Lucy's Dance Recital

 Lucy's big dance recital was tonight.  She has been working all year on these dances for this performance tonight.  She did a ballet to "Cinderella's Wedding Ball" and a tap dance to "Happy Dancing Pony".  The pony dance was so awesome. They pretended to be ponies and even did gallops. Pretty cute. Lucy did a great job with her dances and enjoyed taking dance this past year. Edyn is by far the biggest fan of Lucy's dancing and insists on wearing her "pretty" while watching videos of Lucy's dance recital.  She's memorized some of the steps and can follow along pretty well.

Isak Man

 Isak turned 7 today. SEVEN! He loves to play board games with me, especially when he wins.  He will read anything he can get his hands on and his favorite books currently are the eyewitness science books and the national geographic book on space and the universe.  But he hates to write although it has gotten better through first grade, its definitely not his favorite.  He loves minecraft on the Xbox and asked for a minecraft party for his birthday.  He likes to play with Legos and build stuff as well as play with Lucy and her littlest pet shop stuff.  He loves his baby brother and is a great helper.  One of his favorite things to do is help me juice stuff and make different combinations of flavors.  He also likes to do science experiments and we usually have something on the kitchen counter that is in some stage of research.

Isak's first grade luau was pretty awesome.  This has been going on for over 30 years, even Kevin did this 26 years ago!  They learned several dances to different songs, Isak's class used shells to do their songs and they practiced for about a month before.  Sadly there was a sudden downpour before they could do their final dance and the hula but we got some pretty great videos nonetheless!

Kids and Quinn

 My big baby and my little baby.  Quinn is about 2 months here.

 Isak thought it was hilarious to put his baseball hat on Quinn before his game one Saturday.

 Edyn loves to lay on Quinn when he's in his bouncer and say "Quinny!" in a very high voice.

 This kid has a lot of tea parties and dress up in his future with two big sisters.

 He's so cute.  Love this sweet baby boy.

Isak's 7th Birthday

 My Isak turned seven today.  I brought ice cream cups to school and he got to show Quinn to all the kids in his class. He requested a Minecraft birthday party so I did the best I could..first we had a "potion" table where we made Gak out of borax and glue.

 They had to make sure to follow the directions exactly or it wouldn't mix right. We had to throw one batch out into the garden that didn't work.

 Th

Next we did the classic mentos in diet coke experiment which was a huge hit. I had three bottles of Coke when we did it and the kids thought it was super awesome.

 We also played pin the tail on the Minecraft pig.

 The kids had cupcakes and ice cream for dessert.  They had to go on a scavenger hunt to find the cupcakes though the house that eventually led them to the fridge in the basement.

 There was also an Agast pinata I made out of a box that Kevin was brave enough to hold for the kids to hit.

 We had our family party that night and Isak requested TimeOut pizza for dinner.  After eating there, we came back to the house for cake and presents.  The Minecraft cake didn't quite turn out like I thought but Isak still loved it and it was still edible.

 Isak got lots of great presents. A MineCraft book, Minecraft figures and legos, battling robots, new StarWars Lego book, marshmallow guns, pottery wheel and money.  I think he had a pretty great day!

Piano Recital

 Isak's piano recital was tonight, He played two songs. Old McDonald had a song and Can you hear the Echo. Isak started taking lessons in February and was his teacher's newest student at the recital.  He got one of the "best practicer awards" and did a great job playing his songs! He's enjoyed learning piano even though he doesn't always love having to practice before he does other things during the day.  He's going to take lessons through the summer and hopefully continues to enjoy learning about it. Its been fun watching him grow and learn new things!

 We are LOVING the warm spring weather outside lately.  And we are also loving having cousins here to play with outside!   My sweet Lucy is getting so big. I can't believe she is starting Kindergarten this fall. I love that she has such an opinion on what she wears, what matches, how her hair should be done and what bows she wants in her hair.  She loves to shop with me and go along with me to the store and to yard sales. Definitely my kind of girl.

Quinn Newborn Pictures

My friend Wendy took some newborn pictures of Quinn when he was three days old.  She did a great job and I love that I have these precious pictures too look back on. 

 I just love this kids crazy hair. It gives him so much personality.  He is such a sweet, mild mannered baby.  Now if he could start sleeping through the night, we'd be good!

