Life has been busy....

This summer is just flying by! I guess most of you know by now but for those who don't Kyli is officially back in Utah living with us. Kalun and I drove to California and picked her up on June 25th. We got into town the 24th and drove straight to the beach.


We picked Kyli up the next morning. We drove to Vegas where Kyli spent the night at her dad's then we got up and drove home!!!

Reunion
That same weekend we had a big reunion. We got to zipline which was a lot of fun.

4th of July
We did our fireworks on the 3rd which was fun because on the 4th Kyli and I and Kalun's sister and her daughter, and our other niece all went to the stadium of fire for girls night to see the Jonas Brothers. It was a lot of fun, I've never been to the stadium of fire. It's been so amazing having Kyli back home we are not taking one moment for granted. However, there is still a lot of legal junk to get worked out so I spend a lot of my spare time working on that.

The rest of July
Kalun's mom's husbands grandkids are in town for three weeks and are close to Kyli's age so they've been spending alot of time at our house. We made homemade cookies the other night which they thought was amazing because they've never made them from scratch. Haylie takes after me a little too much sometimes, she loves the cookie dough. We also had another family reunion and repainted and moved the rooms around in the basement to get Kyli settled.

Then this week Kalun took a day off for some family time and we went to Liberty Land. We had a lot of fun.




Then thursday we took Haylie up to Primary Children's to see a cardiologist about her murmur. After a chest x-ray and an EKG they determined she had a Stills murmur which is completely innocent and she will just grow out of it, so that was a relief to hear. Now we are on a search for a new car. We sold our Rodeo today. We feel bad Kyli is squished between 2 carseats and decided it's time to upgrade to a larger vehicle. So now the rush is on to find a new vehicle before our upcoming vacation.

June's Flying By.....

So, I have no pictures to post about anything we've done this month. It seems like life has been crazy, so I went to pull out the trusty camera to post on here and there are no pictures, so I guess I'll just write about it. The first week of June I got to go to Girl's Camp. It was so much fun! I forgot to take my camera. The first night, Sis. Dalton, the General YW President came up to dedicate the Virtue flag, it was amazing. We did lot's of hiking, lot's of eating, we got to do a challenge course (that was so fun, and involved a zip-line). I got to help pass off the first aid and CPR certification for the stake which was so fun. But most of all I had so much fun with the girls.

Tate has spent most of June playing with friends. He thinks it's absolutely the end of the world he is not playing with a friend at all times. He cries every night when I make him come inside. He has also spent the summer getting bitten alive by mosquitos, which isn't good for a kid who's allergic to them! I finally took him in to the Dr because the swelling of one was so bad and found out he had pneumonia. He hadn't even been acting sick! Those couple of days of healing were torture for Tate, not because he felt very sick, but because he couldn't play with any friends.

Haylie has spent her summer trying to keep up with Tate. She wants to be everywhere Tate is. If he goes to a friends house without her she stands by the door screaming for an hour at a time. We also found out in May at her 2 yr check up she has developed a heart murmur. We went back a week ago to recheck it and it is still there. So now we have to go see a cardiologist at Primary Children's next month. Hopefully, it will be an innocent murmur and won't require surgery, but we're keeping our fingers crossed until our appointment.

Besides that we have been dealing with Lawyers once again with Kyli stuff. It has been a very crazy month with lots of drama. Hopefully this time things will work out. Kalun's been playing in his football league, the championship game is this afternoon. Unfortunately I don't get to go to very many of his games because they are usually Satuday mornings and I am usually sleeping after working all night.
Well, that's June in a nutshell so far.

Tate's 4th Birthday

Tate turned 4 on Memorial Day. I can't really believe my oldest is 4. He is getting so grown up all the sudden. We had a little party with mostly family and a couple close friends. We did the slip n' slide, jumped on the tramp with the sprinklers, had pizza,
broke open a pinata, and had cake and ice cream. It was really fun! Kalun and I are so lame that the slip n' slide looked so fun that we even put on our swimsuits and did it, and it was a lot of fun!


Tate's cakes didn't quite turn out as planned. The one that's supposed to be a soccer ball didn't turn out so well, but oh well, he didn't care.
We were just finishing cleaning up and I had gone in the other room to get cleaned up for our next event of the day and came back out and Haylie was sitting on the counter just eating Tate's cake. I asked her what she was doing and she looked at me like "what??" It made me laugh so hard. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.That night we went to my grandparents for a hot dog roast. I forgot my camera and I'm so mad because my grandpa got out his tractor and started letting all the great grrandkids drive it with him. Haylie thought it was the coolest thing ever and when we took her off to give someone else a turn she just screamed! I think she ended up having more turn than anyone because she likes it so much. I think my dad got some pics I'll have to get him to send them to me and I'll post them later. Overall it was a very good Birthday and Memorial Day.

A New Niece!

I'm so excited to announce the arrival of my beautiful little niece. My brother Chad and his wife Camie are amazing people and waited a very long time for this precious angel. The funniest part is that she came early so I had planned a baby shower for the day they were able to bring her home, so Kinzie Danielle Harper, got to appear at her own shower.
Baby Kinsie with her proud parents!

