Kindra

Life is busy with these 4 kiddos. I am thankful for getting to spend each day with them. We just celebrated Creighton's 4th birthday and I thought about how lucky I have been to stay at home with all of them and remember every milestone from the past 4 years. It's a blessing. Nothing to exciting in my life. I am going to be leaving my position at our church shortly to become more active in the congregation. One of our good friends just became the head pastor at our church and we are excited about that. We are so thankful for our church here. They have really become like family to us. I am getting ready to start decorating the basement. I have been waiting for it to be finished so that I could start painting, but now I am dreading the work. O'well. Pinterest has given me some great ideas and I am excited for it to be done soon! The picture above is all 6 of us in our 80's gear a couple months ago. We went to a bowling party a while back for a friend of ours and the theme was "a decade from her life". She turned 40, so we had a few decades to choose from (Sorry, Niki). It was hilarious to see all the costumes.

Kiley, 10 1/2

Well, I don't have any pics of Kiley. I have made plans to take her picture, but something always comes up. She keeps busy with dance and her friends. She is definitely a pre-teen now, but is generally in a good mood and fun to be around. She loves dance, although after her recital we may look into a different studio. We have a studio within walking distance (about 1/2 mile) from our house and we were thinking if she sticks with it, it will be nice if she can walk straight there after school for dance. I always say we live in the best location with everything at our fingertips. Kiley will have a blast when she is old enough to walk or ride her bike places with friends. We do have everything close, but things that she would like that are less than a mile from our house are the Movie Tavern (dine while watching the movie), several ice cream/yogurt shops, cafes, Kohls, dance studio, 24 hour fitness, tanning (although I will discourage this), several spas and salons and sooo much more. We have a great park with bike trail in our neighborhood and Kiley just got a new bike for her birthday, so Chad and I will be getting a bike this year so that we can take the older kids on bike rides in the evenings. I will try to get some pics of Kiley soon. I know she has her dance pics coming up, so at least we'll have those!

Creighton, 4 years old

Time out is not his favorite place

At Chuck E Cheese

His dinosaur birthday cake

He loves his new bike

Creighton had his 4th birthday on March 12. It's hard to believe he is already 4. It's a fun age though. For his birthday, we went to the dinosaur museum, Chuck E Cheese, and had a little party at home for him. He requested a dinosaur cake, which I didn't have time to make and felt terrible even though this one turned out nice (even though they spelled his name wrong). I took him to the store to pick out a new bike and helmet as his birthday gift. He was given dinosaur everything from his grandparents and loves all his new toys. The weather is nice now and my little worker is back out there "building" things from sun up to sun down. He also loves to sit in the front window and look out at the kids playing in the street. He's not quiet old enough to venture out front on his own, but in a couple years. He is a little lover. He is always telling me "I lub you mom" and when I said once to him "Creighton, I am not very happy with you right now" he stomped his foot and yelled "You are happy with me! I lub you and you lub me!" and then stormed upstairs to his room. I couldn't help but laugh and in fact, Chad and I spend most of our time laughing at the things that come out of his mouth. 4 is a fun age so far. Creighton will be heading off to preschool this next school year and starting soccer very soon. He's a great little athlete and excels at nearly every sport so far (just like daddy) so it'll be exciting to watch him in the coming years.

Cort, 2 1/2

Well, "baby Cort" is not so much a baby any more, even though he is still so tiny (97% for height, but only 10% for weight). He embodies every stereotype for the "terrible two's". Cort throws tantrums, jumps off furniture, takes off all his clothes...all the time!, destroys his room and anything in his path, opens every drawer and cupboard and clears them out, colors on everything, and does any other thing that you would find annoying. Despite all the extra work he makes for me, I am so in love with him. He is sweet, cuddly, loving, kisses me all the time, loves for me to lay in his bed with him and read, and is a total mommy's boy.