 Isak and Lucy started t-ball this spring and are on two different teams.  Lucy is in the pee-wee ball and Isak is in actual t-ball.  Its been crazy with them on different teams with different schedules of practices and games.  They had opening day parade last Saturday and got to walk with their teams down main street.  So far they both seem to like it okay, Lucy is more enthusiastic than Isak but that comes as no surprise.  Isak is on the "Mudders" and Lucy is on the "Sprouts".  Isak can hit the ball pretty well but loves to run with his arms swinging in circles, as Kevin describes it, a "zombie like run". Its fairly entertaining. He also likes to chit chat in the outfield and I'm not quite sure how much attention he pays to the actual ball.  Lucy at her game yesterday tried to catch her own team's ball while she was on the base which was interesting. So, we may have some work to do. But they sure are cute.

 Oh Miss Edyn. She sure LOVES her baby brother. I thought she might ignore the baby when I was pregnant. I was horribly mistaken. She likes to take his blanket off him in the carseat while we are driving and pull out his binkies and put them in her mouth. She also will hit his carseat while yelling at him, "Wake up baby! Wake up!" That's one of her favorite things to do. She also loves to pull his sun shade back and forth on his car seat repeatedly. This is especially awesome because I'm driving while all this is going on. She seems to have really embraced the age of two. This week was really full of special things that she had going on....She snapped Isak's glasses frames off, threw my cleaning supplies in the toilet, ran away from me to the neighbors yard while I was feeding Quinn (couldn't find her for 5 minutes, scared me to death),  and she's half decided she might want to be potty trained. In that, every morning, she doesn't want her diaper on. She wants to use the potty. So I take her down there and sometimes she does go potty and other times she just wants to be naked and tell you repeatedly she wants to go potty so she doesn't get a diaper. Then she pees on my floor, my rug, my couch while I'm feeding Quinn and attempts to clean it up with clean laundry or baby blankets. If I get a diaper on her but no pants, it will be off within seconds and there will be a repeat of the above. Then she tells me, "I'm sorwee!!" over and over in her cute little voice which would feel more sincere if she didn't keep tearing off her diaper and peeing everywhere.  She loves to lay on Quinn when he is in the bouncer or swing and talk to him. Her voice instantly goes up a few octaves when she does this, it is very sweet. She likes to say "I yove you" and "its okay" over and over when he cries.  She keeps me on my toes for sure.

Isak really loves Quinn as well.  He always wants to know where he is when he gets home from school and what cute things he did that day.  He loves it when I let him feed him a bottle and burp him.  He's always asking me to take pictures of him and is a huge help to me with getting diapers and taking care of Edyn when I'm busy feeding Quinn.  He's just so darn excited to have a brother I think, may he always feel that way about Quinn!

Quinn's Baby Blessing

 This sweet little boy was blessed today and Kevin gave him a wonderful blessing. Lucky for Kevin and me, his phone actually had memory to record the blessing so there wasn't a repeat of the very unfortunate incidence with Edyn's when it was too full and we didn't know till after..It was a good blessing and I plan to transcribe it for Quinn and keep it for him. I love that most of kids have their blessings to look back and read as they get older, hopefully they will find them to be helpful and a comfort. Quinn looked quite dapper in his knit outfit and white socks and was good and didn't start crying till after the blessing.

 My parents came up for the day and helped us juggle kids. I took pictures with everyone that I could gather after church that were dressed up and documented the best I could.

 It was a tad rough being after church and the kids were hungry, tired and wiggly. However, being our fourth go around with this, I have really low expectations of quality pictures so I am pretty happy that everyone is just in the same frame.

 Kevin's brother Nathan and his wife Stephanie were also there. Kevin's parents, grandma, and sister Whitney were also there but I didn't get to snag them in time for a picture with Quinn.  We had a BBQ at our house afterwards and had a great time visiting with family and letting the kids play with cousins.

It was a great day and I feel so grateful that Kevin has been able bless all four of our children. FOUR children. They are crazy and hectic and most days I feel that I don't have a handle on anything but I wouldn't trade them or this time in our lives for anything. Someday they will be bigger and need me less and while that will probably make for a cleaner house, it will also be a little sad too. So I am trying to remember that this will get easier. Which is sometimes hard to do when I am defending Quinn against all of Edyn's "love" and pulling his binkies out of her mouth....