Dinosaur Park

Last Christmas my parents gave us tickets to go to "Dinosaur Park," so we finally went there as a family this summer & had a blast!

Skyler was pretty proud of himself when he started realizing that the dinosaur sound effects came from hidden speakers, so he started hunting around to try & find them at each dinosaur.

My favorite part of the whole day was watching Kimberly climb under the guard-rails to go give each dinosaur a kiss & a hug before we moved on to the next one!  Here were these fearsome, scary, dangerous looking dinosaurs & Kimberly was kissing each one on the nose & putting her arm around them like they were best buds & that she was sad to have to leave them to go see the next one.  So precious!

Skyler loved digging for dinosaur bones & the girls loved swinging in the swings.  All in all, it was a perfect summer day, making fun family memories with the ones I love!

Bird's Nest

Well, our little baby robins have finally flown the coop.  It was a fun process for the kids to watch, although I would have preferred them build their nest a little farther away from our front door :)  It was magical to see their blue little eggs, exciting when we heard their first little chirps, fun to see how both the mommy robin & the daddy robin would search for worms for the birds all day long & kind-of sad when they started venturing off on their own at only 2 weeks old!  But their nest was getting pretty stinky, so it was probably a good think for us both.  Skyler was the lucky one who first spotted them trying to fly off.  I saw one little bird trying to just make a run for it, with his mother following him the whole way with a little worm in her mouth for him.  You could tell that he was ready to be on his own, because not even a worm was exciting enough for him to come back for.  When Skyler saw a dead baby bird on our neighbor's sidewalk a few days later, the kids all started praying that the birds would be safe.  Those bird's probably needed their prayers because we've got lots of cats around our house.  I sure hope they made it!  But what a fun process to watch!

One of the most exciting days was when the Mommy bird flew in our house one day when the front door was open.  It practically scared me to death when I walked into the family room to find a bird flying around frantically, pooping all over the place!  But luckily Laron was home to take charge of the situation & calmly suggest opening the window & taking out the screen so she could fly back out.  Exciting times!

Outside Fun

I LOVE watching the kids jump on the trampoline... They just have SO much energy & enthusiasm!  And when we've got company over for them to show off their "cool tricks" it's even better!  So thanks Robert & Jeff for playing around with the kids & allowing them to show off for you.  They loved it!

 And it's always nice when I can find someone willing to take MY picture with one of my kids... Bailey's such a sweetheart & we look forward to all the fun we'll have over the summer!

Family Pictures at Cousin Carter's Baby Blessing

This is MY side of the family...  My Grandparents: Leland Erickson, LuCene & Hugh Hougaard.  My Parents: Dennis & Lori Erickson.  My Sister's Family: Emily, Adam, Rachel Belle & Carter Nelsen.  My Brothers: Robert, Chris & Jeff (Tim's on a Mission in Chile).  And of course, our little family: Michelle, Laron, Skyler, Kimberly & Bailey Pace.  Yeah for family!

Grandma & Papa with all the grandkids!

So fun to all be together!

Happy Birthday Papa!

Thanks for all the fun memories growing up & all fun times with the grandkids now!  We love you & hope you have a fun day... Happy Birthday Papa!!!

Skyler's Watch Solution

So, as a Mother you always worry about your kids... Who they're playing with, what they're learning from them, etc.  Well lately he's been really getting into playing with the neighbor kids as soon as school gets out.  He counts down ALL day until when he can play with them, then stays practically until dinner-time if I let him.  But I've been worried about some of the bad habits he's been picking up from them & have been wondering what to do, while still giving him the freedom & excitement of playing with friends.

I finally decided to pray about it.  I figured certainly Heavenly Father cared about such matters & could help me come up with some sort of a happy medium.  And He did.  I got the thought to buy Skyler a watch that had an alarm on it, so I could set the alarm for how long he could play with different friends.  If he didn't come home when it went off, he couldn't play with friends the next day.  And the best part was, I could change his amount of play time depending on WHICH set of friends he was playing with.  So yes, I usually always let him play with friends, but often it was only for 15 minutes with those not-so-great friends & maybe 1 hour with the friends I liked better.  It made me feel better having him HOME more often & helped me feel a little more in control of the situation.  But it still gave Skyler the freedom to have fun playing with his friends & to be more pro-actively in charge of coming home (which he'd been crying about every time previously).  Anyway, I'm so thankful to have found a solution that keeps Skyler home more often & around better friends.  Love you bud!

Exciting Times...

We've been BUSY around here lately!

Here's some of what we've been up to...

Two days ago we inherited 2 large rabbits (and their extremely BLUE rabbit-home!).  The kids have been LOVING it & have checked on them "to make sure they're okay" like 20 times a day!  One of those things you do only to make memories for your children...

