End of school craziness!

The first day of summer vacation seems like the perfect day to pay tribute to the crazy month of May and it's end of school extravaganzas. With four kids in school now our schedule was crazy but we had fun honoring our kids and celebrating their accomplishments. 

First off was Laine, she was honored at awards night! We were super happy for her and though we have no pictures I do have a picture of her "award- winning" pancakes, turns out the hours we have spent watching the Food Network as a family has taught her a few things.

I was lucky enough to get to attend Matt's first field trip! We took a visit to Wheeler Farm where Matt and his friends enjoyed the morning running around feeding ducks, checking out the animals and taking a hay ride! 

Eve participated in a school play where she stole the show as the funniest girl on stage. She just blossomed and came out of her shell, even the kids in James' class thought she was the best part. S

Matt decided that he was ready to graduate from preschool, I'm not sure if I was ready for that one though. He had a part where he spoke about the pledge then got to hold the flag while they said the pledge- he was super excited about that. 

James had an afternoon of singing patriotic songs....

...he was not happy that he had to sing or that grandmas and mom were there to support him. 

One highlight of our last week is that I won free meals at our favorite burger joint for a week.  

Everyone got a good burger and time with mom we had a lot of fun celebrating their accomplishments and planning what we were going to do with our summer vacation!

Nine on the Ninth!

Our sweet James celebrated his ninth birthday this last week. What can I say about our cute sweet boy who doesn't like his picture taken, who remembers everything that he reads. He is obsessed with Blob fishes and loves legos. This boy reads about a book a day and loves science fiction. 

He is also the best big brother. Matt adores him and wants to be just like him. Abby loves to play with James and he likes to play with her. He is smart and can spell any word that is thrown at him. He hates the spotlight but loves to play video games. We just love him.

Since he hates pictures I obliged for his birthday and only took a couple of pictures

We love you James. So glad you are nine. 

Easter 2016

It was a busy spring break. Not only did we go to Comic Con  but we also got to celebrate Easter with family. 

We started the week before Easter and celebrated with our Bellamy Family, we had a traditional Easter dinner (with one too many pans of funeral potatoes) and the traditional egg hunt. 

Look what I found! 

Eve trying to figure out where her parents hid the eggs
this year

Bellamy cousins! 

The next morning the kids woke up to find their baskets. They were all quickly found and everyone seemed happy. They had informed their parents this year that they now all only eat "good" chocolate. Meaning, they perfer to eat the Lindt or Ghiradelli stuff. So they were all super happy that those choices found their way into their baskets this year along with some new Disney Infinity characters.

"Hey, did any of you leave this little pink thing here"

"No takers, I guess I will claim it." 

We tried creating our own dyes this year with food coloring. The kids loved creating their own colors and I loved the way that they turned out.

The kids all got to pick out new church clothes for Easter, not a moment too soon because we had dresses that were getting too small, pants that had holes in the knees, and ties that were unraveling.
They each got to pick what they would wear, well not Abby. We got Abby's dress over a year ago.  And each of the outfits shows who they are, I love it.

Sisters

Brothers

These boys can't not goof off for more than one minute

So happy Easter from us to you!

Star Wars Blue and Gold

So last May I was asked to be a Cub Scout Den mother for James' Wolf Den.  I knew absolutely nothing about Cub Scouts, well I did remember my brother, Adam, earning his bobcat while we all stood around in the kitchen so I guess there was that. 

I have had fun with my little den. They are three of the cutest boys around and have some good giving heart. 

To celebrate the founding of scouts we had the traditional Blue and Gold Banquet, and to give a little bit of added fun we went with a Star Wars theme. 

I wish I had taken better picture of the decorations but they were awesome. We had lightsaber napkins, and some fun table decorations.  

As the boys (and their siblings) walked in they were given a pool noodle light saber. They had fun trying to keep the balloons up with the "force". 

We enjoyed Jabba the Hutt Dogs for dinner and it was hard to tear those boys away from their light sabers for a minute.

It was fun seeing what the boys had worked on over the last year. My little group had made recyclable robots, created their own dinosaurs, made rekenreks, and just had a ton of fun. It was fun to celebrate what we had done over the last year. 

After dinner their was more light saber fights, they even did well of not whacking each other...at least not hard.

By far my biggest surprise was getting Darth Vader from the Alpine Garrison to come and speak and help us with awards. He gave a great speech on the importance of scouting, it was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. The boys loved this surprise. He also helped hand out awards and had words of encouragement for each of the boys.

Vader was even happy to pose for pictures after. 

We did take a picture with our entire family but the person who was taking the picture didn't hold down the button so alas no family picture with Vader.

We were so proud of James that night who earned his Wolf advancement as well as six belt loops. I will miss being his den mother when he leaves to the Bear group in a few weeks.  

Back to school

Since I was a kid I have thrived on routine. We attribute this to the flip chart schedule my mom put me on as a small child (it was awesome and epic and I believe still up in the her attic). Because of this love of routine I have always enjoyed the start of school, I am also a big fan of office supplies and shopping for office supplies. This is one of my favorite times of year and the kids seemed excited about it too. 