Terrible 2's

I swear, the day Haylie turned 2 it was like there was a switch flipped. Can you say terrible two's?!! It all started about a week before her birthday when I realized she was about to turn two and was still in love with her binki. When I say in love I mean wanted it 24 hours a day, and wouldn't go to sleep without it. Tate never took a binki so I didn't have to deal it. I always swore that if I had a binki kid I would wean them when they turned one. Well, that came and went and here we were. I made a decision that my kid wouldn't turn 2 with a binki so I took it away that day. There were a couple of rough days, but not really as bad as we expected. I told her all the binks were gone and she cried sometimes, but never asked for one. Well, seriously the week after her birthday everything changed. She all of the sudden started crying and asking for her binks. She started throwing giant tantrums at nap time and bed time because she wanted her binki. Well, since then the tantrums have become a constant all day event. She throws fits if I look at her. I started having to leave her in bed screaming for 30-45 minutes at nap time before she would become exhausted and finally fall asleep. Now, every night she throws huge tantrums at bedtime. She refuses to get on her PJ's and if we fight them onto her, she takes them right off. So, then we found if we put her in old sweats it tricked her for a while, however, now that has worn off. And to top it off, all this time screaming in bed, she figured out how to climb out of her crib. So now I can't just throw her in bed and let her cry it out. Why can't I have one of those kids who stays in their crib until their 3? But hey I should look at the bright side, we had to take Tate out of the crib at 17 months because he started jumping out, at least Haylie is graceful and I'm not worried she's going to break something. Anyway, I found myself feeling bad for the neighbors the other day because I've been leaving my windows open with this nice weather and I realized they are probably just as sick of listening to her trantrums as I am! So, the other day I was exhausted and tired of the nap time fight, so I turned on cartoons for Tate in my bedroom and I went and laid on the couch. While I laid there debating what on earth to do with my crazy child, she ran around leaving a path of destruction. After a while I realized I hadn't seen her for a while and went to find her. There she was sound asleep on my bed, holding Tate's very special monkey with Tate's very special blanket (that no one is allowed to touch) spread over her and Tate was rubbing her back. I just stood there in shock, Tate finally noticed me and simply said, "Haylie was tired so I put her to sleep for you mommy." Then he sat there rubbing her back giving me the shhh sign. It was so adorable.Unfortunately, that trick has not worked since and the tantrums continue. I hope I survive these terrible 2's!!

Haylie is 2!!

I know this is really late but what can you do, life gets busy. Haylie is now 2 which is so hard to believe, maybe because she's so tiny, that I genuinely forget how big she is getting. She had a great b-day.

Haylie Discovers Dirt

I have been so anxious for spring to come. With the nice weather this week we spent a lot of time outside. We went to the Tulip Festival at Thanksgiving Point, and all got sunburned, oops! I didn't realize it was that warm. But, now that spring is starting to arrive, I realize I really don't know if I like spring. My allergies have been horrible this last week. Then my kids love to play outside, which is great except that all the kids in the neighborhood are obsessed with dirt and sand. I hate dirt and sand. I hate cleaning my kids and house after they've played in it. However, I've been trying really hard to be a better mom and try to quit worrying so much about things being/or getting dirty and relaxing and letting the kids have fun. Well, I relaxed Tate and Haylie played in the dirt for over an hour with the neighbors. By the time we went inside I decided I still hate dirt! It took almost a half hour of head scrubbing to get the dirt out of Haylie's hair, it was just embedded. Then I had to do the same for Tate. Of course then I had to scrub my bathtub which is supposed to be white and had since turned brown. Anyway, after all was said and done I have realized next time I would rather be the not fun mom and not let my kids play in the dirt.

Spring Break with Kyli

Kyli got to fly out here for 6 days over spring break. It is always so fun to have her here. We miss her so much and are always grateful for any time we get with her. We wanted to take full advantage of her time here. We ran like crazy. We went and saw Monsters VS Aliens, we went to the Gateway Children's Museum...



we rented Bolt (which is hilarious by the way), we made and decorated Easter cookies...

We played a lot of Wii, we went bowling (Kyli has never been), went to jump-on-it, went swimming, and spent lots of time with family and friends. We had so much fun. I am exhausted and feel like I need a whole day in bed to recover.

Easter

This morning we took a few minutes to talk about Easter and what it's really about. It's funny to try to explain it to Tate so he can understand. Then we let them find a few eggs and their baskets. The kids were so excited to get candy and chocolate they refused to put it down while I was trying to get their pictures with their baskets, oh well they are my children after all what did I expect?

More Easter Egg Hunts

It seems like we got to do a lot of easter egg hunts this year. The kids loved every single one. We do an egg hunt with my best friends parents. She is an only child so they only have 2 grandkids so they invite my kids to do stuff sometimes. They have an awesome back yard for an egg hunt the kids always love going to their house.


Then it has been a tradition since I can remember to go to my grandparents house the Saturday before Easter. They live on a big farm and they do an easter egg hunt for the great grandkids and younger grandkids. Some years it's out in the fields and some years they do it in their barn. This year because of all the rain eggs were hidden all over the bay in the hay. The kids thought it was a lot of fun climbing all over the hay searching for eggs.