Kallie

Kallie. She is our little spunky spitfire girl. She is so cute and so fun but man, does she have an attitude.

She has started throwing screaming fits that are pretty unreal. She will just yell at the top of her lungs over, and over, and over, and over. She definitely wants her mom all to herself. She gets so mad sometimes if I am holding Tyler and she will pull or push him out of the way.

She was so excited to see a new baby. We have three new babies in the family and she is obsessed with them, always wanting to touch them and give them their binkies. I can't believe she is old enough to even do that. She is very good at being soft with them.

Ha ha, I love this picture. See what I meant in Tyler's post? She really didn't want him on there with her.

One of her many, many, fits.

This one cracks me up too. She and Tyler always sit in these toy bins we have. Well, the big ones. Tyler was sitting in a big one and she was trying so hard to climb into this little one that was too small and she got stuck and was so frustrated. What did I do? Took a picture of course. And then helped her get out.

Kallie loves the bath too. She's usually the first one that wants to get out though.

Kallie loves to poke people's faces. And put her finger in people's mouths.

She is our climber. I about died the first time she climbed up on to Mckinley's chair, and then up on to the desk. We try to keep the door to this room shut so they don't climb up there, but if she ever gets a chance, she will climb up there and then just yell and yell for you to come so she can jump off to you. She will jump off the couch to you, whether you're ready and watching or not. If I had to guess, I would say she will be the first one to break a bone.

See? Always climbing.

Pointing to the DVD player in the van.

Brandon got this cute picture. I love how her feet are touching each other!

This picture is one of my favorites too.

Kallie is really good at posing for the camera. Anytime I get out my real camera and point it at her, she says "Cheese!" and smiles really big. I love it.

Lately she has this new thing of grabbing a blanket and putting it on top of herself and laying down on the couch. It's pretty much the most awesome thing ever.

 

Kallie seems very smart to me and understands soooo much! It always surprises me when I say things like "do you want your diaper changed?" and she runs over to where we keep all the diapers, or just things like that. She knows where her nose, eyes, head, tummy, belly button, and feet are. Tyler knows most of those too. (See how hard it is to post about just one of them?) She looooooves her dad and always runs to him when he gets home from work. She loves to be chased, always has since she was little, and she loves to play hide and seek. She is an awesome eater and lately has been eating way more and way faster than Tyler. We love her to pieces!!!

Tyler

Tyler is the sweetest little thing ever. He is seriously so sensitive and sweet and fun. He is tough too, and is way stronger than Kallie, but she is the one who is more feisty.

 

It's hard to do a post on these guys individually, because they are always together and I am always talking about them together. We'll see how this goes.

 

Tyler loves following Kallie and doing what she's doing. He got on this car with her and she was not too happy about it. 

 

Climbing up on the car...

 

Checking out his new cousin Sophie.

 

I just thought this picture was so cute. Tyler totally loves the bath and splashes a LOT while he's in there.

 

I just love some of his different faces. It's so hard to get a good picture because he's always moving and doesn't stop and pose for the camera like Kallie does.

 

Exploring the kitchen cupboards. Notice all the handprints on the freezer. Ha ha ha. I rarely clean them off because it doesn't stay clean for more than two minutes.

 

These guys have loved watching DVD's in the car. We've always had a DVD player but never used it until I got desperate recently. :)

 

These guys love their little chairs and if I start to put on a movie, they will run to their chairs and they usually sit in the right ones. For some reason they sat in each other's chairs this time.

 

This must have come from Brandon's phone because I didn't take it. Tyler totally loves stuffed animals and will just hug and kiss them. He also loves this blanket. Whenever I go to get him out of his crib he reaches down and grabs his blanket to bring it out with us.

 

I love these lips!!! He does that face a lot.

 

Talking on the phone. :)

 

Tyler loves laundry! He loves diving on a clean pile of laundry and he loves climbing in the laundry baskets. He does it all. the. time.

 

He is definitely the happier of the two but he still has his moments. He really didn't want me to take a picture.

