April 2011 pt.3

The Randomness of life
This month I had the priviledge of doing a prego photoshoot for my dear friend Hannah. Even though this pic doesn't show her incredibly large belly (as she was expecting twins), this was my favorite pic from the bunch!On April 28th Fayleah Reagh and Eden Beverly had joined the world and mom and dad couldn't have been prouder. We had a great time taking the kids in for a visit to see the new arrivals and enjoying dinner with the kids after the visit. Josh and Hannah are some of the most kind and loving people you could ever meet! They are making absolutely incredible parents!

Another favorite picture I took, although on a different spectrum was this next one. Brennan was on a crazy Spiderman kick, loving everything and anything spiderman. Crazy enough I walked into the room and caught him with a red marker trying to become spiderman...Good thing the marker was washable!


This month was also the Bike rodeo for Davin down at the ice rink. He was right inbetween sizes for bikes, and wouldn't let me talk him into riding the smaller more secure bike. So he climbed on the big BMX and could hardly touch the ground. At every stop he almost tipped over, but he was sure excited to participate in the course that the RCMP had put together. Here he is getting the pre-ride lecture with his class by the town by-law-officer.
April is the wrap up for Nathan's Badminton team. He teaches early morning at the Jr. High 2-3 days a week, for the month of March and some of April. April brings Zone's and Provincials and an early morning pancake breakfast on the last day. But not only that, it gives Nathan the opportunity to school a few Jr. High kids in a couple in school tournaments....He's still got it!

I have had a chance to catch my girls together a few times lately and it has been priceless! Taylor has been such a big help with Briley. She changes diapers, preps bottles, plays games, cuddles, reads books, and just loves to spend time with her little sister. As Briley has been crawling this month Taylor has spent a lot of time down on the floor following her around on hands and knees. They can get pretty crazy together, but they sure clean up nice!

April 2011 pt. 2

Waterton Lakes Lodge!!!

Last year Nathan and I took advantage of Waterton Lakes Lodge 2 for 1 winter deal and absolutley loved it! We Figured that a good getaway in the winter helps cure the wintertime blues and breaks up the monotony of the cold white months. This year we convinced our friends Shannon and Cody Toone to join us. We couldn't be away from the kids for 2 nights, so we did 2 rooms for the price of one. We headed up on Friday right afterschool and got settled into our rooms, then rented ski equipment and drove up the Cameron lake road to do some cross country skiing. This was my second time ever going and I absolutely enjoyed every minute of it! This post is going to be filled with a bunch of pics to commemorate the outing and the beauty of Waterton!
On the right is Cody and Shannon at the very beginning of our cross country skiing adventure!
Below is me looking down the trail (roadway) to Cameron Lake.

The next two pics are of each couple once we had reached Cameron lake.


I was amazed at the amount of snow that was up there in comparison to everywhere else. This was one of the outhouses that is open during the summer!

And of course if you know Nathan and Cody at all they have to find a way to challenge themselves during any adventure. This was the slope down into the parking lot that they decided they needed to test their telemarking skills on!
I guess cross country skiis weren't meant for telemarking! But they sure made for a good laugh!

Apart from some sticky snow on the way back making it a little more than frustrating for both of the guys, and one or two falls throughout the trip it was an amazingly beautiful adventure!
We figured we had better get one more shot before heading back down to the Lodge for the night!
After skiing we had dinner at Vimmy's Lounge and sat by the fire to warm up. The food was amazing and totally filling, yet we went back to our room to play games and EAT MORE snacks until we were stuffed!
The next morning we had a wonderful breakfast in the Lounge. Then went back and gathered our things and checked out. Since we still had sitters at home for a few more hours we decided to head back to the lounge to hang out and play games.
Both Nathan and Cody are very into Chess, both running chess clubs at their respective schools, so of course that was one of the games of choice for them while Shannon and I chatted away and exchanged laughs!






What a terrific getaway with terrific people! Something we will have to make a yearly tradition of. I would recommend it to anyone wanting to get away for a little bit, but not wanting to go too far from home!

April 2011 pt.1

I think I realized how much happened in April as I was going through pics for this blog entry. So I think I might break it up into a few smaller entries! To start with I want to focus on the growth of my little kiddlies! I found these two pictures which sum up Brennan lately: from Attitude
to Angel

He has such a way of being so kind and gentle. Giving so much of what he has to others. Always making sure that everyone has a snack if he wants one, or a piece of candy, or a drink, or whatever it is he thinks about. He never wants anyone to be left out. This kid is one of a kind.
Briley has been growing so much and with that growth comes exhaustion! I caught her here more than a few times this month!

I was able to take Briley and Brennan to the Library Tales for Tots, early in the month. We were lucky to catch it on a day when they were giving carriage rides! It was a little chilly, but such a blast!