Cheyenne 9 months

Cheyenne: 9 months

This little girl is so sweet. She is saying "dada", "mama" and "baba". She is walking around furniture and standing on her own. No steps yet though! She spends her day playing, sleeping, stealing from her brother, Cort, climbing, and crawling under the table to see what crumbs she can find to snack on. She is eating soft foods and her favorites are: bananas, cheese, tortillas, crackers, cheerios, and yogurt. I can't believe she is 9 months already! I think it's time to start planning her 1st birthday party!!

No time to do a full update, but soon....I promise.

So sorry that I haven't had the time to really update this for the past couple months. Life is busy BUSY with 4 kiddos! Cheyenne is 7 months now. She is such a great baby. Never fussy. She loves attention but is totally fine just playing on the floor. She has been sitting up for a while and is nearly crawling. Very soon! As you can see from her photo-she has big blue/green eyes and dark blond hair (although sometimes it looks a bit red in photos-it's not though). So, 4 out of 4 of my kids have blue or green eyes and blond hair. I am certain that dark hair and brown eyes are a dominant trait, but I'm thrilled they are all so beautiful.

The holidays were great and I will give more details and tons of pics soon. For Thanksgiving we celebrated with a huge feast and had some friends over. We ate and then played some games that Kiley and her friend could take part in. We decided to stay in town for Christmas this year to avoid the torturous winter weather of the Midwest. Turns out, it snowed here and was beautiful in Nebraska. Of course. Our parents came up here on the 26th. Since they tend to go overboard with gifts, I set a limit of 5 toys per child, per grandparent. (That comes out to be about 60 gifts, 80 if you count the ones I got them! Ummmm...no, I can not find room for 80 new toys! Turns out, one grandma just stuffed a bunch of gifts into 5 bags, but each child really ended up with about 10. The other grandma didn't even attempt to deceive us and just said she couldn't do it. So, we ended up with a living room FULL of gifts!!!! Some of their favorite gifts were: Kiley-a new flat panel TV, an MP5 player, and gift cards. Creighton-a 5 foot tall fort and remote control cars. Cort-the same fort and a ball (he's simple), Cheyenne ended up with a ton of adorable clothes and some toys, but loves her new Johnny Jumper! It was a great Christmas for us.

The basement is coming along very nicely. Chad is just finishing up mudding the seams and then I am going to paint. Woo Hoo! I hate the act of painting, but love the end result. I already know the colors I want. The workout room is pretty much done. We are going to have one wall of mirrors and some free weights and later on Chad wants to put down a rubber floor. The living room is going to be really cool. He put in a cove ceiling and two columns that will be trimmed in wood. The ceiling will have a rope light so it looks normal during the day, but can have a movie theater feel when it's dark. Same with the play area. The bedroom is pretty much done too, nothing to great in there except a nice window seat and huge closet (considering it's the 5th bedroom and will be used as a guest room). The office also has a window seat, but no closet although it's technically listed on our permit as a 6th bedroom. Chad built a beautiful fireplace and hearth that will look awesome when it's tiled. The bathroom is smaller than our other 3, but again, it's just for guests. It will be done in all travertine, so I am excited to see the end result. It has a bathtub/shower so it counts as a full bathroom. Very soon, this house will officially be a 6 bedroom, 4 bathroom, 3500 finished sq. ft house. I can't wait to have full use of the new space! Kiley is even asking to move downstairs already. Many pics to come!!!! Hopefully before March. :)

One big, long, catch-up fall post!

Well, it's time to play catch-up. Fall has been a beautiful season and we have really enjoyed it. The weather has been great, minus one snow day. The colors are amazing. I light my cinnamon candles, open the windows and sip hot cocoa. Fall is my favorite month! Chad and I had our first date in a long time. We were invited to attend the Denver Dinner for an event that benefits abused and neglected kids. We dressed up and spent the evening enjoying cocktails, dinner, entertainment, and music with friends. I was surprised to see so many familiar faces when we arrived. It was a great time for a great cause.