We also planted a new cherry tree, which Laron is pretty excited about!  Right after Laron planted it, Skyler looked at the picture of the cherries on the tag & asked me, "Mom, why are we planting an olive tree?"  Apparently the cherries looked a little like olives in the picture! :)

 Skyler also finally got a working bike, so he's been feeling pretty proud of himself riding around like all his friends.  He also just learned to tie his shoes this last week (he figured it out a lot easier than I thought he would!), which seems so crazy!  I've also been worried about him spending too much time with friends lately & not enough at home with our family, so we just got him a watch with an alarm on it so we can set his watch for what time he needs to come home from friend's houses.  It's working well so far & maybe the rabbits will make him start to think that HOME is a funner place to be anyway.

Bailey has figured out how to wake up Kimberly from her naps & is pretty proud of some of the things she can accomplish these days... She's just lately learned how to give us "five", wave to herself in the mirror, shake her head "yes", & dance to music.  So fun to watch her grow & progress!

Laron really wanted to try starting some plants INDOORS this year (like tomatoes, squash, cucumbers & watermelon), which has been fun, but quite a learning process!  I'm not really loving my front room feeling like a greenhouse, but I've been surprised how thrilling it is to see their day by day growth & not have to go outside in the dirt & elements to see it.

MOST excitingly, we've decided to use our tax money this year to put siding on the house, change the trim from brown to white, get new windows in the back (the front ones have already been changed), & get a new white front door.  The only way we can afford to do it is to have Laron do all the work, so hopefully it'll be worth the effort & look good in the end.  Here's our pile of siding we just bought & the old rain gutters taken off...

A robin also recently decided that our front porch light was a great place to build it's bird's nest.  I wasn't too thrilled with that at first, but Laron pointed out what a fun process it will be for the kids to watch...  A neighbor-boy also pointed out that maybe when we turn on our porch light at night, it will help to keep the eggs warm!  What smart thinking!  I wonder if the bird thought of that...

This warm weather has been fun for us all to get out of the house a little more, but it's worn everyone out a little more too!  In the last 2 days, every one of the kids have fallen asleep in some weird, random place... We play pretty hard around here!

 Kimberly at the kitchen table

 Skyler on the living room floor

 Bailey in her high-chair

All-in-all, fun times!  I'm so glad though that my kids have got siblings to play with, laugh with & love.  What a blessing it is to constantly be surrounded by family!

Easter Fun!

So I think that this year's Easter was the best one we've had yet... Mainly because we were able to focus more on the REAL meaning of Easter during the week before, which really helped set the tone for the big day.  We used several ideas from the book "A Christ-Centered Easter" (which I TOTALLY recommend!) including making unleavened bread & some Easter Cookies where each ingredient has symbolism of something in the Death & Resurrection of Christ... We kept things pretty simple, but even on the days where all we did was talk about some aspect of Christ's life & read a few scriptures, I still felt like we were actually celebrating what the holiday was supposed to be about instead of just doing Easter-Egg hunts.  That being said, we did several Easter Egg hunts too...

We did an Easter hunt at my Parent's house the Sunday before Easter & then another one the next Saturday at my Grandpa Erickson's house.  The kids are always excited to find coins mixed in with their Easter candy & Skyler has already spent his!

Easter morning I woke up the kids with some loud Mormon Tabernacle Choir music singing "This is the Christ!" & we talked about how exciting it must have been to learn that Christ has risen from the dead.  It was the perfect starting to our Easter Sunday.  Then after breakfast, we sent the kids searching downstairs for their Easter Baskets (the toys were all hand-me-downs given to us from a neighbor!) & they played the rest of the morning with their new toys.  So fun & precious to watch their innocent excitement & squeals of delight!

Then, the Saturday after Easter, we had our Ward's Easter Egg Hunt in a neighbor's backyard, complete with their many fun farm animals for the kids to enjoy (ducks, rabbits, geese & even a llama!).  Skyler was a professional by now at running quickly & collecting loads of eggs, but Kimberly was too worried about the candy inside of the eggs that she was missing out on to want to gather very many eggs.  Luckily Skyler shared a few of his eggs with her!

Overall, it was such a great Easter... Lots of fun memories, spread over three different weekends.  And lots of great discussions & activities done just with our little family at home to learn more about the Savior & what he's done for us.  How grateful I am for his sacrifice, so that we too may live again with our families forever!

The story behind the dress...

So, way back in December of 2008, when we were still living in Logan & Skyler was 1 1/2 years old, I found out I was pregnant.  Something about this pregnancy just seemed different than with Skyler's & so I was sure that it was a girl.  Not only was I sure it was a girl, but we already had a name picked out & everything, so inside me was my little Kimberly.  A few weeks later, after telling my next-door neighbor Carmen (from Peru) that I was just sure I was having a girl (and that I was right with my instinct on Skyler being a boy!), she brought me over two beautiful white dresses that her only daughter Fatima had worn (one of them handmade from her grandmother).  One of them is the dress pictured below.  I hung up those white dresses in Skyler's closet & imagined the beautiful girl that would one-day wear them...

