Charlotte at 6

Charlotte turned 6 on the 14th.  I had so many things to do to get ready for her birthday and other things, that I had to post pone the post about her until now in favor of getting some sleep.
Charlotte likes to draw.  Her artwork makes a sharp contrast with what Isaac produces.  He always [...]

Christmas Thoughts: Presents

Our family has celebrated Christmas in what seemed like tough circumstances the last couple of years. In 2009, we’d just moved to Tennessee and didn’t really know many people. We missed our families a lot. We’d just had a new baby and so we didn’t put a lot of effort into making the time special [...]

The next best thing to being there

With all the pictures and videos I took on Ila’s birthday, this post should be the next best thing to actually being able to celebrate Ila’s birthday with her!

Wacky Hair Day

It’s wacky hair day at school today:One of the neighbor boys had some party poppers this morning, so Isaac added some color to his crazy hair on the way to the bus:

Videos of the Birthday Girl

Here are some fun recent videos of Ila:

One of her favorite activities is having me write her name:
She was making our little nativity figures play ring-around-the-roses, but when I got out my camera, she decided to play the game herself:

My Ila Jane

My little Ila turns 2 tomorrow.  She was named after my beloved grandmother, Ila O’Bryant.  My grandma always seemed to just radiate love.  My little Ila is the same way to me.  Her siblings genuinely love her and enjoy being around her and she loves them too. There is some indescribable quality about her that [...]

Pictures from my phone

I just noticed the other day that the pictures from my phone were mysteriously on my computer.  This is good, because I have never taken the time to figure out how to get them from my phone to my computer (I know, I should be ashamed of myself).  Anyway, here are two that I took [...]

Eustace Bunny

This is Eustace:This is a Eustace colored bunny that we saw at the pet store:Here is a Eustace cow:The kids love finding animals that look like Eustace.  I can’t remember a long drive that we have taken where we haven’t found a whole pasture full of Eustace Cows.  We call him our cow-colored cat and [...]

Thanksgiving Review

Instead of an all inclusive detailed retelling of our day/weekend, I decided to just post a few pictures and comments on our Thanksgiving this year.
This is the Thanksgiving pie we made.  We covered the top with cut outs of things we were thankful for that I also had cookie cutters in the shape of.  The [...]

Thanksgiving Thoughts

It’s never a bad time to count your blessings, but today is a great day to do it. Things may change tomorrow, but even if they do, I’ll be glad for all I’ve been blessed with today.
And I do mean blessed. I know some people think it’s just luck or genius that determines our place [...]

A visit from my Mom

My mom came to visit last week.  I can’t tell you how eagerly I anticipated our visit since the last time I saw her was at the airport when we moved to Seattle.  Unfortunately, all 4 of my kids developed colds just before she arrived and I was just starting to get a cold.  Within [...]

Trick or Treating

The kids got 3 chances to try out their costumes this year.  The first one was an impromptu trip to the Kent library with some of our friends for Halloween stories and a few pieces of candy.The second time they wore their costumes was for the ward Trunk-or-Treat on Friday night. Great-Grandma Cochran, Great-Uncle Gayle, [...]

Halloween Costumes

I got lucky this year and didn’t have to buy any costumes, although I am planning to shop for some after-holiday costumes to fill out our dress-ups. 
Charlotte really wanted to be Rapunzel and luckily a friend of ours wasn’t using her Rapunzel dress this year and lent it to us.  I made Charlotte some [...]

Charlotte’s Apple Party

On Friday, the little girls and I were able to go to Charlotte’s Kindergarten class for their annual “Apple Party.”  (I suspect this is their way to have a party without celebrating Halloween, Isaac’s class is having a no costume Fall party)
They had been talking about apples and doing art projects featuring apples the entire [...]

Videos of Ila

Here are some videos that I took of Ila today:

Ila’s Favorites

Ila’s current favorite book is “A Sick Day for Amos McGee.”  She calls it “Elephant.”  She likes the page of the story where Amos is having breakfast and wearing socks and she likes thet page where he’s walking down the street.  She likes to find the bus and the Elephant and the balloon on many [...]

Snapshots of Nicole playing

Nicole loves to make lines of people, animals and vehicles and then move them along the floor or carpet.  It can be a slow process when the line is long and has lots of individual figures to move:Also, she often changes into her PJs in the middle of the day, sometimes she wears multiple pairs [...]

What can I say, it’s an update, albeit an unimpressive one

I feel like I never update my blog these days.  At the end of the day I just want to go to bed and pre-bedtime blogging seems impossible right now.  The last several nights I’ve told myself that I’d sit down and write something–obviously that hasn’t been happening.  So for the next several months, I [...]

It’s a boy!

We had our ultrasound for baby #5 today.  I have to say that I don’t understand the draw to waiting to find out, I eagerly anticipated the day of our ultrasound mostly because of the gender identification.  It always makes the baby seem so much more real when I can imagine a little him [...]

Christmas Lists are Up

Zach and I have been working to compile a Christmas gift recommendations list for our family.  It’s still a draft, but you can find it on the Christmas tab or here.  We will continue to update the list as we think of new ideas.