JayLee's dance recital

Jay's dance recital was this Friday. Here is a video of Jay's class. Her class is 3-5 years old so she is one of the oldest in the class. When she stops she is trying to get one of the younger girls that ran off the stage to come back out. I was really proud of her for stopping to help, she is a really neat girl. It was fun to see her watch out for someone else when she could have been nervous herself.

She had a blast and she was really excited to wear makeup. Let me just tell you that her eyelashes are AMAZING!! They are so long! I was so jealous while I was putting mascara on her. She is one lucky girl. Sorry about me moving so much while taking the video. Olin was on my lap and kept moving back and forth. I finally had to put him on the ground but he was so excited to see JayLee.

This is part of her class. She is pretty good friends with the 2 girls in the yellow and the littlest girl in the purple is the girl she tried to get to come back out on stage. She is definitely sad that dance is over for the year.

As I was talking to her teacher, she told me that she was really excited for when she starts teaching them to turn out because JayLee is so naturally turned out. I just laughed but it puts a whole new perspective on being bowlegged.

Hannah's visit

Not much has been going on here lately. Lottie is growing up fast though. She is a really fun baby. She has a 4 month check up tomorrow so Ill let you know how big she is then. This picture is just when I was changing her into her pjs. She is almost always smiling and you can get her to laugh quite a bit now too.

JayLee's dance class went to a nursing home a couple of weeks ago to perform. Of course my camera died after one picture but atleast I got one right? Her dance recital is coming up and she is pretty excited about it.

My sister Hannah came to visit yesterday along with her 2 kids Liam and Kahlen. Hannah came out to get some pictures taken. (My friend Nichole is AWESOME. Check her out on Facebook or her website and then come and visit me to have her do your pictures....she is AMAZING!!!) Hannah left for a couple of hours to get her hair done and then get the pictures. She was worried about leaving me with 5 kids under the age of 5......rude huh? I even got them all in one place for a picture. OK honestly, it was really cold outside (too cold and windy for Trent to work outside) and Trent helped...ALOT. And Lottie and Kahlen and Liam slept for most of the time. But you have to give me props for getting them all to sleep and the picure.

Her is cute little Kahlen. She is so fun and her little brother Liam LOVES her.

Of course there had to be a little disagreement between the 2 boys. It all started with me using Olin's precious beloved John Deere blanket (click here, here, or here if you need to be reminded) I was feeding Lottie and that was the closest one. Liam saw it and thought it was pretty cool and wanted that blanket so he grabbed it and laid down on the floor.

What? you don't see the green blanket..... Enter, Olin. Yep, he took it and he thought it was really funny. If you don't know Olin, he is a tease and he likes to wrestle so Olin saw this as the perfect opportunity.So Liam eventually caught Olin and they wrestled for a bit. Then Olin being a year older (but not much bigger) than Liam got the blanket back and said triumphantly, "I'm stronger than him." It was all in good fun and Liam, being a pretty big tease too, just laughed when it was all over. It was fun to have Hannah come and my kids thought it was pretty cool too. Thanks for coming out Hannah. We love you!!

JayLee and Kash

JayLee has grown up so much in the last year. It's crazy to think that just a year ago she couldn't reach the stirrups on her saddle and now we had to lower the stirrups. Lowering the stirrups is something that didn't happen much for me, she doesn't know how lucky she is. It has warmed up here so we've been riding more. Here is a video of Jay riding Kash in the pasture. She LOVES to lope on him. We're still working on steering but luckily Kash takes care of her.

Inside Out and Backwards

If you've met Olin, you might think he is a sweet sweet boy. He looks at you with his blue eyes and smiles and he has you wrapped around his finger. He is funny and cute and he is the first one of my kids to break a window. Yep, that would be Olin. How? you might ask,

Well most kids might accidentally break windows by throwing a baseball from the outside of the house in. Right? Not Olin. He threw a baseball bat inside and almost out.

After he did it, he was so surprised that the glass would actually break. He just stared at it until we came and sent him to timeout. Were just glad it happened now and not 2 months ago when the temperature was well below zero.

Another Baby Blessing and Warm Weather

I stole this picture from my sister in-law Alese. Last Sunday we went to Levan for Otto's blessing. Alese had a lunch at the firehouse after church and Michele once again (with groans from men in the family) pulled everyone together for a family picture. Way to go Michele, I love it!!

