Summer Vacation

Here's some pics from our summer road trip! We flew to Denver and spent a couple of days in Colorado, and then drove to Montana to visit Joel's sister Carrie and the rest of the Bock family for a week.  Then we headed to Yellowstone for three days, and then drove back to Denver to catch the flight back home.

nothing like starting your vacation off being stranded at the wrong rental car company!!

Sadie snoozing on gondola ride. The girls "panned for gold" and are examining all their loot. We basically paid $10 for a bag of rocks but it was worth every penny--they've been washing, drying, and polishing these rocks for days!!

mountain slide in Breckenridge--the girls rode on their first chairlift and then took a coaster slide all the way down the mountain

our own personal hot-tubs!

The drive to Montana was great--we never drove more than 4 or 5 hours each day and would stop and take breaks whenever the girls got fussy! Sadie only cried once on the way out there--a real road tripper!It helped though that I sat next to her the whole time and Joel did ALL of the driving! :)

picnic lunch near the Tetons

These next pictures are out of order chronologically but I'm going to save myself the headache of moving them around and just write some captions!

We rented out Carrie's next door neighbor's house--and this was the view out our front door. They live on a cul-de-sac and the girls had so much fun biking and scootering every day! Larkin asked Uncle CJ, "Did you move here because there's no cars?" It was quite a change from the 'burbs!!"

in Texas we find dead snakes on bike rides, and in Montana, elk!

hiking

I love this pic of Willa

rainbow trout with Uncle Ryan

The highlight of their trip was the horse ride!

Willa rode "Hot Rod" and talked about him non-stop for days!

Aunt Lisa

The girls swam in a snow-melt stream and froze their tails off! Here they are warming up with Aunt Carrie and Aunt Jaime

Grandma and Grandpa

even Sadie loved the water

about to strip down to undies and take the plunge!

sandcastle on the Taylor Fork--one of Joel's favorite places that we went

Taylor Fork

Joel and Uncle CJ with a double

Carrie and CJ like to rock climb and they took us out! Joel and the girls climbed and loved it.

Larkin went up very high until I got nervous and told her to get back down!! She was fearless!

Carrie and CJ have their own rafting boat and they took us rafting.  Willa thought the rapids were called "rabbits" and told Uncle CJ, "Let's go find some more bunnies!"

After a week in Montana, we said goodbye to all the relatives and headed to Yellowstone National Park. Joel and I had been there before six years ago when Carrie and CJ got married, but this trip was much different since we were toting around three kiddos!!

We forgot to pack the girls' cameras and they were so mad--so I let them use mine. Willa snapped over 100 pictures in less than 20 minutes--everything was "just so pretty" and she wanted pics of it all. Larkin used Joel's cell phone to capture Willa snapping pics of Yellowstone Lake.

Willa got a great shot of the wood

All the geysers smelled like sulfur, which Larkin said "smelled great." 

Yellowstone Lake

We hiked down to the bottom of the canyon to see the waterfall--Grand Canyon of Yellowstone

geyser flowing into a river

Their favorite place we stayed in Yellowstone were these tiny cabins that you can see behind them. They were super tiny and you had to share a community bathroom, and the girls thought it was so neat that our cabin didn't have a bathroom.

There was an impressive prairie dog population right outside our cabin door and they kept the girls entertained for hours!! They would "feed them" rocks and watch the prairie dogs scurry to catch the rocks.

Joel and Willa headed out to go fishing

bison crossing

Old Faithful

On the way home we stopped for lunch and Sadie was in a great mood--until we put her back into her carseat!! NOT THIS PLACE AGAIN!! The drive home was not as smooth as the way there, but we would do the trip again in a heartbeat. It was great to stop and see so much scenery along the way!

Thanks Carrie and CJ for helping us have such a great trip!!! And thanks too to all the family members that flew/drove out to Montana. It was a family reunion and vacation all rolled into one--and memories that the girls will be talking about for years to come.

Sadie

 It's hard to believe that Sadie is eight months old already! She still is the easiest baby of the three, by far! She's not crawling yet but I bet she will be within the next month. She is still nursing and now eats three meals a day of solids. Her favorite foods are sweet potatoes, butternut squash, yogurt (in moderation-makes her spit up!), pears, and anything sweet. Just this week she's started feeding herself with little chunks of food--although she can't always pick it up because everything slips out of her fingers!