 

Tyler is a picky eater. He always examines the food you are offering him and a lot of times he refuses it. If I shove it in his mouth sometimes he'll eat it, but if he really doesn't want it, he will spit it back out and there is nothing you can do about it.

 

He just started saying Cheese when I take a picture of him. He says daddy, mom (which pretty much means he wants something), uh oh, and I think that's about it. These guys are both getting good at communicating and will point to what they want. They also follow a ton of commands. They will take something and go throw it in the garbage, they almost always throw their dirty diapers away if someone will just open the door to the garage for them.

 

Life has been pretty challenging lately with these two but the sweet moments help you to forget the bad ones. I can't explain how I feel about Tyler, ever since the day he was born I've had a crush on him. Sounds weird, I know. But there is just something about having a little boy, and especially one who is so sweet and has such soft fluffy cheeks. I just love my Tyler.

Mckinley

Time for a post on each of the kids.

 

Let's start with our sweet Mckinley.

 

This girl is absolutely amazing. Ever since the day she was born, Brandon and I have stopped ourselves at the end of the day seriously almost every day and sat and talked about how amazing she is. She never ceases to amaze us. She is so sweet and loving, so smart, creative, and fun.

 

She has always loved babies. Here she is holding her cousin Sophie.

 

She is so sweet to Tyler and Kallie and always looking out for them. She did go through a phase of always bugging Kallie, tripping her for no reason, taking toys away from her, but I haven't seen her do that for quite a while. As for Tyler, they have always been best friends. I would often look over in to the family room and see them wrestling and just giggling with each other. It's pretty much the cutest thing ever.

 

McKinley is old enough now that she loves going on special dates and me and Brandon. This is when we took her to a Japanese Steak House called Sakura. 

 

Here she is playing with her friend Kenzey. These two have loved each other since they were tiny babies. They play together so well and are so cute together. Especially now that they are older and talking a lot more and everything.

 

At random times throughout the day Mckinley will stop and look at me or Brandon and say "Mom (or Dad), I love you." She does this A LOT. It melts our hearts every time.

 

The main thing she is into right now is drawing and writing. It is kind of out of control, but totally awesome. I knew that every week in nursery she would color a picture but there were usually just a few lines scribbled on the page, and that was it. Then all of a sudden one day she was bringing these pictures home that looked really good. And now that she has a desk in her room with storage in it, she puts her papers in there and then finishes coloring them throughout the week. So anyway, I started noticing that she was getting really good at coloring and it was really weird for me because I felt like it was the first thing she was learning to do that I didn't help teach her. But she really stays in the lines pretty good.

 

Here she is drawing on the program in Church.

 

 

Brandon found this awesome easel online and she just opened it Saturday. She loves it, of course, and is constantly drawing pictures on here.

 

Kallie got some cool bath crayons for Christmas (thanks Jess!) and Tyler and Kallie are obsessed with them and Mckinley finally got to try them out too and of course they are perfect for her.

 

So after she started coloring really well, all on her own she started drawing things. She has always been able to draw a circle, and simple things like that, but one day she just said I'm going to draw a snowman. And this is what she drew. I was like seriously? What the heck. How can she just do that on her own. Maybe this is normal for all kids, but she is my first and I don't know any different and I feel like she is pretty good at drawing.

 

She loves the coloring app on my phone and one day I took it from her and closed it out and when I closed it out I thought the flower she colored looked similar to the one on the icon for the app. Sure enough, she copied it exactly. She is always doing things like this. I think it is so cool.

 

So she started drawing people all on her own too and there is no face or body outline, just the important stuff, eyes, ears, mouth, hair, arms, legs. Ha ha ha. I think these are great. So this is a picture of some people with the sun out.

 

On the back of it, she told me this is a moon, a window, and the people are laying down. I absolutely love this!!!

