Off to Disneyland!

Sunday morning we are off to Southern California for a vacation with Ben's family. There will be 14 of us all together! 6 kids and 8 adults. Our itinerary includes Knott's Berry Farm, Disneyland, California Adventure, a Water park, Sea World, a wild animal safari park and the San Diego beach. We like to make the most out of our vacations!:)
So don't bother checking my blog for the next week, or probably for a few weeks. It may take me a while to recover. But then I will post all the stunning pictures of our kids having a blast. We might even have fun too. ;)

Curious, like Curious George!

We are a big fan of Curious George in this house. It is a very cute show but George is always doing things that kids should never be doing. (Like going everywhere by himself! Has anyone else noticed the lack of parental supervision in cartoons? Kids roaming all over the city or country or DragonLand, totally unsupervised?!) They even have a little disclaimer at the end of the show - Some kids in a classroom drawing pictures of George and the funny things he does, then they say, "George is a monkey and he can do things we can't do." Anyway, in one of the episodes, George uses two toy cars as roller skates. So this is what I found Wyatt trying to do this morning. He realized after a few steps that it didn't really work and his feet were a little too big for the little matchbox cars. Lesson learned. He is not a monkey.

Father's Day

For Father's Day I didn't feel like wasting money on token presents so I thought of the idea to buy something for Ben that would encourage spending time with the kids.
Noelle bought him a flour sifter. Since he has taken up cooking, he is interested in having all the gadgets and we hadn't bought a sifter yet so I bought that to represent Noelle being able to spend time with him cooking. So we bought pizza fixing and the kids helped make pizza for dinner.
After dinner, we went outside to play with the ball Wyatt bought for him. The kids are sorely behind on their ball skills and I wanted to encourage some fatherly sports training. The kids had a great time playing with Daddy.

more kiddie conversations

"When I grow up I am going to let my kids do whatever they want but not mean things."
"I am going to let them have snacks whenever they want but not too much."
These are a few of Noelle's thoughts on childrearing. We had a long conversation about parenting in the car the other day. She also said if her kids didn't clean their rooms they would get 10 spankings. I tried to apply that to her but she said it only applied to her kids, not mine.

Oh, something else Noelle always says which I find hilarious is that she says "I'm just so frustrating!!!" when she isn't getting her way about something (she really means "I am frustrated." obviously ) and I usually reply with "Yes, you are frustrating."

Noelle also got a new 'do for the summer.

I can sit up!

Well Logan can sit up at 5 1/2 months. Yeah!!! I love to be able to sit him down places. And he looks super cute.

I took about a couple dozen pictures trying to get him to smile. Most of the time he was too interested in the grass to look up. Eventually Noelle got him to smile but only for a few pictures.

kiddie conversations

Conversation I just had with Wyatt...
Me sitting on the potty, helping Wyatt put on his jammies (when else am I going to get a chance to pee?)
Wyatt: (rubbing my bra) I like this Mommy.
me: Oh really? Why is that?
Wyatt: It keeps your milk from spilling.

Oak Harbor trip

Rebecca's recent blog post reminded me about our trip to Oak Harbor and the pictures I took of Noelle driving her cousin's Jeep. She, of course, was very hesitant and got frustrated quickly when she didn't get the hang of it right away. I kept encouraging her and basically forced her to keep driving around the neighborhood until she got it. She did and had a blast after she got the hang of it. It was a good lesson in perserverance and practice. It is a lesson Noelle is going to need repeated frequently throughout the years as she tends to give up easily.


Her older cousin Davis had a small quad that went much faster than the Jeep and she really enjoyed riding on that with him also.









We had a great weekend hanging out with our family up there. We took a trip to a Fort Casey on the island and had a great time walking around the military batteries dug into the hillside and enjoying the scenary. There were many blue herons, deer, bunnies and other wildlife. I had forgotten my camera and missed out on tons of great pictures. I was very bummed. We also saw some cruise ships going by on the way to dock in Seattle and realized that one of them was the Norwegian Star, the exact ship we took our cruise to Alaska on. We were all very wistful and wishing we were back on that wonderful boat. We have all vowed to take a cruise again sometime, without our children however.


After church we went to Coupeville for pizza and ice cream from a cute boardwalk store. We love visiting Whidbey Island and are so glad we have relatives there to show us around. The scenery is beautiful and there is so much to do. I highly recommend it for vacations.

Noelle's Special Day

So every month on the kid's birth number day, I decided to have a special day for them. March 5th is Noelle's birthday so on the 5th of every month is her special day. This idea was sparked by "Jon and Kate plus 8" when they did special days once a year with all their 8 kids. Since we don't have 8 kids, I figured we could pull off a special day once a month. It basically means they get their
preference for things, like a TV show or food and get to spend a little more one on one time with Mom and Dad. Once in a while, when their day is on a weekend, we might do a special outing or something.

Noelle and I made cookies together and went to the mall where she bought a collar for her
Build-a-bear dog with a gift certificate she got for her birthday.
We parked at the JCPenney entrance to the mall near the portrait studio. Noelle
recognized where we were and wanted to get our pictures taken. Mother/daughter pictures
will be fun to do someday but for now we just had daddy take a few.

Wyatt had his special day this week too but I didn't take any pictures. His day mostly consisted of buying a
new truck at Ross. Maybe next month his day will be better. But they loved having their special day and getting special treatment.
Logan hasn't had his day yet but it will probably consist of me refusing to do any housework because I need to spend time with him. Hopefully it will entail reclining on the couch while he sleeps in my arms for a large part of the day.

Big Boy

Logan is growing up so fast. He is rolling from front to back and almost rolling back to front. He doesn't get a lot of tummy time because he spits up so much and usually ends up with his face covered in spit up because he got tired of holding his head up. This time he managed to keep his face pretty clean.

tulip farm

Here are some pics from the tulip festival. I have always wanted to go to a tulip farm and take beautiful pics of the kids amongst the flower, so I was very excited to go. Unfortunately my visions of grandeur didn't quite materialize. The picture of Noelle and Logan is the best picture I got of the kids and flowers. It was a chilly overcast day and the kids weren't really interested in looking at the flowers or getting their picture taken. They enjoyed playing on the big slide and the other little areas set up for kids with their friends. Well, we will try for a good picture again next year.