Her hair is coming in blonde, but nowhere near as light as Willa's. I think her eyes are hazel or possibly turning brown--we are constantly looking at her eyes to figure out what color they are. Sometimes they have flecks of brown or green, other times they look gray. So for now I'm going with hazel! She weighs almost 16 pounds, but feels much heavier than that when you've carried her around on your hip all day!

The older girls love love love her and just can't get enough. They squeal when she wears a new outfit, "entertain" her with toys, hugs, and songs, and miss her when they're away from her. The other day my mom watched Sadie while I took the girls to swimming lessons, and they just kept saying, "Mom-the car is so quiet. Sadie is not in her carseat! This is so weird that we're driving without her!"
 
Her schedule is:
7am: wake up, nurse, play
10:00: nap
11:00ish-wake up, nurse, eat solids, play
2 or 3:00-nap for two hours or so
4:00ish-wake up, nurse, eat solids, play again!
7:00-bedtime (she has separation anxiety now and fights bedtime pretty hard!)
midnight-wake up to nurse, fall right back asleep
3:00-nurse again, fall right back to sleep
7:00-wake up

Yes, she's probably nursing too many times in the night, but she's kind of on the skinny side (10th percentile for her weight) so I don't mind. Willa was the same weight and nursed the same at night, and what's a few more months of sleep deprivation anyway when I've made it this far?!

Sadie stays on the picnic blanket--at least for now!

hey mom, the big girls are doing puzzles--where is mine?!

ready for the pool!

One day we were playing music and dancing, then the girls went and grabbed their baby dolls because they noticed that I was dancing with Sadie on my hip. Then they said, "Look! We all three have babies! Take a picture!"

Willa loves to dress up Sadie!

If you look closely you can see Joel fishing with the girls down below!

Larkin and Willa love to eat the puffed cereal that Sadie drops??!

better eat 'em quick!!

Her hair is long enough now to where you have to brush it after bathtime or else it looks like this!

Girls building "spider web" and Sadie's making sure their silk stays nice and wet!

She learned how to scoot backwards on this day--trying to get the heck out of the web!

Willa's recital

 Willa had her first ballet recital a few days after Larkin's graduation. She was so excited about the recital that you would have thought it was her Broadway debut. She kept talking about how the audience was probably going to throw flowers everywhere onto the stage when she finished dancing and that she would grab a bunch of them, and her invitation list for the recital was over 50 people long--"We should invite them too-I bet they can't wait to see my dance!!"

I'm so glad that Willa did ballet because it gave her a place to feel special and shine. I didn't want to put both of the girls in preschool at the same time (money wise would have been expensive and unnecessary!). Willa always looked forward to her ballet day and would talk all week about her teachers and friends.

practicing with a friend

 On the big day she was not nervous at all and did great! The recital was held in a performing arts center that was very impressive. There was stage lighting, curtains, and even a professional videographer so that all the relatives can see Willa's two minutes of fame! I wasn't allowed to take pictures during the show but we did order a copy of the video recording.

The highlight for Willa though was the trophy she received after the show. She fell in love with it (named it "Tropha") and just could not believe that she got such a beautiful trophy. Larkin couldn't believe it either and spent at least an hour crying out of jealousy. 

On the way home from the show we stopped to eat lunch and Willa held it during the whole lunch and showed to every person that walked by.

Over lunch she said, "Mom, I'm never going to let you take ballet because then Dad and Larkin would be jealous of your trophy. I just love this thing."

She slept with Tropha every night for a week!

Larkin's graduation

First day of pre-k back in August. She's long since outgrown the dress and the shoes!

Larkin on her last day of pre-k!

Willa said, "Take a picture of me too!" Every single day she would collect flowers or small treasures to give to Larkin's teacher. Here she is with rocks, a bird egg, and flowers! She can't wait to go to pre-k next year and have the same teachers as Larkin.

 It's hard to believe that a year has gone by and that Larkin will be in kinder in a few months! She absolutely loved school, all her friends, and all the fun projects and activities she did there. Her face always lit up when she would talk about school, and you can't ask for much more than that!



She was very well behaved at school and prides herself on being a "great listener." She chooses her friends based on how well they listen to the teacher. Usually when I'd ask her about specific kids in her class she'd describe them in terms of their listening skills. "Oh him? He's a terrible listener!" or "I'm good friends with her because she's nice and we are both great listeners."