Were so excited for Alese and Ryan but I think Olin is the happiest. He can't wait for Otto to get big and rope with him. Notice Otto's blanket in the family picture. Alese bought one for Olin and gave it to him for his 1st birthday (it is his favorite blanket) seen here, here, and here. She also had the forsight to buy one for her future child but Olin can't quite wrap his brain around it. Everytime were together he tries to claim that for his own. But can you blame him, it really is a cool blanket.

This Saturday it was FINALLY warm enough to take all the kids outside to ride horses. Lottie was so cute. She was only out for about an hour but her eyes were wide open the whole time and her little mouth formed into an "o" shape, she was pretty fascinated with the new world she discovered.

And just in case you know Rio, this was him snooping Lottie and my camera out.

Before we say anything about riding horses to the kids (mostly JayLee) Trent and I do a lot of whispering. If we say, "maybe we should ride horses today," very loud or loud enough for JayLee to hear we never live it down. She wants to go out right that second and ride her horse. And if we tell her, "yeah Jay, we'll go out in a while" she can't really contain herself. She just says over and over, "Is it time yet? Can we go catch Kash now? When are we going to go...." You get the idea. She is definitely horse crazy.

Olin isn't quite as horse crazy as JayLee is. Don't get me wrong, he loves them but isn't quite as comfortable on them. He would rather ride with someone. It was kind of like pulling teeth to get him on alone. He rode with me for a while even though he loves his Dad's horse "Hazel Girl"

Trent took Hazel into the pasture and trotted some circles for a while and Jay, Olin, Lottie and I stayed in the trees by the house. I took this picture when he was coming back and thought it was pretty cool. Zak likes to stay pretty close to whoever goes in the field riding.When Lottie fell asleep, I got a turn to ride. JayLee and I went and rode in the pasture for a bit. She is getting pretty good at making Kash do what she wants. Last year she got really frustrated with him when he would go back to the tack shed and would just yell for someone to help her. On Saturday she didn't let him get away with much though. I was really proud of her.

Lottie's blessing

On February 13 we blessed Lottie. We blessd her in Benjamin at Trent's parents house. Thanks Michele for letting us crowd your house for a couple of hours. It was a little crowded with all our family there, but a lot of fun.

For those of you who don't know, we named Lottie after Trent's Grandma. It is fun having them together but nobody tell Grandma that we took her picture.

Before church we got some family pictures. Thanks Michele, for thinking about it. I always have good intentions of taking pictures of the kids before church when they are all dressed up but we rarely get it done.

Notice how Jessie ,Woody and Bullseye HAD to be in the pictures. I guess it is kind of fitting because Grandma has those toys at her house and they are the favorites.

It was a really fun weekend. I love it when we can get the whole family together. It doesn't happen very often with us living so far away but maybe one day that will change.

And since we can't have Lottie and Kahlen together without taking a picture of them, here they are. They were born on the same day and are too too cute

Meeting Otto

Trent's sister Alese had her first baby last week so over the weekend we took a little road trip. They live a little over 3 hours away from us and it is on the way to Trent's parents house so we took the truck so we could get hay for our horses while we were going.

Olin got to ride in the backhoe with his Dad which definitely made his day. You can see his hand on some kind of lever and he didn't let go of it the whole time. He thought he was pretty cool.Once we got the hay loaded Trent had to restack the straw around the hay stack. Well considering Trent hasn't ran that backhoe for over 5 years it was al ittle slow going and we had a little blooper. He was pretty lucky the hay didn't come rolling back. Luckily he was watching close enough that he rolled the bucket back forward and the hay just got stopped right there.

I about had a heart attack. Then the front wheels kept coming off the ground and again, I about had a heart attack. I'm definitely the worst person to watch these situations. I could ride a roller coaster all day but to watch a wreck or a potential one makes me crazy.

Once we got the haystack put back together we stopped to see Nicole and Colby's new house they are building. It is going to be so pretty. When we finally arrived at Alese and Ryan's house to see Otto......

JayLee got to hold him first. And she doesn't take short turns holding babies. She takes her sweet time loving on them.Here is Lottie (7 weeks old), Me, Alese, and Otto (5days old). Alese and Ryan stole our next boy name, just in case anyone was wondering. Just kidding we almost named Olin, Otto. But we decided on Olin. Then when Alese and I found out we were expecting at about the same time, Ryan really wanted us to be having a girl so they could name theirs Otto.

And here they are together. It was a lot of fun to be together and to meet Otto. We even got to stop and see our friends Matt and Aimee on the way home. It was one loaded trip but we had a lot of fun.