday

On Tuesday we celebrated Neils' birthday. We had a few presents which the kids helped him open.

Then we went out to dinner. The kids always find interesting ways to entertain themselves in restaurants. This time it was with a cylindrical ad on the table.

At the end of the dinner as we were getting to go boxes, Michael decided he wanted to help. This is how he helped. I thought it was cute and very funny.

Miscellaneous

We had a lovely vacation last weekend to Denver and the Starfest Sci-fi convention. It was a lot of fun, especially since we left the kids with their grandparents. It was a nice weekend getaway, but definitely needed to be a couple days longer. Here's a few fun pics. Plus some other miscellaneous pics of the kids having fun.

Life size Doctor Who Tardis! Awesome!The only place you can find a Pirates vs Ninja's competition.Even babies get dressed up for these thingsShe looks so much like Luna Lovegood! and pretty good Lucius MalfoyDaddy is the horsey! yay!

Daddy asked them to say chocolate instead of cheese and they screamed it!

Michael helping mommy dry her hair

Always riding double

Discovery Museum

I've heard so many wonderful things about the Discovery Museum in the Gateway downtown, so when Karen's preschool was going I thought it was a great opportunity especially when I could go and Michael could too. We've never been before so it was exciting. Michael always wants to go to school with Karen and so he was really excited to be able to actually go with her that day. It was wonderful. The kids had so much fun and loved all the exhibits they had there. Here are a few pictures that show some of the things they were able to do there. This first one is in an area with balls and tubes everywhere.This was the waterworks area and Michael would have stayed here the whole time (if I would have let him).This was a wind tube where Karen and Michael spent a lot of time. They were intrigued with this and thought it was so cool.
The weather station where Karen was the star!
This was the absolute favorite. The mini helicopter where they could get in and out and even get in the cockpit and air control tower. They loved this and didn't want to get out when it was time to go.