This year we had a big change in the back to school routine, we added in another school. For the past two years it has been one drop off and pick up. But we have added a seventh grader this year....

Laine started at Olympus Junior High this year. She is getting big fast, she was in first grade when Christian and I got married. She was nervous about starting junior high but also excited. She made a few friends in her first couple of days and was super excited that one of her new friends was also named Laine, something that she has never encountered before. 

Eve was so excited to start fifth grade that she was bouncing while I took her picture, it was hard to capture a good one. 

Eve has one of the best teachers ever hence her excitement. There are already plans for a spook alley, a climb up Mt. Timpanogos, and a pirate store. Eve was also excited that this year she can participate in FPS with her friends.  

James was starting third grade this year and while school shopping the only shirt he liked was this one...

He wore a Star Wars shirt last year too, so it must be a theme. James is still our quiet shy boy.  But he has a great memory and loves anything to do with science. He is so cute and was excited to start a new year. 

These two had quite an adventure the first day of school. They are bus riders and have been riding the same route for the past three years and were pretty good at it. Well the bus arrived after school and I watched kids pile off, unfortunately they were not my kids.  I went over to talk to the bus driver and sure enough the kids weren't on there. It being the first day of school the bus driver didn't remember them at all and at most of the stops she had been on the phone with district transportation trying to help a girl who had gotten on her bus accidentally.  One of my kids' school mates, who was on the bus, said he remembered seeing them that morning but not in the afternoon. By now I was freaking out a little (okay, a lot). The bus driver got the school on the phone and people started to look for them up there, then we were on the phone with transportation calling the other bus drivers for Morningside trying to see if they had any extra kids or if they remembered mine getting off the bus.While they were doing that I was on the phone with Christian, who was home with the three other kids, and my in-laws just in case the kids had missed the bus and decided to walk to their house.  After thirty minutes of no luck the district decided to involve their officers. While I waited for their call I started working the bus route backwards, as I was pulling into Olympus Junior High the officers called and started asking questions, I began answering them and then I saw two figures sitting on the curb. Sure enough it was my two kids had gotten off at the wrong stop and just sat waiting. Later when we asked them why they got off I heard, "because I thought it was Monday." (they used to get off at that stop on Mondays last year when taking kung fu) and "I got off because James got off".

So after several phone calls to the parties out searching for the kids, and to the secretary at the elementary school to let them know it was all okay, we laughed a bit and tried to let the kids know that in a few days they would see this as an adventure and have a great story to tell their kids one day about the first day of fifth and third grade.

Here's to hoping that the rest of the school year is less eventful!!!

It's Great to be Eight

James turned eight this last week and we celebrated in style and all weekend long. James is a quiet boy who is still really shy, especially around pretty women. He is also a lego builder. He loves the complex lego sets and sits for hours putting them together. He also loves Minecraft and would play for hours if we let him.  He also dislikes pizza, the first kid I ever met that disliked pizza but loves all other Italian food. 

He chose a chocolate raspberry cake for his birthday. I loved making this one and it seemed to be enjoyed by everyone. 

Then he opened quite a few legos sets and books, his two most favorite things in the entire world. 

James got a birthday party this year and because of my rough pregnancy (and the thought of ten eight year old boys running around the house made me cringe just a tad) we decided to do a party at the local pool. James loves swimming and this was a perfect party for him and us.

 I loved that they provided everything, other than the cupcakes, and even did the clean up. I loved that and James seemed to have a good time too.

Saturday was James' baptism. He was so excited to have his family and so many neighbors present. He even smiled for a few pictures, which is like pulling teeth in most cases. 

So proud of James and what a great young man he is. He is a great little brother and a fabulous big brother. We are so grateful he is part of our family. 

It's a Girl

Christian here, posting for Natalie. Sincere apologies for the many months without a post. We've been pretty busy at the Bradley home. I probably ought to get the big news out of the way first up, we're pregnant, and it's a girl.

For those who haven't spent much time with us lately, Natalie has managed to be pregnant for 12 of the last 17 months (two back to back miscarriages, those sucked), and we still have three months to go. Natalie has magic pregnancy powers that make it morning all day long, and by that I mean that morning sickness is active around the clock. We had some real fun for a couple of months when she had to go on a daily IV drip to keep from dying of dehydration, just glad we were able to do it with the home hospice care service or we would have basically been living at the hospital. Baby Bellatrix as we've been calling her (no, that's not what we're naming her) has been about as much trouble as Matthew was in utero, but at least this one made it past the end of the first trimester so we're all pretty happy about it. We're due in July

That's probably enough baby stuff, what else has been going on around here? Lots.

Seeing the Christmas lights at the zoo.

Meeting stormtroopers at Comic-con.

Singing.

Cooking.

Snuggling cousins.

Growing mustaches.

Playing fetch.

Seeing American landmarks done in Legos.

Playing basketball.

Gardening.

And a whole bunch of other stuff, you know, Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Years, work, play, school, all the usual. We'll keep you posted, just figured we should put something up in case you thought we just didn't want to blog anymore.

-Christian