On one of the last days of school the class was getting hyper and wild and the teacher was trying to quiet everyone down. Larkin turned to her teacher, sighed, and said, "Oh Ms. LaJean why don't they get it?! I haven't had to move my color once all year (you move your color when you misbehave). I just don't know why they can't all be good listeners."

The graduation was quite involved--caps and gowns, Pomp and Circumstance, diplomas, professional videographer, memory books, and refreshments! It was such a memorable night for her and she was so proud of herself for getting up on stage in front of a ton of people!

She is excited about kinder and is definitely ready--she's reading, writing, confident in the classroom, a good friend to others, and most importantly (in her eyes), a great listener!

singing "The World is a Rainbow"

 

 

 

 

 

ready for kinder!

getting her diploma

She loves to organize and clean her room, and one night I came in and found her bed looking like this! Diploma was center stage.

recent pics

Two feet on a shovel are better than one! We finally finished our garden out front

look who's sitting up! and grabbing your hot coffee! and your cell phone!

girls singing "hush little baby"...amazingly she did fall asleep and they were so proud!

It will be a sad day when she outgrows this carseat! Sleeps so well in it!

first time painting own nails

I see a resemblance!

First lemonade stand! They wanted it to be a "fancy lemonade stand" so that's why they're in princess attire!

Want to hear me scream? I dare you to take away my washcloth!!!

Shopping is hard work! First time riding in the cart, and then took a record-breaker nap that afternoon!!

First best friend

If you've spent any amount of time around Larkin over the last few months then you've definitely heard her talk about her friend Campbell. Campbell was in Larkin's pre-k class and the two were inseparable. At drop-off in the mornings one would always wait for the other to arrive, and at pick-up in the afternoon they always wanted to walk out together. During class they played with each other so much that even other kids noticed and would greet us in the morning with something along the lines of, "Hey Larkin! Campbell's on the tire swing waiting for you!"

Western day at school. Campbell is on the far right

When they got together outside of class they would just talk talk talk. Poor Willa tried to join in but just couldn't keep up with their conversations since a lot of what they talked about was what happened in their class. One day Willa said, "I wish I were Campbell so Larkin would like me as much as she likes Campbell." Ouch!!

Larkin came home from school one day and said, "Mom, I have terrible news. Campbell told me that she is moving to California and she was really excited about it. I told her that it was exciting, but really, I was just sad." As the moving date grew closer, Larkin became more and more depressed. One day I picked up Larkin from school and her teachers were concerned because she was mopey and quiet all day and they thought that she was coming down with something. I told them that she wasn't sick--she was just heartbroken!


For our last playdate with Campbell I took all the girls to a park and then to an ice cream shop. When we dropped off Campbell that afternoon we saw the huge moving truck in the driveway.  It all hit Larkin then and she struggled to say goodbye to her, even though she was going to see her again one more time at school. As we drove off she sobbed the most heart wrenching tears, and she refused to eat dinner that night.

The next school day was Campbell's last day, but Larkin said she didn't want to go to school because she was just too sad. It was the only day all year that she didn't want to go to school--every school morning she just can't get there fast enough. I knew that if she went to school she would cry and be sad all day, and thought it'd be better that we just skip school and have her last memories of Campbell be of the fun times at the ice cream shop.

Crazy hair day AND ice cream!

It's been a few weeks now since Campbell moved, and Larkin still gets sad about her periodically. When you ask her what's wrong she frowns and makes the letter "C" with her hand (for Campbell).

She's realized though how rewarding a friendship can be. The other day she said, "Mom, when I go to kindergarten will I meet another friend like Campbell?" I told her that she would make another good friend for sure, and she replied, "Well then I can't wait for kindergarten!"

Easter

Here's some pics from Easter! We went to Cat-Mama and Papa's house and visited with Laura's family from California. Unfortunately I can't get all the pics to load onto this blog (they download fine but then when I add them to the blog I only see about 1/10th of the picture??!)-- but here's a few that Laura took!

About to demolish the Easter pinata. I love how Ethan looks like he's already taken the pinata down himself and we haven't even started, Willa has a goose egg visible under her bangs, and Larkin is a sweaty mess. Look out Easter Bunny!!

now if they would only do this inside my house and not in the grass

Ethan sharing his Easter chocolate with Sadie. Yep, it was melted!