Lilly Pilly Punkin' Silly

This is our sweet Lilly after she has gotten into mommy's makeup. If there is anything that can be gotten into and made a mess of - this girl can find it! She LOVES makeup, lotions, soap, shampoo - all that stuff is like gold to her. She will find it and find somewhere to spread it - usually on herself, and then somewhere in the house. Scissors are to cut anything she can find, pencils and crayons are to write on anything she can find, and gum is (of course) to put in her hair. What else?! She has been my WORST toddler at getting into things. I think it's a combination of being in a bigger house that has been harder to babyproof, less supervision because of the bigger house and more kids to supervise, older kids leaving things out for her to get into, and the simple fact that she is just a stinker! Hence the name "Lilly Pilly". If Lilly visits your house and you haven't seen or heard from her in a few minutes - you better go find her!

"This and That" (so you know we're still alive!)

April? Is that really the last time I posted ANYTHING?! Well, let's just say I'm kind of a blogging loser! The time just goes by too fast! I'm just quickly looking through my photos over the past few months to see what may be worth mentioning or seeing - to me anyway. These will be in reverse chronological order as to remain consistent with how the blog normally posts. That way we can pretend I've been blogging all along. :)
This is in the month of May. The kids helped plant flowers in our yard and this is where they were planting the giant Sunflowers. If you've been to our house in the last few months, you've seen that these Sunflowers that started from seeds are bigger than our trees!

This is also in May. This marks the beginning of my coupon shopping. In the past, I've just taken the kids with me to the grocery store. Shopping with coupons is quite another story. It just takes a lot more time and effort. As you can see all 3 kids knocked out after we finished - they were not up for the challenge. I now leave them home if at all possible if I'm doing couponing. :)

Luke

No, I'm not trying to start a new trend! This is just an example of something a rushed mother might do. I grabbed a pair of pants - the ones I thought Luke had been wearing that day as we rushed out the door to go somewhere. I didn't put them on until we got to our destination, and after a few minutes noticed that indeed these were not Luke's pants, but Cameron's shorts. Too late! He would just have to wear them. When we got home I decided to take a picture and document my stupidity. Glad I can laugh at myself!

Chad and Lilly

This was up at Bear Lake over Memorial Day weekend. The kids had fun at the beach, and I DID take a lot of beach pictures of the kids playing, but I thought this was a good opportunity to include Chad on our blog once in a while! :)

So the next thing I found was Easter. Yep - Easter was a long time ago, but here is the best photo I could get of all my kids (and Yoda). It's not very fun trying to get all the kids in a picture at once and from my photo files I can see that I only tried 7 times and this was number 7. I guess by that point we were all just DONE with trying so this is what we got. They are all looking, and smiling (sort of - Lilly) and I suppose that is about all I can ask for. Nice diaper shot Lilly!

This has caught us up to summer - and boy we have had a whole summer FULL of family, fun and sun so that will have to come later.

Easily Entertained

What more can I say? I guess zipping is funny!

20 Pounds of Chunky Goodness!!

Luke had his 6 month check-up and he was just 2 oz. shy of 20LBS.! He is going strong in the 95% for his height and 90% for weight - or the other way around I can't remember. This picture is very indicative of his personality. He is a happy, mellow baby, who smiles easily and pretty much loves life. We love our little Luker!

For comparison's sake, you can see how he now measures up to Lilly as she lovingly strangles him around the neck!

Beautiful Day at the zoo

This was the last week of February when there was still snow on the ground, but there was this gorgeous day out of nowhere and we were lucky enough to be able to take advantage of a free day at the zoo. Rilee was at school, but Cameron, Lilly and Luke got to go and my mom came along too. The kids had a lot of fun, but Lilly had a little trouble with the kids on the playground. There were a lot of kids old and young that didn't have very good manners on the snake slide. She got pushed down and shoved out of the way several times, but insisted on going on it several times anyway. Gotta love that girl's determination!
Luke and Grandma

He's GINORMOUS!

Isn't your 3 month old baby supposed to be smaller than your 2 year old? I can't believe how BIG this boy is getting! Luckily, Lilly thinks "baby Loot" is very sweet and loves to hold him and hug him. It's probably in her best interest to keep him on her good side since at this rate he'll be bigger than her in a few months!

Rilee's Baptism

She looks so old!!!! I can't believe we have a daughter old enough to be getting baptized. Rilee is just growing up so fast and changing so much. She planned the program for her baptism herself and made it very clear to me that SHE was going to make the calls to ask for people's participation and also to invite people. She wanted to invite all her school friends, but since school was out we could only invite those whose phone numbers we had. It was such a nice day and we really appreciate all those who participated and came and supported us.

This was the only family picture we got because Lilly was not exactly cooperating (as you can tell). The person taking the photo kept trying to get Lilly's attention and they were waiting for her to look at the camera. We know better than to wait for Lilly to be agreeable - -we just press on with whatever we're doing whether she likes it or not. Unfortunately Chad got caught in mid-sentence saying "just take the picture".