Happy 6th BDay Kaitlyn

August-
This year was Kaitlyn's first real big friend party.  I had given her many options of what she could do - even rent out an area at the community pool with water slides.  She wanted to do just what Abby did and have a swim and pizza party at the pool down the street.  Invitations were sent out and the day of the party there was a heavy chance of rain.

Two hours before all of the friends were to arrive, I started to panic because I didn't have a plan B.  I quickly came up with some options with games that they could play inside.  (Thank you Katie B for the game book you gave me years ago!)  Watching the forecast it was supposed to rain the first hour and then be gone so I planned on games, pinata,  pizza, cake first and then head to the pool.  We should have done it the other way around.  The rain held off until we were going to go to the pool, then it poured!

I had hired a sitter to help me watch the girls at the pool and she came up with the great idea of just playing in the rain.   I had 10 girls dancing in the rain out in the street.  We got so cold we even thought of making hot chocolate!  It's a party for the record books.

Kaitlyn heading off to her annual birthday breakfast with Grandma and Grandpa!  They love this one on one attention!

FHE - Family, isn't it about time?

Tonight was a crazy one at our FHE.  Abby likes to conduct and brought out a toy microphone and set up a stand.  But, Kaitlyn wanted a turn and this set off a chain of events that had 3 girls in timeout, crying.  We hadn't even started yet.  After much crying from the girls and frustration from everyone, we finally got started 30 minutes later.   Todd picked the opening song to be "I Am a Child of God."  As we were singing and got to the part, "...with parents kind and dear..."  Kaitlyn shouts out to Todd, "You're not kind!"  Touche! It was so funny I couldn't finish singing and I was crying from laughter.

Also, during some of the crying, Kaitlyn was complaining how Olivia keeps her up at night.  Then  Olivia complained about when she sleeps in our bed, she can't go to sleep because it's too noisy so Todd looks at her and says "Well, sleep in your own bed then."  Waterworks just started flowing then.  She got worse when she saw that I was laughing.

In the end, Abby gave a great lesson and everyone still got treats even with all the craziness.  How's that for parents kind and dear?!

Camping In

This is from back in August, I'm still trying to get caught up but not doing a very good job.


One week while Todd was traveling the girls really wanted to go camping and have a sleepover.  We combined the idea and made a sheet tent in the family room.  They thought it was pretty cool and dimmed the dining room lights to pretend that they were stars.  The girls did so well with "camping out" we did it a few nights in a row.

I just love that Abby is reading to her sisters and there is no fighting at this moment.