Stuff

Lately the kids have been sleeping longer in the morning these days. With the exception of Landry, who likes to wake up at 7:00am usually. So before everyone gets up I like to take this time to go outside and water the flowers and just take in a little peace and quiet. The other day, I spotted this beautiful dragonfly resting on our bush out front. I was bummed that I didn't have any of the kids awake to share it with, so I pulled out the camera and showed them later.

So last week was just one of those weeks. It seemed like anything we had planned didn't happen for some reason or another. The plan Monday was to take Kelci to her ENT appointment for some pre-op things they needed to go over before the surgery on Wed. But while we were out that morning at Target, she started to feel really ill. She had already been dealing with a runny nose and cough for about 8 days, so I wasn't completely surprised, but I knew this wasn't going to be good for her planned surgery. So instead of heading off to our next scheduled stop, we had to detour to our pediatrician (with all five kids with me, sounds fun uh). He determined that she had a bad sinus infection and would need to postpone her surgery for another 2 weeks (right before school starts...bummer).

The next day, I decided we would go to the dollar movie at the local theater. So we got ready, jumped in the car and drove to the 10:00am show, pulling into the parking lot I quickly realized that no one else was there and we had come a day early, opps. So we drove over to Costa Vida to say hello to Daddy and took care of a couple of other errands that day. Around 1:00pm I received a text from Chrystina that she was in labor and delivery and was dilated to a 5! We were so excited and when Bryan arrived home we made the trip down to go and see our new nephew.


Here is Brandon Clark Collins. Born prematurely at 36wks and 7days at a whopping 9lbs 7oz and was 21 inches long. We don't even want to thing about how big he would have been in 3 weeks. We are just so excited for Craig and Chrystina and there family, that have waited a long time for this little guy.

Here is Tyler meeting his new brother and checking out how little his hands are. So precious!

Minature Golf and Bugs

Maybe having everyone say "Lake Tahoe" was not the best thing to say for a picture...too funny!

One of the activities we like to do while in Tahoe is play minature golf. Sort of makes me laugh when you think about all the things you can do at the Lake, but hey the kids love it! We are not quite ready for hikes and rafting yet, those things can wait right. I'm pretty sure this was Brody's favorite activity, he just ran from one hole to the next, always lining up his ball where he wanted it. We bend the rules of course. I think we even had a couple of hole in ones.

Lake Tahoe

This has become a great family tradition for our family. Bryan's parents get a condo up in Tahoe for a few days and everyone joins in when they can for some fun. It has become something that we look forward to every summer. This year we got smart and actually bought some beach umbrellas, this helped beat the heat out on the beach. The kids had a great time playing in the sand and water. We actually went to two different beaches this year and spent a few hours at each. Besides having to deal with a few diaper issues, it was pretty relaxing. After the beach we all decided to take a swim in the pool back at the condo. It felt great to get into the water and swim and play with the kids. Tyler was so cute, he was trying so hard to get Grandpa in the water so he could teach him how to swim, unfortunately it didn't work. We had a great time playing scrabble back at the condo and teaching the kids how to play uno. I already can't wait until next year to go back.

Landry is 4months

Yes, it's true my little Landry is now 4 months old. I suppose I shouldn't refer to him as little Landry, because he is anything but little. He has grown so much in the last two months! It makes me sad to watch him grow so quickly, but I am so glad he is healthy and happy.

Here he is stepping into Lake Tahoe for the first time. He didn't even seem to mind that the water was a little cold. He is such an easy going kind of kid, we all
appreicate this.

He is learning new tricks all the time, including finally getting his little head off that ground while playing on his tummy. Some of his other tricks right now include, trying to sit up in his carseat, spitting up all over his clean clothes after just being changed (I love that one), and of course smiling his cantagious grin at everyone.

Of course I shouldn't forget to mention Landry's great timing, he almost always poops out of his diaper at the best times. Here is at the beach with poop up his back. More than once we have been getting ready to head out the door, and I will go to get him and discover he has pooped out his diaper.

This is where he takes most of his naps. As long as it is before 8:30pm he will travel happily where ever it is you need to go. After that you can count on him letting you know he would prefer to be anywhere but that carseat.

For about 6 years it was all about girls in this house, and I must say it is nice to have boys now.

Something you don't see everyday...

Here is something you don't see everyday. Emery fell asleep while watching a show Saturday afternoon. Of course it took falling asleep at 3:00am that morning at a slumber party to do it!!!

Happy 4th Birthday Cambree

I'm finally getting around to blogging about Cambree's birthday party. Has it really been 4 yrs? There really is no slowing anything down when it comes to kids growing up. She was so excited to have a party, it was all I heard about for 2 weeks. Since she doesn't really understand what tomorrow and yesterday mean, it gets frustrating to her. Finally the night before her party she told me, "mommy can you just tell me when it is time for the party."

One of the games the kids always love to play is hot potato with the water balloons. When all of the kids have had a turn popping the balloon on themselves than they can run to the bucket and have a water balloon fight, which only lasts a couple of minutes. Brody was just taking two balloons out at the same time and tossin them onto the grass. He thought this was great.