And then, a couple weeks later, I had a miscarriage.  It was a slow, drawn-out miscarriage that had me doubting & hoping for my baby's life day by slowly passing day.  Everyday I would look at those dresses & cry aloud, "Come on Kimberly!  Don't you want to wear these beautiful dresses?  I've got these beautiful dresses just for you..."  And then I'd imagine the girl that I may never have in the the dresses that she may never wear.  Those were some painful couple of days, but I think the image of my little girl in these beautiful white dresses almost made it harder.  We moved the next week after my miscarriage down to Bountiful & I could never bring myself to tell my neighbor of our misfortune for fear that I'd feel like I should return the dresses.  And I just couldn't loose that hope that I'd been holding onto through those dresses...

Fast forward a couple of years & now here's my beautiful little Kimberly, all grown up & wearing one of the dresses I've been saving all these years.  When I look at her in that dress, all sorts of emotions come back to me, but mostly now, all I feel is gratitude.  Gratitude for my sweet daughter.  Gratitude for the chance to be her mother.  Gratitude for a loving Heavenly Father that can heal all wounds & soothe all broken hearts.  And Gratitude for a second-chance.

And now that the dress finally fits her, I'm realizing that it's not the dress at all that's the prize, but the beautiful girl within it that I love & cherish so dearly!  So thank-you, thank-you for sending me my sweet little Kimberly...

Skyler's Drawing...

Skyler doesn't usually like to draw pictures much (he'd rather be playing outside!), but typically whenever he draws a picture lately, it's usually of him & Laron doing something.  So the other day when Skyler came up to me to show me his picture & had me guess who it was of, I was all ears when he said that it was of him & me.  But his explanation was even cuter... He said it was a picture of him holding a brush & brushing my hair!  Adorable, huh?  I told him that he wasn't allowed to erase it because it just melted my heart every time I saw it! The even cuter thing though is that he actually does brush my hair sometimes... He knows that if Mom is sad or crying, brushing her hair or rubbing her shoulders will make it all better.  Wow, Laron has taught him well!

No more NIGHTS!

Yeah!  We made it!  Laron is officially DONE working NIGHTS!  It's been a very long 2+ years, but somehow Laron's managed, although it's definitely taken a toll on his health... Laron is now Lactose-Intolerant, which means I can no longer cook anything creamy, which is limiting me far more than I like.  And his new shift isn't entirely ideal, but it'll be better than working at night for sure!  As for some of the drawbacks, he leaves at 5:00 in the morning, which means waking up at 4:30, which means no more slacking off on getting the kids to bed on time.  Also, he no longer has a carpool buddy, which means more money he'll have to spend on gas & he'll actually make less money now because he doesn't get extra for working nights.  But I suppose it's still worth it!  No more tiptoeing around all day because "dad's sleeping"... We're thrilled!

And guess who else isn't waking up during the night now too?  Yep, Bailey finally started to figure out the whole sleeping-through-the-night thing.  (Of course, now that I've got Laron with me at night to help me... Ironic, huh? :)   Oh well, I guess we'll take it when we get it!

I sure love that girl!

A dose of Warm Weather

I am really loving this warm weather we've been having lately!

Today we grilled up some hamburgers

& yesterday we had a picnic out on the grass... 

It's getting me excited about
all the fun we're going to have over the summer!

Bring it on!

St. Patrick's Day Fun

St. Patrick's Day was fun this year, although I think Skyler was a little disappointed in our Leprechaun this year compared to last year... The night before St. Patrick's Day, Skyler set up a trap in his room to catch a leprechaun, just like last year, and he even said in his prayers that night to "Please help me to be able to catch the leprechaun," but right before we tucked him into bed, he decided that maybe we shouldn't try to catch him or he might get mad & mess up his room like LAST year.  And so, we took down the trap.

But the next morning the kids woke up to their beds all tied up with yarn & a note from the leprechaun saying that this year he decided to set a trap for THEM!  The kids were a little stunned, but excited. :)  But then they ran all over the house trying to look for his gold (last year he left them some) & they checked excitedly in the fridge for a green treat (last year he left them one of those too), but they came back empty-handed & disappointed.  But luckily the leprechaun had at least thought to turn their milk green for breakfast, so that made up for some of the forgetfulness.  Whoops!  I guess he shouldn't start traditions that he doesn't feel like continuing year after year after year...

 Now that leprechaun's just got to figure out
what to do for next year...

Bailey's CRAWLING!

Bailey's now officially into everything around here!  Three weeks ago, the very day she turned 8 months old, Bailey finally started crawling.  She'd been rocking on her hands & knees for 2 months prior to that, but she's finally figured it all out.  It's funny to see the kids running ahead of her, grabbing all of their toys out of her reach.  And wow, it hasn't taken her long to figure out all the exciting places in the house to explore.  Her favorite, by far, is underneath the kitchen table where there seems to be a never-ending supply of crumbs!  It doesn't mater how much I sweep, there are always more produced at every meal.  The other day I walked into the kitchen to find both Bailey AND Kimberly eating crumbs off the floor together... It was such a precious site to see & made me reconsider whether I should bother with sweeping them up! :)

She now says "Da Da," "Ma Ma," & "Na Na" and is just such a happy & sweet girl.  She's pulling herself up on everything now too, so we're really having to be careful what we leave lying around.  But all-in-all, we're really enjoying this stage & hope we can keep her out of too much trouble!