May adventures

I went too long without posting to make a theme for this post so it's a bunch of photos and stuff all together!

May 1st
Jonas wants to take part in the cooking and when he saw me brushing the glaze on my homemade Italian Bread, he wanted to help. Our little chef:

May 12th
A couple days before Mothers' Day, I was excited to find that the birds' nest on our porch had baby birds! They were so cute! the mom was a little annoyed to have us on the porch but I managed to get a couple of photos in.

And I got this cute little video of their little chirping. I loved how a slight breeze would make their mouths pop open. It reminded me of the catching fish game I had as a kid.

Then, for a couple weeks in May, I watched my nephew Liam who just graduated from Pre-K! We had some fun taking him to parks, and singing and playing together. Sydney and him loved swinging, blowing bubbles and playing with playdough. I have some pictures of the fun we had later on in the post.

May 21st
Just a quick video of Jonas playing with some toys. He's starting to get to vocal with his growls and play noises.

May 23rd
A couple more videos of Jonas playing. One of him bowling and one showing how he likes to make the snoring noise and pretend he's sleeping. He'll go get a blanket and pillow to lay on.

I'd love to include more videos but these 90-second videos are taking about 20 minutes to upload each so it's just hard to include more than a few.

May 24th
On this day, Jonas, Sydney, Liam and I went to a fun water park. It was great and the kids loved the sandboxes especially. There were a ton of kids there!

Jonas saw this girl sunbathing and decided it was a good idea so he went and got a towel to lay down beside her. They thought it was pretty cute. He actually laid down for a couple minutes beside her.

Sydney and Liam playing in the sand.

May 28th- Memorial Day

Yes we barbecued on Memorial Day but we did spend it with a War veteran, my grandfather. Unfortunately, he's not in either of these pictures :( But we love you grandpa and are indebted to your service and millions of service men and women like you who have put a greater cause before themselves.
Grandma with 3 granddaughters

Great-grandma with 6 great-grandchildren 

And that's all I have to show for May!

At the end of May, I stopped watching Liam but have started watching a family of 3 kids which includes an 8-month old I've been watching a couple of days a week for a few months now. It's fun and they play well with Sydney and Jonas. Sydney is picking up the phrase "Oh My Gosh!" from the 7-yr old girl and it's just funny.

Brian has signed up to start his Master's program (MBA) with University of Phoenix in the fall so I'm really excited for him to be furthering his education. I know it means a lot of work and things will be busier around the house but I know it's for the best. It should be a year-and-a-half long program.

Also at the end of May, my sister Nicole (who you can see in the blue shirt in the Memorial Day photo) has moved from Nevada and in with my sister Drea along with her two boys, Brendon and Ross. We're excited to have them so close and to be able to spend more time with them. It reminds us of the time we'd spend with our own first cousins when we were younger. A bond really formed between us that lasts to this day and I think we really want that for our own kids.

Sydney enjoys doing worksheets each day with me on her letters and numbers. She practices cutting as well. I'm glad she has that hunger for learning and is excited about it. It's too bad she can't start Pre-K until next fall (her birthday misses the cut-off by 3 days!) but she'll just be that much more prepared when she starts!

Jonas is talking more and has also started signing "more" when he wants more food. He also has developed a habit of sucking on his lower lip (which I blame on Aunt Kymry!) but it's cute! His canine teeth are all coming in so he can be a bit grumpy at times.

I'm working on developing my digi-scrapping business more as I have 1600+ facebook fans and launched my newsletter this last week. It's pretty exciting and keeping me busy. It's helping to pay off the new computer I got last fall and then with a little bit of extra cash when we need it. I eventually hope I can get a Wacom tablet (after paying off the computer) and maybe a photoshoot for the kids with my friend who's a photographer in Dallas. Those are my goals at least!

Hope everyone is doing great and having a fun summer!

Kymry's visit, group shots

Ok, last post about Kymry's visit. LOL. You think I took a lot of pictures? I'm only posting about 1/10 of the ones I have. We had a super fun week with her!

So we went to the Norton Art Gallery trying to get some gorgeous group photos of 6 children all 5 and under. lol. you can tell how well that worked. but we got some cute shots of them in clusters.

The girlies :)

We were trying our hardest to grab their attentions and make them smile with every goofy phrase we could think of. I think these came out pretty cute. Just a rundown for you:
Left to right: Jonas, 1; Scarlett, 2; Liam, 5; Bryce, 1; Kaylin, 4; and Sydney, 3.  They are a cute bunch are they not?

Cute mother-son shot!

then we let the models play in the creek. they LOVED that.

Some cute flowers in the girly-girls hair :) Such pretty little ladies!

Then we have some pictures with our grandparents. have I ever said how totally our grandparents are? Well they ROCK. Not only are they the reason why we are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, which blesses my life every hour of every day, but they have always opened their home to provide help and assistance to their children. They are so loving and I love getting these multi-generational shots with them.

6 great-grandchildren in this shot!

The granddaughters with the best grandparents ever!

And I was glad that our cousin Peggy was able to come see Kymry the night before she left.

Another shot with the sisters and their crazy bunch of kids! 

Sisters, always and forever. Love you guys and hope we can get together sometime soon again..  :)

Kymry's visit, Gator and Friends and Chuck E Cheese's

There's a lot of photos to go through! Since it's been over a month since she visited, I better get these up! So I'll just pick some of the best photos from the rest of Kymry's visit. She has since had her sweet baby girl Hailey!

These first set of photos are from a place called Gator N' Friends where you can see lots of other cools animals besides alligators, like these deer, lemurs, zebra, camel and goats.

Oh mom! You're such a kidder!

Kaylin and Scarlett find a caterpillar!

Come on cousin, give me a smooch!

Aunt Drea explains this as she was barely holding Jonas back from climbing into the kangaroo enclosure

Kaylin enjoying a ride!

Bryce was loving opening and closing the tray on my stroller. :)

These photos are from Chuck E. Cheese's. This was the first time Sydney and Jonas had ever been there! The kids had a blast with lots of tokens!

gotta love Scarlett's adorable smile!

Ok and some more pics for this post... We also went to the great Duck Pond. It was great to go there because we all have lots of memories of this park from our childhood spent in Shreveport.

A super wonderful sight was to see this mother duck with her baby chicks. They actually came within a few feet of Drea and the kids while they tossed some bread to them. It was so cool!

 Fun times!