These two pictures should be flipped. Cheyenne plays on the floor and plays so rough with this that it eventually collapses on her. You can see she is just as happy to chew on it as she is to play with it. The first time it happened, I was in the kitchen and heard Creighton yelling for me "mommy, Cheyenne is stuck!". I found him standing over her, lifting this off of her (it's maybe 2 lbs) but he was holding it up off her like he was lifting a car off of someone. He said "you have to get her, she is stuck", as he is lifting it off her and barely breathing. He cracks me up!

Cheyenne has decided she is too big for her beloved swing. She tries to scoot out of everything, so I suppose we should start strapping her in. Although, she seems to prefer a quilt on the floor, some toys, and space to roll around.

Not the best pic of all the kids, but it shows their costumes and that's all we need. Creighton was Frankenstein, Cheyenne was a fairy, Cort wore the infamous Woody costume, and Kiley was a devil. When someone asked Creighton what Cheyenne was, he said "she is a fly"....I suppose he isn't familiar with fairies and the only bug he really sees that has wings is a fly. :)

Kiley was on fall break all of last week. We spent the time at the park, playing outside, watching movies, going to the pumpkin patch, and catching up on house work. The weather was so beautiful, except for one snowy day, but of course, it was 70 degrees the next day and we were once again in short and tank tops. I am trying to get Kiley to watch some of my favorite movies-My Girl, The Addams family, Now and Then, so we spent one whole day watching movies.

On the hay rack ride. It's impossible to get a pic of them all looking at the camera. This came close.

Kiley and Creighton in the hay maze at the Pumpkin patch.

This picture of Kiley and the boys cracks me up. Kiley is 10 and the boys are 3 and 2, but more than 1/2 her size. They aren't big boys either, she is just very petite. They still listen to her and she somehow manages to carry them around, despite there only being about a 10-15 lb difference in their weights. She is a really, really good big sister and she'll be a great babysitter in a couple of years.

Finally, Cort is big enough to go on our playground by himself. We do plan to make some changes to it though. The ladder he is crawling up is going to turn into a rock climbing wall. It's more fun and safer. The fort will be closed in more to make it more like a tree house and we may take the three swings down and move them to another area of the structure and put a bridge across the center. We'll see, but for now they have a blast on it.

I am not sure why Cheyenne is giving me this crab-tastic face. I think it may be that she HATES the hat and I always put it on her.

One of the houses a couple blocks from us goes all out for Halloween. I couldn't get a picture of the whole thing because it's too wide. This was the exit to the haunted house and me and the kids are in front of the entrance. We took a walk down there with our kids and a few of Kiley's friends one evening. It's definitely a fun thing for the kids to do on Halloween night. We didn't take the little ones on Halloween night because it's much scarier with smoke, fire, sound, etc. The girls did go down and go through it though.

Baby Cort feeding Cheyenne fire cheetos. Don't worry, I took a quick picture and then put them back in the bag before she could grab them.

Denver got some snow on Tuesday evening. A lot of snow. One of our tree limbs fell off and one was resting on the deck awning. In true Colorado fashion, this should all be melted by tomorrow.

This is our lab, Cooper, with a toilet seat around his neck. He was supposed to be upstairs taking a nap with Creighton. I heard Creighton yelling "Cooper's stuck, Cooper's stuck!" and when I went upstairs, I found Cooper with his head in the toilet drinking water. When I said "Cooper!" he tried to pull his head out, but because he has a big head and this is just a little kids training seat, he pulled the whole thing off and this was the end result. :)

Cheyenne and Cort had their well baby Check-ups a couple weeks ago. Cheyenne is 25 inches long and 15 lbs. This puts her right in the 50th percentile.

Cort was 32 inches tall and 23lbs. He is in the 76th percentile for height and 10th for weight. Tall and thin.

I am running out of time now, but will update more in a few days!