 

 

Mckinley really is the sweetest thing ever. She is always wanting to save treats and things for Brandon when he gets home from work. The other day we had this little thing that I shaped into a circle and it kind of looked like a heart and she goes Mom! Look, it's a heart! We need to save it for Dad because I love my dad. She forgot to show it to him and a few days later she saw it and was like Mom, can you make this into a heart for me so I can give it to my dad?

 

I love hearing myself come out in her. (the good things anyway) She will tell me sometimes,"Mom, you're my best girl ever."

 

Anything that happened in the past is "last year." And anything that's going to happen in the future is "next week."

 

I could write about her all day. Some days I want to just sit and record everything she does and says. She is such a blessing in our lives and we constantly wonder how we were so lucky to get her.

Sleeping Babies

Last month Brandon and I went on a date to a basketball game and his mom watched Tyler and Kallie for us. We meant to bring our pack n play to her house so there would be two pack n plays for when she put them down. We forgot ours. So we told her just to put them in the same one and hopefully it would be okay. I had made them sleep in the same crib back in November when I was babysitting my nephew and needed a crib for him, so I knew it was possible.

 

Well, when we came home she told us they went down really well and I went to go find them and this is what I found. Tyler totally has his arm around Kallie. Cutest thing ever!!! We pretty much died from how cute this was and Brandon decided they needed to sleep together from then on.

 

This was the picture of them sleeping together when I babysat my nephew.

 

Anyway, from that night on, they have slept together in Tyler's crib almost every day. It doesn't seem to work as well for naps so I usually put them in their own cribs at naptime but at bedtime they almost always sleep together. I have some other friends with twins who kept them in the same crib a lot longer than I did (we separated Tyler and Kallie at about 4 months I think) and I always wondered how that would work, but now I know, it's totally possible! They just find room in there somehow.

 

So now I am kind of obsessed and every time I go to check on them I can't help but take a picture. It's so fun to see their different sleeping positions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Brandon's 30th Birthday

Brandon's birthday this year was the big 3-0. I had big plans of a cruise or even just a night's stay in a hotel without the kids, and even had a hotel booked, but in the end we cancelled it because Brandon really didn't want to go, and it was his birthday after all so I decided to give him exactly what he wanted.

 

The night before his birthday we went out to dinner at Sakura's and then went shopping and got him a bunch of new clothes. It was a really fun date.

 

The day of his birthday we made pancakes for breakfast, then he opened his presents, and then we just kind of hung out at home. The babies were awful and I had a full on mental breakdown (sorry Bran) but luckily he didn't let it ruin his day. We went out for ice cream at Menchie's and that evening we made him a train cake and had his family over for a pizza party.

 

My sister Kristen made a train cake for her baby's first birthday and Brandon thought it was so cool. He asked me to make one because he knew Mckinley would love it. And she did. She talked about it for a whole day, ever since she came to the store with me and we bought all the stuff for it.

 

Don't look too close, it's pretty sloppy, but I still think it turned out cute.

 

 

Brandon's sister Chandra's birthday is the day before his so pretty much every year they blow out candles together. We had a really fun time and he said this was his best birthday ever.

Family Pictures

While all of Brandon's family was in town over Christmas break we got together at the new Nu Skin building and took family pictures.

 

This picture is cute but it makes me want to get one with all of my kids smiling. I know it's possible! It might just take some work.

 

 

With three new babies since November and another one coming in less than a month, this family is not getting any smaller!!! It's hard to get together and do things but I am so grateful to Brandon's dad for still trying and making lots of things happen. I love getting together.

 

Ross and Karen with their 15 grandchildren. The grandkids are close to outnumbering the adults!!

New Year's Eve

I love traditions. Brandon's dad has so many and is so good at making them happen. Every year on New Year's Eve we all get together and he orders Chinese food, and then we go crazy at like 8 p.m. with all the poppers and confetti and streamers he gets from Zurchers.

 

This is what it looks like:

 

 

We spend more time preparing for it and cleaning up after it, but it's still fun.

 

All the kids went to sleep and we stayed over there till like 1 playing games and chatting. It was awesome.