One year

This first picture is Kennedy when she started 2nd grade. It literally seems like yesterday, this year has been crazy and busy and has flown by!  She has grown up so much and is a lot more mature. She knows that she can be a bit dramatic and she has learned how to reign in her emotions. 

 Kennedy is an oldest child through and through. She is incredibly driven, very bright and things tend to come easily to her.  She is an incredible little gymnast and a great student. She was in gifted and talented this year and did wonderfully well.  She loves to be challenged, she knows it makes her better and she really thrives in that environment.

 I really love her! She is hilarious and so much fun!  I think she is beautiful and I covet her thin, buff little body daily. I think we are in real trouble when she gets older.

Sophie Blake

 I had to post pictures of the difference in Sophie from when she started preschool to now, when she is done and ready for Kindergarten.  She started out in speech therapy at age 2.  She was suppose to know 50 words at 2 and she probably said 2 that we could understand.  So we had a wonderful woman, Mrs. Peg come to our house and helped her to communicate. We loved Mrs. Peg.  

So Sophie started preschool as soon as she turned three.  She looked so tiny heading to school that first day but she seemed to like it. The meetings I would have with her speech therapist and other professionals at school would stress me out because you always want your little one to be perfect and not struggle but it never seemed to phase Sophie. She was happy, very social, loud and always so friendly.

Towards the end of this school year I met with all of her teachers and they told me she no longer needed speech therapy. She has come so far and grown up so much.

 She has one of the most entertaining and fun personalities. She is incredibly sweet with a little bit of sassy thrown in there.  I love her to pieces!

Birthday #5

 Gosh I love this girl. She is such a sweetheart and is so grateful for everything.  She told me she wanted an owl birthday so I did what I could to make that happen.  We played pin the beak on the owl, had an owl cake and did a little owl craft.  

She is very into My Little Ponies right now and La La Loopsy. She got some darling presents from her cute little friends.

Here are the girls playing our little game.

Here is the birthday group; Brooklyn, Ragen, Sophie, Stella, Kennedy and Caroline. Ruby is behind Stella.

Here is Sophie during her soccer season, I can't get this dumb picture to go the right way. I was actually quite surprised at how well she did at soccer. She like it and scored 4 goals throughout the season.

The owl cake.

Utah fun

 While we were on our cruise our wonderful families helped out with our kids. My goodness, arranging and packing for over a week of time for four kids was quite a task.  They all did amazing on the drive to Utah.  The girls and Finn stayed with my brother after school and at night and my sister in law Niki watched them during the day. Trey was watched by my mom and Mike's mom.  Sophie got to have a sleepover at her Aunt Rachels and they both slept over at my brother Kelly's one night. I'm sure they didn't want us to come back.

Above is the girls at the Zoo with their cute cousin Grace and Aunt Rachel.

 Here we have Finn, Sydney, Mckay, Kennedy, Sophie, Hannah and Parker.

 Here is Sophie with her little cousins Aryiah and Lily. Gosh they are adorable.

 Aryiah, Lily, Grace and Kennedy at the Zoo.

 Here is Kennedy and her Aunt Amber doing tricks on the trampoline. Amber was a gymnast and college cheerleader and is Kennedy's idol.

 I love this picture above, it's a bit blurry but so funny. My brother Peter has Kennedy and Sophie o his back and Finn is grabbing his nose. Peter is such a fun Uncle. He is so silly with the girls and does hysterical dance parties and competitions with them. They are so lucky to have such fun Aunts and Uncles. My brothers are all so much fun with all of the Grand kids. It makes me sad that our kids don't get to be with all of their fun cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents all the time.  

 Sydeny, Kennedy and Sophie.  

 Here are the kids in our packed car on the way to Utah.  Trey is next to Sophie and then Finn, Kennedy is in the back with all of our crap!

Grandma Janice and Trey at the Zoo.

Cruisin'

 Our good friends are finishing up their residency and they invited us to go with them on a cruise. It was 7 days in the Eastern Caribbean. Their brother and sister in law also joined us. We had so much fun!  Mike volunteered for everything and kept us laughing the whole time.  He always does karaoke when we go on cruises and it is absolutely hysterical. He can't sing at all and he doesn't care, he is loud and dances around and went through the audience shaking his butt and putting the microphone up to people to have them sing. Natalie and her sister also sang a song.

 Mike loved doing the flo rider. He would wake up early every morning and worked on it and in the end he was in a competition that you had to be asked to be a part of. He and four other people competed. 

 I loved hanging out on the deck and watching the sunset. It was so relaxing to listen to the ocean and to do nothing.  After a few days though I did start to miss my kids.  I think from now on we need to do a 5 day cruise, 7 was a little long to be away from my babies.

 We thought it would be fun to play Bingo, we never had before. It was super funny, I never realized what a culture there was in Bingo. Mike and Bryce really enjoyed heckling people that won. 

 This is Megans Bay, absolutely beautiful!

 Mike volunteered to be a part of a magic show, the magician was super creepy and really awful.

 Here is the group. Mike, Emily, Jake, Bryce and Natalie.  They loved playing games whenever we had down time. I don't love games unless they are funny games.  They played a lot of card games and ticket to ride so I sat by them and read.  

I am so thankful for all of our family that helped out with kids so that we could have a fun vacation and a little break.

Grandkids

 While Mike and I went on a cruise we left our kids with family. The Voorhies had all the Grandkids under 2 get their pictures taken.  I think they turned out so cute! Above are just the girls and below are the boys.

 On the top from left to right we have Henry, Finn, Sloane, Aryiah, Beckett, Lily and Trey.

This and that

Finn has finally gotten over Trey and the jealousy he first felt when we brought him home. Now he just kisses him whenever he gets close to him and then goes on with whatever he is doing. He is still such a sweet little boy and is learning all sorts of fun new things everyday.  

Trey is such a good baby and is so easy.  It hasn't been nearly as bad as I thought it would be to have the two boys so close in age, so far. Trey is still really portable and usually sleeps when we run errands, which makes it easy for me to get things done.  I know once he starts moving around things will be crazier.

For Kennedy's birthday I took cupcakes to her class and had lunch with her at school. I then got to watch her play at recess with her friends. It was really fun to see her interact with her little friends especially her best bud Emmy. They are so hilarious and cute together it made me want to be back at that age where you had so much fun being so dumb with your friends. They showed me all kinds of fun tricks on the swing and were cracking me up the whole time. I love that Kennedy always picks the funny girls to be friends with, Emmy is super funny.  

The pic below of Soph I could not figure out how to turn the right way so bear with me.  I had to post a pic of the hilarious hat I bought for Trey. He looks like a litle Elf.  Sophie is such a good big sis for Trey and Finn. She always wants to hold Trey and is so good about playing with Finn. Sophie started soccer this month and is doing really well. It is fun to watch her and the other little kids chase the ball around in a big huddle.

 Trey seems to be growing so fast. He is already growing out of some of his clothes. I want to hold onto every little minute of his small baby time since he may be my last.  He has had pretty bad baby acne which is absolutely killing me not to pick at.  He still has all of his dark brown hair and I can't quite tell what color his eyes are going to be but I am really hoping they are brown.  

While we had family in town they all took the kids to the bounce house and Sophie somehow caught her tooth on the netting on the side of one of the bounce houses. It looked so bad. We finally had to take her into the dentist to have it pulled because it wasn't budging. For a while there had a terrible snaggle tooth and we couldn't help but giggle every time she smiled or talked.