Here are some fun facts about Cambree.
~She has great facial expressions, they almost always bring a smile to your face.
~She is not afraid to share her opinions with you, good or bad.
~When people told her happy birthday her response was happy birthday back to them.
~She loves to sing everything and will often make up songs to sing to me throughout the day.
~She loves her family.
~Would eat a peanut butter sandwich everyday for lunch, if I let her.
~Loves to wear dresses, for her birthday Auntie Angela made her a dress with disney fairies on it to wear! She loved it!
~One of the funniest things I can remember Chrystina telling me that she said while staying with them. She wanted to know why dogs don't wear clothes. Chrystina told her it was because they have hair all over there body and they don't need it. She told Chrystina, well my Daddy has hair all over his body and he has to wear clothes.

Cambree loves the cake that her Aunt Olivia made for her, and the ladybugs Mema made out of peanut butter, those didn't last long at all! It was a wonderful party for a"fabulous" little girl. She drives me nutty somedays, but it's moments like this that remind me of how special she is to our family. We love you Cambree!

Happy 4th of July

I like the 4th of July, it has always been one of my favorite holidays growing up. I think when I was little, I just loved the idea of being able to stay up late and wait for the firework show to began. One of the traditions we have is traveling down to Fairfield for the annual parade. It is a simple parade and the kids look forward to it every year. They love meeting family there and of collecting candy thrown there way.

Since we have to drive from so far in the morning, Mema always heads out early and scouts out a great location for everyone. Brody was already impressed with all the firetrucks and police units passing by. This year Brad and Ryan were in a SWAT car, but of course I was so busy staring at the firetrucks, I missed getting a picture of them. There is just something about those trucks, well actually we thought we saw someone else we knew on the truck :)

We even had a Pepa sighting at the parade!

Recently we saw Ice Age 3, which was hilarious, seriously. So we decided to take Bryan to see it after the parade. When we were done we headed over to the Collins house for a BBQ. Olivia helped the kiddos decorate cookies for everyone. Good thing we love those kids, because I saw Tyler lick the sprinkles off his fingers several times in between adding more sprinkles to his cookies. Yummy!

After dinner it was off to Vacaville to watch the firework show.

Grandma and Grandpa Collins have 8 grandchildren now, soon to have 9 though. One of the joys of being 8 months pregnant is you make a great pillow during a firework show.


Of course part of our celebration is wearing anything red,white, or blue. Mema made the kids cute necklaces and Olivia made the kids cute headbands to wear. After Olivia gave Cambree her headband, she asked her where her wand was. Cambree is such a girlie girl.
Happy Birthday America, we are so blessed!

Idaho

Recently Bryan's wonderful parents invited Emery, Kelci, Landry and myself to come along with them to Idaho to visit Cragen and Jenna. Everyone agreed that to take Brody and Cambree would have been tough, with so much drving, etc. So Bryan stayed back to work and take care of those two.

We had a such a great time together. For me it was something I have been wanting to do with Emery and Kelci for awhile and I was really thankful that my in-laws were willing to bring us along.

We were gone 6 days, and actually traveled around and through in some cases 6 states, California, Nevada, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and Utah. All of the kids did awesome in the car. Poor Kelci got a little car sick shortly after we started the drive, which was a first for any of my kids. After that little episode, she was fine. Landry handled being confined to a carseat really well. He really only got fussy when he was hungry, or when it was approaching bedtime at night. No suprises there, he does the same thing at home. I took over 300 pictures on this trip....so this is going to make choosing what post interesting, I hate decisions like this.

The highlights of our trip included:
*Spending time with Jenna and Cragen.
*Seeing how much Rexburg has grown, along with touring BYU-Idaho.
*Swimming at the hotel, this was Landry's first time, and he loved it.
*Bear World, located just outside of Rexburg, this is a great place to see A LOT of bears and other animals.
*Shopping in Idaho Falls in the middle of a crazy thunderstorm.
*Yellowstone, oh that place is amazing, Heavenly Father created some marvelous things for us to enjoy! The kids loved it.
*Touring Salt Lake Temple Square, which was a first for the girls, always beautiful.
*Last but not least, making wonderful memories with Grandma and Grandpa. They are so generous to us and just know how to make a LONG trip into a FABULOUS trip.

The Rexburg Temple was so beautiful. Jenna has a view of this right outside her apartment.

Landry pouring on his charm!

A Grizzly Bear wandering around at Bear World. I learned that there are no more Grizzly Bears living in Californa.

Feeding some bears at Bear World, these bears can actually come right up to your car, even climb on top if they want. Luckliy they just hung out on the side of the road for us, so cool.

The kids had a great time playing with Jenna and Cragen in the pool.

I just love this picture!

One of the first things we saw at Yellowstone was a large herd of buffalo crossing the street and causing caught a traffic jam doing so. This was one of the few that were still pretty close to the road by the time we drove by. If you look in the back you can see a calf laying down. These animals are so much bigger close up!

Waiting patiently for Old Faithful to do her thing. It was a little cold and windy, but of course little did we know we were actually all getting nice sunburns while sitting there...even Landry, what a bad mom. Kelci shared with us after waiting for about 40 minutes, that her patience were running out!


Here we are sitting right next to a waterfall. This was so neat, none of us have ever been so close to the brink of a waterfall, there was even a rainbow glowing right above the crashing water.

Ok, I'm not sure why, but this picture is sort of funny to me. It could be the fact that we put the stoller up on this block, or the fact that you can't even really see Landry at all, just feet. Whatever it is, the Temple sure is pretty.

It was a lot of fun to spend sometime with my girls without all the little interruptions we often have at home. Thank you again Grandma and Grandpa!