Sweet Peas

When I was a teenager some of my friends and I made a "club" we called the Sweet Peas. We would hold club meetings and assigned everyone to club positions like president, vice-president, secretary, etc. This week we were able to bring together three members of the Sweet Pea club, my cousin Katrina, my good friend Annie, and I. Only now we have nine and a half (Annie's pregnant) kids between the three of us. So crazy!

We invited everyone over to our house (our first non-family visitors!) for dinner on Thursday. The kids didn't really eat, they were much too excited to play. They spent most of the evening going crazy in the basement playroom. Yay for basement playrooms, they could be as loud as they wanted and they were plenty loud.

At the end of the night we cleaned up the playroom (in under three minutes thanks to everyone's help) and took a picture of all of us together. Except we took a few of just the kids (first picture, above) and some with all of us...and then I realized someone was missing.

My own child. I realized Camden was not in the pictures. I said, "Wait, is Camden here? Where's Camden?" Everyone said, "I don't know." So I ran upstairs to look for him because I didn't remember the last time I saw him. Turns out I was semi-thinking when we came downstairs to clean up and take pictures because I did bring him downstairs. We found him next to the playroom in Julia's room getting into all of Julia's paint. He had probably wandered in there back when we were cleaning up the playroom and no one noticed because everyone was frantically cleaning up.

Julia and Bella are new besties. It took 20 minutes to pry them away from each other when it was time to leave.

We also decorated massive Halloween sugar cookies (that my kids and I made earlier that day, Micah and Julia had fun rolling out their own cookies and mashing them up again and rolling it out again. We didn't end up using their dough ;) )

We had a great time!

Happy 1st Birthday Camden!

Two days before Camden's birthday we wanted to go up to Park City and get in some high elevation running in preparation for a relay race Robert, my brothers, Dad, and I were going to do the next weekend. And since we were all going to be together anyway we figured it would be a good time to celebrate Camden's birthday.

This was our view before the celebration as we ran up, up. and up from the elevation of the freeway all the way up to the cabin.

When we all finally made it up we were able to celebrate Camden's birthday (and listen to conference. Remember, Camden was born on conference Sunday last year, so his birthday is always going to fall around conference time.)

He was tired, but was interested in opening his presents still. But as you can see in the video, so were Julia and Micah.

I told everyone no more toys. We have plenty of toys, especially for his age since we've had two other kids go through that same age already! He got a lot of snacks, sippy cups, some clothes, and books.

Then it was on to the cake.

He is very interested in everything right now, especially a bright cake set right in front of him.

He started out just eating the blue frosting on top of the cake.

He really liked it.

He finally did make it past the blue frosting at the end and enjoyed his first taste of chocolate cake (I think, you never know with Grandma around what he's been fed).

Blue frosting monster.

Camden's personality right now is busy and friendly. He loves to babble, he loves to explore and experiment. He loves his siblings, but also wants everything that Micah has, so he often butts heads with Micah. I imagine we can look forward to that for a long time even though they do really love each other.

He is getting a mouthful of new teeth right now, so it's hard to say exactly how many he has since the new ones are just coming in. Eight? I still think of him as my little baby, but really he is almost toddler size, especially since he wears 18 month old clothes.

On Camden's actual birthday I told Micah to go give Camden a happy birthday hug, and this is what happened. For the record, he was giving him a hug, a very aggressive hug.

Unpacking

You know the point when your house is so messy you don't even care anymore? Yeah, I think we're there. I am in middle of finally unpacking everything after waiting a month after we moved to remodel. The remodeling work isn't done yet, but it's done enough that I can unpack. And unpacking while also trying to feed, clothe, and entertain three kids makes for a very chaotic scene.

But not caring doesn't mean I've given up cleaning or unpacking. It just means I'm not looking at the mess anymore and thinking that I need to get it all cleaned up before I go to bed. It means it's okay if it doesn't get done today or tomorrow or the next day. Until then we just keep plugging along, little by little getting stuff organized.

Micah was excited to have is own bed at last.

Camden is at that "I need to explore everything" age. Now you understand how things can get messy fast around here.

Julia's First Day of Kindergarten

Julia started kindergarten this year. Julia and I were both excited for her to go to school and make new friends and learn new things. She is actually a pretty good help with the boys, so I was sad not to have her help. But she is horrible to take to the store because she wants me to buy her everything, so now we go grocery shopping and run errands while she is in school.

First day of school pictures. Julia loves Sophia the First.

 Micah misses Julia when she is at school, they are buddies and best playmates.

 This was before school on the first day. We were still living at my parents house. When she looked inside her backpack when she woke up that day it was all full of Frozen picture books and Frozen magnets. So here they are putting the magnets on the fridge.

 We've already gotten her school pictures back, she looks too grown up to me.

Lining up on the first day of school. I forget that Julia is short for age until I see her with other kids her age. She is one of the shortest in her class. After class on the first day I met her at the door and she introduced me to her new best friend and they hugged each other as we left. Now they draw pictures for each other to take home.