One Week

It is amazing how much can happen in a week. When we left for Texas Averi could kind of scoot a couple of feet. Well now one week later she is completely mobile. I think I have been vacuuming at least twice a day. She finds everything. She really can make it around the whole house. Here it kind of looks like the dog is cheering her on.
She has the funniest crawl she kind of just drags one leg along. It is really uncoordinated and cute! In these pictures since she escaped without clothes her knees were getting sore so she decided to go with the hands and feet approach.

In this last one she managed to stand up by the cabinets. I still am not sure how she managed it but when I was cooking dinner there she was standing up so big.

Time really does fly. It is amazing. It kind of feels like if I turn my back for just a second I will miss out on some major moments. Definately puts things in perspective for me in this fast paced life.

Milestones and Playdough

Miss Averi is growing up so fast! While I was in Texas she decided to try to take a few crawls. By Wednesday she was crawling all around the house. It is a spastic crawl but it gets her where she wants to be. I have to constantly be picking things up...you forget how many small toys the kids have until the baby gets moving. Today I caught her standing up on the stools. She was quite proud of herself.
Today the kids decided to have some fun with the playdough. They were entertained for so long. They really had some great imaginations today. They had so much fun.

Here is a picture of their creations. There is pizza that had been cut up and I believe that there is some pasta there as well. They had a whole tray of desserts created. And Averi was there customer. They were taking her order and everything.

Texas

So, I am so far off on my blog that I really don't know where to start. I promise that I did not fall off the face of the earth as some people may believe. No-instead I have been helping my husband get moved to Texas. It has been somewhat difficult to make this decision but we feel strongly it is the right one for us right now. This past weekend I drove down with him and we explored the area. It was actually quite fun! But then today I had to fly back home without him. Don't get me wrong, I was excited to get back to the kids. But really, I don't know how single moms do it. I know that we will all be stronger from the experience but it doesn't make it easy. I know that Court is hard at work trying to find us somewhere to live so we can all move down there. We are excited for our new adventure so wish us luck.

Christmas

I need to add Christmas for my memory. We had a great christmas this year. We are so blessed. I am including some picture with Santa in this post. They were taken the Sunday before christmas. It was so exciting. I was cooking some dinner and someone came to the door. Courtney went to get it and he yelled for the kids. I walked around the corner to see who it was and to my amazement it was SANTA! It was seriously so fun to have him come in and sit on our couch. I was way excited and I am pretty sure the kids thought it was neat. It is a memory I won't forget.

For Christmas Eve we went to Aunt LaDawn's house with all of her kids and grandkids. We ate yummy food, did our nativity scene with the kids all dressed up, and played a gift game. We had such a great time. We had to skip the annual silly string fight because it was raining...that would just be a super big mess.

Christmas was great with the kids getting just what they had wanted and spending time with family. My mom came over and opened presents with us and she even woke us up when she arrived (at 7:00 a.m.). I guess my kids didn't get the wake up at 4 gene. We had a delicious christmas breakfast, which Courtney cooks every year. This year we had hasbrowns, bacon, and omelets. Then we played, napped, and went over to have dinner at my mom's house.

Here is Averi with her new sippy cup. She was pretty funny because she basically sat with it hanging out of her mouth the whole morning.
Rylan got the airport to go with the geo trax train. He also got army guys and hotwheels cars.

Here is Jaxon with Santa at our house.

Kambree received a music box, cupcake maker, and HSM barbie dolls.

Jaxon got a hot wheels stunt track and bakugan. Please excuse my lovely head.

Here is Kambree with Santa. Somehow I believe she failed to get the memo that christmas is in the winter.

As you can see in this next one, Rylan loves santa. In his defense he really does like him....from a distance. Finally, we have a tradition of giving an ornament each year. We kind of try to make it symbolize something about the past year in the kids lives.

Kambree-a tooth ornament to signify her losing her teeth

Jaxon-a school bus to signify him starting school

Rylan-an ornament with a boxer (dog) with a santa hat on to show that we got our dog this year and he is positive he is in charge of her

Averi-a stocking with baby's first christmas

Courtney-a baby spoon to celebrate averi's birth

Kellee-a stork to celebrate averi's birth

We are truly so blessed and want to thank all of our friends and family for enriching our lives.

Snow Day

Since I am a month behind on my blogging I am going to make sure and add some old stuff so I have it recorded. Back in mid December the kids had a snow day. This definately needs to be documented because I think the last time it happened I was in high school. Anyway, the kids thought it was pretty funny. The thing of it is that it occured on a day when the kids had fun christmas stuff to do at school. Jaxon even had a few tears because they weren't going to be able to do their gingerbread houses. Because of all this, I decided I needed to make it a fun day and not just do chores and such during the day.

The first couple of pictures shows the kids water coloring. They love to do this but it always turns into a big mess. They had fun and no one tipped their cup of painty water over this time. That alone is an improvement.

Then we had to play in the snow. Here is Kambree with frozen hands when they were trying to make a snowman. Notice the no gloves. All we own is fabric mittens and they don't hold the moisture out so well so they had to be taken off due to the fact that they were soaked through.

Jaxon was working on his snow angel.

After the snow fun we had hot chocolate and watched a christmas movie. I think they had a good time and hopefully it will be a good memory because I don't think it will happen around here again for a while.

Time Flies

Well, I am really far behind on my blog. It seriously seems like time vanished. I first wanted to post about how big Averi is getting. She has decided that she will go ahead and try to be big. She is already thinking she should try to crawl. She is getting pretty good at getting up on her hands and knees and she even rocks back and forth but she hasn't successfully crawled yet. It is so strange to me that she is doing this already. All of my kids have been really late crawlers so for this family this is early. It is fun but it also makes me so sad. It seems like once they are mobile they just aren't a "baby" anymore. We will see how quickly she progresses into a full crawl. I think the other kids may be worried because they will have to be way better at picking up their things if we have a baby moving about.

Canning

So I had to post a picture of the fruits of my labor. I decided to attempt to can. Now I have never done this before but I figured it would help out my food storage. My neighbor helped me get a great price on chicken and so i went to work. And let me tell you, it was work! Courtney helped by cutting up all of the chicken while I prepared the bottles and lids. When I was done with all of it I had canned 36 pints. I am so relieved to be done with it. The only problem is that I am not really wanting to eat it. I am afraid I am going to poison us all. Now I now my pressure was high enough and it went long enough so hopefully I will be able to get over it. It is a little funny because I don't really even think about it when I open a can of chicken from Costco...Anyway, I am way excited that I was able to learn this skill and I know it will be delicious when I get to eating it.