Happy 2nd Birthday Micah!

Wait, didn't we just have Julia's birthday? Yes, but I'm behind, I've had this post ready to go with pictures for a while but haven't found time to sit down and type something.

So Happy Birthday Micah! He is now a big (but small) 2 year old. He is learning to talk and understands pretty much anything you tell him. He is saying sentences now like "Mama, where are you?" and "Grandpa home soon?" It's pretty cute =).

We decided to just have a small birthday party for him. Lucky Micah had both sets of grandparents there as well as some of Robert and I's cousins. I got a little monkey pinata for him that we broke in the basement on a punching bag stand.



Camden is also getting big.

Getting ready for the pinata.

Micah was not quite sure what to, but Julia was ready.

So was Kirsten.

Proof that I was there too, with the baby.

Logan and James knew what to do too.

Micah loves planes, trains, automobiles and especially trucks. And that is mostly what he got for presents!

Cars book, one of his new favorites.

Planes backpack that he uses to store all his new cars and trains.

We got Frozen when it came out but kept it hidden because Julia wanted it for her birthday. But we decided to surprise Julia and just give it to both Julia and Micah on Micah's birthday. Julia loved it, and now that Micah has actually seen the movie he likes it too. It's funny to see him get excited about pictures of the Frozen girls and say, "Anna! Elsa!"

With his loot: cars, trains, trucks, and planes.

I made construction truck themed cake using some of the toys he already had.

Julia had to help him blow out the candle because he didn't understand what we were trying to tell him.

I just threw this in here. Micah and Camden have started to interact and it's fun to see them together.

Happy Birthday Robert and Lauren

Last Saturday we spent the afternoon with Lauren and Jess to celebrate Robert and Lauren's birthday (they share the same birthday!). We started out with lunch at Costa Vida and then went to a park near Lauren's home for brownies and play. Micah was very excited for the park. I used to take Julia to the park everyday when she was his age, but now with three kids we go about once a week, so Micah gets really excited for park time. Lauren brought a kite and Julia had fun trying to get it up. There was a bit of wind, but only enough to get the kite into the air, not enough to keep it up there. So julia had to keep running around to keep the kite up in the air.

We decided last minute to bring the nice camera and take some portraits of the kids since they are all at a milestone age: Julia, almost 5; Micah, just turned 2, and Camden, almost six months.

Camden is close to being able to sit up by himself, but not yet. So since he wasn't acting too smiley at the time we decided to just wait a couple weeks to take his pictures until we can get him sitting up by himself.

An Update

We are still living at my parent's home in Saratoga Springs. Our home in California has been on the market about a month and has still not sold and although we would like to get it sold, we are in no big rush either. It has been really nice to have so many people helping out with the kids all the time and we are pretty comfortable here. Robert and I have been able to leave the kids with family almost every weekend and go out to look at open houses to narrow down what where we would like to look for homes and what we are looking for in a home (we haven't narrowed it down that much so it doesn't really matter that we haven't sold our home yet...)

 Robert and I have also signed up to run a half marathon in May, so it has been invaluable for us to be here where my Mom and Dad can watch the kids in the evening while we go out for our training runs. So far it has been really fun, but we are only running distances that I was used to running (3-5 miles). Coming up next week our training schedule has us running distances that go past my comfort zone so we will see how it goes!

We are also enjoying being outdoors even in the cold. I joked that we are training the kids for our Wheat family camping trip by going on long walks. There is a walking path nearby that has exercise equipment along the trail and the kids like to stop and try the exercises. Julia has also done really well walking farther distances (she used to complain after a few minutes that she was tired) so hopefully she will be able to do some hikes at Zion this year.

The other day we went off the path and the kids kept falling over. So I joked that this was training for when we are camping and the ground is uneven.

Enjoying the parks nearby. You just can't keep Micah down.


Julia is going to preschool at a preschool a neighbor does in her home four houses down. She really enjoys it and has fit right in. Here they went on a field trip (and the boys and I came too) to a veterinarian's office, who also happened to be the preschool teacher's husband =) .

Camden is getting very mobile! I made the video below a couple weeks ago to show how well he wiggles around on his tummy, but even since then he has started to move so much more! Look at the height he is getting in this picture from today. He can rotate on his stomach in a circle very quickly and can pull himself forward in sort of a precursor to army crawl by using his arms and pushing with his bum and feet. He can roll all over the place too, so we have been saying we now have to watch that he doesn't get too close to the stairs and watch that there are no small objects on the floor for him to roll to and put in his mouth.

Bowling

A couple weeks ago was Reah's birthday and per her request we went bowling. It was the first time Julia remembers bowling (she's been before) and was the first time for real for Micah and Camden. Micah and I played as a team alternating who gets to roll the ball. Micah did pretty well pushing the ball down the kiddie ramp and even wanted to carry his ball from the ball rack to the ramp (he dropped it once). Julia rocked it- pushing the ball down the ramp- and beat everyone on the first game.

Thanks for being part of our family Reah!

Snow Weekend

A few weeks ago our kids' only cousins came to town (with their parents) so we joined them and Grandpa and Grandma Wheat at the Holiday cabin in Park City for a snow weekend. We did some snowmobiling, a bit of sledding, snowball fights and igloo building. We had to fit it all in because it was probably the last snow fun we will have this season since the weather has been warming up as Spring approaches.

All the Wheat cousins

 

Matching boys

This marks Camden's first snowmobile ride. Like the others kids he spent most of the rides up and down sleeping. Something about the movement and noise of the snowmobile and being all bundled up puts them right to sleep.

Julia better get into the snowfort and out of the snow.

 

It's fun to see these guys together. They are about four months apart and just about the same size.

Everyone wearing their footie pajamas. Micah is too, but he loves to wear his Cars slipppers, even with his footies.

It takes three snowmobiles to get us all up there now.

A little video of the cousins playing. The video through the window was me filming Grandma Wheat and Jen taking pictures of Nate and Micah when they went outside. Neither of them spent much time outside that day because it was snowing off and on. We got them all bundled up and it started to snow, so they went out and took a picture on the sled (below) and then came back in because they were both cold. Sledding in a blizzard is not fun?

Tyler and Julia both got to drive the small snowmobile around in circles in the meadow this year. Needless to say they thought they were so cool and had a blast.

Kid Videos

A couple recent videos of Micah and Julia.

A Day in the Life of Micah. I changed the music right before I saved the video and never watched it all the way through. I just assumed it would repeat until the end...


Frozen rules in our house.

Bouncer

These are the best invention. All my kids have enjoyed this bouncer and it is so nice to have a place to put them down where they can happily entertain themselves for a while. We only brought what fit in the car with us from California, everything else is in storage. I wanted to bring this bouncer so much that the chair sat with me in the front seat of the car the whole drive from California because there was no room anywhere else for it and I really wanted to bring it. Camden started using it this month and he loves it.

Camden is Four Months

This boy is growing up way too fast. He is four months today, but is wearing 9 month clothes, rolled over for the first time last week (back to front) and yesterday I found his first tooth poking through his little gums. Whoa buddy, too fast! He weighs 19 lbs, only 5 lbs less than Micah.

Elsa

I can't stop laughing about Julia today at church. I went to pick her up after church from her primary classroom. I told her substitute teachers that I was Julia's mom. They looked confused and said, "I...don't think we had a Julia today in our class." I could clearly see Julia inside the classroom and I pointed to her as she walked over to us, "here, this is Julia."

"Elsa?" they both asked. Then realizing what happened, "She told us her name was Elsa!"

We all had a good laugh about it. Julia must have been in heaven for 2 hours being called Elsa after her new favorite Disney Princess.