Caden's turn

Yep, Caden got his braces on this morning. He just had to get them on his top teeth, and for some reason they put different braces on him than they put on Kami.

Easter

I brought Kami with me this year to get some Easter things for the kids, and we had a good time assembling baskets and hiding them around the house. When Shawn and I headed off to bed we found these creations, by Isabelle, sitting on our pillows: (I think the brown one is a bunny:)

I did manage to get a few pictures of the kids, but not until after church and after an egg hunt out in our wilderness. Maddie was already out of her church clothes, Isabelle had had enough of her hair paraphernalia and the boys were well on their way to filthy!

Later in the afternoon we went to Shawn's parents for Easter dinner. Andersons, Suzette, Grovers, us and one of their missionaries from the Oklahoma mission were all there. There were a few different seating places to accommodate so many (about 27 bodies) and I took a couple of pictures before everyone was all settled in:

Around the table, back left to front: Ainsley, Gracie, Belle, Madeline, Abby, Sam, Sander, Nolan, Isaac

After dinner we had a concert and everyone that has been working up a piece, on the piano or violin, for festival, performed their pieces. This is never a big hit with the littlest members of the family, but they sat pretty quietly:
Meanwhile, Abram snuck off to clean up anything still laying out that looked remotely tasty:
And the second that the concert was proclaimed complete all the little boys jumped on Shawn:

Then Suzette started playing the piano and some of the kids gathered around to sing:

l-r: Abby, Ellie, Isabelle, Suzette, Kamille, Madeline

And those are some bits and pieces from our Easter!

How to build an arbor- it's a family affair!

I just had another birthday:

I had a picture taken with Caden, because he figured out a way to make me a sugar- free Devil's Food birthday cake. And boy was it nice to be able to have some cake!

This year Shawn built me a beautiful arbor for my birthday present:

He still wants to add some gates, but I think that is a project for another weekend:)

Anyways, it was really fun because the first arbor-building-day, Shawn and the kids worked together on it, mixing and pouring cement to set the posts- it was a beautiful day.
I was running the tiller on the garden at the time, and it was so great to see them all working together, that I had to have someone run and get me the camera and it seemed like every time I was coming down a row in their direction I just had to snap another picture. (I'll spare you posting all of them though!:)

The next day Shawn cut out pieces and set them all up in the garage to be painted. While a blizzard raged outside, we painted away!

Finally, on Saturday, which was once again a beautiful sunny day, I got up early and put another coat of paint on everything, we gave the kids instructions to paint the posts outside...


and Shawn and I headed to a stake baptism.

When we got home everything was ready to go, Shawn assembled it and - voila!! It looks great, and I am so excited about it!

toilet talk

Well, it seems like Abram just got through the stage of getting into toilets only to be back into it again with a vengeance! Suddenly he is back into dashing into the bathroom every chance he gets because he "needs to blow his nose" and "drain the toilet" - his words for flushing the toilet.

If I'm not on the ball, he can easily work his way through a roll of toilet paper, but luckily the toilet never gets plugged up because he likes to "drain the toilet" so much!

Last week at the library the theme in the children's section must have been "potty books" because, holy moly, they sure had a lot of potty training books on display. Nolan determined that we should check a bunch of them out and get working on Abram. We got the "cars" theme toilet seat out, or as Abram calls it, the "Ka-chow" seat, and asked Abram if he wanted to try sitting on it. He did, but at the last minute as I was sitting him down on it, he changed his mind, straightened his legs and one of his feet ended up in the toilet. For the rest of the day he told everyone he saw that he fell in the toilet and that it was s-c-a-r-y!!

I haven't felt like Abram is ready, and have told Nolan this, but as I have said, Nolan is determined that it is time for him to learn. I have told Nolan that he can be the trainer and he is taking his role very seriously. Every day he "reads" Abe some of his potty training books:

Then, he asks Abram if he wants to sit on his potty seat. His tactic works about 50% of the time. When it does, he is ecstatic, because as "trainer" he gets to share in the rewards. (CANDY!!) This morning, Abram kept acting like he was going to sit on the toilet, only to keep changing his mind at the last minute. Nolan is very frustrated. Who knows? Maybe Nolan will miraculously train Abe...and hooray! I'd be ecstatic! But if not, Abram WILL eventually be potty trained, and Nolan will still feel like he managed to train him after a lot of hard work and effort, right? Meanwhile, it's pretty cute to watch this whole process and relationship between the two of them.

Time with grandparents

Kami has been anticipating general conference weekend for a couple of weeks now. My parents decided to start a new tradition where they take their grandchildren, that are about the same age, to conference with them. They started with the oldest grandchildren, plus my younger brother, Eli, who is only three years older than Kami. Turns out that one of the grandchildren couldn't come, mom and dad therefore had an extra ticket, and Caden was able to go along, as well.

Above l-r are: Caden (12), Kami (14), Ila (15), Abby (18) and Eli (17)

They saw all the sites on temple square, toured the Beehive house - Brigham Young's home - went to conference sessions and swam until 11:00 every night at the hotel and had a wonderful time with their grandparents, uncle and cousins.


The had tickets to the Saturday morning session, and got into the tabernacle for the Saturday afternoon session and also the priesthood session for dad, Eli and Caden.

Kami's new look

Can you notice anything different about this smile?
Yep, Kami got braces on today. Caden was supposed to as well, but his ended up not coming in - so he will get his next week. I just kept putting this off because braces are SO EXPENSIVE!! BUT, Caden came home last month and told me that lately, ever so often when he is talking, he accidentally whistles through the space in his front teeth "and it's really loud!" He found it rather humorous, but me...I decided that it was time to 'get her done'.

Poor Kami was our guinea pig, as usual. I never had to get braces, so I had no idea what she was in for. Not only for the contraption they make you endure while they place the braces:

But also for what you feel like after you get them on. She couldn't eat most of the lunch that I sent to school with her - I guess you need foods that you don't have to chew much for the first couple of days after getting them on. Poor girl- But she'll surely have some beautiful teeth in a couple of years!

And out it came!

Isabelle has had a pretty loose tooth and yesterday she decided that she wanted Shawn to pull it. That's a new experience around here - usually our kids take care of losing their teeth by themselves. Shawn couldn't get hold of Belle's tiny tooth with his big fingers, so he tried dental floss. Too slippery. So he tried thread and out it came! We're excited to have a toothless smile around these parts once again:)