Briley has started crawling over the last month and the kids have loved following her everywhere. They think she is just amazing and hence, she never gets much time on her own. Here is a great example of her crawling practice with all the kids supporting her:

This month was the beginning of spring in our area, which means gopher hunting! It means time out at our favorite place: The Ranch! Nathan's "Aunts" (Susan and Marcheta- whom we lovingly refer to simply as "The Aunts") are living on the family ranch while his Uncle Ricks runs the cattle. He is always welcome to help with the rodant issues they have out there, so we take our guns out for target practice on the menaces. This year Nathan bought the kids a single shot Henri rifle to learn to handle. They mostly only shot at our stationary target. But they had a great time learning the ins and outs of gun safety.

When I think of it the Ranch should almost have a blog post of it's own. Why? You might ask? Well, probably because so much happens out at the ranch! Here are a few pics to illustrate my point: early on in spring the ranch is always dealing with melting snow spots and water.
Water+4 year old curiousity=
Thanks to a mom who always packs an extra change of clothes in her "Go Bin" and amazingly prepared Aunts (who had a pair of yellow gum boots just his size for an Armour of God primary presentation) we were good to go again!

Shortly after pulling onto the road after Brennan's trip through the mud we came across a heffer who had just given birth to this little one. It was a great chance to talk to the kids about the birthing process and why there were "stringy things" (as Davin put it) coming ou the cows bum! Man all the opportunities the Ranch allows is amazing!!!

March 2011

This month we had the privlege of being invited to the Young Women's New Beginnings. As Taylor is turning 12 this year she was spotlighted and introduced to the group as well as 5 other girls. Their theme was "Princesses". I can't believe that she is growing up so quickly, where have the last 12 years of my life gone? For New Beginnings the girls spotlighted the wonderful work of Miranda Layton. She is a seamstress in our ward and I have the priviledge of visiting teaching her! She created a Young Women's fashion line with formal dresses in the colors of the values. Each of the Young Women wore one of her dresses as they described what each Value represented. It was a beautiful evening. March seemed like an insanely busy month! It was Leprechan time and Davin's class made Leprechan traps at school. It is a tradition in the first grade. They make these traps with the hopes of catching a Leprechan and getting it to tell them where his pot of Gold is. If the trap is worthy of the Leprachan's notice the Leprechan will leave a suprise behind to reward the child's efforts...what an interesting tradition, but one that Davin got rather creative with this year!March is our Gymnastics wrap up month, which usually means insane extra hours at the gym and not much else in our household but gymnastics! Needless to say it drives Nathan insane!!! This year I had the opportunity to take over Juliann's Preschool class as she got a full time day job. Let me tell you, these girl's were the cutest bundles of energy! I took this picture after we practiced log rolls on the mats. (which was loaded with static electricity) Where would I rather be than sharing a laugh with these little angels?!?
Here is a picture of Davin stretching in prep for his finale number.
This is Brennan preping for his walk across the balance beam!

Here Taylor is the one in the handstand closest to the left at the end of her finale number!
This is one of our finale night pictures. We had 3 nights of Finale's in order to spotlight every class. This night was a lot of our older gymnasts. Coaches Todd Griffiths, Juliann Sommerfeldt, Myself, Kris Olsen, Judy, and Jenni MacDonnell are all pictured here. Taylor is in this one as well, next to Jenni MacDonnell. She has a black leo with colored stars and such on it.

And last but not least, this month is also the Rotary Music Festival, which means extra choir practices and running to see preformances 2 days in a row. One day the school classes preform, the next the choir groups preform. They do an amazing job under the direction of Linda Burwell(with Mrs. Williams on the piano and Mrs. Drew managing all the behind the scene issues). I don't know how she gets them to preform as they do, but her choirs are amazing!
Here is Annie Soper, Taylor and Haylie Holland all sporting their wonderful choir attire!

February 2011

Along with February came Valentine's day! We had our usual Valentine's Breakfast and posed for our personal Valnetine greeting we sent out to Family this year.


I also attempted a mini photo shoot of Briley. Attempted being the key word! Brennan loved his sis so much it was hard to get any pics of just her without him mauling her. Ah...sibling love....I hope it doesn't turn to sibling rivalry too quickly!


Davin has been constantly building with the Trio sets that he recieved for Christmas. This is an example of one of Batman's hideouts.

February also brings the Sciene Fair at theCardston Elementary School. This year Taylor coupled with her friend Micha to find out which cereal gets soggy the fastest. It was quite a cereal fest at our house for a while!

I also did a little experimenting with douvet covers to match the Camo theme in the boy's room. The douvets the boys have are a child's size, so I got a sheet and folded it in half, sewed up the sides, added buttons and a fold over top, and viola....The end result:
The boys were quite excited with the finished product!

Here is a Picture of Briley (on the right)at 6 months with her best friend Allie Atwood. They were born 2 & 1/2 weeks apart and have been too cute together!! We caught what looked like them holding hands...BFF's already!

To end February off we attended the Winter Festival in Waterton. We took the kids swimming at the Waterton Lakes Lodge and had dinner at Vimmy's Grill afterwards. An incredibly fun day!

We also attended the Remington Carriage Fair that is held every Family Day. The boys learned how to make their own ropes and have been working on their roping skills ever since they got home. If I can figure out how to post it I'll get a video clip of them trying to rope a stool turned upside down, they could pass for real rodeo ropers!!