Walking?!

Starting with the less frightening news. William had his first hair cut. You can't really tell. It's just even now and his baby mullet that was forming has been nipped in the bud.

And now for the frightening news. This kids thinks he's old enough to walk! He took his first steps on Saturday. Not walking between Mom and Dad like he's supposed to. He just took off from the preschool table on his own. He is walking more and more everyday. He still holds onto things if there is something available, but even that looks like it won't last much longer. Good thing he's so cute!

7 Years!

 Along with just an excuse to shoot at things, I also accompanied my husband on his shooting venture on Saturday because Sunday was our 7th wedding anniversary. We also went out that night and enjoyed some time sans children.

For our actual anniversary on Sunday, we celebrated by speaking in church. Yay! The good news is, we managed to give fairly coherent talks despite my choking fit and Jacob's crying. (I will be forever grateful to the teenage boy who went and got me some water.) Oiy. 

Who's ready for a trip down memory lane? I'm pretty sure that every year since we were married I have posted the same picture (or maybe I rotate between 2 pictures) on the blog. So this year, we are doing the non-posed pictures! 

Yay for amazing friends! We need to have a basement dwellers reunion. Seriously.

Awww....so little and cute!

Can you see through the fuzziness to the 'I'm about the puke' look on my face? Don't worry, it wasn't the cake. The cake tasted amazing.

Yay....brothers and roomies

Shooting

Last weekend was absolute madness, so I'm going to try to break it down into a couple of different posts.

The madness started Saturday morning with my first experience with shooting a gun. Well, a modern gun anyway. I shot black powder rifles a couple of times back in my childhood.

Jacob 'inherited' a gun from his grandfather....step-grandfather?.....long story short, he has a 12 gauge. My brother Scott also owns several guns, so we went out to the desert with him and his wife. I hit.....lots of dirt. I still don't understand the fascination. It was fun. It wasn't like I died of boredom and I didn't accidentally shoot anyone or get shot. I had fun. I still don't get it. I am just not a gun person. I have no desire to have one in my house. It definitely wouldn't make me feel safer. Obviously, Jacob disagrees with me on this point. Oh well.

I can now say I have been shooting. I might even do it again sometime.

Ladybugs

Alright, normally I save preschool things for my preschool blog. But this was so cute and so fun, that I had to put something about it on here.

On Monday, we had park day for preschool. We've been learning about bugs this month. I went and got 1500 ladybugs (after calling every nursery in the valley, I finally found one that had them) and we let them go inside a tent. The kids loved it. I was definitely concerned that they were going to be too freaked out, but it was awesome. Emily even ended up with ladybugs crawling in her hair and she was still in heaven. Best activity ever.

Let's Go Fly A Kite

Emily has been begging to fly kites for months and it finally happened!

I was impressed with how well Emily did (with assistance from Aunt Becca). She loved every minute of it and was able to keep her kite up pretty well.

Eddie's kite had less success and spent some time in the tree.

It stayed up long enough to make him happy. That's all that counts.

(I am not ready for this!!!)

2 Days, 3 Doctor's Appointments

To round out the craziness (yes, I am exhausted and feel like I have completely lost my marbles), we decided to see 2 different doctors at 3 different appointments in 2 days.

Monday, it was Eddie's turn to figure out why he was not feeling well. Strep, I totally called it. I love my doctor's office, because they trust me. When I said I thought he had strep, the nurse immediately swabbed his throat. Ammoxicillin is a wonderful thing.

The next day was back to the same office for Emily's 5 year old well check. Of course, she passed with flying colors. The health problems were not evenly distributed in this family.

We only had a few hours before Eddie's appointment with the asthma and allergy specialist, which is 2 minutes from where we were and 20 from home. So, we decided to stay on that side of town. We went to the library and then went to the park to eat lunch and play for a little while. 

There were more turtles out and about in the lake than I have ever seen before, so we had lots of fun watching them! We also saw some pretty big fish and of course, the ducks.

It always amazes me how much the kids love just climbing all over the walls at this park.

After some fun in the sun, we headed to Eddie's appointment. They did more allergy testing and found that he is allergic to eggs, sesame seeds and mustard. I am not looking forward to trying to remove eggs from his diet. The good news is that the doctor says eggs are the most commonly outgrown allergy. He now has to be tested every 6 months to see if he is still allergic to eggs. 

I am dreading this new challenge, but hopefully it will help him be healthier! We are also going to take him to see an ENT to find out if he can get his tonsils out. I think that would help him sleep better, which would help him so much!

Birthday, Easter Weekend of Insanity

So we returned from Utah late Friday night, got a small amount of sleep and then got moving to get ready for Emily's birthday party Saturday afternoon!

I wasn't planning to start doing parties with friends until the 6th birthday, but Emily has been asking for a birthday party for months. I gave in.

As luck would have it, seeing the Hobsons right before said party seriously worked out in my favor as I got to take advantage of Shannah's craftiness. I would say it turned out pretty darn cute for my first attempt at card making!

Through the help of my mom organizing some things while we were gone and a miracle in whirlwind cleaning, we were ready for the party in time! 

Of course, you must be dressed like a princess for a princess party. She made sure to pick out a crown from the Renaissance Festival that would be perfect for her party.

We played pin the lips on the frog, read princess stories, made castles and necklaces, slew a dragon (a dinosaur pinata, I couldn't find a dragon), had pink cupcakes and played castle. And of course, she loved opening presents. Her friends must know her well. She got lots of princess toys, books and crafts.

And then it was on to her actual birthday and Easter! They had a blast looking for Easter eggs.

William highly approved of the toy he got from the Easter Bunny.

After breakfast we headed to church. Mom and the boys just stayed for sacrament meeting, as I suspected Edward was coming down with something.

I then put my mediocre cake making skills to Emily's request for a castle cake. Not half bad, if I do say so myself.

Since it was Easter, we combined Emily's party with Easter dinner, which she was really happy about. But first, the traditional Easter 'Egg' hunt at Grandma and Grandpa's. They had lots of fun decorating their bags.

And loved all the surprises they found!

After a delicious dinner, it was on to presents (again)!

We all scored, she got almost every princess-y thing in existence and is loving it.

William got spoiled and wasn't forced to wait for his first birthday to have his first piece of cake. He immediately picked up the whole thing and shoved it in his mouth.

Anyone else remember this?

Or this?

This one is decidedly less dainty.

And now, a little bit about Miss Emily:

She is growing up way to fast! She has outgrown all her imaginary friends. She is getting super smart and is so excited to start kindergarten in the fall. She is memorizing books and songs and loves to retell me all the things we've learned in preschool. If you haven't noticed, she loves all things princess. One of her gifts was a Disney Princess Wii game and I've been surprised at how well she can play it. I can't really give you a list of favorites, she doesn't seem to have many. She watches a lot of movies, eats lots of different foods (though doughnuts are probably the most requested) and reads and plays different things every day. She does love to do crafts and to draw and color!